Friday

Friday was a very fun day. We met the students on campus at noon to play frisbee. We played for over an hour and then we all had a good long lunch in the cafeteria. Then more frisbee... (sorry, no photos of that...)

The students were invited to come to the girls' apartment on Friday evening to watch Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Evie made us real popcorn!  The movie was well received and provoked nearly two hours of discussion following the movie.

One Week Observations from Everyone...

Evie's thoughts...
I am so glad that I listened to God's voice and am here in Japan. He has been revealing himself to me and showing areas in my life that need to be changed... The girls here that I have met have been wonderful. I have to remember that it is so hard to wait for God and His timing, and I tend to become frustrated... God has called some to be reapers and others to be sowers. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He will strengthen thy heart...

Joe:
I really enjoyed spending time with our new guy friends last night. I hope that we will be able to build relationships with them and reach out to them in the coming week. I pray that God would continue to help us overcome difficulties in communicating with them.

Mike:
So far it has been a good week. I finally feel like we are starting to get our foot in the door and build relationships with some of the students. I am praying that the Lord will give us opportunities to share the gospel with each one of them.

Rebecca:
This week has been a constant exercise in relying upon the power of God. As I look around me at the students we meet, I am continually reminded of my own inability to attract them to Christ on my own. I've been reading intensively in the minor prophets, and the message they share has been a real encouragement to me. These men were able to look into the depths of human depravity and yet not despair, because their hope was founded upon something greater. Today I met an amazing student who comes from a mixed Christian and Buddhist background. She does not yet know where she stands spiritually, but she is seeking to find the truth. Tomorrow my dad and I will visit the Christian church she attends and spend some time talking with her on the subway. Please pray that my dad and I would 'become invisible' as we share with her, so that the truth of Christ can shine through us.

Steve:
I just went to this blog site for the first time today after being here one week. I really appreciate Amy posting our activities. I must make one correction: she listed our team's fearless leader as being me. I wish that were true. But every time its my turn to drive our group somewhere in the van, I pray very hard, ..."Lord please don't let me get these young people too lost and lose a lot of time." I don't do well in a big city in America, let alone on where all the streets look alike to me.
It is a joy to be here with this team. They talk with students about everything, inlcuding what is important; Jesus.
Thank you for your prayers and support, it really is a team effort and we can see your prayers at work.

Josh:
So it's been a week since coming to Japan. It's admittedly been slow for the first few days but we are to wait on God's timing, right? These past two days, we've gotten to interact with many students and it has been enriching and eye-opening. There are many things our Japanese friends want to know about - why we're here and stuff like that. It is my prayer that we will be able to continue in our relationships and that God would be in the center of our conversations.

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Thursday

Mr. and Mrs. Bush, you should be very proud of your son.  Joe located a weedwhacker and volunteered to cut down the (very tall) grass in the UpTen yard Thursday morning. 

For lunch, we went to Dohton Bori.  We aren't really sure what kind of animal this mascot is supposed to be, but the imitation of its expression is priceless!

This restaurant has a soda fountain!  Coca-Cola, Fanta, Minute Maid orange juice, hot chocolate, hot milk tea, and Calpis (a popular drink here that's kindof like a milky flat Sprite).

We weren't quite sure what to do, so our waitress kindly showed us how to do it.  You get a bowl of raw food that you are supposed to mix up and cook on the hot griddle in the middle of the table.


My best description of the dish (called ookonomiyaki) is that it is a cheesy, potato-less hash brown filled with vegetables and seafood...

...which was topped with a teriyaki type sauce, kewpie mayonnaise, bonito (dried fish) flakes, and chopped seaweed.

After lunch, we went to Guys Club on campus.  They divided into seven groups, one for each of us, and the students interviewed us and then introduced each of us to the class.  They asked questions about favorite color, favorite food, movie and music preferences, and our families.  We used the opportunity to talk about our Christian faith also.  After group introductions, we had a huge Koom-Ja tournament!

One student challenged Mike to an arm wrestling match...

Then two guys at once...

Then three at once...

Everyone adjourned to Starbucks after Guys Club.

We all grabbed McD's on the way back to UpTen.  About 25 students joined us for UpTen Night.  We ate our dinner, then divided into four groups.  Each group was instructed by Ogawa-san to speak English.  Mr. Yeager and I were in the smallest group, with only three students.  We talked for a while about school, classes, their part-time jobs, and goals after graduation.  We shared with the students about the 10 Commandments and how we break them in our hearts even though we may seem pretty good on the outside (see Matthew 5).  These students attend a Christian university, they are required to take a Bible class, and they have opportunity to attend chapel every day.  This is good, because they all know about Jesus already, but it also makes things difficult because many of them just see the Bible as a textbook, Jesus as a historical figure, and Christianity as a club to join.  Pray that the students will take the instruction to heart and realize their need for Jesus in their hearts to forgive their sin.

Wednesday

Wednesday at noon we drove downtown to meet with Dr. Metoki and his wife.  Mrs. Metoki was led to Christ by Mrs. Yeager many years ago.  We saw this enormous statue of Buddha along the way.  No, that is not Photoshopped - it really is that huge. 

The Metokis took us to a seafood restaurant for lunch.  We had a private room and an amazing seven-course meal at Restaurant Hemingway.  Mrs. Metoki was very inquisitive about our purpose here in Japan and agreed that people need Jesus because of the sin in our hearts.  We had a good discussion about Christianity over lunch.  Three of our group (Mike, Josh, and Evie) are all pre-medical students, so Dr. Metoki really enjoyed answering questions about medical school and practicing medicine in Japan. 

After lunch, we were given a tour of Dr. Metoki's pediatric clinic. 

In many places in Japan, you must remove your shoes before entering, and some places provide slippers.  Aren't these guys cute in their pink slippers?

Doctor offices in Japan see many more patients than doctors in America - up to 200 children per day in the colder months.  Here is a room with three beds for speedy examinations.  There was a sick child room beside this one.

Wednesday evening was Girls' Night at the Girls' apartment TopThree.  We had yummy snacks...

And we made cool jewelry from beads and thread...


Girls' Night Group Photo:

We had a short Bible study on the story of Mary and Martha from Luke 10:38-42.  We talked about what distracts us from important things and about priorities. 
We will host another Girls' Night next Wednesday, this time with a Japanese theme.  We asked the girls to bring Japanese snacks and to teach us Origami or another Japanese craft.

Cooking Kayoobi

We began Tuesday with a mission team Bible study. We discussed all of the scriptures that each of us have been reading personally. I encourage all of you to read these this week so that you can follow us in our prayers:
Matthew 9:1-8
II Thessalonians 3:10, 13
I Thessalonians 5:14-22
Romans 13:8-10
I Corinthians 13:1
Matthew 7:24-27
John 14:23
I Corinthians 3:10-15
I Corinthians 14:19
I Corinthians 2:1-5
Micah 7
Luke 7:36-50

We were put in charge of cooking for the weekly UpTen Lunch, held every week on Tuesday, as well as a special Barbecue supper. Menu for lunch: Texas Red Chili, Fried Potato Wedges, Rice, Veggie Sticks and Dip, and No-Bake Cookies. Our friend Eriko came over to help us prepare lunch.

Rebecca had bought what she thought was laundry detergent, and Eriko *just* stopped us from washing our dark clothes in bleach!

Lunch was a huge success! We had about ten students here for lunch, and we had opportunities to share Jesus with several of them! Praise the Lord!


After lunch, we played a game with the students called "Koom-Ja". (For those in the know, Bunny-Bunny Tokey-Tokey!)

For supper, the guys made barbecue chicken tenders and the girls fixed a salad and creamed corn. Evie made awesome cracker candy for dessert.

Supper was a little larger crowd, and we all played Koom-Ja after we ate. Then we all sat down and the students had opportunity to ask each of us whatever questions they wanted. We answered everything from "What is your favorite movie?" to "Why do you want to be a doctor?" to "What is your hobby?"

Monday

We continue to rise early.  The sun comes up about 3am, and the walls of our apartment are paper thin.

The group split into pairs for a 7am prayer walk around the local campus.  We prayed that the seeds God plants through us this week would blossom into Bible studies among students on campus. 

We regrouped back at UpTen, and everyone had a chance to check their email (I am the only one who brought a laptop!).  Here is a photo of UpTen:

Then we all piled into our little car for a group trip to Yamazawa (grocery store).  We will be cooking lunch and supper at UpTen on Tuesday for about 15 students at each meal.  Each of us had a good think-on-your-feet lesson when we couldn't find all of the ingredients that we needed for our recipes! 

After we returned and put away all of our groceries, we walked to the cafeteria on the local campus for lunch.  It was so crowded that one student sat down right in the middle of our group.  We tried to talk with him, but he was more interested in eating quickly than in practicing his English.  He was kind enough to write down the name of the food he was eating so that we could try it too.

Ogawa-san picked us up after lunch in his van and drove us to the downtown campus.  This university, Tohoku Gakuin, was originally all downtown, but it became crowded, so they built the local campus for Freshmen and Sophomores and now have only Junior and Senior classes at the downtown campus. 
Tohoku Gakuin University: http://www.tohoku-gakuin.ac.jp/en/index.html
The local campus is called Izumi, the downtown campus is Tsuchitoi, and there is a third campus called Tagajo that is located in another city.

We got to meet many Guys Club members, but they said that it was difficult to come now that they are at the upperclassmen campus.  Rumiko, a former Guys Club member and a graduate of Tokohu Gakuin Univeristy, now works in the Facilities Management office at the downtown campus.  She showed us all of the buildings and introduced us to some other former Guys Club members.  We talked with one girl, Mei, for a while in a student lounge.  Mei is going to join us on Wednesday for girls' night at TopThree, and she might come for another visit next week.

I learned that Tohoku Gakuin University was founded in 1886 as a Theological Seminary for the purpose of training Christian preachers and still has a Christian Theology department.  There is another huge chapel building on the campus downtown as well.  Tsuchitoi has an American-style house on campus that the founders built to live in.  We were allowed to walk through it, and for once I didn't have to duck through the doors!

From there, we went to The Christian Martyrs' Monument.  The plaque reads:
"The Tokugawa shogunate banned Christianity in 1613, and by 1620 persecutions of Christians began to be seen in the fief of Sendai.  In the winter of 1623, a Portuguese priest named DIOGE de CARVALHO and eight Japanese men were arrested in the Ou mountains and sent to Sendai.  They were half-sunk in the freezing water of the Hirose River.  Two of them drowned on the last day of the year and the rest died near where the Ohashi bridge now stands on January 4, 1624."

Here is our tream: Joe, Josh, Michael, Amy, Evie, Rebecca, and Steve:

Our last stop downtown was a Christian bookstore called Oasis Gospel Shop, where we each bought Japanese tracts to pass out on Saturday morning, before our downtown shopping trip. 

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Parade Photos

Sunday Festival

Sunday Festival

Sunday, we went to the Aoba Festival in downtown Sendai.  Aoba Shrine is the resting place of Date Masumune, Sendai's founder.  We were met with the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of a festival that you would find in any town, but with an obviously Japanese theme.

Sendai is much larger than I had anticipated, with about a million residents. We walked to a Subway station on the opposite side of campus and took the Subway to downtown. We could hear the festival before we could see it. The fist thing we encountered was hundreds of people of all ages dressed in white robes with black hats. They were on a lunch break when we arrived, so they were all sitting around everywhere. We saw later that they were basically the parade helpers, carrying platforms and flags, and walking along with groups. We also saw many people in parade costumes and kimonos.


Next we were each given a green plastic bag and a pair of tongs to pick up trash with. We were told to bring back a bag of trash and exchange it for a resuable "Eco Bag".

Ogawa-san led us to an acrobatic performance, and then we walked past all of the colorful booths.


We picked a spot on the main street to watch the parade. It was so beautiful! But after nearly an hour of watching dozens of groups doing the *same* sparrow dance to the *same* song, we decided to leave to find some lunch.

Dragon, a friend of Ogawa-san, joined us for lunch and led us to a restaurant hidden in the basement of a shopping center. Ootoya was a lovely little place with amazing food. I had a chicken soup, and others had various soup, fish, and rice dishes. When we went back oustide an hour and a half later, the parade was amazingly *still* going on! We couldn't believe it was so long!

We did a bit of shopping with Dragon, then we took our trash bags back to the stand and traded them in for Eco Bags. Then we all tried a popular festival snack: chocolate-dipped, sprinkle-covered banana-on-a-stick. Tasty!

When we got back to UpTen, everyone played a card game called Mao. The rules of Mao:
1. No talking during the game.
2. When you win, you make a new rule.
3. No talking about the rules.
It was hysterical! The most hilarious rule was when Rebecca made everyone sing "I'm a Little Teapot", complete with motions (shhh! Don't tell anyone that I talked about the rules!).

We all went to Mr. and Mrs. Ogawa's house along with some of our new friends for supper and worship. Mrs. Ogawa made Tomato Rice, Chicken in Cream Sauce, Green Salad, and California Rolls. Yum yum yum yum! After supper, we sang some songs together and then studied Matthew 10:1-23. It was such a wonderful study, but we were all exhausted by the end of the two-language lesson!