English Camp has begun!

The last few days have been a whirlwind.  We have seen and experienced a lot in our few days here already. Today we started our English camp.  We all didn't quite know what to expect.  After meeting with Seima yesterday, we decided we needed to change up some of the material we had planned for the week.  At first I panicked a little bit trying to figure out what we were going to do but were able to spend some time thinking it through and came up with revised skits for the week that all tied into a theme.  God was at work even when we doubted.  This is a lesson that God continues to teach me (Sarah).  I want to do everything on my own but thankfully God intervenes and reminds me He needs to be in the center of everything.

We had such a great time with the kids and their moms.  We ended up having a lot of young kids (5 and younger) and not as many older kids.  They most enjoyed the games and crafts.  Who doesn't love a good game of red light/green light and a chance to make hand puppets!  It was so wonderful to see the kids running around and having a good time.  I really enjoyed meeting the moms.  They were all very sweet and even though there was a slight language barrier, we were able to communicate.  Drew mentioned in a previous blog post about the story of the mom in the community who had committed suicide.  When I heard that story I was very moved and my heart went out to other women in similar situations.  I was so glad we could in a small way support and care for the moms and their kids that came today.

I hope that through the work of Seima and his team that this whole community would feel love, support and a strong sense of community.  We are excited for tomorrow and a chance to be with the kids again.  I can't wait to see what God has in store for the rest of the week.  I do know that God is at work here and I pray that Grace Harbor church will be a refuge for this community.  Sema said today that he hopes in a 100 years that Japan will be known as a Christian nation as opposed to today where as little as .2% profess to be Christians.  I second that hope with Seima!

Get Christianity on the Menu

Greetings!  It is around 9pm over here in Japan, and the last couple of days have been a whirlwind.  There'll be more info later (as tomorrow we are starting our English camp and we are trying to combat the jet lag we've experienced over the last day or two), but I wanted to share something that really struck me today.

We met with Seima, our mission partner in Tokyo, who spent a little time talking about what is happening in Japan and how he came to serve here.  He told us that Japan often flies under the radar of countries in need of missionaries, mainly due to the notion that it is technologically and socially on par with other first-world countries.  Yet, less than .2% are professing Christians.  There are more than 20,000 suicides every year; people face ultra high societal expectations of success and oftentimes are lonely and without hope.  "Sometimes people choose to end their lives without even knowing that Christianity is an option," Seima told us.  "We just want to get Christianity on the menu."

For some reason, that thought lingered with me all throughout the day.  It's one thing to knowingly reject something; it's another to not know of its existence altogether.  He spoke of a story about a woman who recently jumped from one of the highrises in the community, a mother who not only committed suicide but also took the life of one of her children as well.  He asked us to imagine the depth of pain and loneliness she must have felt to get to that point, and told us that that was one of the reasons why they planted a church in the neighborhood.  Even if people reject the gospel, he wants them to be able to experience God's love and know that there is a community of people who will love and accept them.

Japan is fascinating and heartbreaking.  Some of the things I've seen here have blown my mind, and yet some of the things I've heard have killed me.  We will start our English camp tomorrow, and while it is meant for the kids, filled with games and skits and English flashcards, it is also an outreach to the mothers out there who have no community, whose husbands choose work over family because they feel pressured to, who might not know of all the options.  Our hope is that we can, in some small way, put Christianity on the menu for them.

Final preparations...

Hello and welcome to our team blog!  Hopefully, this will be a place for all of us to share not only what we are doing, but what we are learning and what our experience is like as well.  (Realistically, there might be few words and lots of pictures... but we shall see!)

Anyway, we leave for Japan tomorrow!  Craziness.  We just had a team dinner and I think all of us are feeling some combination of a) excitement, b) nervousness, and c) that nagging sense of being slightly unprepared.  I know that for me (Drew), there is definitely a lot more anxiety than excitement, mainly because it feels like there's a weight that comes with going on a trip like this... almost like it needs to be super amazing to justify all the time, energy and financial support people have poured into our team.  

But I am reminded that Christ did the only justifying work I will ever need to claim, and that instead of worrying about our lessons or last minute errands or even language differences, God wants me to be more Mary than Martha... to slow down and realize that the best use of my time is not in making preparations, but simply sitting before the Lord and communing with Him.  Oftentimes, I do the exact opposite; get all of the things I need to get done out of the way first, and then spend the last minutes of my day sleepily reading my Bible or praying/drifting off to sleep.  

So even though my mind tells me I have eleventy hundred things to do before we step on that plane, I'm going to go talk to the Lord for a bit.  If you would like to pray for us and our trip, here are some suggestions:

1) The safety and health of the team during the trip

2) Overall team unity

3) That we would be an encouragement to the people we are working with (and vice versa)

4) That we would be flexible and keep our focus on Christ, not on our plans or our notion of "success"

Drew