Seinan Gakuin
4-L
Foundation
News
Number
52 April 20, 2017
Associate
Akane Forbess Begins Service
Ms.
Akane Forbess, Seinan Gakuin 4-L Foundation’s new Associate, arrived in Fukuoka
on March 28. Last week she attended the orientation for new teachers and taught
her first classes. Here is a brief statement received from Akane on April 14:
To the members of the 4-L Foundation, thank you
for your support and prayers as I start this new journey. I have felt so welcomed
by everyone here and am adjusting very nicely. After having my first English
Bible Class at the university and my first few days of teaching, I am hopeful
for my year ahead. I pray that God will give me opportunities to share my faith
and that I will be bold to seek out those opportunities while serving as your
4-L Foundation Associate.
Thanks to
Associate Erik Berger
Mr. Erik Berger began service as a Seinan
Gakuin 4-L Foundation Associate on April 1, 2014, and completed his third and
final year of service the end of March. The 4-L Foundation is grateful to Erik
for his work as a teacher and Christian witness on the campus of Seinan Gakuin
and in Fukuoka City during these past three years.
Here is part of a much longer report Erik
wrote earlier this month:
All the good,
bad, and incomprehensible sides of being an American witness in a foreign land
point not only to the neglected areas and excesses of the church at home, but
also to the flaws glaring in my own perspectives, and some of the things I had
become ungrateful for in my own upbringing. The sights and sounds of the city:
ramen shops, late night conversations, pilgrimages to many of the events I had
planned and participated in—concerts, parties, reunions, farewell sendoffs,
exploring different neighborhoods and neighboring prefectures—to the calm and
solace of the mountains and forests, island shrines beside streams, to the
busyness and bustling hum of teachers pre-lesson scrambles and desk-to-desk
dispatches, to class chimes, to subway announcements, to sermons in Japanese
and English and being moved by songs whose words I couldn't understand.
Every part of
each section of every moment of it all builds into a kind library of experience
and feeling and learning and being rocked to my core that I wouldn't trade for
the world. Thanks and heaps of gratitude go out to everyone who made my mission
possible, to Leroy and Lydia, my adopted aunts and uncles and classmates, and
everyone at the karate dojo, and to Mike [his supervisor and colleague], trying
to corral all those hyper, insecure, wonderful students into some understanding
of what English is.
I couldn't
have made it through without all the help and encouragement, and prodding and provoking,
and grace and patience of all my friends all over the country and the world.
And I wouldn't be the same without a single one of them.
Annual
Meeting of Directors
The Seinan Gakuin 4-L Foundation Board of Directors held
(by teleconference as always) their FY2016 annual meeting on March 30/31. Among
other actions, the current Directors were all re-elected for one-year terms
that began on April 1.
Seinan
Gakuin University’s New Library
Seinan Gakuin 4-L Foundation, Inc., Directors
Ø Leroy Seat (former Chancellor of Seinan Gakuin),
President
Ø Charles Cantrell (attorney, former exchange student at
SGU), Secretary
Ø Keith Seat (attorney), Treasurer
Ø Gary Barkley (Chancellor of Seinan Gakuin)
Ø Lydia Barrow-Hankins (Chaplain at Seinan Gakuin)
Ø Charles Dozier (grandson of Seinan Gakuin’s founder)
Ø Joy Fenner (former missionary to Fukuoka/Japan)
Ø Karen Schaffner (President of Seinan Gakuin University)
Ø
Ken’ichi Takara
(Chief Administrative Officer of Seinan Gakuin)
**For
more information about the Seinan Gakuin 4-L Foundation, please check the
website (http://seinangakuin4-lfoundation.blogspot.com/), or write
Leroy Seat at 1307 Canterbury Lane, Liberty, MO 64068, or by email at SeinanGakuin@4-LFoundation.org,
or call 816-429-5205.