Konbonwa from Tokyo

Tokyo, Japan -- So, I had written a blog... but apparently when I was finishing it, I accidently clicked something else and I lost everything. And so I decided at that point just to go to bed.

These last few days I've done everything from Japanese class to cooking Mexican food to play volleyball with a whole bunch of Brazillians. I've also had some good talks about culture and living here and things that the missionaries face here with Christine and have also learned a lot from Tim. That's been really helpful, along with hearing from various people their experiences and observations. I kinda see my job as listening, observing and investigating.

The Japanese class was crazy. It was taught all in Japanese and there were 2 girls from Sri Lanka who were with me. One of them spoke Japanese already, but she was accompanying the other girl. It takes a while to catch on, but eventually you do. And at the end you have to introduce yourself, tell where you are staying (the area in general) and tell where you are from. There's a lot more words to that than it sounds like. But I made it through it, and came home and was grateful to spend the afternoon with familiar stuff like making some Mexican food.

The Mexican dinner party turned out well. There were Tim and Christine and the two newbies- Ben and Joe and Kazo and Abbey (probably didn't spell that right), the associate pastors of the church and their two daughters. They're Japanese and spent 3 years living in Tasmania. I really enjoyed getting to know them; I felt a connection with them-- they're great people! Oh, and the food was good too. They ate a ton of it and as far as I've heard, no one's sick-- so that has to be good right?

Today we went to another part (I don't remember what the stop is called) and played volleyball. It was part of an outreach that the Brazillian church does-- there were 4 new people (which is pretty good)... and one of them was a Peruvian. Her name is Gianina-- which is pronounced like my name, only with an "a" at the end. How ironic is that?? I was so happy to speak to someone who spoke Spanish... But we played for a long time and it was really cool to get to know them some more... the pastors really have a heart for the people, you can tell. And the church people who were there are really sweet.

It's really hard to get people to come to things because of their work schedule. People work really hard here... and it takes a really long time to develop relationships here and see fruit. That's one of the reasons why missionaries go home from here... it's not like other places where you can see easily the fruit of the work you've been doing. Here it takes a really long time because of their schedules, because of their perspectives and way of life and because of their group mentality. But when they do decide, they do it whole-heartedly.

One of the really cool things that I got a chance to see and even participate in was the Gospel choir. I'm not a singer by any account, and Gospel isn't my genre, but I wanted to see this. It's a program going on here in the church-- Japanese people really like Gospel music. And so, it's open to the public and they can come in and sing. I went on a morning with fewer than usual people-- and it's the session that's not as much attended as the other. But, they sing the songs (in English) and there is the translation in Japanese at the bottom with some Bible verses (and they offer a time beforehand to explain the meaning) and they work hard at singing the songs.

And boy do they get into it. My mouth dropped. It was so powerful! Here are a bunch of non-believers (there were 3 believers that day) really singing powerful music and you can tell it's doing something on the inside. And people are getting saved by singing. They realize that the atmosphere is different, there's power in praise music and they want Jesus. I was really touched to see it all.

This week's favorite invention here is the carpet warmer. I haven't investigated it enough to know how it works, but it really warms up the carpet. If you're standing, you can feel that your feet are warm-- so just imagine sleeping on it... since we sleep on the floor here!And speaking of that, I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow won't be as busy as some of the other days this week, but I want to get all rested up before I head next week out to see more of Japan!!