Prayer Requests; the Next Few Weeks

As it is exam time at Hokkaido University, and as many of the students and young people will soon be winding down for the year and returning home, we have the opportunity to do a number of special things.  I would really appreciate your prayers as we plan and prepare for these future events and trips:

This weekend (21^st-22^nd July) the UK team, Delia and I will be helping run a children’s camp at Hiragishi Minami (a suburb of Sapporo).  This over-night camp is organised by a missionary family living in this area.  Please pray that all the organisation and preparation up to this point will prove successful.  Please also pray for the children, aged between 8 and 12, who will be attending.  That, even through the language barrier, they might hear of God’s great love for them.  Please also pray for protection and safety for everyone attending.

Between the 28^th and 31^st of July I will be travelling to Obihiro (a more rural area of Hokkaido, about 4 hours outside Sapporo) to help with an English event for teenagers.  Please pray for my preparation for this as I have been asked to lead a portion and to give my testimony.

The 3^rd of August is the final FMZero event before the summer holidays.  This will be a farewell for Delia, Levi and myself.  Please pray that we might be able to share God in an open and honest way at this event to the students who attend.

From the 4^th to the 9^th of August Delia, Alyssa, Karin and myself will all be travelling to Iwate to help with the relief work there.  Iwate is in Honshu (the next island south of Hokkaido) and was one of the worst hit areas in the tsunami.  Work is still ongoing to clear the area and help people return to a normal life.  One year on and people are still struggling, however now their concerns are often in regards to anxiety about the future, and how they will ever reclaim what they have lost.  We will be helping the McGinty family (OMF missionaries) with their outreach in this area.  Please pray for the work that is ongoing in Iwate; for the McGintys, that they might have the strength to continue in a demanding and draining work.  Please also pray for us, that we might be able to help in whatever small way we can.

Update; 20th July

Time is really flying here in Japan! I can scarcely believe that I have been here over two months already.  It has been a very busy fortnight, so much has happened since my last update. Hopefully I will be able to tell you just a little bit about all the amazing things God has been doing.

Oasa Primary School

With the team here we’ve been able to do much larger events. We ran a one-day English and Culture Camp in a Primary School in Oasa (a nearby town, outside of Sapporo). It seemed to go well, the children all listened attentively. We had 6 nationalities present so we each gave a brief introduction to our country. The children had also prepared questions in English to ask us.

 

I was asked, ‘What is the flower of Northern Ireland?’, so I was able to answer ‘shamrock’ and give a brief explanation about St. Patrick and the Trinity.  I did feel slightly sorry for Delia though; she was asked, ‘What is the ecological situation in Germany?’

We also got to spend lunch-time with the children. I had my lunch with the 3^rd Years (8-9 year olds).  I was quite surprised to see how school dinners were done in Japan. 

Almost every Primary School provides a free school dinner; however there is rarely a dinner hall or canteen.  Therefore children eat their dinners in a classroom with the class teacher. This is used as a time to teach or reinforce good social behaviour and eating habits.  The children are also expected to take their turn in serving the meal to their classmates and clearing up afterwards.  All children are expected to take part in cleaning up the school, so immediately after lunch they all started running around with brooms, dusters and hoovers.

School Dinners in Japan; rice (with furikake), miso Soup,

 katsu, pickles and a carton of milk; it was pretty tasty actually!

Once chores were complete we all went down to the gym and played games together. I discovered it’s very difficult to run in slippers on a polished wooden floor (everyone has to take their shoes off in the school)!

Oasa Church BBQ

We were also invited to Oasa Church the following Sunday.  Afterwards the church held a BBQ as an outreach to the community, and where Frazer was able to give his testimony.  We were also able to invite a number of the Rakuno Students, who we had got to know through various events. 

 The Japanese reads, "God loves you."

KGK BBQ

As it is now most definitely summer, there have been BBQs happening all over the place! (Or Genghis Khan parties, as they often known). 

  

 Purple potatoes, not something I'd seen before!

Sandra (from the UK team) is an IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) worker, and thus has links with KGK (the Japanese equivalent of Christian Union).  Through this, we were invited to a KGK BBQ.  KGK had organised this BBQ at Hokkudai as an outreach to other students and non-Christians.  Sandra was able to give her testimony, and afterwards two people who had just wandered over asked to speak with her more about what she had said.

 

End of the Summer English Scheme.

The Summer English Scheme is now over.  Attendance remained good throughout our time and it was a great tool to build up relationships and introduce new students to some of our work in a non-threatening manner.

This is part of the Wednesday night class. On the last 

night we all went out to get ice-cream together.

Wednesday Bible Study.

As Wednesday nights are once again free, the Bible Study has started up again.  We had hoped that the English Scheme would encourage some more people to come along to the Bible Study, and this seems to have happened!  Our numbers have double from six weeks ago, and more students have said that they were busy this week but wanted to come next week.  What’s more, I was amazed at how much those who had attended before had retained.  Some of the guys were able to explain the exact materials and significance of the statue in Daniel 2 (in sequence, I was nearly put to shame trying to recall this).  They also asked some really great questions.  Questions which showed they were really thinking about things, rather than just reading the text.  It was quite exciting really!

Ocean Day.

Monday 16^th July was a national holiday in Japan (Ocean Day).  We invited students to just informally hang out with us on this day.  We started out at a park and ate Bentos and chatted together.  We did try and play catch or Frisbee, but the trees made this slightly challenging.

Later we went to Karaoke.  Karaoke was quite an experience! Rather than in front of a big audience you hire out a small room , I was quite glad about this as it meant I only had to sing in front of people we knew.  Also, we were each given a mug and had free use of a ‘tea and coffee bar’.

As an end to the day, some of the girls asked Alyssa, Delia and myself to take Purikura with them.

Purikura is a bit like a photo-booth, except it’s in a large cubicle with a green-screen background. After the picture is taken you can then edit it and draw over it. Unfortunately the machine also makes a few ‘improvements’ all on its own. Some of them, such as photo-shopping your skin to make it look smooth and glowing, are quite flattering.  However, it also automatically enlarges your eyes.  Which, considering I already have quite large eyes, has produced some quite hilarious results.  Needless to say, no-one looks much like their photograph above!  At the end we all got a little sheet of stickers to take home.  Also, pulling faces (or ‘Hen Gao’ literally ‘strange face’) is an essential part of Purikura. In general it’s quite normal to always take two copies of a picture; a sensible version and a Hen Gao version; that's why i have so many pictures of everyone with silly faces.

We were able to have some really encouraging conversations with some of the young people there and build up relationships.  It was also good for them to see that Christians are just ordinary people, and that it’s okay for Christians to have fun.  Too often Japanese young people have an image of Christians as either a dangerous cult or as strange or miserable people.

Somewhat ironically, I teach my Friday English 

class right under this sign.

UK Team Farewell Party.

It seems no time at all since the UK team arrived, and now they are going!  We held an FM0 night as a farewell party for the UK team.  This time 54 people came.  The team were each able to share what God had taught them during their time in Japan.  They also sang a worship song, and everyone in the room clapped along.  The atmosphere in the room was quite special!

               

We're beginning to run out of space! What a 

wonderful problem to have!

At the end of the night two guys even asked if they could take home bilingual New Testaments.

English Teaching

I have been having a number of opportunities to teach English.  The whole team was able to help out with a number of official classes at Hokkudai University.  The teacher was a Christian and asked us if we would come along and speak with his students.  This gave us a whole new group of contacts.  My class on a Friday has also been going well, though this may have to stop soon as it is exam time at the University over the next couple of week.

This is only a small sampling of what I have been involved with!

Prayer Points;

Praise God for the ministry of the UK teams. For all the work they have done during their time here. Please also pray for their future plans.  Frazer will be travelling to Korea to do an English Camp for a month, Cheriel will spend a month in Iwate with a team from her university and Sandra will be returning to England to continue working with IFES. Please pray that they might continue to honour God in all that they do.

Praise God that the Summer English Scheme was a success!  That our numbers were good and that all the young people seemed responsive when we introduced Biblical topics.  Please pray for those who came along, that the interest and relationships built up might translate into attendance at the Wednesday night Bible study.

Praise God that so many new young-people have started attending the Bible Study.  Please pray that they might continue to attend.  Please also pray that studying the Bible will become more that simply a means of language practise, but that they might recognise the real significance and truth contained within.

Please pray for relationships forged with KGK.  That FMZero and KGK might be able to find a way to work together which is glorifying to God.  

Thank you.

Update, July 1st

So it’s a new month here in Japan, thus I thought it was high time for an update as to how things have been going:

UK Team

The OMF team from the UK have now all arrived safely, and are (mostly) over their jetlag. So praise God for that! They are here for about one month and are going to be working primarily with FMZero.

From left to right; Sandra, Cheriel, Levi and Frazer.

There are now eight of us, so Karin has christened us the ‘Hokkudai 8’.  As our numbers are much larger we’ve been able to arrange lots of events, so looks like I’m going to be extra busy for a bit.  However, this also means we have lots of great stuff planned for the month ahead!

FMZero Jubilee Party

To welcome the team, and allow them to get to know some of the young people, we held an FMZero party on Friday night. As we now have a lot of people from the UK we decided to make the theme a ‘Jubilee Party’. 

It was decided that we should cook the traditional UK dish of Shepherd’s Pie, followed by scones with jam and cream.  Thus the hunt was on to find bags of potatoes with more than a few tiny potatoes in them!

This is considered a large bag of potatoes in Japan.

 As a Northern Irish individual I cannot fathom this.

Once a sufficient number of potatoes had been accumulated, the next task was to mash 9kg of the things using only a fork! Furthermore, most houses in Japan don’t have an oven (as I would understand it), however most microwaves do double up as ovens (and grills, and toasters, and various other things).  Consequently, it was rather challenging to cook such a large quantity of Shepherd’s Pies in such small ovens; at one point we had Shepherd’s Pies in various locations and on 3 different floors of the Hokkaido Centre.

The food however was a great success; one guy managed to eat at least four portions of Shepherd’s Pie (I seriously have no idea where he put it though, they weren’t exactly small portions), the only thing which stopped him was that we ran out! A number of people came up to me and told me that they had heard that food from the UK was really bad and tasteless, however they now didn’t believe this was true.  The team had also brought over some sweets and snacks from home; everyone seemed to like Jaffa Cakes and Percy Pigs, but were rather confused by Twiglets.

We had about 50 people attend in total, considering we had been expecting about 35 people this was very encouraging.  For once, however, I was quite glad that I am really bad at maths; I had miscalculated how many scones I would be making (12x tables are hard!) and accidentally made 54. After a few ‘mysteriously vanished’ in the presence of the team beforehand, we ended up with exactly the right number!

We played a few games together and Frazer, who is from Scotland, and led everyone in a Ceilidh dance, which was a great laugh.

The dance we did was called the Flying Scotsman.

After the food Levi gave a talk. As it was ‘Jubilee Night’ he was able to use part of the Queen’s most recent Christmas Speech:

Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves-from our recklessness or our greed.  God sent into the world a unique person-neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.

He was able to use this and part of his own testimony to give a short message to everyone gathered.

All in all the night was a great success!

English Summer Scheme

We are now half-way through our Special English Summer Scheme. This week was gestures and etiquette, which was good fun. We were supposed to finish at 9pm, but on Tuesday night we ended up playing signs (using the gesture we had just taught them) until past 10 o’clock! Two guys also saw copies of the Manga Bible (Bible stories illustrated in the style of Japanese comic books) and asked if they could take them home and read them.

They each borrowed both English and Japanese versions.

The fact that they asked if they could have them, without being offered, was quite surprising, but at the same time rather exciting. I’m quite eager to hear how they’ve been getting on with them.

Next week we are going to be teaching about slang and idioms.  We are going to use the Bible to show how it is the source for so many idioms in the English language (and the basis of so much of our culture). We are hoping that this will inspire students to want to learn more about the Bible.

ESS

ESS did really well in the recitation competition they were practising for, coming 1^st in the speech and poetry categories, and 2^nd in the play. 

They won a prize in every category!

 

They are now practising for a Debating Competition.  I have discovered that the style of debating is very different in Japan from at home. The purpose of a debate is not to argue or make heard your opinion, but rather to come to an agreement as quickly as possible.

Some ESS members have also started coming to our English Summer Scheme, which is great to see. The ESS of Rakuno University, also attended and came 3^rd in the play category. Rakuno University is in the next city of Oasa, some students have been attending our Summer Scheme and FMZero events, so it was great to be able to support them too.

English Teaching

My English class on a Friday has been going well, however I have also recently had the opportunity to teach a number of classes out at a Church in the outskirts of Sapporo. There are six different classes, ranging in age from 3 to 16. Teaching the 3 year olds was quite challenging, but a good laugh.

I had been asked for part of the classes to teach them all about where I was from. I do have to spend a lot of time explaining that Northern Ireland is actually a country. However it’s often interesting to draw parallels between the island of Hokkaido and the island of Ireland as they actually have a lot in common; very similar size, population, both are island nations and both are famous for potatoes.  One girl was particularly excited to learn that I was from the UK, as this is her favourite anime (Japanese cartoon) character:

Apparently he is supposed to be a personification of Britain 

(and/or England, I’m not sure the distinction is all that clear!)

 

She was able to tell me lots of titbits she had learnt about the UK from this TV show, including the UK’s love of tea (fair enough) and the fact that all UK food is tasteless (this appears to be a running theme in Japan).

Hokkudai-Sai and Rakunodai-Sai

The past few weeks have been the  Rakuno University and Hokkdai International festivals.  As we know so many of the students we attended quite a lot of the events to support them.

This is one of my English class students helping at a

 stand about the Philippines

As part of the Hokkudai-Sai (Hokkaido University Festival) there was also a food faire.  ESS had a stall selling chocolate covered bananas, so naturally we had to sample them…along with a number of other delicious things.

Alyssa was very happy to find a stand selling tacos.

                Rakuno is an agricultural university and they have a dairy farm on campus (it smelt like home!).  It is a much smaller university than Hokkudai, consequently there was much less at their festival. 

 There was, however, a cow seat.

They were also selling some of the produce they had made, so I was able to try pumpkin ice-cream; it was actually (somewhat unexpectedly) rather nice. Interestingly, the Rakuno KGK (Japanese equivalent of CU) were permitted to have a stall; this was quite unusual, but great to see.

Yosakoi

Now for something very fun! The Hokkudai-Sai coincided with the Hokkaido Yosakoi Sōran Festival. Yosakoi (which means ‘come at night’, apparently) is a type of Japanese dancing. It is very loud and energetic, combining traditional Japanese dance movements with modern music. The choreographed dances are often performed by large teams.

 
Costumes are a big part of the routines, many are based on different forms of traditional dress, however it’s quite common to have a number of costumes changes.  The costumes are always very beautiful.

 This team had travelled all the way from Taiwan.

               

                The festival went on for a whole weekend, with hundreds of different teams parading through the city and performing on the stage. It all culminated in a big final which was televised throughout Japan.

Hokkudai have their own team, which is quite famous for its multiple costume changes.  One night at the festival we were invited to see a preview of their dances for the competition. After the dances were finished the whole crowd (me included) was invited up to have a go at the dancing. Whilst fun, it certainly gave me a new admiration for energy level required to do a whole dance.

Hokkudai's first...

and second costumes. 

(I don't have any suitable pictures 
of the other costumes)

 Festivals are a very interesting thing to see in Japan.  The people are usually so reserved that festivals are often the only time they permit themselves to really let go.  Experiencing the festival has allowed me to see a whole different side to the people here.  Whilst it was an entertaining experience, I also feel I have gained a new insight into the culture.

Prayer Points:

Praise God for the safe arrival of the UK team!

Please continue to pray for the team; for relationships and planning. Pray that we all might work together to use our various gifts and talents to further God’s kingdom.

Please pray for the 2 guys who took home copies of the Manga Bible; that, as they are reading it, something about it will resonate with them and that they might wish to find out more. Please pray that if they have any questions that we might have the right words to say to them.

Praise God for the success of the Jubilee Party; that so many people came and that they team were able to get to know so many new people. I am so thankful that all the cooking worked out and there was enough for everyone. Please pray that some of the new people who attended might come to some of our other events.

Pray that relationships might continue to be formed with members of ESS. Please pray for the new relationships with students from Rakuno.

Please pray for my teaching at Hokkudai. That through my actions I might be a good witness to Jesus, even when I cannot always overtly speak about Him.

Once again, thank you for your prayers. They are such an important part of everything I am involved with. I am certainly seeing evidence that I am being lifted up and surrounded with prayer, and this is of great comfort.