The following letter was written by an ELCA young adult missionary in Japan to her friends, family and congregations about her global mission service.

Life has certainly been busy since summer ended and we got back to school. This past month has been a very good one in that I feel that I finally have started to get the hang of teaching here. For a person who is used to teaching one or two subjects, and having the same classes everyday, the system here at Luther took a while to get used to.

I teach 5 levels of English Oral Communication: 1st year Jr. High - two classes, 2nd year Jr. High -- two classes, 3rd year Jr. High -- two classes. I also have four classes of 1st year High School, but two different levels and two classes of 2nd year high school. I see the High school classes twice a week, and the Jr. high once a week.

The classes do feel like they are going well on the whole. I am really enjoying my students, and I hope that they feel the same. I just remind myself that, although my job may be to teach English, it is probably not the full reason that God sent me here. I just hope that something that I do will make an impact on my students.

On top of teaching, I took over the duties at the English Service at Kumamoto Lutheran Church, which is where I am assigned. I split the services with another missionary here. He leads the service one week, and I lead the next. It is a neat opportunity to get an idea of what a pastor's job may be like. I do enjoy the English Service a great deal.

In the middle of this month we had the opportunity to have the annual J-3 retreat in Nagasaki. It was a wonderful chance to see my old friends from Tokyo, whom I miss a great deal. It was also a time to see our new J-3 family together. We have added four new J-3s over the past month or so. They are all great, and I know that they are going to make huge contributions to the J-3 community and to the local community that they are in.

Also, just a side note for those of you that have followed my language study hardships. I would like to inform you that I have continued to take lessons. I have a private tutor that I see once a week, and she is fabulous. I actually look forward to my Japanese lessons. Of course this is mostly because she is awesome, not because my Japanese has improved much, but hey, any little success counts!

Tina Mills