church picnic

Some of you know that I was on a short-term missions trip in 2005 that took me to ministry in the Philippines and Japan.  We have a connection with specific churches there, and we typically conduct an international event every other year.  Even though we had a group go overseas last year, our Japanese partners sent a couple dozen youth to visit us this year.  God willing, I hope this experience promotes a time of growing in the faith of our visitors (as well as our hosts), and helps fuel their vision for long-term ministry of some kind.

After Sunday morning worship, we had an all-church picnic.  There was lots of great food and fellowship.  We had classic games like the water balloon toss and sack races.  I was happy with this picture from the sack race, especially because of her hair.  Do you know what?  Despite the language differences, the time with our Japanese visitors feels more like a family reunion.

A funny thing happened to my camera that day.  The autofocus did not want to cooperate.  The motor went on buzzing back and forth, but it didn't rotate the glass.  I had to shoot everything in manual focus.  That was to my advantage for this particular shot, since this student was to be away from the center.  If I was using autofocus, the timing would have been too slow, and it might not have selected the right focal point.  Later, I removed and replaced the lens.  That seemed to fix the AF problem.  Maybe the contacts weren't making a good connection, but it's better now.