and this is Tetsuya (whose name means he is wise)

I think you can pick who they are by their being Japanese
I first met both of these great guys in my first week on campus – what was meant to be a prayer walk with our Christian contacts on campus turned into a lunch as Isamu brought some of his non-Christian friends along. Sigh. But no! Not many of our contacts turned up anyway! So we had a great opening with Isamu’s friends! I spent the lunch getting to know him and Tetsuya.

Now Isamu, I should mention, was an amazing contact to have! Not only a faithful Christian who wanted to help us, but he knew EVERYONE! We would meet some new contacts: “Oh, this is Isamu, do you know him?” “Of course!”. He really helped us get linked in with the campus! He was very proactive in introducing us to Tetsuya – I believe he’d been praying for about a week for that particular meeting

A day or two passed, and somewhere in NGU’s daily 5 hour lunch, Isamu and Tetsuya joined as I started to clean my wallet. What was making it fat? A Knowing God Personally tract! What did Tetsuya take interest in as it was casually thrown in his direction? He couldn’t read it, but I had a Japanese one too, so I let Isamu go through it with him. He was amazed! He took the tract with him.

A few days later… TETSUYA! He was really going well, and I asked if he wanted a copy of Manga Messiah – yep! A version of the Gospel in Manga (Japanese comic) form! Man was that boy excited to learn about Jesus! He read the Manga Messiah that night and everytime I saw him he seemed to have the Knowing God Personally booklet just on hand, and usually the comic too:

“Hey Tetsuya! How are you?”

“I’m great Dave!”

“Been able to read that book I gave you?”

“Oh yah! Was really interesting! Here it is here!”

We asked him if he’d be interested in learning more about this Jesus character…

So we did lessons 1-3 of the infamous Exploring Christianity course in 1 week! 1 week! That’s 300% faster than standard! (and 10,000,000% faster than lamzorz who forget to turn up Always, Tetsuya would be saying “sugei!” (amazing) when he understood concepts! (last sentence phrased in the way I sometimes spoke English to clarify Of course Isamu was helping as much as he possibly could (and that’s not a small amount!) Many biblical concepts were illuminated to Tetsuya via Isamu’s strong knowledge of the bible and translation power He was just as excited to be sharing his faith in this way as Tetsuya was to be learning!

Tetsuya was absolutely blown away by lesson two on Forgiveness, and, in lesson three (on the resurrection of Christ (first) and the dead (later) and Judgement), when asked (George – my supervising STInter – prompted this earlier in the day) if he wanted to become Christian, his response can be summarised as “Hiaku pasentto!” – one hundred percent! I couldn’t believe it! So much so that I got Isamu to clarify that Tetsuya knew what he was doing – he really did!

So Isamu is much more capable and sensitive in the way he shares his faith, and Tetsuya has hold of eternal life and relationship with God and is growing, with Isamu teaching him I’m so thankful to God that I got to be used in this. He is far too good!

Please pray for both Isamu – that he’ll continue to learn how to be a complete Christian, and Tetsuya – that he’ll stay firm and growing in the faith! And thank God that he brought Tetsuya to himself, and thank God that Isamu knows a lot more about how to share his faith! Thank God that we could all meet each other.

Signing off

Dave Prabhakar

After seeing some an amazing temple/ gardens, we got home pretty late and were planning to get to bed early because Dave had a 6:00 bus trip to catch to get to Osaka airport, and we had stayed up till 2 or 3 the last two nights playing carpet ball…

Dave wanted to go to a Japanese hotspring (Onsen) – but there weren’t and close by. There was a public bath house across the road from where we were staying so we went there.

The concept seems pretty strange from an Australian perspective, but is normal/ popular/ famous in Japan.
It is really relaxing being in the hot water, its somewhat like a sauna.

Dave and I were in making-friends mode from the mission, so we talked to another guy that was there and got along really well. His name is Tomoyuki Nishi.

We ended up going to karaoke for about 4 or 5 hours and then got dinner at a 24/7 restaurant ~
We talked about various things, about our plans for the future and about the mission we finished.

I heard once that short mission trips are just training for when you come home ~ so pray that we’ll all use what we learned and keep the momentum going in the mission fields back home ~~

Kinkakuji in Kyoto – 金閣寺

Me and Dave in tshirts outside in the freezing cold feeling fine~~

On Tuesday night, we had our team’s “fun night” where we spend time trying something new, and having fun, as a whole team on Mission Megumi. This time, though, the guys on the team hung out, to have some manly time. What does this involve? Silly question, clearly the answer is: eating, walking through a cemetery, and karaoke. We went to the Mountain restaurant near Yagoto station, which is known for serving rather bizzare meals. For dinner, we had chocolate banana spaghetti, followed by an Italian tomato paffe for dessert.

On our way home, we walked past a cemetery. It looks nothing like what I’ve seen in Australia. It was on a hill, with hundreds, and hundreds of graves. It looked like a maze of graves. It’s pretty likely that none of them believed in Jesus, and found hope and life in Him.

This week on campus, we tried using Soularium on campus. This involves a pile of picture cards, and using these cards to talk about our opinions and images of life, and God. They haven’t been used in Japan before, and so we brought them with us from Australia to see how they would go. So far, it seems to be pretty good in starting conversation, and creating an engaging conversation. As Soularium was designed by Western culture, we have tried to adapt it to better suit Japanese culture, by removing pictures that are not very clear.

One of the most encouraging stories for me on Gaidai is split into two parts. On one day of campus, I went with an Aussie STINTer, and a Japanese student, to go and meet students in one of the new buildings on campus. We found someone who the STINTer already knew, and we began a two-hour conversation with him. It was a really good conversation, as he was working on an English debate about capital punishment, so he asked us what we thought, to try and build his argument. We ended up talking about God, and faith, and the Japanese student was able to share his story in coming to know Jesus, and also to share the main points of the Gospel. He was very interested, and listened well, asking lots of questions.

A couple of days later, I was in the same building with one of the Japanese girls. We weren’t sure who to talk to, so we sat down to pray about it first. After we prayed, we ran into him, and this time he was with a group of friends. We started talking to them, and were talking about Christmas. On Thursday, we had a Christmas party, and so were inviting students to come to that, and also giving them Christmas CDs with music. After we invited these students, we were talking about the meaning of Christmas; why and how someone’s birthday could be celebrated all throughout the earth. The guy we had shared the Gospel with pulled out the booklet we had given him with the main points of the Gospel on it, and told his friends about it, and so we were able to share the Gospel with them, and they were also very interested!

It has been amazing to see how God has been at work on Gaidai, and finding students are so interested in finding out about who God is, and the relationship we can have with Him. And knowing that it has nothing to do with what we do, or how we do it, but that God is in charge, and is just showing us the way He has already set for us.

We now have only one week left on campus – time is going really quickly!

Awesome things have been happening, but again this is just a quick update.

I have taken many videos on my phone, and uploaded them on YouTube, see our YouTube channel to watch them all!

<-- click
youtube.com/missionmegumi

Over the past three weeks we have been at Kinjo University on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Kinjo is a Christian women’s university but despite its Christian roots, our team is not quite free to talk about Christianity outside of the Christianity centre building there. However, God is still gracious and has led us to around 20 girls since we started going on campus. Our day at Kinjo usually consisted of meeting random students in the morning, praying together before lunch, lunch fellowship with contacts and Christian students and then meeting random students again.

At the same time we have been going to Nanzan University on Mondays. Nanzan is a co-educational Catholic university and students generally speak better English here than at Kinjo. God has also been working during the three times we have been at Nanzan. We invited all the contacts we met from Nanzan and Kinjo over the past two weeks to a gyoza (dumpling) party on Friday December 4 at Joyce’s house. 10 students attended (9 girls, 1 boy). We had a great time chatting to students and making dumplings together. Several spiritual conversations took place over the duration of the night. We also taught students how to do a Tim Tam slam and although some students weren’t quick enough with eating their Tim Tams we all had a lot of fun with the students.

This week and next week we have been meeting and trying to arrange meet-ups with students outside of lunchtimes so that we can share our testimonies and the gospel with them. Particular names to pray for include Riko, Mori Mori, Ayaka, Asuna, Saori, Miso, Nao, and Sayaka. Please pray that God will break down barriers at Kinjo and Nanzan and that God will open up opportunities to meet students outside of lunchtime and that He will protect the meetings and what is shared during that time. Also pray for the upcoming Aussie culture night, that students we have already met will be able to attend the event, hear and understand the Gospel and trust in Christ.

¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.

Also, yesterday at lunch, we were able to experience God truly answering what we asked in His name when we prayed for a contact that Juli and Yukari (a graduate from Nanzan) had met the week before. Minori is a 3^rd year student with Christian parents but hadn’t made a decision for herself to trust in Christ. At our prayer time before meeting students for lunch, we prayed for the opportunity to share the KGP with her and for her to trust Christ. Praise God for answering that prayer! Yukari and Joyce (a CCC staff member) got to share the Gospel with her throughout lunch and even into 3^rd period when she was supposed to have class. Please pray that Minori will now grow in her faith and that God will strengthen and protect her in this important period.

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.