The Legend of the Raven

Merry Christmas everyone! Thought we might share this:



"A long time ago, the raven looked down from the sky and saw that the people of the world were living in darkness.
The ball of light was kept hidden by a selfish old chief.
So the raven turned himself into a spruce needle and floated on the river where the chief's daughter came for water.
She drank the spruce needle.
She became pregnant and gave birth to a boy, who was the raven in disguise.
The baby cried and cried until the chief gave him the ball of light to play with.
As soon as he had the light, the raven turned back into himself.
The raven carried the light into the sky.
From then on, we no longer lived in darkness."

As told by "Marilyn Whirlwind", Northern Exposure, Episode 3.10, "Seoul Mates"

This caused us to read John 1:1-14 in a new light.

Ecumenical Service 2007

This past Sunday our church (UCC Japanese Protestant) was the host for the annual Ecumenical service in our city. We worshiped with our local Catholic and Greek Orthodox parishes and it was a beautiful experience.

It was a real shared and collaborative experience. Our curch hosted the site this year but the actual worship service was truely an action of unity. We all sang hymns and read prayers and creeds of each tradition accompanied by a sermon given by the Priest of the Catholic church and even a chant from Genesis by the assistant priest of the Greek Orthodox church. Steph also sang Ave Maria too.

If you'd like to watch a few video clips from the service click here.

And, Steph's Sunday schoolers are still doing wonderfully!

This past Sunday's lesson was the creation story.

Steph taught it in English AND JAPANESE! She's my hero.

Below are the lyrics to the song that they learned: