日本(Japan) Edition! Pt. 1

この朝は日本に行きます。僕は日本人があうと楽しみしています。僕ために祈りてください。天国のお父様はあなたに祝福です。僕は二ヶ月にあなたに見ます。
(This morning I will go to Japan and I am looking forward to meeting the Japanese people. Please pray for me. Heavenly father's blessings to you. I will see you in two months.)

So to start... This is my room. Everything is in chaos as people prepare to leave for their outreach locations. I haven't had a moment to breathe today!



To start our Japan plans, we will be staying at a church in Chiba!

Here is the church's mailing address. I will only be staying there for two or so weeks. Air mail will arrive in about 5 days. It's expensive, so if you want to send something please wait!

Ichihara Shalom Church
Goi 4871-1, Ichihara City
Chiba Pref., Japan 290-0056
http://church.ne.jp/ichiharashalom/index.htm

Check out the website!

So here is the schedule:

1. We arrive in Japan, and take the train to Chiba. The city is across Tokyo bay. The bay is about 4mi in width, I believe.
2. We will stay at Ichihara Shalom Church there in Chiba for two weeks working in maintenance and/or using it as a base of operations.
3. After Jan 4, we will move into the Tokyo Metropolitan Area for two weeks. The YWAM base is located in Shibuya, ontop of that we have several other contacts. It is a possibility we will go into international schools and work with students there who are learning English.
4. From Tokyo we will take the shinkansen (bullet train) to Osaka. There in Osaka we will be hosted by a church which has worked with YWAM in the past.
5. Then from Osaka, fly out and return to Kona to debrief (Feb 15).




Shinkansen path: Tokyo to Osaka.



This is my crazy Japan team. This is actually only half of them, but I love this picture because everyone in this picture is posed in a way which represents one aspect of their character. For instance, Sydney is making the "cute" victory sign with her fingers. She does it in every picture (It's hilarious to see that almost every Korean or Japanese does this), and yet she is too busy to look at the camera.




This is a song my sensei "Yukako" taught our outreach team. She is Japanese from the northern part of the main island. It is the Japanese version of an originally Korean song dubbed "The Blessing" song. Yukako really helped our team with some insight into Japanese culture. She also was gracious enough to set aside time with me so I could work on speaking the language. She'll be doing her outreach in Boulder, Colorado. I have been there.




I'm really excited to see what is going to happen in Japan. We've had some great prayer times and already God has moved to reveal potential problems for our team. Please keep all of us in your prayers, as I believe there will be a lot of opposition waiting to mess with us in Japan. I believe, however, that in the end we will see how God's works prevailed.

Peace

More on the topic of exciting travels.

I have just under 2 weeks left till I leave for Japan. When ya fly to Hawaii (or Hawvay'i as the Hawaiians call it) you gotta' take in the beauty! So this weekend I split a rental car with 5 friends. Saturday and Sunday we will go forth and explore. So.. on my first day we went to this beautiful valley, ate at Verna's (No can.. No can. If can - VERNAS!) Then we went up to see the sunset at Mauna Kea. All of those back home will be assured to know I experienced the suffering chills of cold -Blast!-

World Class Observatory on top of Mauna Kea (14,000 ft)


Mustache? TRY BEARD! dum dum DUM DUM DUM!!!



Please share in the this experience with me aided by the amazing feats of technology.



It was in the upper 30 degrees farenheit, and the wind's icy fingers froze my exposed skin. If you would have seen a full body shot of me you would notice that I may have been a little ill prepared. I ascended Mauna Kea armed with: A borrowed beanie; dazzling aviators; a beach towel, which in a moment of unparalleled genius, I utilized as a scarf; a cargo jacket; swimshorts; and my tennis shoes. Yes, I said I climbed a 14,000 ft mountain in swimshorts. Wanna' fight about it?

As for Japan I will post up another update soon with the full briefing. One cool thing from this week was this German woman named Susi Childers. She began this school called Photogen X. Essentially, they take a world tour for two years and photograph people. The focus is on social injustice and being a "Voice for the Voiceless". When she was younger she never dreamed of using her talent in such a way to fulfill the purposes of God. I love how Christianity creates radical living. No matter what I do, as long as I hold on to the Father's will, my life will be rich and stimulating. So, I get excited as only a youth can.

Oh snap! (notice the onomatopoeia pun)

Last weekend I went to a place called Makapala which is near Palolu Valley.

This is what it looks inside...




This is what it looks outside...




You see that land way below me in the above pictures? Well, this photo is sea level baby! I trekked down into that land, sweater tied to my waist, walking stick in hand, and mustache bristling in full glory.

Just wanted to share the love. More to come later this week so keep an open eye!

A Thanksgiving Birthday

Today I have officially survived 19 years on a massive ball of dirt hovering, drifting eerily close to an even larger fiery nuclear ball, all through an unfathomably large vacuum. I would also like to congratulate the other 6,500,000,000 people, on this Earth, for surviving another year. Praise the Lord. In the spirit of sharing here are three wonderful pictures! I hope you enjoy them.

I call this "Nature Meets my Mustache"


This is my work-duty team "Special Projects"


I call this one "Me, the Ladies, and the Cactus People"

Time is flying by!

WOW! Things are going by quickly. A week just zooms by! I was talking the other day to some friends of mine about how when we first got here a day was so slow, and now it's like a week goes by and I don't even notice...

Anywho... this last week was on the topic of relationships. They were both from Hawaii and it was interesting to here their take on relationships, and "culture sensitivity". Relationship is one thing I have neglected in my past, but as time goes on I realize that in any situation, or field of work, the first thing you should do is develop a relationship with the people around you. It is crucial! The main focus however was making our relationship with God right, and continuing to let down walls you've put up which limit God's transformational power.

About 4 weeks ago I joined the "Choir of the Nations". This weekend we gave two performances: one to the Kona base, and the other in a local market. It was a really good experience to work with people who had limited musical backgrounds yet were so passionate for Jesus and for glorifying Him. Despite some technical difficulties here and there, everything came together in a surprisingly solid way! By the way- our choir dressed in Hawaiin shirts and khaki's for the performance.

I've been experimenting a lot with language and how we communicate as I've been here. One of the first things you notice on the Kona base is how diverse language is here. So on top of my Japanese studies I have also been messing with constructed scripts (creating an alphabet for any language). I have also just checked out this book from the library called loglan.

To summarize, Loglan is a language designed to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf) that the natural languages limit human thought. It does so by pushing those limits outward in predictable directions, principally by:
-forcing the fewest possible assumptions about "reality" on speakers
-incorporates the notational elegance of symbolic logic
-removing all structural sources of amiguity
-generalizing all semantic operations (what can be done to one word, can be done to all)
-derives its word-stock from eight natural languages (culturally neutral - [or at least culturally diverse])

Making up for lost time..

Well first of all... here is a picture of me in Kona. In case anyone was curious as to what it looks like for me to be in Kona. Actually this is a picture of me in my dance attire, to be more specific. I am learning Ceroc. It is a swing/salsa fusion with a dash of ballroom. It is as strange as it sounds.

Here is what is going on in a nutshell:

Last week- A team of guys came in to talk on worship. What ended up happening was we spent the majority of the week in crazy worship, minus the talking part. This one guy was insane and would began to cry and drool because of the hurt in people and in communities around the world. We had one night where 17 drums were on stage and everyone just danced, like in that one matrix scene. However, despite the insanity, there were some powerful times spent in the midst of the Holy Spirit. By the end I was ready to process a lot of it all.

This weekend- I spent most of the time indoors studying Japanese. 私は八時間が先週末で勉強しました。 Which means! Last weekend I studied eight hours. I think. Soo...

This week- we are covering the Holy Spirit. The woman teaching it is serving as a doctor in Japan which is exciting. She has many impossible stories how her hindu family all came to Jesus through the radical power of the Holy Spirit moving on them. So, crazy stuff.. and today we had a big prayer time.

I've been fasting and praying asking for some guidance as to where I should go after this. Strangely, I think my plans and God's plans might line up more than I figured they would. So the plan still is to finish my college applications. I think UChicago may be where I need to go. So please pray for me and I will keep you posted.

I'm still here..

Sorry I haven't been updating lately. I will post in a few days with a picture of Halloween and to explain recent events here at YWAM. In addition to this I have the final details on my outreach plans.