Dear Diego,

Happy Birthday! You happen to have the same birthday as my mother, by the way. My father and sister also have birthdays in June, so I have a lot of celebration to do this month!

I live in Charleston, South Carolina. Every spring, the city holds an art festival called Spoleto. There are lots of concerts and art shows. There’s a park here called Marion Square. During the Spoleto festival, artists set up tents in Marion Square and display their pictures. I went there with a friend, and we saw some beautiful paintings. One artist used a Japanese art called “gyotaku”: She puts ink on a real fish, then presses it onto paper to make an image of the fish. Then she paints the eyes. I’m sending a photograph of one of her pictures of a flounder. Flounders are a kind of fish that lives in the ocean near South Carolina. I think the picture is funny and beautiful at the same time!

A gyotaku picture of a flounder

My friend Mary Catherine taught gyotaku during Bible school at our church last summer (June 2012). Our lessons were about how Jesus asked his friends to go on a journey with him. They became his disciples. They already knew how to catch fish and eat them. So Jesus taught them how to catch people and teach them about God. (Mark 1:16-20)

Later, the fish became a symbol for Christians: The Greek words for “Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior” begin with letters that spell the Greek word for fish.

Maybe that’s more about fish than you ever wanted to know…

Happy Birthday!

And may God grant you hope, peace, joy, and love,

— Garrett Mitchener