A crazy couple of days!

Harry Lam here reporting in for my first proper blog on the mission trip! I haven't been able to join the team very much, but i was asked to do this blog now because the team is busy "cycling, tracting and interacting" up in Ishikawa-Ken right now! So it looks like they'll be doing several kilometres of cycling for a couple of days (on the itinerary it said about 30km of riding each day!! imagine that in this super humid and hot weather :( )!

Anyways, here's a bit of a recount of 24/6 - 27/6. I am writing this a few days after all these events so i apologise if i miss anything! There's a whole lot to blog about, so forgive me if this post is very long! If you find that it is too long, please at least scroll down to the bottom for the prayer points!

Australia Night 24/6

After many days of stress and frustration in lead up to Australia night, the night finally came! Jay started us off with a short explanation of Australian culture in comparison to Japanese culture, and Yoshiki was there to translate everything (that guy's a legend!). Then we decided to break into dance with an all Aussie bush dance! Everyone had a whole heap of fun learning the dance and sharing each other's sweat in the heat while dancing :) then we had a short break, in which the Japanese students had a taste of Australia: Anzac biscuits, fairy bread, vegemite and some other stuff :) I think they loved it! Although, i do think that some of the students, being Japanese, could not truthfully say that they didn't like the vegemite :P One of them said it tastes somewhat like soy sauce! I think they were kinda right, except it's a little stranger than soy sauce... Anyways, so the night continued with a skit about the prodigal son, and Masaki doing her talk in English (with Yoshiki as translator). I think the students thoroughly enjoyed it all :) They decided to give us all presents, but they had only prepared 6 of them, because well, they didn't account for me since i wasn't there most the time. But Kat told me to go up and grab the gift in her place, and she somehow convinced me to hold onto it...

Anyways, all in all it was an enjoyable night of good fellowship between Christians from two different cultures! :D (i'm not sure if there were any non-Christians there...)

Friday 25/6: Nagoya!

So the next morning we got up early to check out, and we then caught the train to Tokyo station, from which we caught the bullet train to Nagoya. I think it was about a 2 - 3 hour long ride. One awesome thing about bullet trains is the amount of leg room they have :D

Anyways, upon arriving at Nagoya, we met Azu, who helped us a heap with luggage (legendary!!). She also introduced us to one of her friends, Dai, who was also quite helpful :) So when we got to Nagoya, we had no idea who we were meant to meet exactly, and we were a bit late so we thought they'd left already. But we got in contact with him and met him at Mister Donut. So there we met Mr Joseph Kim - a Korean who grew up in America, co-missionary with Michael Oh, the founder of the Nagoya Bible Seminary - another legendary dude :) He drove us over to the Seminary, where he gave us a short tour and filled us in on the many different initiatives that have been taking place there. Sounds like there are heaps of different things going on there, and it seems that although missionary work in Japan is really hard work, there is a ray of hope. Joseph told us that he was sure that God was using globalisation to make the new generation of Japanese more open to western culture and religion, and he showed us an interesting youtube video to show us why he thought so. Can you guess what he showed us? For all the Big Bang fans out there reading this blog, he showed us the clip for "Gara gara go" by Big Bang :) Basically, he was surprised that a bunch of Koreans would be singing in Japanese and English. Several decades back that would have been absolutely unheard of! But now, huge korean bands like Big bang are becoming very very popular even in Japan, which has a huge fan base. Could God be using these things to bring the Japanese back to Him?

So we're all praying for the work to continue, and for the Gospel to be spread more and more there (see below for prayer points). Allthough it was a shame that we couldn't meet Mr Michael Oh himself, it was an awesome privilege to meet Joseph, who is a very knowledgeable and faithful man indeed!

After our meeting we went out to eat some awesome Nagoya specialty flat udon :D The price was awesome for the amount that we ate :) And we had a really awesome time chatting away about random things and enjoying each other's fellowship. Praise God!

We then trekked to our one-night accommodation in Nagoya. I really wish we could've stayed longer though, coz it was seriously such an awesome place! It has its own onsen, and it was quite big and comfortable to live in unlike the other accommodation we had. On top of all that, it was very cheap! Anyways, once we got to our accommodation it was officially our day off :) So the options we were given by Azu were to go out for Karaoke or to go and watch a baseball game. Everyone was too tired to even want to do anything, so we decided on plan C: to spend the night inside. Azu kindly offered to take some of us shopping to bring food back for everyone :D So a few of us drove down to the shops to get some food. We arrived at a huge shopping mall, where we shopped at a huge supermarket :) So when we got back, we ate, and then had dessert, at which point we discovered Jay's "maccha face" :P Jay's the biggest face of maccha, and upon finishing his maccha ice cream his face showed his absolute appreciation of maccha. So we called it the "maccha face" :) Oh yeah, so Jay also has been nicknamed "Nagaremizu" which means "running water"... you can go and figure that out yourself :P (he was also previously nicknamed "diabetes boy", does that help?)

Saturday 26/6: Sakae, Nagoya castle and Kanazawa

So we had a day off to explore the area a little. Azu took us to Sakae, which is one of Nagoya's big city areas with heaps of good shopping. So we stopped by the hundred yen shop and UniQlo to shop a bit :) We then met up with Joel (who soon got the nickname "Jama-Joel" which means "Joel, who always gets in the way" or "Obstacle Joel") :D The ten of us then went out to look for food, and we found this rather expensive but super awesome and satisfying restaurant where we got huge plates of amazing food :) After an awesome meal, we trekked up to Nagoya castle and explored the area a bit. May need to wait for mission photos to go up, and that might take a while! (The team is quite busy after all...) We then said goodbye to our legendary guide Azu, and made our way up to Kanazawa from Nagoya. Upon reaching Kanazawa, we met up with the accommodation dude, who led us through some rather dodgy streets to bring us to the accommodation, which looked pretty dodgy on the outside too...but the inside was quite nice and i think some of us had a pretty good rest :) Some of us stayed up a bit to prepare for the next day though.

Sunday 27/6: Wajima Bible Church

Sunday was yet another early start. We made our way back up to Kanazawa station, and met up with Mr Stephan (pronounced "Steven") and Simon (a Korean dude who spent about 11 years living in Brisbane!), our missionary guides for the next week. The drove us (apart from Joel and Alen who caught the bus up) to Wajima. We properly introduced ourselves and talked a whole lot about various things like where we were from and all. The journey up was amazing! I mean the scenery up there is seriously so amazing, it made me wanna live there, honestly! It's a shame i couldn't get out of the car to take a couple of photos though...but i think the image will remain in my head forever :D Mental snapshots are awesome...but they only seem to serve one's own purposes...they should so develop a "mental snap" camera :) One blink and voila! Perfect snapshot :D Anyways, on the way up, we stopped by a convenience store to pick up some food, and our driver got attacked by a rogue falcon :0 I think it was going for his food... it dove at him twice! It was quite awesome but also quite scary haha...

So, we arrived at the church at about 9:30am, giving us about an hour to prepare for the church service. So at 10:30 we were all ready to go! We performed "My heart is filled with thankfulness" for them, then i did my testimony. The pastor Arakawa sensei (a really really jolly man :) another legend!) gave a short talk on Psalm 139:14 (LOVE Psalm 139!), then we had a break and played some awesome games organised by him. He showed us the Japanese version of rock scissors paper: "Jan-ken-poi! Acchi mite HOI!" I think Alen has a new favourite game :P He absolutely blitzed it!

We then had a really awesome lunch, and some really nice cakes and waffles for dessert (which were leftover for afternoon tea as well :D). So we re-charged a little and prepared for the next segment, which was an English service (evangelistic) at which Jay gave his talk completely in English. While it was a good talk, i don't think many of them understood much of it! Still, it was a great opportunity for us to bring the word to them anyways! Afterwards we enjoyed some time together playing very similar games to the ones we played in the morning. Alenface was heaps excited about jankenpoi again, and this time he managed to beat about 5 people in a row! What a beast!

The following bits aren't exactly part of the team activities, but i thought they'd be encouraging for you guys to hear so i decided to blog about it too:

So Joel and I had to leave early, and we caught the last bus from Wajima station at 6:10pm (yeah...that's HEAPS early i know!) with a non-Christian girl called Miku. The bus ride was about 2 hours long, so it was an excellent opportunity to talk to Miku about her thoughts on religion (and a great opportunity to spend some time man-chatting with Jama-Joel!). Miku, like many Japanese, grew up in a Buddhist family, but did not hold onto that belief herself. So she was actually very open to hearing a little about the Gospel and gladly accepted a two ways to live tract from us (by the way, this was my first time ever explaining Christianity and the Gospel in Japanese, so praise God that He gave me the words to say!)

So after our two hour bus ride, we reached Kanazawa station, where i said bye to Joel (who caught the last train to Kyoto) and Miku. My bus was an overnight bus - an 8 hour trip to Shibuya, Tokyo. So i had to wait almost 3 hours for that bus, with nothing much to do. So i bought some food for the trip (and for breakfast next morning) and sat down to do a bit of journalling. Whilst journalling, a man with a cute little daughter in a pram came up to me and asked "are you travelling?" Immediately i thought "oh wow, this guy must be a missionary or something!" (Japanese people don't tend to talk to random strangers unless asking for directions or something). So it turns out this guy is a missionary from South Korea (another one!!!) who has been in Japan doing ministry for about 10 years. It was an awesome coincidence and i told him how happy i was to see him doing that kinda work there. We told each other about what we were doing there, and i talked to him about Credo and the mission and stuff. KGK also came up, and so we talked a bit about that too. He then told me about an event coming up called "KOSTA". This was a South Korean initiative that started in America about 24 years back for Korean exchange students. It is now a camp that takes place in about 12 different countries, Japan being the 12th, this year being the first for Japan! Well...he didn't actually tell me all that info...he just told me the name "KOSTA" and we left it at that. But when i got back to my place in Yamanashi, my Chinese friend (the only other Christian living here in these dorms) who goes to a local korean church gave me a pamphlet for KOSTA-Japan 2010. I get the feeling God wants me to go :P

So that wraps up those four days! Please take some time to pray!

Praise God for:

- a smooth running Australia night - quite a lot of students came, though i'm not exactly sure if there were any non-Christians there...

- the awesomely encouraging and faithful KGK students

- the initiatives taking place in Nagoya Bible Seminary, and the way He has been using missionaries like Joseph Kim and Michael Oh here

- using globalisation as a tool to make the Japanese more open-minded about foreign cultures (and thus foreign religions like Christianity as well)

- Stephan, the missionary from OM that the team is now working with

- Miku, a non-Christian girl who has been going to the English classes once a month at Wajima Bible church. Praise God that she heard a bit about the Gospel for the first time, and that she has now received a "Two ways to live" pamphlet in Japanese.

- sending so many faithful missionaries from other countries, especially South Korea

Please pray:

- That God will continue to be at work amongst the KGK students all over Japan

- That God will use Michael Oh, Joseph Kim and the others at the Nagoya Bible Seminary to further the work being done here in Japan. In particular, pray that as they seek to eventually open up a church

- That God will open up more paths for missionary work here in Japan

- That God will raise up the next generation of pastors and Bible teachers here in Japan, using native Japanese people to preach to the Japanese (apparently there is now not a single Bible college that has proper accreditation from the government).

- For the church in Wajima - that God will use Arakawa sensei's English classes and the other events there to bring more people to Himself

- For Miku (see above in the praise points), that God may open up her heart to the Gospel and that she may pursue Him

- That the team will have enough energy to cycle around and that their work may be effective

- For good teamwork, as it is very easy to get frustrated when working with a team for so long, even within Christian circles

Thanks so much for keeping up to date and for being patient with the super long post! :D