During our stay in Japan, there was a very wonderful family who helped us tremendously. Mike and Tomoko McLain are members of the Taga church of Christ, and they with their three kids, Anna, Erika, & Kiara were instrumental in the success of the Friends Camp at Plateau Satomi as well as the VBS we held at Taga church on the following Thursday. We were blessed to have met them and consider them our brother and sister who live really, really far away.
During the Friends Camp, we had a Talent Show on Saturday night to display all the wonderful abilities that God has blessed us with. Samantha sang I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen from The Sound of Music, Amanda did really cool rope tricks (not magic tricks, but “roping” tricks), Derin sang Jesus Loves Me in the style of Donald Duck (you have to hear it to believe it), and Lucas sang the Spider-Man song complete with costume gloves. Chris & Leigh Lawrenson performed a “mind-reading trick” (after which Leigh violated the magician’s code and told me how it was done 
, and Michael played a very nice violin solo (he’s only been playing a couple years!).
The McLain family closed out the evening with a beautiful a capella rendition of Shu No Maeni (しゅのまえに), a Japanese praise song.
[...] us plan out our travel between Tokyo’s Narita Airport and Hitachi, and also connected us to Mike and Tomoko McLain, who offered to house us while in [...]