The Grove Family May Update
It's mid May, and strange to think we have come to the close of another school year here in Columbia. The collegiate students have left town, and even Evee has completed her first year of preschool! Evee's teachers had a great year with her, and we think Evee will enjoy going part-time next year as well. We will enroll her into an afternoon class with the same teacher. She was an excellent peer model for her fellow students.
While we are eager for free time in our morning schedules, we still have a lot keeping us busy. Jeremy and I have been going to a 7 week long bible study on the gospel of Mark that his company hosts. It's called "Jesus and Beer". We meet every Wednesday at Shakespeares Pizza and they provide as much pizza and beer your heart could desire. It's been a great way to discuss the life of Jesus and work through questions that arise as it pertains to our faith. We have been blessed by the conversations we have had with both believers and skeptics. The past month we also had a really cool opportunity to be apart of "For Columbia", an annual church co-op that pulls church bodies together to serve the needs of our beloved city. While it was storming and raining a lot on the day, we were still able to roll up our sleeves and do landscaping for a local children's shelter The Great Circle. They focus on children in the foster system who have endured traumatic life events. Our missional community worked together on the premise to paint and landscape. Here's a picture of some of our missional community at the Great Circle:
While we were there, we met a Japanese woman who teaches Japanese and Chinese in the Columbia Public Schools. We were delighted to find that she would be interested in teaching us during the summer! We look forward to meeting together to continue our language journey. We will still meet with our good friend Anna every other week to practice Japanese! We are so encouraged by the foundation of Japanese we have in taking classes for over a year. Until next time, shoot us a message and let us know how we can pray for you. Here are some ways that you can pray for us:
God is continually bringing more people on our team, thank God for the progress we've made thus far in reaching our support goal!
We have seen a lot of progress in home projects, pray we would continue to finish those without a lot of hiccups.
for our language development to continue to grow.
the girls and Leanna to have a fun and healthy summer.
as Leanna will encourage academic development for Evee, pray for patience.
Jeremy's opportunity to preach in June, pray he would be diligent and led by the Spirit while he is preparing.
An upcoming family reunion in June, that the time would be well spent in making memories for when we are in Japan.