Month: December 2013

Here comes Jesus!

Aside Sue Takamoto1 Comment

Yesterday, on Christmas Eve, I think I met Jesus.  Twice. I had been excited about the day because we were surprising our Nozomi staff with a year-end bonus.  From what I’ve heard from our manager and others, this is virtually unheard of in Japan for part-time workers.  We knew it would really bless our staff, […]

Christmas Song Quiz Answers

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Merry Christmas – today, on December 25th- we want to wish our friends and family joy, and peace, and times of abiding.  Here are the answers to our Christmas song Quiz (nice job, Carrie Myer!):

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1.  Wii Three Kings of Orient Are

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2.  Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

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3.  O Come, All Ye Faithful!

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4.  Silent Knight

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5.  Jingle Belles

6.  (This is the hardest — extra credit!)

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6.  Ding Dong, Merrily on High  (It really is a christmas song – I had to find it on YouTube to prove it to Eric.  And those silver things are chocolate cakes called Ding Dongs (like Ho Hos) – for those of you who aren’t from that part of the country where they are sold.

Merry Christmas from the Takamotos!

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Merry Christmas Quiz from the Takamotos

Sue Takamoto2 Comments

For friends who haven’t received our Christmas card this year, here is your chance to take the 2013 Christmas card quiz from the Takamotos.  Please name the following Christmas songs:  (Answers to come in a day or so!)

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6.  (This is the hardest — extra credit!)

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We are so thankful for God’s daily care in our lives and in the work He is doing here in Ishinomaki.   And thankful for the friends from different places around the world who have chosen to be a part of our journey with us.  

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 Merry Christmas!

 

Giving

Sue TakamotoLeave a comment

Today we had the wonderfully difficult staff meeting of explaining to a room full of mystified women the whole idea of tithing… or blessed to be a blessing.  We are still pinching ourselves a bit, but God has blessed us with a healthy profit.  We don’t have the final numbers, but we really do thank God for how He has blessed the Nozomi Project.

Our Be One/Nozomi team has decide that we want to tithe 20% of our first year profits… 10% to local Tohoku needs, and 10% to those with great needs overseas.  We don’t know how orthodox this is, but it has felt like the right decision.  We are setting aside 10% or so to bless our staff as well, and the rest will be invested back into our company.

Chad came to the meeting and helped to shared the vision and our desire to be a blessing just as God has blessed us so much.  What we have is all a result of God blessing us — it is all His! — and we want to share from the first of that.  We gave out a sheet I had prepared with possible agencies and ideas for local and overseas giving.

I shared with the staff the lesson that Eric and I learned a few years after our marriage.  We were both seminary students, and we had started using our credit cards to get from month to month… and the debt starting adding up.  We didn’t share about it with others.  Then one night we attended our hope group — a weekly fellowship from our church.  I can’t remember the topic, but we ended up sharing with our friends there about our debt.  As they gathered around to pray for us, one of the older members wisely asked, “Are you tithing?”  We realized that we had both tithed before marriage but it had somehow slipped away as a priority the past year or two.  We kneeled there and surrendered all of our finances to God.  It was a major turning point for us in many ways.  WIthin a year of taking our tithe out first from our monthly pay, our debt was manageable and nearly gone.  It has been a foundational principle of our lives since;  both with income as well as gifts that we have received.

This morning I called my dad, and told him about the talk we were about to have.  He has been one of the models of generous living to me — even at 85 he continues trying to outgive what he gave the previous year.  He won’t tell me how me the percentage because he doesn’t want to boast.

He told me about a Christian great who he met one time while flying in a small plane back from Peru… R.G. LeTourneau.  This Christian man made his money from inventing heavy machinery… I read that 70% of the machinery used in World War II had been invented by R.G.  As he and his wife began the practice of tithing, they inverted the normal Christian way of doing things – they lived on 10% and gave away 90%.  Even still, they prospered and were able to make a great impact.

My desire is that Nozomi Project will be known for being generous — to our staff, to those starting new things;  to those in need.  And that God will continue to work in my own life to love being generous more and more.  This is the way of Christmas.

1000 Days

Sue Takamoto3 Comments

A few days ago Owen came home and told us that it has been a thousand days since the tsunami hit.  Woah.  That sounds like such a long time;  but in some ways it feels here like it was still a short time ago. Many hearts are still raw;  many people still living in temporary homes;  many still unemployed.

This morning we had a very intense worship time.  We did not do what was planned;  but rather ended up focusing on some of the challenges that are being faced by our friends in this region.  One friend was grieving over the tragic suicidal death of her father a year ago;  another shared that a mutual friend is contemplating suicide. We cried, and prayed, and cried and prayed some more.  One friend just buried her head in my arms and sobbed.  I held her, and cried.  I sat at lunch with a junior high girl who is just so sad, so often, since the tsunami.  There was a great deal of heaviness.  But Jesus was in our midst.  I am convinced of that.

Tonight one worshipping friend from this community got into a fender bender and called me — so so discouraged.  She is a single mom and lost the discussion with the police and the other driver about who’s fault the accident was.  She will need to write it up with the insurance and pay for it.  She was so sad; struggling so hard with being single and not having a husband to be there by her side.

All of us felt pretty worn out!  But I looked around the room this morning – maybe forty-some of us crammed together into a combined dining/living/kitchen area.  And I felt so thankful for our Be One team… a group of us who are committed to being here – for whatever that means.  To walk with our friends from Tohoku through their sorrows, their joys, their jobs, their singleness.  To be here, God willing, for the next one thousand days.

Christmas decorating tales — the wonderful ways of God

Sue Takamoto3 Comments

I am sentimental, especially at Christmastime.  This year it has felt particularly fun to decorate for the season:  our kids are more interested in the stories behind our decorations, and last year we were in our third temporary home without much space or means (or energy!) to decorate.

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I have loved having “real” help from especially the older kids (photo below is with our friend Haruna who dropped by,and helped untangle Christmas lights).

IMG_8095We bought an artificial Christmas tree on the internet – it looks nice especially far away!

DSC_8286Almost every ornament on the tree has a memory or meaning attached…. Eric and I have tried to geet away  somehow almost every year for our December anniversary, and we have found a different tree ornament each time.  On family vacations we have tried to pick out a special remembrance.  And then those special homemade ones….

One of my most prized possessions is my Santa pitcher.  My Grandmom Plumb made it as one of many ceramics that she molded and painted during her younger years.  I am guessing that it could be sixty-five years old or so.  I love it as it reminds me so much of my grand mom who passed away about fourteen years ago this season (photo below:  top right, above my snowman collection!).

DSC_8294But there are two decorations that especially remind me  of God’s sweet and watchful care.

Sometime around 1987, I went with a team of favorite friends to the Dominican Republic on a missions trip (Anne, Lauren, Julia, Diane….).  There weren’t many fun gifts from our shopping excursion one day, but we all fell in love with the handmade sets of ceramic nativity sets.  Most of us bought several — I took some back for my sisters and friend Kris and for me.  It was my only Christmas decoration that went with me from Washington DC to Japan for three years and then to Los Angeles where I attended seminary and met and married Eric.

Our first Christmas after our one year anniversary we were robbed.  Our storage unit was broken into, and two boxes of our favorite Christmas decorations were gone – including my D.R. nativity set.  I was crushed.

Our friends the Weigels in New Jersey told their young girls about our misfortunate.  Each night their youngest, Laura, would pray that God would help us to “find” our nativity set.  Her mom Kris didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was long-gone somewhere in Los Angeles and wasn’t coming back…

The next month my Dad was cleaning out the basement of our family home in New Jersey.  He found a box all wrapped of a — a new D.R. nativity set.  My sisters all confirmed that they had theirs safely stored in their own homes.  All that we can figure is that those years ago I had bought an extra set, and forgotten about it.  It remained buried in our cellar for eleven years – until a month after a four year old prayed and asked God to help us find the nativity set.  Every year since that Christmas I take out this replacement set –with great care– and smile at the kind provision of God.

nativityThe other story is tied to our Christmas stockings.  About five years ago we were back in the US for a seven month home assignment.  After Christmas we went shopping at a Pottery Barn outlet, and found awesome quilted stockings on clearance.  Kaaa-ching!!  I picked out five for our family (two red male ones;  three light blue female ones)  and went home.  When I got them out to show Eric, I laid them out and discovered — I had accidentally bought six – three boy and three girl ones.  The outlet was two hours away- no way was it worth returning the extra.  I was kind of mad at myself but stuck them all in our boxes to be shipped to Japan.

That next September we were asked by our adoption agency to be a foster family for a few months to little Yuu kun.  Most of you know the story… Over the next few months God made it more than abundantly clear that God wanted him to join the Takamoto family.  The following Christmas, I pulled out our stockings – and realized – that the mistaken purchase provided exactly what we needed for Ian Yuu, our final family addition.

DSC_8287I think as I get older I realize more and more how sweet our Jesus is!  So thankful for how He finds quirky and wonderful ways to remind us of His love. They are displayed all around us, whether it’s Christmastime or not.  These are the things of Christmas decorating that I want our children to remember as we pass along our holiday traditions.

Snow Bugs

Sue Takamoto1 Comment

Last year, our first real winter in Ishinomaki, we learned about a little thing called, yuki-mushi, or snow bugs.  They are tiny little fluttery things that, at first glance, really might remind one of snowflakes caught in the breeze.  I remember being surprised by them – they were just – suddenly– one morning – HERE.  

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And our Nozomi staff became my teachers (for some reason I don’t remember ever seeing them in previous places I have lived in Japan – even Sendai).  When the snow bugs come out, it is sure to snow in the next few days.  A quick search showed me that they actually have about ten days to prove themselves correct.  Last year, it was just a matter of three days.

Yesterday, our little white friends were just, suddenly, HERE.  The girls and I were quite excited… several quickly became little pets after school.  I don’t like the cold, but my philosophy is that if it’s going to be cold we might as well enjoy it with snow.  We will keep you posted.  I think nature is so strikingly beautiful that it provides such whimsical harbingers of the upcoming season.  

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