Last Thursday, the Japanese Christian students were trained on evangelising to people during the Christmas season. They received specific tips on how to build rapport with people and how to get people thinking about the real meaning of Christmas.

We ended the night by heading out to the cold, where we stood outside on the streets of Nagoya, handing out Christmas CDs. The Christmas CD consisted of various Christmas songs, a gospel message, with the hope to challenge the Japanese to think about the real meaning of Christmas.

Please pray that the people who were given the CD would have an opportunity to listen to the CD and be really challenged by the Gospel message.

Our first two weeks on campus has been Epic! We have been visiting  Nagoya Gakuin University (NGU) which consists of 4000 students. It is a small campus, a university known   as an exchange university where many of their students have a desire to travel overseas to study. It was originally established as a Christian university but sadly has lost its Christian roots.

Our overall objective is to pioneer a Christian movement  by establishing student contacts and encouraging  the very few  Japanese  Christian students to step up in leadership. We hope to see some of the Christian students step up and be involved in Student Impact (Life) , so we can see students come to know Christ.

The NGU team consists of David Prabhakar, Ben Gibiec (who joined the team on 5/12/09) and myself.  We have been busy familiarising ourselves with the campus and learning how to break through to the students in Japan with the assistance of the staff from Student Impact.

God has provided abundantly through the staff contacts that Student Impact has established.

Praise God for :

-          Mesuda Sensei, an English professor at NGU whose desire is to see students come to Christ. He has opened up doors for us to attend English classes and as a result we have met many students.

-          Maiko Jimbo, coordinator of foreign studies at NGU. She is a personal friend of one of the staff from Student Impact. She is very passionate about her job and has a genuine desire to assist her students in many ways and through her serving heart for her students, she has opened up more opportunities for us to meet students by allowing us to sit in on English conversation classes.

We have found the English classes as a great way to meet students that we decided to establish our own English conversation classes during lunch times. We have seen some new students come in where friendships have been built and great conversations have taken place.

During the time where we are not attending an English class or running an English class we have done walk-up evangelism, meeting random students with the purpose to establish student contacts.

Hospitality nights are held on Friday nights, where we invite students to hang out with us. Our hope is to build rapport with the students where we hang out and do dinner and karaoke.

Prayer Points

Praise God for people we have met and established friendships with. They have been very friendly; some have been open and responsive to spiritual conversations

-          Tetsuya

-          Atshushi

-          Mitch

-          Karin

-          Hiromi

-          Ayami

-          Mayumi

-          Serima

-          Miki

-          Kengo

-          Hiromi

Pray that God will continue to work in their lives and that God will provide for more opportunities to have spiritual conversations and sharing of testimonies. Pray that through this, the students will be encouraged and challenged about Christianity.

Praise God for the Christian Students

-          Isamu

-          Tetsuya

-          Minz

-          Park

-          Dream

Pray that God will keep them strong in their faith that they will continue to encourage and support each other as Christians. Pray that God will provide for the pioneering of the Christian movement, that someone will step up to do ministry on campus so many students come to Christ.

Praise God for the team and the support that we have received. Pray that God will continue to grant us wisdom, boldness and knowledge so we can connect with the Japanese students and share our faith with them.

Some the girls at Kinjo fellowship lunch

I have…and it’s not simply over some guy either. In fact I don’t think I have cried out as much in my spirit as I have this last week in Nagoya. Since arriving I have experienced what can only be described as a whirlwind of emotions. It has been one of the most challenging and stretching times of my life but I’ve learnt a lot and I praise God for that.

Here in Nagoya, Olivia (one of the other Megumites) and I are based on a campus by the name of Kinjo. It’s a prestigious girl’s university and from the first visit you can distinctly see that the campus is made up of various “ojyousama” (princess) types, for example the lacrosse and hand bell choir girls. The girls arrive to university dressed up like they’re ready for a night out in town and it’s not uncommon to find the princesses making up in the bathroom, cafeteria and even the library. Image is held in high regard here.

Perhaps it is this image that brings much opposition. Truth is that although Kinjo is known as a “Christian School” we are forbidden to share the gospel outside their building known as the Christian Centre. The reality is that Olivia and I do not actually have permission to be on the campus making friends and reaching out to students but that is a calculated risk we take.

Our prayer is to find a “person of peace” who will respond to the gospel and introduce us to their friends so that we will have a network of students to reach out to. In order to accomplish this Olivia and I with the 2 Campus Crusade missionaries Cecilia and Joyce spend much time talking to “randoms” around campus hoping to get a second meeting with them in the Christian Centre. This in itself is a challenge as it is not unusual for students to respond with suspicion and fear as it is highly unusual for people to approach strangers in Japan.

I can honestly say that all this has once again reminded me of our dependency on God. Fact is that we cannot do anything without him and we need to be so reliant on the Holy Spirit. My weakness reminded of a verse in 2 Corinthians 4:7

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

It’s amazing to think that God has entrusted us with such a great treasure although we are fragile, breakable and really imperfect.  Truly it is a reminder to me that we must never rely on our own strength, wisdom and understanding. Instead it is only through God that all things are made possible.

So please continue to pray for Japan, there is spiritual warfare taking place like crazy but God continues to move. He has already led us to several Japanese girls like Ayaka, Kayoko (who I met on the bus =)) and Riko who have already joined us for “lunch fellowship” at the Christian Centre last week. Pray that he will continue to move in the hearts of the Japanese people and lead us to many divine appointments in Kinjo. Finally please pray that we will continue to depend on him and be so sensitive to the Holy Spirit as we continue to reach out to the students at Kinjo.

Thank you for your support,

Juli ^_^

Living in Japan as opposed to holidaying in Japan has meant that I have had to learn and adapt quickly to the culture. Although we had cross-cultural training, it only prepared me to a certain degree.

Traveling to places has been somewhat of an adventure, missing a few turns, asking people for directions and  trying to  read a Japanese map. However, we eventually managed to find our way to  the important places that we had to go, e.g Train stations and the university.

I also managed to digest my first  sashimi ( for those who know me- I don’t do raw food). But  one thing , I will never be able to eat is a nato, it was soooo feral, tasted like phlegm/snot/saliva.

Traveling to a foreign land and trying to find my way to places and trying foreign food, definitely took a lot of faith but my biggest faith lesson would be doing ministry with the Japanese. Doing walk up ministries and evangelising to people who I don’t know, in a foreign country where language us a barrier from both sides has been challenging.

However, God has been good and has directed and guided me this week.  He has provided me opportunities for me to meet people and provided me the wisdom to talk and connect with the Japanese Christians and the non-Christians.

Despite the challenge, I know I can trust God in all this and submit to his soverignity, knowing he knows best and to simply walk with him as Abraham did when he went to a foreign land.