My husband, Tom, and I have been working as a team to manage a farm and a cultural tour company for Japanese tourists for nearly ten years in Oregon. My daughter, Lina, is 12 years old. My son, Roman, is 8 years old. We have been homeschooling both of our children for about six years.

The decision to homeschool my children took time and caused feelings of fear. I thought I could not be a teacher to my children. The reason? Because English is not my mother tongue. I grew up in Japan until I was 20 years old, when I moved to the United States. I am an alien resident. I have a Japanese accent. I encounter many words that I do not know when I read even nursery stories to my children.

Yet, one day I was awakened by the Word of God to “see then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise” (Ephesians 5:15). My husband and I decided to homeschool our daughter when she was 6 years old. I did not know anybody from my country homeschooling their children when we first started. But as my homeschool network widened, I started to find more and more parents who speak English as a second language homeschooling their children. Now I even know a mom who speaks virtually no English yet has homeschooled six children in their earlier grades. It is amazing how these children are all bilingual and the older teenagers are showing very mature godly character.

In 2000, 18% of the total population— or 47 million people—in the United States reported they spoke a language other than English at home. Immersion schools where two languages are used to teach and are taught have become popular all over the place. In Eugene, Oregon, there are Spanish, French, and Japanese public immersion schools. I realized I certainly have a great advantage over native English- speaking homeschooling parents. I am fluent in Japanese and I can pass it on to my children. We start each day with the Bible verse of the week and praise songs in both languages. I teach Japanese using Japanese textbooks. For the rest of the subjects I use curriculum textbooks mostly in English with my English-Japanese dictionary by my side. I check out books on cassette and CDs at our local library for my children to listen to English with artistic expression. I also collected almost all the Adventures in Odyssey story CDs. The children love to hear them as they do crafts or while taking baths, or while traveling in a car. But the rest of the time I try to speak in Japanese. My husband, Tom, who is American, speaks both English and Japanese. He mostly speaks English to our children and reads books in English to them whenever he has time.

Since we manage a farm, we all have our work responsibilities. When we have tourists from Japan, we arrange various kinds of company visitations—for example, at bike factories, at advertising companies, at local farms, and so on. We also arrange home stays, school visitations, and some cultural exchange programs between the US and Japanese students. My children often participate in those tours and cultural exchange programs and learn a great deal through our job. Once they watched Japanese students build a teepee replica and rode a covered wagon drawn by horses. They ride the tour bus and give short greeting messages to the tourists. When we took our children on our business trip to Japan, they participated in a local festival and toured several locations, such as a strawberry farm and a confectionary factory. All these adventures have been possible because we homeschool.

I was going to quit homeschooling if it didn’t work the first year. But it has been working well for the last six years, and I am willing to continue to homeschool my children until the end of their high school education. My daughter loves being homeschooled and so does my son.

Homeschooling is a lifestyle of our own with a clear purpose. Being an alien resident with English as a second language is not at all a problem to initiate homeschooling in the United States. In fact, all of us who have faith in Jesus Christ are aliens in this world since our citizenship is in Heaven according to the Bible. Shouldn’t we, as aliens or God’s ambassadors, stand up and do the right thing for our children?

After working as a full-time businesswoman at a travel publishing company in Tokyo, Japan, Sumiyo adapted well to farm life in Oregon. In addition to this big change, homeschooling was a big challenge at first but has become a wonderful adventure and blessing to her. Sumiyo and her family recently moved to Shizuoka, Japan, to pursue cultural experiences. Shizuoka is famous for green tea and offers a stunning view of Mt. Fuji. Her husband, Tom, teaches English at a local middle school while Sumiyo continues to homeschool their children. They enjoy bicycling, hiking, and learning martial arts.