When sticky notes just aren't good enough...

Having three younger brothers, I grew up watching out for the things that my brothers would forget and misplace. Something deep inside me, I guess, wants to be able to say, in response to the questioning look on another face, "Your keys are inside your coat pocket." "Your glasses are in the bedroom." "Your coat is under your boots under the basement stairs, tho I have no idea why it's there..."

Even now, I think, I love to have answers for people's questions. Cindy loves to dream big dreams, and I'm usually the one following behind her with a notebook and a list of bullet points, ready to give an answer and logical plan when she needs one. I have electronic sticky notes all over my computer usually, filled with answers that I may need at some time for some program...

I was reflecting again tonight that God doesn't call me to build programs or big churches, but simply to walk in relationship with Him. Maybe, to put it more bluntly, God doesn't care about the number of my sticky notes or bullet points. He cares about my heart.

Hehe. Lindsey just ran upstairs and asked, "Where is my phone?" And I answered, without looking, "On the table."

So, once again this is going to be a post reflecting about mushy things like love, grace, and the fact that relationship is more important than religion...(can I say something like that here?!)
Sigh. I feel like I could be so much more hard-nosed, a go-getter, someone regarded as wise, if I would only stir myself up enough to research some deep doctrine. Or maybe if I was strong, I could at least be respected for the forcefulness behind my beliefs. But in reality, I often just feel like a wishy-washy person always preaching about love. And the times that I even do reflect on turning into a deep, doctrinally-wise person, I find myself battling with pride like none other...

I just finished reading Oswald Chambers, and I'm going to quote him for you a little: (it was under the title, "the Method of Missions")
"The challenge to the missionary does not come on the line that people are difficult to get saved...but along the line of his own personal relationship to Jesus Christ. 'Believe ye that I am able to do this?' Our Lord puts that question steadily, it faces us in every individual case we meet. The one great challenge is--Do I know my Risen Lord? Do I know the power of His indwelling Spirit? Am I wise enough in God's sight, and foolish enough according to the world, to bank on what Jesus Christ has said, or am I abandoning the great supernatural position, which is the only call for the missionary, viz., boundless confidence in Christ Jesus? If I take up any other method I depart altogether from the methods laid down by Our Lord--'All power is given unto Me..., therefore go ye.'"

I especially like the part asking about knowing God, and knowing His Spirit. The idea of knowing intimately, relationally, God Himself...and that is the method we use for missions and life.

Sigh. I feel like I'm just a little out of wack, and I know that truth and doctrine are good and wonderful, and I'm probably totally one-sided here...

But for now, am being called away from my lists and answers back into the throne room...back into what it means to be known and filled with God.

Looking forward to a home...

Yesterday I was running along the sea, watching huge waves crash into the beach, and it was maybe the first time the thought hit me: I'm going to be leaving here soon. The thought brought me full circle, back to when I was leaving America and I was thinking of Abraham, called by God to pick up and move. In Hebrews it says Abraham could pick up and leave because he knew that he was a foreigner on earth, and was waiting for a home and country of his own--a heavenly one (ok, so maybe that's paraphrasing it very loosely, but that's the thought that sticks out for me when I read those verses).

A home.
Today, since it was a day off (dare I even admit this?!), I borrowed a dvd from Lindsey's collection and watched the second half of the long version of Pride and Prejudice. She had laughingly referred it to me before, after watching Pirates of the Caribbean with me and being on the receiving end of my detailed discussions regarding character development. :) It definitely lived up to her promise--I revelled in watching the girls of this family develop and grow up and get married, and now I'm curled up in my room with my computer reflecting on life and growth and what it means to have a home.

A month ago, when I had just really moved here, I was reflecting upon not getting close to this place--possibly, if I didn't make it feel like home, then it won't hurt to leave it in the spring...at least, that's what I thought. But yesterday running and reflecting on the waves suddenly sprung a thought into my head; I am, truly, at home here. I run up and down the steps of my house with a wild disregard for their steepness, wander through the house at night in the dark without tripping over half so many things... :) and know the shortest ways to good places to get chocolate and eat Indian curry... :)

When did that happen? I wonder. When did I start to feel at home here? I'm not sure...and I say it with a sigh, because I know that the call to move again will be coming very soon, really. Where will the call tell me to go next? I'm not sure. Probably somewhere as wonderfully-specific as "To the place I will show you." :)

To follow. That's what's important...though what that even looks like, often, I don't know. Here in this country there are so many loose ends--discipleship, music, liturgical dance (if you really want a crazy option!). Yet so many of those things I don't really want to do nor can I do them, because I'm not Japanese. So what is my role...?

Not saving the world. Not bringing contextualized music to a culture. Not starting new ministries to reach the youth culture. Just walking to "the place God will show me." Or is that too simple of an answer?

Half-cooked bars, 40+ people, and a house church?! aka An Incoherent Posting about Exciting Things God is Doing

So, today was the church's typical "Coffee House" day...the third Sunday of the month. Coffee House is the monthly English event that is held and run by us teachers and usually involves attempts at connecting students and church members, etc. However, this month we decided to do things a little differently, and we decided to hold an open house in our new home in Niigata city.

Notes/advice for those wanting to hold open houses:
1. Don't do all of your baking at night.
2. When you do all of your baking, check the oven to make sure both the top and bottom is going to be heated.

So, I really can cook...promise!...but Friday night as I was making bars and breads and the like, I was struck by the fact that almost all of my food was coming out a little raw on the bottom, while the top seemed quite done. I'm not going to go into detail about the different attempts that were made to make the food edible...let's just say it involved different ingredients, a microwave, etc. It distinctly reminded me of living in Kawasaki, when we didn't have an oven and tried to make a batch of cookies with our microwave and fish frier. :) (note: the fish frier works really well...honestly!)

Anyway, so by last night, the night before the open house, when we realized that the church members were mostly going to be busy preparing for an event for the next week (and they were going to be using the room we wanted to use for icebreaker activities), I was just a little bit nervous. It was definitely one of those nights where I was thinking, "Why do I work for the church? Why couldn't I get some nice 9-5 job where I could just minister to people without leading events and having to act like such an extrovert..."

Anyway, so that was me complaining. Which my coworkers took very graciously, I might add (as always...thank God!).

Thank God that He doesn't just let me be complainitory for too long also, because He definitely had crazy plans for today. Somewhere around 40+ people crammed into our house, and the originally-planned 2 hours of icebreaker activities, food, and talking turned into 6-7 hours of talking, laughing, games, music, the beginning of a liturgical dance group, an impromptu evening worship service and prayer time, the singing of a newly-written song, connections of multiple people to multiple other people who can possibly bring them into the church, and, to top it all off, the discovery that two of our junior high girls who have randomly been coming to Coffee House and hearing the devotions, etc., have been praying to find out whether God was real or not, God somehow answered their prayer, and then they prayed that they could be forgiven and believe in Jesus!!!!!

- insert dancing for joy here -

I'll back up and take this a little more slowly. So the normal Coffee House time is from 1-3pm, which is not a big deal, and we sometimes do evening worship afterwards made up of Taize songs and the like. About 2:45pm at the house, some students were getting ready to leave, and they requested that before they leave Atsushi and I play through some of our random music repetoire. So we sang through half a dozen worship songs, etc. Then I had to leave to connect some student's mother with her daughter, who had left just a few minutes prior to her mother coming...anyway, I was a little worried, so I walked back to the church with my student's mother, which provided good talking time. By the time I made it back to the house, more people had cleared out a little bit, and I was greated with the news that the two junoir high girls believe in Jesus! After saying "Yay!" for a few minutes, I was grabbed by another student who is a song writer who'd given me a song that he wanted me to write lyrics for...which started another 45 minutes of singing random Japanese pop songs, worship songs, etc. After which a church member brought over her newborn baby to pass around to meet people, and then Sensei called saying that a new girl who's bilingual and a dancer was going to come over to the house. So then we all started talking about liturgical dance and I pulled out my computer to show Atsushi examples, and since he's studied dancing, he started dancing along with my youtube songs. :) Bets joined him, and by the time the dancer actually arrived, we had a whole house full of people wanting to meet her and wondering what this strange new form of worship really is about...

Sidenote: the reason that I keep coming back to liturgical dance is because I've seen the role that dance plays in this culture, and it's much more important than it is in America...anyway, so I was struck with the possibilities that liturgical dance would have in terms of connecting with the younger generation here...so, as of last week, was praying for something like that to happen (kind of praying in this "and if you really want to do something crazy God, there's always this option)...low and behold, a dancer SHOWS UP AT OUR DOOR a few days later! How's that for crazy!!!!!

Anyway, so with the dancer at the house (did I mention that she's a Christian?), we decided to do an evening music worship service as a send-off for Atsushi moving to Oosaka for awhile. And then we prayed for him...

As people slowly trickled out, I talked with a church member who literally was glowing as she described her chat with one of my students. The two ladies seemed to hit it off well, and now the church member is already thinking of how she could involve them in different worship times or activities...

Anyway...I'll stop and catch a breath here for a moment! :) Sorry for the incoherentness of this! I wish so much that I could capture for you some of what we saw here today...I can put down some of the words, the schedule, the cool things that took place. But I can't even really begin to explain, for example, the look on one of my student's face...he was curled up in the corner, feeling very odd crammed into a house with all these other people that he didn't know necessarily...and he never ever sings with us as we worship...but he just sits and listens, and his face relaxes, but it relaxes out of it's constant, forced smile into lines of pain...
So, basically, we shoved him into a house with a lot of strange people, and then we made him sit through worship and prayer times with a God that he doesn't believe in...and when he finally did leave around 6pm, you could practically see the hunger on his face when he said something to the extent of, "I'm looking forward to coming again."

"The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few."

Today was like being surrounded by the harvest. I'm seeing it in all different stages, and at all different times. Cindy, Lindsey, and Betsy and I sat around for awhile after everyone finally had left and had to talk and worship and pray and process...and the only thing we can come down to, again, is simply, "God is doing something big."

So we have people coming in and out; friends, relatives, neighbors, students...people who are non-Christian mingling with those who are...not really set schedules or anything, but just times of singing praise and reading the Bible and praying together...people becoming Christian right under our noses...people who are hungry being drawn in...this afternoon was, yes, very house-churchish and crazy and totally--TOTALLY--God's Spirit working.

Sigh. Is it any wonder that this post is incoherent? :)

Sometimes silence is all you can do...

I've thought about typing up this blog post for awhile now, but when you are going through a time of silence, it's hard to put it into words... :)



For some reason (maybe it's just "the grass is always greener on the other side"), I remember days back in the states when it seems like I could communicate well. I distinctly remember passing speech class, for example. :) I remember talking to church members and talking to friends and leading study groups and music rehearsals and multiple things...and then I often stop and ask myself, "is this just me looking at the past through rose-colored glasses?"



The truth of the matter is that communicating in any language here--English or Japanese--is difficult. I communicate better through music than using any other medium, it seems like, and that is not necessarily so intentional (ex. I just had some help figuring out the whole meaning behind a new worship song that I've been leading people in...I had understood about half of it, and it seemed to fit the theme of the week, so I decided to use it...thank goodness, the other half of the meaning that I previously didn't understand seems to also have fit the theme wonderfully...:))

I can tell you step-by-step what happens in my brain most of the time I start speaking in a public situation:
1. Speak half the sentence (or at least a few words), begin a long pause.
2. Suddenly have a billion thoughts come into my head at once and see an entire picture/diagram/proposal that is fairly well-thoughtout but seems to involve a million steps.
3. Struggle over deciding what to choose first or if I can even verbalize quite that many steps.
4. Reflect upon the fact that what I have to say may not be what the other person really wants to spend time listening to...especially if it seems that long.
5. Decide that my brain is slightly overheated and I should just give up.

Sigh. It was funny this summer to go back to America and just begin speaking like normal towards the end of 10 days...not because of language, but simply because I'm unused to regular...speaking. I'm not quite sure why.

Last week, after church, I tried to start a conversation with a church member and they just simply turned away without acknowledging that I said anything...a common occurence here, trust me. That is NOT actually because they don't want to talk to me (I think...I hope...hehe), but simply because...well, living in this country you get it drilled into your head that you're supposed to read the atmosphere, don't intrude or annoy people, etc. So I think most of the time when I address people, I do it in a quiet, is it maybe ok to have a small conversation with you? voice. I don't know. It's like being verbally invisible sometimes...

Anyway, I'm only typing all of this because it is an ongoing struggle for me here, and I get into these random funks where I can do my job and even hang out with people, but it's like speaking and communicating with them takes up all the energy I can muster up.... People say, "Oh, isn't Japanese difficult?!" And I want to say, "Words are difficult! Communication is difficult! Japanese is just...a language." And then I just roll my eyes at God and laugh over the very ironic fact that I'm an English conversation teacher. You know that whole "God's power is made perfect in weakness" idea...yeah. :)

Monday seminars...

Today, even though it's a Monday, is the last day of the weekend here...Japanese people have this habit of planning all days off full of random (and, I confess, for me usually unpleasant) things. I went into the weekend knowing that we had a Monday holiday, and also knowing that there was already a day-long seminar planned and a financial meeting after that. :( While it's good for Japanese practice, I wasn't expecting anything restful.

However, the seminar went beyond my wildest expectations! The speaker was a young pastor who is working on a lay-leadership program in Hokkaido, and there were so many times today when he brought up things like prayer, studying the Bible simply because you like it, and even spiritual gifts and the different roles church members have. There were at least a few times when Cindy and I looked at each other and said something scandalous like, "I love him!" :) But in reality, it was so truly exciting that at random times I wanted to stand up and do a jig. There have been multiple times over the weekend that I've seen God bringing people to Nozomi church who are ready and looking for so much more than the Sunday-morning Christianity that they are accustomed to right now. And here is this pastor at least starting to talk about discipleship! Really, prayers for him and the work that he's doing, and these churches in general would be lovely!

変わらない愛

I've just finished singing a song that has "unchanging love" (kawaranai ai--the title above) as the first line...

Tonight has the perfect feeling of Fall--a little crisp coolness that makes you want to curl up with a blanket, but it isn't too cold to eat ice cream... :) I ended up catching my early train home from the kindergarten today, and since the evening was so nice I decided to get off at Niigata station and walk back to the church rather than take my next train. It's about an hour walk, with half of the pathway being beside a river where you can see the lights of the city yet take in the stars, trees, the sound of waves, etc. Have I mentioned before that Niigata City is a beautiful place? :)

Anyway, I walked and listened to old band songs and just mourned in general, which felt like the perfect thing to do on such a night. It feels like a good chunk of my life in Japan is spent mourning...I'm always getting used to things, and then things change. Part of the reason is because the people close to me are always changing--it's the nature of the program. Part of the change is just the changes in job focuses all the time, and the changes that happen in relationships with the churches, where you can never quite understand what's going on because of the language.

It's funny, because working at Nozomi isn't new to me...but being here all the time is. This area isn't new to me...but living in this house is. Lindsey and Cindy aren't new to me per se, but our relationships have changed this semester.

And so much has changed simply in my personality and roles, it seems like. A year ago, I was quiet, not expecting to lead anyone except from behind, and my biggest concern was being nice to the people around me. Now I'm brainstorming, jumping in as a leader by default even when I shouldn't be...

Mourning tonight actually made me think of Laura and Efrain the most (my former coworkers). I remember going to Sado Island with the Nomura's and Betsy, Efrain's birthday party and farewell party, singing with Laura almost once a week. I still remember singing with her in the car for the last time--we were crying so it was difficult to sing, but then we had to laugh too because our voices would crack with emotion at the most inopportune times...I remember being Ef's little sister, and always being able to count on him for taking the crowd and being the one with charisma. Goodness...how long has it been? But I still miss them. Being full-time at this place and not having him here is harder and weirder than I thought. Like, why would you mourn people 5 months after they left? I don't really know...

Sigh. It's really hard to work out of a place of unchanging love. I have a picture of what it could look like with my family, and with other people. But isn't it funny--and I hate myself for doing this!--how often we work out of the idea that we aren't loved? Working to impress, building relationships to protect, laying down rules to give ourselves roles and lines that give us identity...I do it so often. Especially here, when you can't understand the language and have the joy of knowing that you'll often screw up more often than you'll ever do anything right...it's really hard for me to go through changes and to not have the roles defined. Because if I don't have the roles defined, then I don't know if I'm doing things right, which means that I could screw up really big...or worse, I could just be screwing up all the time and acting really selfishly and people could be disagreeing with everything I do and I could just not be catching on at all...hehe, and this is dehibilitating self psycho-analyzing, de shou?

And all of this...makes me mourn the past again. I was safe with Ef and Laura, because we all had our roles and had them figured out. This...this is new and different and has already been messier than I would like it to be, in some respects.

I KNOW that it's good. On the worst days, I think that I'm barely working here as an English teacher now, and I'm not really doing anything worthwhile. On the better days, I realize that God has brought special people in every day, and the school seems to literally be exploding with new people coming in. Tonight we had a new boy come with his mother. They lived in Hawaii for a long time, and they want him to keep his English up...AND, get this, he's a Christian and he wants to be involved in a Sunday School or something. We've been looking for kid translators to help us start up a kid's program...and here this kid just walks thru our door and asks! It is things like this that make me realize that God's blessing is way more important than man's blessing...and seeing God's blessing is so very very exciting!

One girl came to my house and talked about "Who really is God?" for an hour Sunday night.

The kindergarten teacher came running with me to the train tonight and we again talked all the way to her house, and she invited me to the school sport's day later...

The "gifts class" starts tomorrow...don't ask me to explain it right now...it's just another example of God's blessing in ways that I could have NEVER pulled it together myself...

Don't ever let anyone tell you that being a missionary isn't a humbling experience--it is. Even the whole time that I'm writing all of this processing, I'm realizing how selfish it is to be thinking this way, and to being trying to get success and accomplishment and work to make myself and my relationships safe. Blah for human nature and sin. So, back to the unchanging love of God idea...so important.

Alright...have to actually prep for class tomorrow and go to bed. Enough selfish processing for tonight. :) At least I'm accompanied by Paul, who says, "The things that I want to do, I don't do, and the things I don't want to do I do. What a wretched man I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God in Christ Jesus..."

See? The answer: unchanging love.

The first week of class...

Statistics from the first week of class:

- Number of classes: 12
- Number of new observers: 6+?
- Number of times of morning prayer: 5
- Number of evening worship times: 2
- Number of surprising people brought to worship times: 3
- Number of crabby days: 1 (no more than that, right...? ;)

- Number of times I've asked the question "How was your summer vacation?": roughly one hundred! (it feels like it, at least)

- Number of chocolate squares eaten: a secret (is that really countable?!)
- Number of times we've seen God do miracles: more than I can count...(even more than the chocolate bars' statistic...)

Special highlights:
One lady in my music class...we're talking about "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and talking about how it ends kinda sadly...since she is studying the Bible, I just commented randomly that expecting to be filled with human love always ends sadly...cuz it doesn't fill us. Only God's love does that. Then we ended class with a quick listening of "Trading My Sorrows," and at the end of the listening, with an embarassed laugh that reminded me of a young school girl, the lady said, "God's love is so...big..." I was struck with how intimate that sounded; and she realized too that "big" was not a holy or far-off word for God...just big. Hence the embarassed giggle, I think. And I realized that God's really been working on this lady...and it sounds like she knows, finally, that she is loved...

My usual connections with junior highers or high schoolers involve seeing them walk into English class at 7pm, still not having eaten dinner and coming right from basketball or music or one of the other gazillion sports or activities or cram school lessons they have...pretty much, they're dead tired. But this morning I got to visit the high school where one of my former students is a teacher...and I got to meet all of her students! Basically, I spent a couple of hours walking around and laughing and talking to random kids all over. It was great to see them in their elements...so much praying needs to happen for this generation...

To take or not to take...

So, I've been wanting to post and reflecting on how I could put inside processing into words...being as the inside is usually just a jumble of emotions and confusion! :)

But I think I have the perfect concrete example from which to work off of: the Japanese proficiency test. The test is offered once a year, with registration happening in the summer and then the actual test being administered in December. Last December I took the first level (which, coincidentally, is level 4), and this year I could take level 3. My scores on level 4 weren't so bad, but level three has more kanji and vocab and new grammar stuff...and listening is actually pretty tricky...blah....

Do I want to go through the process of registering and be committed to studying? Is there even enough time left to study for me to pass? Would it be better to not waste the time and money on something that I know I'll be border-line passing on at best?...hmmmmm.

And then, the question of like...well, since I came back from vacation (and the question that I'm guessing we all have to get to at some point): how will I use Japanese in the future? If I'm planning on coming back and working here, or getting into a school here, I really need to study and take this test. However, if I'm just planning on going back to America and doing...something, then would it just be a waste of my time right now?

So the question, actually, goes deeper than the test. This country has a need that is so hidden, but so real...a couple of nights ago I was online trying to find original Japanese worship materials--anything that hasn't been translated from old Lutheran liturgy would have been alright with me!--not to say bad things about the liturgy--it's just very strange to be singing the SAME melody, just translated, as what I was singing back home--awful, I tell you!!!--anyway, I was trying to find original Japanese worship materials, and the few that I did find just made me ache, because it was so little...so little for a people who can be emotionally and symbolically touched on so many levels. This is the culture of the tea ceremony, shodo, flower arranging...ect. etc. etc. They feel emotions in special ways, with special meanings.

Anyway, enough ranting about the need for culturally-meaningful worship...culturally-meaningful Christianity...and the like.

Seeing the need, what is one to do? I don't want to live here for my whole life...but I love these people...does seeing the need mean that I should just plan on staying and trying to fill it? (ps - that would translate into me taking the Japanese proficiency test...just to try and connect my thoughts for you here...)

Sigh. I KNOW that the future is way out there, and that God holds it...so why the stressing now? Every once in awhile, with prayer and fighting thru anxiety, I seem to get to a place of trust. But (and this is like, the duh comment of the century) trust is so easy to lose...

I think about the evening worship planned for after classes tonight...I have a bilingual version of "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus," and we're reading the section of the Bible where Jesus walks on water and asks Peter to do the same. That's a good, simple picture for what this time feels like. Jesus walks into my life and asks me to come out to him on the water...yikes...but I can trust him.

Ok...so obviously no black and white answers for the future in this posting. :) But, I'm going to hop on my bike, and at least go to the bookstore and buy the registration packet for this test. And as for walking on water (i.e. trusting)...it definitely gives a person an adrenaline rush. :)

The beginning of 2nd semester

I was halfway to my coworker's house before I realized that as I was biking, I was singing under my breath: "Soaring, flying, there's not a star in heaven that we can't reach...if we're trying, now we're breakin free." (From some High School Musical...1 or 2?) Disney channel movies and music don't often come to mind, but I was "genki" and happy and the words and music just kept coming out.

That's what it feels like to know that I can work here...that I can be at Nozomi and work with Cindy and Lindsey and see these church members and students. And even though it's 2:30am on the day before classes start again, it feels...so good...so blessed...to be here. A few months ago, I thought I was going to be sent back to America, and it felt like my reputation, job, relationships, etc. were all going to turn really sour...it's such a miracle to still be here, and to not only be here but to be in the middle of once again praying for these people and seeing God act in ways that I can never imagine or guess...

There is a lot of stuff left to do, and tomorrow's gonna be an interesting day...I go to the kindergarten and deal with crazy kid's most of the day...but I can't describe really...can't even explain...the joy that comes from being so "close to the action"...watching God work...seeing Him free people...

yay!

Goodnight. :)