Victories

Konnichiwa!

This week has been pretty good :D

Many battles taken place, but many victories to celebrate about! You see, in Japan, since everyone knows the infamous statistic “There are less than 1% Christians in Japan,” well, I want to be optimistic about it and say that there has been 1-2 new students who have been coming out to J-House, one comes only on Fridays to Big Wave, but the other comes on Sunday too!! Praise God! If less than 1% of people in Japan are Christian, and someone consistently keeps coming out, then I say that is a victory! One step at a time, ne?!

This week I got sick a bit; I felt a bit disoriented and just dizzy, but I didn’t want that to be an excuse to go out to the campuses and miss opportunities to reach out to the students. So even a bit sick and dizzy, I go and God certainly gave us opportunities, boldness, and even a new area in the campus to reach out at. I would say that that is another victory, no? When we thought it was so hard to evangelize and approach people, God gave us a different perspective and different way to approach people, and so far it has been pretty good.

At J-House, I have been able to talk with more and more people that I don’t normally talk with, and it has been awesome! I love these people here and their heart for J-House and God. They are also just really fun to hang out with and talk to. Yeah there is a language barrier, but it has been about 5 months since I have been here and surprisingly, my Japanese listening skills have upped a lot! Maybe it is hard for me to talk to them in Japanese, but that’s when translators are helpful :P I thank God that there are quite a bit of people who are able to translate! If not, I’d be having such a hard time here! God bless you all! Hahaha…

Anyway, I look forward to more and more relationships, both new and old, to grow not only with each other, but also with God! Keep praying for us here in J-House and Japan in general! We need your prayers (and missionaries :P)!!!

Jah ne~

Remember Your People

Have you ever heard something meaningful/impacting so often that it doesn’t register in your head or heart anymore until God smacks it right in front of your face again? Well, that happened this past week and especially this past weekend.  Me and 6 other people (plus 5 more in Tokyo) drove from Osaka to Tokyo (approximately a 7 hour drive) Friday night around 11:30PM and arrived around 7:30AM Saturday to go to Passion World Tour in Tokyo International Forum! What a night it was to see Japanese people worshiping God all at once!!! There were about 5000 people who attended that night! Here are some pictures from the Passion blog 268generation.com/blog

When I saw these people worshiping, I started to cry. That rarely happens to me, but I started to cry when Chris Tomlin started to sing “So remember Your people, remember Your children, remember Your promise, oh God.” Also, when he sang “How He Loves Us” Oh man, it was such a beautiful sight, I wish I could have recorded the worship time, but they took our cameras :P Either way, I think I just needed that time to just worship and remind myself that God loves me too and he knows everything that I am going through! Hallelujah! This was a night filled with joy, challenges, excitement, crying, laughing, dancing, reverence, and of course God!!! Words can’t really describe what I experienced and saw at Passion, but God is truly here in Japan too!!

Besides Passion, this week has been filled with opportunities to improve myself in areas that I thought I wasn’t very good at.  Talking with people I don’t normally talk to, going up to strangers, speaking in public (still don’t like it :P), etc.  I’m being molded so much that I feel like a different person sometimes. I see the good and the bad sides of me as I am going on my 5^th month here in Japan. I can’t believe its almost June…

I am super tired; I had about 4 hours of sleep total this past weekend so I am just recovering today. Here is something I heard from Louie Giglio during Passion:

“God is BIG, but he is not TOO BIG to know your name.”

So simple, yet at the same time, so beautiful. Thank you God. 

(Mt. Fuji!)

Blessings Amidst Trials

こんにちは！

How is everyone doing? Things here have been busy, but good!

This week was filled with many blessings despite, as some of you might have heard, the visa problem that I have…

This week I didn’t really know what to expect other than the fact that we had a lot of stuff to do.  On Wednesday, I woke up around 5:15 AM to get ready to go to a prayer meeting in Shin-Osaka with a bunch of other pastors from the Osaka area. It was really cool! I actually went 2 years ago to this place with our mission team, but I went again this year too! It was a blessing seeing that there are people doing God’s work here in this city. I was asked to lead our Jesus Soldiers + Tomoko-san in one song in Japanese. We sang “How Great Is Our God.” I picked this song because I wanted to sing about how great he is and that he is even in the midst of us here in Japan.

On Fridays we have our Big Wave event and this week went pretty well I think! There were a lot of people and Justin blessed us with a good message about “Modes of Life”: Success Mode, Jellyfish Mode, and Bible Mode. Good time talking with people, singing songs, and fellowship.

Saturday was Justin and Tomoko’s Wedding Party in Japan (for those who couldn’t make it to the Hawaii Wedding). I was in charge of making their slide show and I was the cameraman. :P It was a lot harder than I thought.. A lot of pressure to take good shots and a lot of running around, but it was really fun! I just hope I took good pictures for them. I will post some on here. I hope that God may continue to bless your marriage and that you will both fall more and more in love with God and with each other! おめでとう！　

(such a cool/fun entry!)

Sunday, service was good; there is always something to learn. Our cell group, Rhino, is going deeper than our usual, just hang out and chill, but now we get to talk about some stuff that we struggle with and just have questions about. I’m glad we are going in this direction. Then after service, Justin and I went to go play Basketball with some Kandai students in a tournament. We still are not that good, but we got close this time! I made a 3-pointer to tie the game and go to overtime, but from there we lost by like 3 or 4 points? Haha, whatevers…it was fun!

Side Note: I am pretty sad that I missed out a chance to see Janice and Sonia perform in LA this past week, but maybe God will cross our paths someday! Check out their performance this past Saturday!

Well God, If You Say So...

Hi.

First of all I want to say, Happy Mother’s Day (母の日　おめでとう！／어머니날 축하해요!~) My mom is very precious to me and I love her so much! She has always been supportive of me even when things in my life don’t seem to be going well. She stuck by my side no matter how stupid I was. Thank you for all the years of love, support, and patience, I really wouldn’t be the person I am today without you!

So this past week, I have been either wondering what God is trying to say/teach me, or why God is saying what he is saying to me. Strange, no? I want God to speak to me, but when he does my response, in a very unsure and unenthusiastic way, “Well God, if you say so…” But I guess in subliminally, I mean “Ugh…not this again, so much faith and trust necessary, God why can’t you just show/tell me clearly more frequently…” There is a lot going on internally, and the only thing that I can cling to is God. It is funny that I came to that conclusion (but not really haha), because it’s God that is leaving me confused and even sometimes frustrated, but I cannot deny the countless times that God has provided for me when I was in situations like these. Ultimately, I guess my first response is the only response I can really truly say. Yeah… So if you guys can pray that I can see what God is trying to teach me during this season, that would be greatly appreciated!

Anyway… There was one big event this past Tuesday and it went extremely well! God gave us awesome weather, many people came (about 50!), a good mix of J-House members and Funky Club students, and just awesome time of fellowship! We had an American BBQ and I was so blessed and happy to see the people interacting so well and just enjoying/relaxing during their Golden Week! (For info on what Golden Week is, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Week_(Japan) :P ) We started around 11:30 and ended around 3:00, but the cool thing was after everything was over, people just came back to J-House and just chilled and had a good time enjoying people’s company.  A lot of people didn’t leave until 7-8 PM! So I thank God for being gracious to us!

(Tickling Takuya: Initiation before he goes studying abroad)

Well, that’s all for today. Not too long, but it’s ok. :D See you next week!