We wanted to thank so many of you for your lovely Christmas cards and kind notes this season.  They have really cheered us up!  It's getting colder here in Japan, and while at Kanto Gakuin there are lots of Christmas events to keep us busy, like so many other westerners here, it's hard for us to get into the "Christmas mood" in Yokohama, if you know what I mean.  For one, we have a palm tree waving out the side window greeting us every morning when we wake up....  For us northerners, "palm tree" and "Christmas" are mutually exclusive entities!  On top of that, our families are 7,000 miles away, and on top of that, the only signs of Christmas we have seen on Japanese TV or heard on Japanese radio have been commercials asking us to have a "Kentucky Christmas!"  Can you guess what that is?  Check out this web-link and find out...  Here's a hint: "Kentucky" is the name of the "Kentucky Fried Chicken" restaurant chain in Japan, and since turkeys are so hard to come by here, guess what the Japanese marketing gig is...  I'll leave it to your imagination, but if you want to pursue it, check out the web site:

http://www.kfc.co.jp/xmas2004/index.html#ptb

Unfortunately, Christmas is a widely misunderstood holiday in Japan.  Most of the students I work with have an idea that it "has something to do with Christianity," but they don't understand much more.  I asked my high school seniors this semester what they were going to do on Christmas and about a third of the class said they were going out on dates.  That's right--Christmas night is a date night!  Actually, for most Japanese, the New Year--"oshyogatsu," is a much more important family holiday.  So please keep us in your prayers as you celebrate Christmas the "American way" with your families this year.  We are a bit jealous!

But here's our first bit of good news.  We are planning to be in the States for Christmas next year.  Our US assignment starts in the beginning of April, 2005 and we'll be in the USA (living in Delaware, Ohio) until mid-March, 2006.  We are looking forward to seeing so many of you again!  Some of you we'll be meeting for the first time, but we are looking forward to placing faces with the names of folks who have supported us so faithfully during these first three and a half years in Japan.

We will be asking the folks at Valley Forge to schedule us to speak at churches, which have supported us regularly, but this is not always possible from their end.  If you want to be sure that we can be at your church when we're home, it's imperative that your church contacts your American Baptist Region's Minister of Mission Support and requests that we come.  We want to be able to see as many of you as we can when we're in the States.  For scheduling, you can also contact Ruthie Stevenson at Valley Forge directly with this e-mail link: Ruthie.Stevenson@abc-usa.org.  We will be keeping in touch with you more about details as the time draws near for us to leave.  Another thing we have to start thinking about as soon as possible is a car to use while we're in the States!  If you have any leads, please let us know.

On one final note, I wanted to share another bit of good news with you all!  Our school, like most Christian schools in Japan, is quite formal in its worship style.  But this year, at the request of one of our Japanese school chaplains, we decided to try something new for our high school Christmas worship service.  This service, which is the climax of the 2nd semester, has traditionally been a rather uninspiring service that has lasted for about an hour and a half.  Last year, half of the crowd was sleeping when the benediction was announced!

This year though, I stepped out on a limb and said, "Well, why don't we try keeping the screen down throughout the service and just running a powerpoint presentation in the background? How about we make the theme, 'Why Christmas matters today?'" The group of chaplains bravely accepted that challenge and we spent about a month and a half planning the service.  The contents were not all that different from the service we have used in the past--brass band, tone chimes, choir, sermon...  We just added a slide show bringing up images of the big events of the year.  I planned to interpret the show in the message....  All the teachers on pins and needles, we tried the program out last Friday.  At the end of the service, some of the students had been so moved they were in tears.  The principal (a quite rigid fellow himself), watery-eyed, said to me, "nakanaka yokatta ne...." ("Wow, that went pretty well!").  Even a few of the non-Christian teachers (one of whom ran the slide show), were visibly moved and said it had been the first time in their lives they had felt something in a worship service!  One teacher even gave me a hug.  Those of you who have traveled to Japan know what a rarity that is!

Well, needless to say, I was pretty happy.  I've never been one to want to overemphasize the role of emotional expression in worship, but on the other hand, I think for the first time, some people at our school came to realize that Christian worship can be a powerfully moving experience.  They realized that God had something to say to them, personally.  Please pray that this marks the beginning of a journey in the right direction for some of our students at Kanto Gakuin!

Well, you are all in the middle of your own Christmas preparations.  May God give you a wonderful season of re-experiencing divine love, forgiveness, and power.  Please don't forget to begin planning ahead now to have us come visit you at your home churches in 2005/2006!  It will be sad to leave Japan, but so great to be with so many of you!

Yours in Christ,

Dwight and Kari Davidson

American Baptist Churches/USA