We are now living in the US again.  Ioan is climbing and crawling and generally getting himself into trouble.  Mike is working, and very busy.  And I’m trying to keep up with both of them, take care of the apartment, and get settled.  So aside from moving half way around the world, it’s business-as-usual.   God has blessed us in amazing ways during this transition - we had enough money to get through the summer, we were given a whole apartment full of furniture and most of the basic kitchen supplies - pots and pans and such.  Most of the furniture and kitchenware was not only free, but is nicer than what we had in Korea, too - so that was an incredible blessing.  God has also provided transportation for us.  Ioan did really well with all of the traveling, visiting new people, adapting to American food (peas and greenbeans are things we didn’t get very often in Korea, and without my own blender zuchinni baby food is hard to find in the US) and various other adjustments.  He is still his happy, out-going self and is still the happiest baby in the nursery.  I had intended to start making my own baby-food again after we got settled, but a day or two after we moved into our apartment he started eating table food (cut up or mashed), so that is no longer a problem.

We are back at Grace Covenant Church, and loving it - but now we miss UBC!  Guess we will just have to keep looking forward to heaven and being able to worship alongside our brothers and sisters from all over the world.  Anyway, for now, Mike and I have been asked to be involved in developing a new ministry at our church here in Ohio.  We’re going to be starting a children’s ministry on Sunday nights with an emphasis on learning basic doctrine.  We’ll be using a catechism as the back-bone of the program, and then fleshing it out with Bible study, memory verses, etc. as we teach the kids the biblical foundation behind each point and then how we can apply it to our lives.  Anyway, we’re really excited about seeing how things work out.  The class is scheduled to start in mid-September, and between now and then we have to pick a curriculum, put a team together, and work out the logistics.  We’re working with one of the associate pastors as well as with the Sunday School director to figure out all of these details.

Next week is a busy one - it is Spiritual Emphasis week at school.  Please be praying for that - we’d like to see God calling our students to himself, whether in salvation or just to know him better.  The topic for the week is the story of Joseph, and the speaking will be divided up between the pastor of our church, the middle and high school Bible teachers, and the high school history teacher.  On Wednesday, we will have our annual purity seminar - a day when we cancel regular classes and take the time to challenge the kids to be pure and holy (”set-apart”) in every area of their lives.  I will be teaching two sessions to the middle school girls - the first is about the qualities and characteristics that define a true friend, the second is about finding beauty in the image of God, rather than in following cultural pressures.  Please pray for wisdom as I prepare.

Next week we will also be visited by one of my best friends from Cedarville.  (Yet another example of God giving more than we dare to imagine).  I’m really looking forward to spending some time with her.   Pray that she has a safe and uneventful trip.

That’s all the news I can think of at the moment.  I will try to post baby pictures as soon as Mike shows me how.

We are doing pretty well.  Mom flew home on Christmas Eve.  We were sad to see her go, but I’m sure my family is glad to have her back. :-)  The last few days have been an adventure as we try to adjust to being a three-some.  Ioan is doing well.  Mom and Dad have good days and bad days, mostly depending on how much sleep we got the night before.

Mike’s Christmas break ends on January 5th.  Please keep him in prayer as he re-adjusts to working full time and dealing with the changes at home.  Also, pray for me as I am having a hard time emotionally with not going back to school, and will also need to adjust to caring for Ioan on my own during the day.

God has provided a Spanish teacher - literally, as in from Spain - for my afternoon classes who is much more qualified to teach them than I am.  I’m excited to hear how he will challenge and stretch the students.  My Spanish II class is a little panicked, but I think they will rise to the occasion.  Pray for the kids as they adjust to a new teacher, and for Jose’ as he adjusts to Uijongbu.  Also pray that his visa paperwork would go through very quickly and he would be able to arrive early in the semester.  We are still praying and looking for a math teacher.  Right now, the plan is that the middle-school math teacher, who is also our pastor, will take the Algebra II class, while the Pre-Calculus class will be taught by our guidance counselor, who was the high school math teacher up until last year.

Mike will be speaking in chapel in January, and also possibly preaching sometime this winter.  I will be continuing to teach the middle school girls’ Bible elective, and to be involved in the high school ladies’ Bible study.  I am also involved in helping with the annual purity seminar, which will be held the first week in February.  Please be praying for all of these things.

Little Ioan is already such a blessing.  Every day he gets a little more alert to what’s going on around him, a little hungrier, a little more peaceful when he sleeps, and I realize a little more how totally dependent on us he is, even though he sometimes thinks he isn’t.  It’s been a good reminder - to watch for God at work, to crave the bread of life, to rest in the knowledge that I am secure in him, and to remember that on my own I can’t do anything.

I hope your Christmas was enjoyable, and that the New Year brings you closer to Him.

- Mandie

Please be praying for us as we continue to adjust.  Merry Christmas!

- Mandie

“Advent” means “coming” - it is a reference both to Christ’s coming to us, and to our nearing the Christmas holiday.  As a season, it is a time of preparation, waiting, and excitement as we look forward to His return by remembering His birth.  I’ve always loved this time of year - with its rich tapestry of traditions, symbols, wonder, worship, awe, and joy.  I often call this tapestry “the Christmas magic,” and it seems inescapable in December, even for those who don’t understand what it really is about or try to smother that reality.  But for those of us who know the Truth, how can we not experience it?  Immanuel - God with us - demands a response from us.

This Christmas season is different than any other I remember, as our little family awaits an “advent” of our own - Ioan’s birth any day now.  As I packed my bag for the hospital last night (yes, I know - that should’ve been done weeks ago), I found myself wondering what Mary might have packed for her journey to Bethlehem, knowing that her pregnancy was nearing its end.

My list of things to pack included baby clothes and a blanket to bring our son home from the hospital.  Was the swaddling blanket Jesus was wrapped in that night a gift from family or friends?  Or something Mary had prepared herself, months ahead of time?  Or was it whatever they could manage to find on short notice after an early and unexpected birth?

I also packed a camera, and thought about the verse in Luke, after the shepherds leave, that says “Mary treasured all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”  I can imagine, if they had cameras back then, that line might have said she treasured these things, and spent hours looking back through his baby book.

As I packed shampoo, a hair brush, make-up, and toothpaste, I thought about how in the picture books and nativity scenes, Mary always looks so beautiful and serene - and I realized with shock that she probably WASN’T, and wondered if the exhausted and disheveled young mother might not have resented the intrusion of the shepherds - just a little.

This morning I printed off a copy of my mom’s flight itinerary for her trip, and added it to the bag, just in case.  I wondered if Mary wished she could’ve been closer to home, with her mom or some other experienced and trusted woman to help her through her first labor and delivery.  Had anyone told her what to expect, what to do?  Or was it all instinctive?  Was she scared?  I wondered if Joseph was worried, uncertain, or over-protective.  Did he stay with her the whole time, or go look for help?  Was it an “easy” birth or a complicated one?

In the long run, of course, none of these questions really matters compared to the amazing reality that God became a man - if they did matter, they would have been mentioned.  But this Christmas, I have been reminded, perhaps more than any other Christmas in my life, that this is a story about real people - not the smiling bulletin board cut-outs, or the sober and solemn  nativity pieces, but real every-day people, in our real and crazy world.  God came to be with US - not in a fairy-tale or an alternate universe, but into the fabric of ordinary, everyday life in an ordinary, everyday family.

Praise his name!

It’s been a pretty crazy week here.  Mike preached at church on Sunday night.  His sermon was on Psalm 31, and how we can trust and worship God even when we are in the middle of a trial.  It was a wonderful reminder that “our times are in His hands.”  On Tuesday, I had the privilege of speaking in elementary chapel here at the school.  My lesson was on not skipping the first things (God) in our rush for the “second things” (toys, friends, coolness, money, fill in the blank).  One of the highlights of the lesson was making a batch of macaroni and cheese without cooking the noodles first.  It came out pretty nasty - as the second graders who volunteered to try some can tell you!  Hopefully that will help them remember the point that if we forget what comes first, all we end up with is a mess.  Bible passages used included Mathew 6:33 and the story of the rich farmer who didn’t put God first in Luke 12.

Besides these ministry opportunities, which have been a blessing but also time-consuming, this week is the end of first quarter.  For Mandie, this has meant finalizing quarter grades, getting in those last-minute make-up tests for students who have been absent, grading quarter projects, and dealing with pleas for extra-credit.  For Mike, it means battling the printers and grading software, both of which always seem to pick this week to malfunction.  Since we don’t have an elementary principal at the moment, Mike is in charge of verifying, printing, and distributing report cards for grades K to 5.

So, anyway - things are pretty busy.  Pray that in the midst of all the hectic activity, WE would remember to keep first things first.  I have so often told my students this last week to keep their school work in a proper perspective - but find that I need the same reminder myself.

- Mandie

Actually, most of the North Americans here (including the US embassy) call it Thanksgiving, but from what I’ve heard it sounds more like Korean “Dia de los muertos.”  (Uhm . . . how do I make an accent mark in wordpress?)

For those who don’t know Spanish, that would be “Day of the Dead” - a holiday celebrated throughout Latin America in the beginning of November.  The actual festivities vary from country to country, but generally involve visiting the graves of family members who have died, eating a special meal of traditional food (often as a picnic at the cemetery), taking food to the graves of your loved ones, and sometimes special masses/candle lightings/etc.  In some countries, like Mexico, there might also be elaborate parades or dances in the town square involving skeleton costumes and stuff like that, or even fireworks.  The main foci are remembering your heritage (family, cultural, and religious), and the realization that death comes to us all sooner or later.

Traditionally, way back in the day, Korea’s main religion was ancestor worship.  Chusok is a holiday that has its roots in that history.  Many families travel away from the city to the rural areas of their family roots.  They visit the graves of their ancestors, taking food with them, offer the food to the spirit of the dead relatives, bow to the graves, and then enjoy a picnic eating the food they brought.  Other families, who have been city-dwellers for generations and/or are families of conservative Christians, gather at the home of a relative (such as grandma) for a special meal and “family reunion” rather than visiting their ancestors’ graves.  Still others DO go out to the graves to remember loved ones, but don’t participate in the food-offerings.

I made the mistake of asking one of my classes (in which the majority of the students are Christians, and more than half from Christian families) if, in their opinion, it was more like American Thanksgiving or like Day of the Dead (which, by the way, is considered a religious holiday in Catholic Latin America - unlike, say, Memorial Day in the US which is patriotic).  This question led to a 15 minute discussion that almost turned into a fight.   (Reminded me more of a discussion on Halloween than either of the two holidays I brought up.)

One girl, whose multi-generational Christian family has decided not to participate, said that her family celebrates it like Thanksgiving, but that they are “untraditional” because they are Christians and the holiday is really about worshiping spirits.  Another girl (also from a multi-generational Christian family) was very upset by this description, and said that no, that wasn’t fair - they weren’t really worshiping the ancestors, you just brought the food and bowed to the grave because it was Chusok and it’s what you do, but it doesn’t mean anything.  (She made a comparison to Santa Claus.)  Yet another student, a first-generation Christian, said that to his grandfather it DOES mean something, but that his parents don’t like fighting the traffic so they just stay home and enjoy the three days off of work.  It all led to a very interesting discussion that has NOTHING to do with trigonometry, but did give me some valuable insights into the shifting Korean culture and into the hearts of my students . . .

Please pray for our students at ICS-UJB this week.  Chusok day is on Tuesday, and many will have decisions to make about how they celebrate the holiday.  Several of our students are the only believers in their families, and may have extra-difficult decisions to make - balancing their own convictions about worship with commands to obey their parents.  Pray for wisdom, discernment, and safety in traveling (traffic is horrible this time of year).  Also pray that our students can be good testimonies to those around them, whatever situation they find themselves in, and that God’s light will shine this holiday season.

School is going very well lately.  Mike has been busy with his new job.  The annual audit was the last week of August, and we still haven’t heard officially if we passed or not.  However, we do know that it went much better than last year - so that is good news.   I have been getting used to a new school year, new classes, and new students.  Lots of familiar faces, but new combinations and dynamics.  I am very excited about my Spanish 2 class - they have retained a lot of information over the summer, seem eager to learn, and have great attitudes.  My Spanish 1 class is about half the size of last year’s class, and also seems ready to dive right in.  Pre-calculus is going well.  Their first test is today, but I’m pretty confident they’ll do fine.   Most of my students from last year’s Algebra II class continued on for Pre-calc, so it is nice to have a little more time with them, since we got off to a late start last year.

Two of my classes have been a little challenging.  The new Algebra II class has a much wider range of abilities than last year’s.  Some of the students are extremely bright and catching on very quickly, others are really struggling even just in chapters 1 and 2.  Because of the amount of information required to prepare the kids for pre-calc next year, this is a fast-moving course designed for students with solid backgrounds in Algebra I and Geometry, and several of the kids are really struggling with basic Algebra I concepts.  It is hard, because I really can’t slow down that much, but if they don’t get a handle on the basics the whole year will be a struggle.  Pray that God gives me wisdom in balancing covering the material, challenging the advanced students, and helping those who are struggling.

I’m also teaching a middle-school class - “from scratch” - that covers topics from Bible, relationships, study-skills, health, and a variety of other areas.  We meet once  a week - a challenge in itself.  Pray that God will give me wisdom in knowing what things to cover, in what order, and the best way to communicate it.  My desire for this class is that the girls would learn to seek God first - and that all the confusion of peer pressure, relationships, beauty, academics, boys, self-image, and all the other “stuff” that life throws at teen-age girls and young women only clears up and makes sense when looked at in His light.   That they truly are “fearfully and wonderfully made” and don’t need to buy in to society’s definitions of “perfection.”  If they can grasp that message now, as 12 and 13 year olds, it may spare them some of the emotional agony and drama that scars so many young women in our culture.

Anyway, please be remembering us . . .

- Mandie

1. We didn’t want an extremely popular name. It’s not necessarily that we don’t like the names that are popular, we just want to avoid giving our children names that everyone else also has. I, for example, have a very popular first name. Don’t get me wrong, I love my name. I love what it means and I love how it sounds. But I hate that other people have my name. So we would like to spare our children this kind of agony.
2. Since the largest part of my blood ancestry is Welsh, I thought it would be cool to give our kids Welsh names. Now the majority of Welsh names aren’t all that odd. Most of them just look funny b/c the Welsh alphabet is so cool and so they’re spelled differently. So we figure that could help accomplish #1 without being too weird, and help them get in touch with their heritage… although I really wasn’t raised Welsh… By the time it got to me we had all been melted into the pot of America.
3. Ioan is the Welsh equivalent of John (similar to Johann in German.)

Now what’s really cool is that Ioan is really easy to transliterate into Korean. In Korean it is: Now this is really close to the Korean equivalent of John: which is actually just a transliteration of the German Johann - as in JS Bach.

So without even trying we came about an 1/8th of an inch away from picking an absolutely perfect name for our baby - one that would sound and mean the same in both Welsh and Korean.

Oh well. I guess we’ll have to settle for 98%, and seeing as how we weren’t even going for this initially anyway, I’m pretty satisfied with our choice.

Dear family and friends,

Thank you for praying for me while I was on bed-rest during May and June.  Things are looking much better now, and my last two doctor’s visits have both gone very well.  I have been approved by my doctors to go back to school this fall, so I will be able to teach for one more semester before the little one joins us.  On my July ultrasound, the doctor couldn’t even tell there had been a problem!  Praise the Lord!  Yesterday, they looked closely at the baby’s brain and heart, both of which were normal, and checked several different measurements to make sure he’s growing properly.  Everything looks good.  We also found out that we are expecting a boy.

Mike has been keeping busy all summer, so “back to school” doesn’t seem like that big of a change for him.  (Except that the summer work day starts at 9:30 and the school-year work day starts at 7:30).  I’ve been keeping busy around the house since being allowed out of bed, and have just started to FINALLY get into a pattern of keeping the house clean and just maintaining the status quo instead of trying to play catch-up all the time.  The challenge will be to see if I can keep it up now that school is starting up again.  We also stayed busy at church - I am teaching Sunday School for ages 3 to 8 and we taught Children’s church (ages 4 to 10) together during the month of July.  Mike also taught an adult Sunday School class during the summer.

Look back over 12 months in Korea, and remembering some of our concerns as we left the US, we are amazed at all the blessings God has given us:
- a warm and loving church family
- good friends
- Mike loves Korean food!
- Mandie survived her first year teaching, and actually had many students sign-up for a second year with her.  (The classes she teaches are all optional).
- opportunities to minister outside of school in the areas for which we have burdens and talents (music, children’s minestry)
- opportunities to build relationships with students
- financial provision
- ability to keep in touch with our families - mostly for free
- a wonderful land-lady who is very good at charades for our first apartment in Korea
- free beginning Korean language classes
- Ohio State beat Michigan in football
- the Philippines trip
- protection through health problems
- the coming baby
- an opportunity to move into a bigger, nicer, apartment
And that is just the beginning.

We are excited to see what the next year will bring.  Classes start on August 16th.  I will be teaching Spanish I and II, Algebra II, Precalculas, and a Middle-School Girls Bible class.  Mike will be working as the school’s business manager.  We hope to welcome our little one in December (due date: December 8th).  After that, I will transition into being a stay-at-home mom.  God provided tickets for my Mom to come from Ecuador and visit us for a few weeks in December.  She will be here for my birthday, the baby’s birth (if everything goes right), and stay until just before Christmas.  We are looking forward to her visit.

Thank you so much to everyone for your prayers, encouragement, and support.  Several people have sent us e-mails asking what kinds of things we need, since we will be unable to return home for a baby shower.  If you are one of those, the rest of this letter is for you.  I also included a few ideas for Christmas, since the baby is coming at that time of year.

- Mandie Lewis (and Mike and baby)
Soli Deo Gloria