Japan Memory/Recap #1

Hello everyone! Sorry, once again, for the lack of updates about my trip! Definitely needed to take my own laptop with me. I will remember that for any future trips! 

So—instead of trying to catch you all up on everything, I've decided to just post a couple of my most memorable times/encounters from Japan, so that you can get detail on some of the things that happened. This will be the first of...well, one such update for now, and we will see how many I get to! :P

Alright, since I haven't written much about our time at Waseda, for this post I will explain some of what that looked like, and one of the friends I was able to make there. Here we go:

Waseda University is one of the top tier Universities in Japan. Located in Tokyo, about 40,000 students attend Waseda, and there are several different campuses across the Tokyo area. Our team focused on the main campus located at Waseda Station on the Tozai Subway Line. It took us about 30 minutes to get from our apartments to Waseda, and usually we would try to be there from 12pm until 5pm.

While there, all we would do was go up to random students, start conversations, and trust God to steer our talk toward spiritual topics and then, hopefully, whether in that first conversation or in a later one, to the gospel of Jesus. However, whether or not the gospel came up, we desired to simply befriend and be real with whoever we were able to meet.

So, one day, I was wandering the campus with my team leader Zack trying to find some guys that seemed like they might have time to talk. Zack noticed two guys, both sitting alone on different benches, and challenged me to go talk to one while he would go talk to the other. I agreed, went up to one of the guys, and started talking. 

What a conversation! My new friend and I talked that day for probably almost two hours (his English was really good, even though that was his 3rd language!). We met up another two times while I was there. The first time, he took me out to a noodle place that I had never tried before in Tokyo. After the lunch we got into some really good conversation, and God gave me the opportunity to share the good news with him. He was able to receive it well, and though he didn't believe, he asked some really great questions about my faith and Christianity in general. Please pray with me that he continues to seek and question what he believes in.


The second day we met up, my friend took me to play with his futsal circle. Two things to know about Japan here: first, circles are what we would call clubs in America, except almost every college student is in one, and they are taken much more seriously. Secondly, futsal is a type of soccer played on a smaller court, with fewer people and smaller goals, and it is very popular in Japan. So, I got to play futsal with a bunch of other students, and became friends with many of the guys there, including the leader of the circle. As a result, I got invited back to play with that circle a couple other times whilst in Japan. It was so much fun, and I am so thankful to have been able to meet that friend and then get invited to that futsal circle. I miss playing with them already! 


Alright! That is probably already much too long for just one story from Waseda, but hopefully that helped show a part of what was happening while we were there. Please keep praying with me for my friend who heard the gospel. I hope he will look back from time to time and remember that conversation, and I hope we can continue to be friends.


Thanks again for reading this blog, for bearing with my tardiness in posting, and for all the prayers and support that have gone towards my trip to Japan!

God bless!

Christianity week at ICU

Hello everyone!

Sorry again for the super slow posts! I realize now I should have taken my laptop--trying to write a blog while having to borrow a friends laptop is not easy. So here's another brief update!

This week has been super busy, but a lot of fun! We have mainly been helping out at ICU high school's Christianity Week.
ICU (International Christian University) high school, is really Christian in name only, and Japan's stat of about 1% Christians seems to apply here as well. The school does not actually teach Christianity, and teachers that are Christian (which are few) are not allowed to preach their faith. However, they still have one week every year called Christianity week, during which they hold seminars and classes more focused on the religion of Christianity.
This year, we were able to be a part of a cool opportunity to come and share our testimonies in some of the Christian classes, and then get to discuss and talk to the students in small groups!
On Monday, I had the opportunity to share my testimony with a class of freshman high school students. I believe it went well, and heard that at least some students were able to clearly see how my life was changed for the good after I came to fully trust in Jesus Christ as my Savior. Along with myself, 3 other members of our group have had a chance to share their testimonies, and a few have also had the chance to share their testimonies in the smaller group discussion times.
Also, on Wednesday, the group we are with called Let's Talk (run by Cru staff) was able to put on their own seminar featuring a Christian rap artist in Japan called Young Kirk and a popular Japanese female artist named Manami. They were able to both perform some of their songs as well as share their stories of how they came to faith in Christ and how that has impacted their music careers. It was a really awesome experience, and out of the 270 students that had to sign up for different seminars, at least 70 students chose to come to that!! We are praying that God really stirred some things up from that event.

Please pray for these seeds that have been planted. Pray that the enemy would not be able to snatch them away, but they the students would really begin to seek out this Jesus that they've heard can save them. Pray that we would have the opportunity to meet with some of the students again and get into deeper conversations with them. Also, pray for our day tomorrow, as we have another opportunity to share testimonies with a class and then discuss with them about it.

I'll leave off about there for now--hopefully I will have a chance to post about our times at Waseda University soon, but I felt like the ICU events were more exciting, and more current as from here on out we will be focusing more on our outreach at Waseda.

Thanks again for all the support and prayers. We greatly need them, and Japan greatly needs your prayers as well!