At Adventure's End

Somehow, it was a long summer and a short one for me.  I've seen a lot and learned a lot of invaluable things in Japan and it's not an exaggeration to call the experience "life changing."  This post will be mostly about things that I've learned and will be a bit rambling.

The first thing I have learned is just how generous my family, friends, and church are.   There wasn't much time between when I asked for help fundraising and when I left for Japan, but people quickly donated money, even many who were hurting financially.  In fact,  more money was sent than what I needed!  I am so thankful to God and to those who helped me pay for this mission!  For those of you who are reading, thank you!

I also was able to finally get to know Japan, the country that I had studied for years.  First, I confirmed a sneaking suspicion that I've had for a while:  that Japanese people are people and that you cannot completely peg someone just from what country they grew up in.

I saw firsthand how desperately Japan needs the Gospel.  The Japanese know absolutely nothing about Jesus or God.  Their worldview is different to the point where things that seem incredibly obvious to me would never occur to them (and the other way around).  And while America has its own host of problems, Japan is in serious pain.  Unfortunately, the number of missionaries in Japan are decreasing, especially since the earthquake.  Which is really unfortunate because I think that the earthquake has caused Japan to become more open than it has been in centuries.

It's a bit strange for me to think about it, but I've seen things that most people haven't or ever will.  I've seen an entire city wiped out, and met people who have lost their houses, friends, and family.  From this, I think I've learned to be more sensitive towards other people's suffering, and also to realize that the bad things in my life could be a lot worse.  I've also learned that I need to listen to others more and speak less (my Japanese listening ability is better than my speaking, which helped me do that).

While in Japan, I was able to make a lot of friends and connections.  I'm glad to have met each one of them and I really hope to see them again (many of them I know I'll meet the other side of eternity, but I also want to meet them again here).  I've met so many amazing people who are giving their time and money to serve the Lord, and I'm so glad to know them.

Most of all, I've learned that Japan is a wonderful place to be and I can't wait to go back someday!

Thank you for reading this blog.  Even though I'm back home, I'll try and update it every once in a while!

Working in Nara

After returning to Tokyo, I had a few days to relax before packing up and heading to Nara Prefecture.  While I was still planning my trip, I made a request to go to the city of Osaka in the western area of Japan (Tokyo is in the east for those of you who don't know Japanese geography).  The reason was so that I could visit a church there that I've been paying attention to for a while (which is a story in an of itself).  The nearest Converge missionaries were the Chapmans in Ikoma city, Nara.

Getting down there meant that I was able to take the Nozomi bullet train (aka the shinkansen) down to Kyoto before taking some more trains to Nara.  The shinkansen was really nice, actually.  It was like an airplane ride with more legroom.

Nozomi bullet train

Surprisingly, I was able to navigate the trains all the way from Kyoto to Nara, which is a big deal considering my talent at getting lost.  It was there that I was picked up by Jeff Chapman and his daughter Anna., and they took me to their home where I met Jeff's son Caleb.  Things were a bit crazy at the Chapman house then, since they had just sent their oldest daughter Rachel to college in the US and Jeff's  wife Barb was also in the States.  Poor Jeff had a lot on his plate, so I'm glad I was able to help him with some of it.

My main job was to work on tracts.  Jeff had ordered 10,000 tracts about Ayako Miura, one of the most famous Japanese Christian authors and I needed to stamp the address of the house they would have church in on each of them (which was, incidentally, the place I stayed for those two weeks).  Mrs. Chapman had already stamped around 1000 tracts, so I ended up stamping over 9000.  It was tedious and boring work, but there was a TV where I was staying and I found a few interesting shows I could watch while working.

Ikoma

The Chapmans are using tracts as a change in strategy.  For years they've been trying to develop relationships and introduce the Gospel later, and that approach has had frustratingly little to show for it, for various reasons.  So now they're going to try and spread the net wide across Ikoma.  To be honest, I'm not totally sure how effective it will be, since Japanese people are generally not at all receptive towards that kind of evangelism, but hopefully God will use it.

The two weeks I stayed in Nara were really great.  The Chapmans were very hospitable and we were even able to take some time off from working and went to see the city a bit.  Nara was originally the capital of Japan and has a lot of old temples and shrines.  It's also famous for its deer, which are very common in the city.  We first went to Nara Park where tons of deer hung around.  They're tame and only get aggressive if they think you're hiding food.

We also went to Toudaiji a huge Buddhist temple and the largest wooden structure in the world.  Ironically, I was only able to take pictures of the gate in front of the temple before the battery on the camera died.  Inside the huge building was a huge statue of Buddha with other statues of his guardians.  I guess I've always thought that praying to statues and man-made things was mostly a thing of the past (I figured that nowadays idolatry was towards things like money or power), but there were plenty of people praying and offering incense.  I was able to see what kind of hurdles the Gospel has to go through in Japan, and how desperately the Japanese need Christ.

The gate to the temple.  I'm glad that my God does not need a temple.

My stay in Nara seemed to end before it began, and after two weeks, I was back on the bullet train to Tokyo.  I stayed at the Mehn's house one last night before going to Narita airport, Los Angeles, Los Vegas, and then finally arriving home.  I'll write more about my overall thoughts in my next post here.  Thanks for reading!

Rebuilding Ishinomaki

Hello, everyone!  I know that it's been a while since I've posted, and I'm sorry.  Like I said in my last post, my internet situation for the last two weeks of my trip made it so that I couldn't really do a long post or anything.  And even though I've been back since Sunday evening, I've been fighting a losing battle with jetlag, so I've been forgetting to update this blog.  I really am sorry!

My second trip to Ishinomaki passed quickly even though it was longer than my first one (ten days as opposed to seven).  I worked in the same area, so I was able to see a lot of people I had met from the first time and develop some friendships more.

The operation in Shintate had grown considerably since I had been there before.  The main task that Dean wanted people to work on was a field owned by a man named Mr. Abe (different from any Mr. Abe that I've mentioned before.  It's a really common name in the area).  He had grown vegetables in his field, but the tsunami had flooded it with salt water and oil.  And to make things worse, there was a factory right next door that made cell phone parts, which were strewn all across and even buried underneath the field.  It was such a mess that the Abes had given up hope of restoring it, which was especially sad because it had been passed down from Mrs. Abe's father.  Such a job would require a lot of people.

So God provided a lot of people.  With the group I was with, nearly fifty volunteers showed up the first day to work on that field.  It was amazing how much that many people can get done and I think that the Abes were really impressed with the work.  First, we had to clear off all the salt that had solidified on the surface, which was basically the top two inches of ground.  Then we had to dig down about a foot and sift through the dirt to find any glass, plastic, metal, or oil deposits.  It was long and tedious, but it got done.  The worst part of it was fighting the Japanese summer back.  Of course, I'm used to bone-dry Colorado, where any sweat quickly evaporates.  In Japan, though, summers are horribly hot and horribly humid.  Each day, I would completely sweat through my shirt, have it dry over lunch, and then sweat through it again.  By Friday, it was hot enough to be dangerous and we had people taking breaks often.  Thankfully, Dean had bought some stand-up tents that we could work under to keep out a lot of the heat.

That Sunday our group prayerwalked in Shintate, just like the first trip.  This time, we went to the very edge of the neighborhood.  I was really surprised to see that just a few blocks away from where I had been working, almost every house was abandoned.  Out of almost one hundred houses, only one in that side of town had residents.  Sadly, there were some houses that had been looted after their owners either abandoned them or died in the tsunami.

In Japan, having flavored shaved ice is a traditional summertime treat.  That Monday, to give the community a bit of a break from the sameness of recovery life and to bring some cheer back to Shintate, we set up some tents and prepared for a big shaved ice party!  We also had a singer, one of Mr. Abe's (the man who is like a pastor but isn't one) former students, who came to sing and share the gospel.  It was absolutely fantastic and over one hundred people showed up.  For a short time, I could see what the city was like before the disaster.

Having been to Shintate for two trips, I had developed a lot of attachment to the area and the people there.  I will never forget my time working there and someday I will go back to see how things have changed.  Please pray for the people there, that they would be healed from the suffering that they have experienced and that God would open their hearts to the Gospel.