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 ^_^

My poor frisbee

This last weekend marked the end of our first week in Japan; time is going by pretty quickly! My first visit to campus was on Wednesday, where I began to acquaint myself with the layout. At Gaidai, I met several of the Christian students on campus. Gaidai has seen several students come to know Christ over the past month or so, so it was very exciting to meet quite a few students at the lunch we had.

Most of the time on campus is spent meeting and talking to students, trying to build relationships, and develop community that reflects the love of Christ. One of the ways that I have tried to do this, is to find people who are interested in playing a game of Ultimate Frisbee. This is played every week at Griffith university, and I think it’s a great way to connect people, and to have fun, so I brought a frisbee with me from Australia, with the intention to try and play in Japan.

Friday saw the first attempt at frisbee, and quite possibly the last for my poor frisbee. We didn’t have enough people to play a game of Ultimate Frisbee, so we just threw around the frisbee on campus. It turns out that plastic frisbees weren’t designed to hit tables, rocks, poles, concrete, and walls. Hopefully with my tape-covered frisbee, we can try and have an actual game of Ultimate next week.

Sharing faith with the students on campus is a little different to Australia, but many of the Japanese students like the idea of Christianity, and want to have a belief in God, but if you ask them how they can, they don’t know. On Friday evening, one of the girls at university prayed to receive Christ, and we were very excited to welcome her into the Family of Christ, and to know that she has placed her trust in the love of God, and the sacrifice He made for us.

My first week in Nagoya has definitely been a lesson of walking in faith.

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.

Yesterday, after a long flight from Sydney, we arrived in Nagoya, Japan, at 7.50am. This is a photo of our very tired team straight off the plane!

The first lesson we had to learn was how the trains work, and the system of getting onto, and off of, a train without offending the locals. Which of course, we did, by not lining up where we were meant to, and talking too loud. But the power of being gaijin (foreigners) helped us get away with it.

We settled into our apartments, but not before breaking another rule – shoes off before entering the room! The three Aussie STINTers (short-term missionaries) explained to us a few rules, and in particular the crazy rubbish system, of different coloured bags, with many categories, that needed to be not only sorted, but cleaned.

To explore the local area, we went on a “scavenger hunt” to learn to read our Japanese maps, and find the vital locations (like groceries and McDonalds – where we had our first dinner in Japan).

After much needed rest, today we will be looking at orientation into ministry on campus in Nagoya. We hope that through this, it will help to encourage, equip, and prepare us for ministering to the Japanese students we will be meeting over the next four weeks.

Please join us in prayer for:

• guidance for our team dynamics and that God will grow our heart for us to love and serve each other, and Christ, so that He might be glorified.
• the Japanese students that God would open their hearts and minds to know Him.
• our overall team vision of seeing 6 students come to know Christ personally.

Mission Megumi has been an intense 4 week experience for everyone involved. Our vision was to bring the Japanese one step closer to God, wherever they may be with God. We accomplished that with the students that we met, however Japan is still the 2nd most unreached nation amongst 1st world countries and the ratio of missionaries and people remain at 1:2000.

Japan still need us and you can partner up with Japan in two ways, by continually praying for them. You can also support them financially as well.

Please contact Jody Kubo: kubos6owari at gmail dot com if you would like to support Japan either financially or in prayer.