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!