Week 6 6/7ths Part I

It's pretty late in Shizuoka right now, but I realized it's been awhile since I posted some updates (or called my parents) so I figured I start a post and fill in the empty stuff later.

To begin with, most everything since sports camp has been running really smooth. The students have really responded and have invited us to various dinners and various other smaller group activities. I've found this to be really great for the most part, but because they are smaller group activities a result is that the conversations need to keep moving for a longer time. You can only find out about a students hometown, major, and favorite hobbies once (the hobby question has been an unexpectedly popular question from the Japanese), then you have to move on. An artist of conversation is not a title frequently ascribed to me by those who have spent event the least amount of time with me, so I've been extremely thankful that God put me with teamates that can ably move the discussion along comfortably and get everyone involved. They've been great at filling in the uncomfortable silences (while leaving the comfortable ones), and making sure that our time with students is full of deeper learning about each other than "what kind of music do you enjoy" type stuff.

A quick runover of the events That have taken place since the last post. This is not really a comprehensive list, and as I said earlier will probably be added to later tomorrow.



We went to the nearby city of Shimizu with a few students and explored a festival they were thowing in their downtown area. The festival is called the "Tanabata" festival, the back story on the festivals origins are a little iffy according to wikipedia (by iffy I mean confusing and "I'm not sure why this warrants a festival exactly") but the people downtown all seemed to have a good time. There is a sort of main street where you walk and look at all these amazing paper creations, like the most amazing pinatas you'll ever see hanging from the ceiling on this main street/hallway deal. Along with the amazing pinata/floats there are also many small shops and the usual food being sold, shaved ice, tako yaki (octopus balls), yaki torri (grilled chicken usually on a stick), crepe's (german pancakes wrapped around fruit and ice cream or a similar filling) and other great stuff. Our small group really enjoyed all the paper creations and it gave us something to start conversations with later on with students.

We tried to have english class that Wednesday but because of sports camp, I think some students though maybe the class was over and we only had 2 students RSVP for the class and then only 1 actually showed. So Kathryn had some time 1 on 1 with the student I and left to rehearse some worship stuff with some of the staff for the upcoming sunday's church service. IT was a little disheartening to only have 1 student show to a class that we had been entrusted to keep alive after its primary instructor-Aileen had left. It felt quite a bit like failure, but we decided to redouble our efforts and focus on the final class coming up on the next Wednesday.



One of our Japanese roomates organized a trip to a Shimizu S Pulse J-Leage soccer game for the team and a few students. Soccer is realtively new to Japan but it is already fairly popular. This was confirmed by the charasmatic cheering from the crowd throughout the ENTIRE soccer game. We never sat down, and each section had its own cheer commander type person who made sure that everyone was still actively cheering. Most of the fun from the game was trying to figure out the cheers along with the students and then laughing at ourselves with the students as we basically butchered these cheers or in a best case, were so happy for understanding the cheer cheered embarassingly obnoxiously. The students found both cases pretty funny. The S Pulse unfortunately went on to lose the match, not for a lack of effort or cheering (maybe some shady judging). And our team and others ended up with about 24 new inside jokes that have yet to get old.



following that was another american night on the 13th of July. Gabi headed up the creation of some Sloppy Joe's for dinner, which was a new food for 98% of the students, as well as new vocabulary-Sloppy.It was a good turnout of students, and some of them even tried to sing along with the the worship songs. We again read a verse from the bible (presently it escapes me which one it was that night) and had sharing time with the students where we duscussed the past week and plans for the next week. The students really seem to enjoy most of the American night especially the music and sharing portions (they seem pretty indifferent to the bible part, possibly because its short). That night is usually quite encouraging and leads into our Monday morning bible study quite naturally.

Speaking of the Bible study, we took a break from 1st Peter last week and our leader Mark decided to have us study "Asking God for a Mate". He gave us a comprehensive list of verses to examine and extract truths from to share wth the group. The actual study was pretty fun and a bunch of us completed it together, laughing at the awkwardness of the subject and occasionally the content of the verses (Song of Solomon especially). At the group meeting Mark spent a good chunk of the time explaing how he had met his wife, a Japanese native named Yumiko and their amazing story of how God had brought them together. It was encouraging, yet frustrating as we all arrived at the answer to the question: "Just wait on God".



That Tuesday a small group of us met some students at a local Italian restaurant called Piso Lino's. The group that night was especially loose and talkative and the students talked relatively freely about plans to travel, learning english, the struggles of school, and the exhaustion of speaking english to us. Speaking a 2nd non native language is extremely mentally exhausting for the students, so its really a testament to their dillagence that they hang around us at all, with our constant demands for menu translations, and requsts for Japanes phrases. It was really enjoyable.

I'm going to stop here for a couple hours and fill in the reaming week tomorrow, in the meantime a couple prayer requests for the future:

We are traveling to Takayama early monday morning for a 3 day trip with some students sightseeing. Pray that our time is well spent, we remain safe, and our conversations rich.

We also have an english camp this Friday and Saturday, so please pray for energy and that the students would be curious about the Bible as that is a major topic during english camp.

We are climbing Mt. Fuji on Sunday, please pray for safety and good weather.

And finally our team has been together in a foreign country for over 6 weeks and some small crakcs in our "masks" our starting to show, so prayer for Persistent love in the team and patience with each other.