the beginning of the next week :)

Thanks for coming to our blog :)

Here's what we've been doing for the past couple of days...

Monday..........was our day off =) 

we went to Hirosaki city. everybody was tired so we slept in! and didn't leave til abt 12pm.

First, we went to lunch at a udon place =) 

Waiting to be fed =P

The Egg Udon

We then headed to a traditional Japanese house, which was at the back of a store which sold sake...

The Lounge Room

The Dining Area

After that we headed to a museum in Hirosaki, which showcased the Neputa Festival. It's held on 2-7 August (during the summertime).

One of the floats used in the Neputa Festival

A closer shot of the design...

We listened to the music which was usually played during the festival. It consisted of a flute and taiko drums..we even got to try playing them!

Nat, Judy and Dave playing Taiko drums :)

 We also got to try out another instrument...which is abit like a guitar...

Pete rockin' it out =P

We then travelled to Temple Road. A road literally lined with temples on both sides.

Temple at the end of the road

Then it started raining, so we headed back to church (where we're staying)...and had some time off.

For dinner, we went to eat sushi =)

When you order your sushi, it comes on a bullet train :)

I think it was a clam-like sushi...

After we headed towards the onsen to end the night! This time we went to a smaller onsen, which only had one bath. 

Tuesday (today)

We spent most of today planning for the week ahead...

We will be visiting preschools, elementary schools and holding various children and youth Christmas events in following weeks...as well as holding an Aussie Night!

Nat and Roy were writing up a Nativity Skit. I hear that Roy is going to be the angel hehe =P

Danny and Pete were thinking of big group games we could play with the kids. 

Dave and I were going through children's songs (with actions) and also Christmas carols which we could sing (in English/Japanese)

A hard working team :)

Nat and Danny designed a pamphlet for our Aussie Night...

Tonight we had English Class, where we had opportunities to mingle with four Japanese people. We were split into four groups, and had to find out as much as possible about each other within 7 minutes. We then rotated, so that we were able to meet all four people who came to English Class.

Split into groups

Towards the end, Roy shared his testimony :) and we also got time to talk more with each other. We had gingerbread cake and tea/coffee as well, yuuuuum :)

It was pretty exciting as Dave and I had the opportunity to share '2 ways to live' with Junji, a man who had been coming to English Class for a few months now. He was brought up with ancestral worship - praying to his ancestors for blessings and to protect him, as they watch over him. It was interesting as he said he could see that the world is not perfect and there are many things wrong with it and it's only getting worse. Junji also said he could believe that God came down to earth...but he was unable to believe that one God created the world, and that there existed a heaven and hell. Despite that he was still very open to us sharing the gospel with him..and when asked if he had to choose between the 2 ways, he knew that he preferred eternal life under Jesus' rule.

Praise God for opportunities to share the gospel with people! And please keep praying for Junji - that he may come to understand and believe what Jesus has done for him. He may be coming to visit us at the Harvest Chapel tomorrow! So praying that he will come and we will have another opportunity to talk to him :)

Sharing '2 ways to live' with Junji

Other prayer points:

* Keep praying for opportunities for our team to be sharing the gospel with people and also encouraging the Christians at church

* Pray that we as a team may continue to work well, united in Christ

* Pray that the outreaches we do at preschools, elementary schools and other christmas events may make people more aware of Itayanagi Church

Thanks again for taking a look at our blog!

We really appreciate your support in the gospel through prayers :) as all that we do is nothing if we don't depend and trust on God.

Coming up...Roy will post next. 

Things to be looking out for: our work at Harvest Chapel, Harvest Chapel Children's Christmas event, Night Cafe, Aussie Night

For the glory of God,

Judy :)

Epic post! (sorry no pictures...)

so currently my brain is currently not really functioning properly - possibly due to the electrocution that I experienced tonight. But more on that later...

DAY 2 (二日)
Friday we had some orientation in the morning and then preparation for Young Life (their youth group) in the night time. At Young Life Danny ran some games (murder in the dark, introduction game and ninja destruction) and then gave his testimony. We sang songs and got to know the kids. Some kids who stick in my mind were Masato-kun who is a massively tall 16 year old. He has two siblings - Nonoka-chan and Tomoki-kun. All three of them are great kids who have been coming to church for a long time but aren't Christians yet. Please be praying for them. I think that Danny, Roy and I are making a connection with Masato and Tomoki. Masato plays guitar and so I taught him the introduction to an HY song - AM11:00 and then proceeded to hear him practising it for the rest of the night.

DAY 3 (三日)
Saturday started out relatively laid back. The guys set up some lights outside of the church and on the nativity scene out the front and cleaned up the front section. After lunch when we prepared for Cross Village - an outreach event involving many town people (church and non church) setting up stalls and selling various things in a bazaar in the church. Young Life kids had a stall selling heaps of goodies like home made lemonade, Chicken karage and hot chips. Ruth, Roy and Judy were baking most of the afternoon to make many goodies for sale - apple pies, pumpkin raisin twists etc. They were a real hit and we didn't see Ruth for most of the night as a result. This was also a great opportunity to meet church members for the first time. I had a great conversation with Hiroshi and his wife, Ritsuko. Ritsuko does flower arranging for the church and is a house wife. Hiroshi is the principal of an elementary school of about 280 children. We will be visiting Hiroshi's school on the 14th Dec. Cross Village overall seemed to be a great success. There were many many people from the town around but not too many church members around to have good conversations with them. Please be praying that God will be giving church members a burden to use events such as Cross Village (which happens a few times a year) to reach out to the community in Itayanagi.

DAY 4 (四日)
Sunday is in Martin's words our one work day. In the morning we started with prayer at 8:30am, 9am was English Class, 11am was Service at Itayanagi where Pete and I gave our testimony. Judy played the piano for us for a couple of hymns too. I met a family - the Haroko family - Fumiyaki (father), Tomoko (mother) and little Hikari-chan their daughter. They are apple farmers who have been at church for almost 20 years! After service there was lunch - Japanese Curry. We then had to leave straight after lunch to Harvest where we did it all over again! Dinner was Mapo Tofu made by Junji. I also met Junji's wife, Keiko and their three children, Kaeda, Nire and Enju. Keiko lived in New York for 1 year and so her English was very good. We wolfed down dinner and then headed back to Tsugaru for the English service at night. We had a really relaxed time in the cafe singing Christmas carols and giving testimonies - this time without the need for a translator!

DAY 4.5 (四.五日)
We went to Erumunoyu Onsen after all was done. It was great! I can only comment on the men's bath seeing as guys and girls were split up.
Jacuzzi - straight hot water with bubbles - very therapeutic.
Normal Temp - nice warm bath. pretty straight forward
41 degrees - slightly hotter (this was the first bath I went into)
43 degrees - you might not think it but 2 degrees is a LOT hotter! This one was quite hot but this was my favourite one
Outside - normal temp but outside so your head is cool and your body is nice and warm=)
Cold - this was great to go into to cool off and then to jump into the 43 degree bath!
Electrocution - this was definitely the most interesting of the baths. There are two electric places to the right and left of you which pulsates electricity through your butt and is supposed to therapeutically contract your bowel and other muscles. We used this as a mini initiation ceremony - to sit all the way back between the plates - Roy was the only one to not make it to the back.

Anyways I am going to sleep now - it is about 1:46 at the moment and I am feeling quite brain dead but we have a day off tomorrow! Stay tuned to hear more about that!

oyasumi!

Super Saturday!

I may or may not have planned to blog this yesterday at 12:30am after a long days work (Dave has just now pointed out that 12:30am was today so I actually mean today) but Peter in his profound wisdom suggest that I do this the next day (which was actually the same day, as pointed out previously)

So here I am blogging at 8 in the morning =)

We arrived at Itayanagi at 5:30pm on the 2nd of December and God really blessed us with a chance encounter. See, from the OMF headquarters (all the way back in Ichikawa) to the Ghent's place in Itayanagi consisted of 4 trains and 6 and a half hours and on the last few rides we had to zig our way on the train to Itayanagi. We had to travel west, but there is no line that travels west, only one that goes south west and another that goes north west and after a while we had no idea how far we were from Itayanagi and then all of a sudden this one Japanese student walks up to Judy and Dave and asks if we're going to Tsugaru. Awesome right =D ?

Now get this, next he says 'I live with the Ghents'. We had just bumped into, in one of our 4 train rides and of the several carriages in that train, Yudai, who is currently living with the Ghents. God provides! Yudai then helped us get to Itayanagi where we met with Martin Ghent.

Itayanagi is a countryside farming town that's famous for its apples. We arrived having just missed out on last weeks snow. We had our first meal at the Ghent's house (they are awesome cooks, I think it's called Hayashi rice that they made, I went back for seconds and thirds!).

After that the boys went to our first men's bible study and the girls went to a reef making class held by Martin's wife, Ruth.

Dave describes the bible study as nice, I describe it as filled with manliness (being a men's bible study) and Roy describes it as *thumbs up*, encouraging and edifying. So all in all it was good. We went through Mark 10:17-31 and we went through what it meant to place hope in something. Like putting hope in the stock market, putting hope in plans, and best of all putting hope in God.

That was actually a recount of our Thursday, as we are lacking on time to blog, but we will endeavor to give more time to it. But the title is not a lie, I guarantee this was well and truly written on a Super Saturday!

Prayer points: Give thanks to God for today, we had a bazaar/market at the church today and many church goers and new comers came along. The youth helped out with a shop and I got to chat with Masato and Yudai about what they thought of love. Pray that they can continue searching through what love is, by experiencing God's love and searching through how high, far, wide and deep His love is!

As for our team, pray that we can be serving God foremost in all things. And always have His will in mind and that we treasure Him and His wants above ourselves and our own.

P.s I may or may not have finished this blog at 9:38pm

OMF Japan Days

The gang at OMF!!

Yeah, i know, it's nat... AGAIN! You're probably sick of reading the stuff I write, and I am sorry, but I happen to be the only one with slightly more time!

so bear with me dudes.

Onto the REAL story

Arriving safely to Ichikawa last night, today was our first day of orientation at the OMF in Japan. Meet the Jap short term mission co-ordinator Alison, who guided us in alot of useful information ! We also met the old Jap co-ordinator Bryan. He also happened to be someone who Pete knew from his last mission in Japan in Sapporo so that was heaps fun.

We also met the Brisbane team that is heading to a church in Hatazawa. They are all really awesome! It's so encouraging to see both teams crave the gospel to be reached to the people of Japan! It,s really interesting, because their team leader, Josh, happens to know alot of the Gracepointers that are from Brissy! "It's a small world AFTER ALL" ( found out Roy hates that song)

Like Hudson Taylor, we are suppose to blend into the Japanese culture to show the Japanese how Jesus is the light to our dark lives. So, as a result we had to learn over the etiquette of the Japanese. Our team discovered we broke nearly 15 out of the 40 etiquettes! Really pray that God will guide us so that we don't end up offending anyone as we evangelise!

We then did a cultural scavenger hunt at Ishikawa, where we had to put all the stuff we learnt into practice! That was fun. Heaps of funny photos and alot of great moments!

Great dinner! thnks to Gareth and ruth!!!

Count down to Aomori: 2 days!!!

for your reassurance....

the whole team has arrived to 日本 safely!

practically all together.... besides me....

PRAISE GOD!!!

for the glory of the kingdom!

one awesome epiphany

as I waited for my flight to narita, I had approximately, let's say, 3 hours to spend at HK airport. Being Nat, of course my first instinct was to go and get food. To my demise, I was sadly greeted with a ham, egg and macaroni soup instead of my beloved wonton noodle soup. Yes. Indeed, sorrow and a deep sense of despair drowned me and I sincerely thought my life was about to shatter into tiny little pieces (well, not really).

by the way, that was not my epiphany

my revelation occured to me as I was doing my QT as I sipped my COT (cold lemon tea, the o looks like a lemon ey ;) LOL). Reading and slowly making my way through Ephesians, I came across Eph 3: 14-17a. it reads:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

It was constantly told to me, but this passage strongly reminded me the power and the meaning of prayer. Prayer is one of the greatest gifts given to us by God. It can break down walls and protect us against the enemies. But i think more importantly, this passage reminded me WHY we pray. We pray to not only ASK God for things but it is that His glorious riches may flow onto earth. By gifting you with the Holy Spirit, all is possible!

Also praying with humility really challenged me. I definitely took God and this gift of prayer for granted. Paul KNEELED before the Father as he prayed. I wonder why is it, in this current friction in time, that we fail to do so. Is it a matter of pride? Is it because we don't like to be vulnerable? I'm deeply challeneged as to HOW in this "post-modern society" (vomit please) can we pray to our God with humility....

And as I reached to these people "bounded by the chains of sin", I really need to remember that the only way any of things we as a team do, will only suceed in prayer and full faith in our God.

Nat

P.S. "bounded by the chains of sin": It sounds so awesome! thought of it as i was writing up my prayer =)

all for love.

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3