Ryan & Samantha

Four years ago, Ryan and I traveled to Hitachi, Japan (the home to the electronics company of the same name), to be part of an LST mission trip. When we prepared to leave Japan and come back home to the States, we made sure to be thorough in our goodbyes and thank yous because we never thought we’d be able to return. I mean, really, who gets to go to Japan once in their lifetime, let alone twice?

While finishing up my masters thesis, my advisor presented me with an opportunity to accompany her and share my research at an academic conference. This conference was on automated manufacturing equipment, and my thesis looked at how manufacturing equipment used energy (electricity) as they build parts and ways to save energy. This conference goes from city to city each year, and it turned out that this year’s conference just happened to be at the University of Tokyo! I asked if I could bring Ryan and extend our stay on either side of the conference and my advisor said yes. Japan, here we come!

We contacted Judith Alexander, the missionary we worked with in Hitachi-Taga, and told her that we’d be able to come back and visit everyone. She helped 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 Hitachi.

Like with our Ireland/Scotland trip, we made a big effort to only take carry-on luggage: one backpack and one small carry-on each. We did it, and took even less stuff than when we went to Ireland! The difference between checking bags and only taking carry-ons is amazing–there’s much more freedom and we can move so much faster. Honestly, the less we take the better time we have because it forces us to go out into the community where we are to do laundry, buy toiletries and other supplies. We really get to know the people, and building relationships really makes the trip meaningful. Pictured below is all we traveled with, but it contained: clothes for one + week, shoes, laptop, iPad, books, gifts, medicine, toiletries (in the 1-quart clear ziplock), Lara bars and snacks, and gifts.

This year we spent Independence Day with our great friends Tristan & Leslie Block and Leslie’s family in Windom, Kansas. They live on a farm and opened up their implement shed for a huge pot luck meal for family, friends, and neighbors: hamburgers made from the beef of one of their own cows, deviled eggs, cakes, cookies, and several homemade ice creams. What a feast!

After dinner there were games of ladder ball and volleyball, and then singing! A group congregated around the gentleman in the cowboy hat, pictured below. He is a fantastic cowboy singer, and taught/sang us the history behind our state song Home on the Range. There were a few sing along songs, too.

The fireworks show happened in between rain showers, but didn’t last too long! When we first arrived the all-day downpour had finally let up, but only to start again right as fireworks began. Everyone relocated into the shed for cover from the rain to watch a few more fireworks before the wicks were put out by the rain.

It was a great evening–thank you Tristan and Leslie for inviting us!

This post is about 7 months behind, but I wanted to make sure and share it for the benefit of those that read our blog but are not on Facebook. Our involvement minister, Mark Yeakley, took photos and wrote the following description of this event: “The Northside Church of Christ’s children’s classes launched a giving program on Nov. 22, 2009, to raise money to help poor children in Venezuela. The money will be sent to the church’s missionary, Jonathan Hanegan, to buy Bibles and class material for a small congregation in a fishing village a few hours from Caracas. Norma Banning is the Children’s Education coordinator, Samantha Corcoran taught the special class, and Josh & Julie Marcum, missionaries from Bolivia, were able to attend the launch of the giving campaign.”

This special class was focused on the geography and culture of Caracas, Venezuela. I wanted to kids to be able to see how far away Venezuela is from Kansas, see photos of the people that Jonathan served, and taste some of the food that they eat there.

The lesson started with a short video clip from the Disney movie UP!, where the two kids talk about visiting “Paradise Falls” (which is Angel Falls in Venezuela). The kids recognized this clip so I used it to introduce where we were heading on our map. I used Google Earth and started the map in Kansas, right over our church building, and then flew south down to South America to Caracas. Once we “arrived” in Caracas, preachers Steve Tandy & Mark Yeakley talked to the kids about their first-hand experience in Caracas from when they went to visit Jonathan earlier in the year. They had some great stories to tell the class about the mountains, the beach, the people, and what worship and bible class are like for kids their age in Caracas.

We then traveled from Caracas to Cocoli, which is difficult to find on a map. Jonathan had given us the distance from Caracas to the fishing village, so I had the kids help me use the ruler tool in Google Earth to measure the distance to find the fishing village.

I had made one of my favorite latin dishes, ceviche, for the kids to try. Jonathan said that this is a very common dish and would be perfect to introduce the kids to fishing village food. After reviewing our food tasting etiquette, the kids each enjoyed a small helping of ceviche with chips. Most liked it, but it wasn’t as successful as our lentil stew or bread and cheese classroom taste tests.

In a way that on the Holy Spirit could do, we had an unexpected visit from missionaries Josh & Julie Marcum from Bolivia. For the last part of our class they were so gracious and taught the kids a song in Spanish, showed them Bolivian money and then prayed with kids in both Spanish and English. I was so thankful that they were there–their example and teaching really made the lesson come alive and real to the kids!

We finished by showing a video Jonathan had made called Campaign for the Children of Cocoli. This introduced the service project: collecting spare change to provide Bibles and other supplies for the children in Cocoli. They kids were really excited to help and since this time have been faithfully bringing their spare change each week to their Bible classes.

For the past four years, I have done some editing of some short comedy videos for the Women Walking with God Conference, held at our church here in Wichita. Below are the two videos I made for this year’s conference.

A little back story if you have not seen the previous years’ videos, the basic premise is that men will (and have, according to the videos) do anything in order to attend the women-only conference, just because of how good it is.

Enjoy!

Friday Night:

Saturday:

Today is the last day in February, and we’ve visited lots of great places in Wichita this month. Living in Wichita gives us a unique perspective on the town, but also means that we’ve been almost everywhere and seen almost everything already. That makes it hard for us to narrow down what we would blog about. Since so many other travel blogs and magazines exist, we don’t want to reinvent the wheel by making our posts comprehensive (we aren’t nearly as good of travel writers as Rick Steves). We’ll simply post about the places we’ve been, things we’ve seen, and people we meet along the way as we explore this great state.

That being said, we’re postponing our Wichita posts until the very end of our Kansas journey. Stay tuned…

Inspired from our visit to 105degrees, I made ravioli from the chef’s recipe book for dinner tonight. This ravioli has a ricotta-like filling made with blended cashews and tarragon and the ravioli “noodles” are actually thin slices of red beet. They’re each topped with chopped pistachios and drizzled with sweet yellow bell pepper sauce. It was so brightly colored, with great flavors and a good mix of textures–very enjoyable to eat! It really did taste like baked cheesy ravioli, so it is amazing to me that this was created only from raw vegetables and nuts.

For dessert we had a dark chocolate ganache tart with vanilla cream, from the same recipe book. For those of you a little unsure about raw foods this tart will change your mind! It is made from maple syrup and chocolate, and tastes like thick melt-in-your-mouth fudge.