Dear Friends,
            At the end of June, our Outreach Minister Woun Kim, our Youth Director Akiko Kikuchi and I had the privilege of attending the Asian American Baptist Conference and Convocation in Chicago.  It was wonderful to meet with friends from established Asian American churches that have been active in the Asian Caucus for years, as well as newer friends who have broadened the base of the caucus both with respect to ethnicity and length of residence in the US.  In addition to the fellowship, we were blessed by a number of excellent presentations, including those made by the keynote speaker, Rev. Katie Choy-Wong, who addressed the theme “Living the Present… Facing the Future.”  As part of her presentation concerning the future, Katie spoke about the “reticular activating system” or RAS, the area of the brain that among other things helps us perceive things that we are expecting.  Katie illustrated this function by saying that after she and her husband planned to purchase a particular model of car, they started seeing them everywhere.  She urged us to allow our RAS’s to enable us to see God actively at work every day, everywhere.
            Recently my own RAS seems to be increasingly aware of apartment complexes.  I now see them everywhere, not only in neighborhoods that are new to me but in areas that I thought I knew well, including some not far from my own home.  As I’ve visited families from Burma in apartments in Kent, Tukwila, and Seattle, I’ve been surprised by how many apartment complexes there are—and by how many of them are populated by people from around the world, including Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. 
            Of course, one doesn’t have to go very far from JBC to see this, since the church is surrounded by Yessler Terrace public housing.  When Gail, Sophie, and I attended JBC’s movie night a couple of weeks ago, I walked around the corner to invite the Chin children who have come to our Sunday School.  I was amazed by how many children I saw on that short walk, playing outside on that hot evening under the watchful eyes of their mothers.
            This past Sunday afternoon, I preached for the third consecutive week at the Karen worship service in Kent.  As I walked into the gym where the service was to be held, I was surprised by the increased number of chairs that had been set up, and suspected that many would go unoccupied.  Not so.  By the time the service started, I counted 173 worshipers present.  A few weeks before, I would have estimated 120-140.  I wish I could attribute some of that to my preaching, but that was not the case.  Each week, the worship leader identifies and welcomes families who have just arrived from refugee camps in Thailand.  Most recently, these have come from Mae Rah Moe and Mae La Oon, the two camps I visited in Thailand in January.  When I was invited to participate in the baptism service at New Year’s, I was told I might be seeing some people I would be welcoming to Seattle as new residents.  That has indeed proved true.
            The apartment houses and the families that inhabit them give us much evidence of what God has been doing—and also of the mission to which God calls us.  Let’s keep our RAS’s working—and our eyes and our hearts open!
Yours sincerely,
Paul D. Aita