Fi's experience tracting on Noto Peninsula

So while we've been cycling during the week we had been trying to give tracts to people we met and talked with... However Noto peninsula is like a farming area. A lot lot lot of the houses are abandoned and overgrown, or summer houses that people aren't living in just at the moment. So as far as meeting people *while* we're cycling, that can be a bit of a challenge. Usually we were riding past them or they were working in the rice fields. On Saturday we spent the whole day tracting the coast east of Nanao (the church we were at on Sunday).

Tracting houses in Japan is totally different to Australia! First, you have to find the front door of the house. In some of the seaside villages I was walking through, the houses were all clumped together like a maze, with little streams in between them and crazy terraces all curving around. The front dear can be on any side of the house! sometimes near the street, sometimes in a little nook or cranny, sometimes not where you were expecting it at all.　Then you have to find the letterbox - which is somewhere near the door. Good luck! it is usually small and inconspicuous. Other times it is red (hooray!). Sometimes, it is inside the genkan/entrance or gate and you feel like you're walking into someone's house.
Also because we were tracting on a Saturday, a lot of people were home! I 'talked' to maybe 20 people or so! I think it would be very rare in Australia to actually see the people you are leaving tracts for, but Japanese houses often have a sitting area near the front door - like a metre or so away! somtimes there were people working in the fields in front of the house, but it wasn't their house! Most of the people are old. I saw maybe 2 families or groups under 50!
Finally, they are interested to read what you give them. I didn't meet anyone who looked at the front page or heard me say I came from a church and reject the tract because of that.

Please pray:
- thank God for the willingness of the people to receive the tract and read it.
- pray that as God has promised, his word will not return to Him empty (Isaiah 55:11), that not only would people read the tracts and understand them, but by the Holy Spirit they would come to know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.