The Year of Return

Salt and Light

2011-10-25T08:27:00.003-05:00

I work for an English school that is part of a city-wide organization that was founded by a Christian man. It has Bible verses up on the walls, and the director of the school is the founder's son, and a Christian. But aside from the two of us, there are no Christians (that I know of) in the building. This is a common thing in Japan: Christians start schools but do not staff them with Christian teachers or staff. I had prayed for God to send Christians to schools like this when I was a missionary here before, but didn't imagine I would be placed right in the middle of one.

The biggest event of the year at my workplace is Halloween. Christmas is a night in a restaurant, but Halloween is a whole week of parties celebrated in every individual class. I know that Halloween can be good, innocent fun, but there is also a lot of nastiness. More and more, the holiday makes my heart feel yucky...I dread seeing the decorations, and things like witchcraft made cute. I was sad to learn what a huge focus it is for my school. So, I'd been wrestling to figure out how I would respond. Because I don't actually teach any kid's classes at my school, I wondered if I would be off the hook this year. But the beginning of October brought a thick packet of paper to my desk with instructions for us to work together in figuring out all the Halloween festivities. I continued wrestling.

In short, I approached the executive director (the other Christian in the building) and talked to him about not wanting to participate in Halloween. This created a couple of hush-hush meetings, and, in the end, I was given permission to not participate.

This opened the door for a pretty cool conversation. One of the part-time teachers casually said to me, "So, you're celebrating Halloween right now?"

I told her, "No, I don't celebrate Halloween."

"Is it because of your faith?" I had met this woman soon after coming to Fukushima and explained, when she had wondered if we were scared of the radiation, that we were here to say that there was a reason to hope.

She was surprised when I told her it was, and asked, "But, isn't Halloween a holiday for casting evil things out?" In Japan, there are holidays specifically for casting away evil things. I've always kind of scoffed at them, because it involves doing things like throwing beans to keep the demons away. But, in that moment, I realized that however bad I feel like Japanese holidays are, they actually have the idea that you should cast out evil things rather than dressing up like them and seemingly celebrating them. That was humbling.

We went on to discuss the difference between Halloween and All Saint's Day, and then the difference between All Saint's Day and Obon, the Japanese holiday where tombs are visited and the dead are prayed to. I explained that the difference is that Christians believe in a resurrection and a life after death. I thought this would be overly simplistic, but I was surprised when she responded, "I can't believe in heaven. I don't want to believe in heaven."

I've heard many people say they can't, but I couldn't believe this statement of not wanting to. Without really meaning to, I started pouring out words... Heaven isn't the same as this... Everything that is bad about this place, everything that is from sin, will be gone... I have only seen a six year old girl ever receive the news the way this woman did. Her eyes were wide. "Really?" She asked it with a kind of sincere eagerness.

Sometime in the middle of this, one of the foreign teacher's walked in wearing his Halloween costume, which was a zombie with blood all over his face and shirt. The teacher looked across at me and said, "Wakatta. I get it." I may not have convinced her about heaven just yet, but my coworker sealed the Halloween argument for me.

This isn't a story that ends with a conversion, but it did end with amazing openness as she shared across a busy teacher's room how she felt that God had been ignoring her, told about her struggles, allowed me to pray for them.

The days following that conversation have seemed to carry a lot of "work angst" for me. I know that it will be decided soon who they will offer contracts to for next year (beginning in April). Joel will be extending his (he works at a different school), and I find myself waffling between two emotions: fear that my company will not offer me one, and therefore the school will be back to zero Christian teachers...and the severe cultural frustration of working in a very Japanese environment that makes me hope I'll be done, or be working at greatly reduced hours, come next April.

But conversations like this remind me why I'm here... They remind me that I wanted to come into the middle of a very real world environment and be light and salt.

I find working in this place that, until this moment, I have given up very little for the sake of the lost. Which is why my heart is complaining lots now...stretching pains, growing pains. Giving myself to them at the expense of being able to connect with and support very dear friends who already know Jesus ... Giving myself to them at the expense of a mutual day off with my husband ... Giving myself to them at the expense of a job environment that feels meaningful, and that offers any kind of grace... Oh, Jesus, give me your heart for the lost.

Today the principal came with a smile on her face, showed me my time card and informed me that I was working for a Japanese company and that clocking in 8 minutes late was not acceptable. I am to be in my seat by the time on the schedule, which means I need to arrive at least 15 minutes early, vacuum the carpet, get my tea, and be in place so that I can look busy for the next few hours when I have no real work to do.

Later today, she came and gave me my semi-permanent schedule, and when I requested that I be allowed to keep working on Saturdays and have time off on Mondays (it gives me a little more time with Joel and helps me recover from the Sunday of church activities), I was told that it is totally unacceptable. Even though I don't have anything scheduled on Mondays at all, we can't switch the schedule. I'm so far at the end of my rope that I ended up in tears in front of the principal. Sigh.

This is the 12th day in a row that I have been busy, and it had been an effort to get to work even 8 minutes late this morning. I had plenty of time to get ready for my first class, so no client was affected. Also, I was proud of the idea of switching the schedule around so that I would work Tuesday to Saturday...it was far more productive and efficient on all levels. But none of that is an excuse. I'm not ignorant about Japanese culture...I know that if I want these people to think that I care about them, part of that ground has got to be won by following their rules and choosing my battles. There are some really important battles I'd like to fight in this place: battles that will open the door for the Bible to be read and the gospel to be shared. If I fight them on every rule that inconveniences me, I will lose authority and the trust I need to fight when it's really important. I know this. But my exhaustion keeps winning, and I fight and talk back and negotiate when it isn't necessary.

The principal has sounded more than willing to renegotiate my contract for less hours in the office since my teaching hours are so below the contracted amount...and I sit here thinking, "Do I have it in my heart to keep sacrificing these things for the sake of these people?" If 40 hours a week and little time to connect with my husband, close friends, and family means that I am begrudging at work...then have I overstepped myself? Is it better to step back to 20 or 30 hours so that I can enter the school filled and joyful? The escape door has been opened, and it's up to me to decide. Is switching to part time a cop out? Will I lose this opportunity to witness that Jesus so graciously entrusted to me? Am I losing it already by doing things like getting teary-eyed about not getting my way? Would I miss out on the opportunity to trust Him with something bigger than myself? Am I just trying to get this situation back in my control rather than leaving it painfully (in the short run) in His?

"How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"
~Romans 10:14

Pray and wait...pray and wait...Lord, please, please be glorified.

The Flood Waters

2011-10-14T07:52:00.003-05:00

"Here's the word of encouragement to you today: ... Whether the increase in pressure is circumstances or if it's an increase of the Lord's presence in us...I want you to know that it is God's heart not to destroy us, not to simply overwhelm us, but he desires to dig a deeper channel in our lives to increase our capacity to receive the fullness of what he has for us." ~Pr. Jim Olson, Bethel Christian Fellowship, 7/10/11

Psalm 93 NLT: "The floods have risen up, oh Lord, the floods have roared like thunder, the floods have lifted their pounding waves, but mightier than the violent raging of the seas, mightier than the breakers on the shore, the Lord above is mightier than these."

Last week felt like the final straw. I found out that my grandpa had died. He was 94, and while the death was sudden, it wasn't unexpected. But it has followed so much else...

My godfather, a close uncle--one I have danced international folk dances with, lived with on college breaks when my Wyoming home was too far away, who spoke to me about God, and was one of the ones I remember smiling with joy in me when I decided to follow God's first call to Japan--passed away from leukemia about two weeks before that.

The departure for Japan was made a thousand times more stressful by a doctor telling me that I might have cancer and might not be able to have children...a quick process followed through a diagnostic surgery that declared me cancer free but was too rushed to have time to ask any questions or get any answers about fertility.

At that same time, my dad received a new call (as a pastor) and my parents moved away from the hometown I grew up in, away from the house we built.

I've had a lot of stressful things happen in life, but I've never had so many happen all at once. All of this seems to have been accompanied by a switch in life circumstances that shuts out every way I had of filling myself...I am working full time, which I have never done well with. I miss my husband: Joel and I were together pretty much every moment all summer, and when I began working in September our schedules no longer give us a mutual day off. I'm missing time alone to recharge. I'm missing friends who help me process. I'm missing Bethel (my church in the Cities)--the ability to sit in that congregation of people with their hands in the air, worshiping Him without abandon...somewhere I can worship and cry out for healing all in the same service...somewhere where the questions I toss up to God in prayer are so often answered by a human voice speaking for Him within the same service.

In a message of Pastor Jim's that I just listened to tonight (though it's a couple months old), he showed images of flooding in North Dakota and talked about a situation where they had to let extra water out of the dikes because of all the pressure. They were worried about homes down stream from the dike, but something amazing happened. The huge influx of water lowered the flood level by making the river bed deeper. One fishing hole went from being its usual 15 feet deep to 50. He used that extra water sent through the dike as a metaphor for the extra pressure God sends through our lives.

That metaphor brings strength to my heart. I put the actual quote at the top of the blog, but the word that "it is God's heart not to destroy us, not to simply overwhelm us, but he desires to dig a deeper channel in our lives to increase our capacity to receive the fullness of what he has for us." I think of the deep realization around when I was moving to Japan, and one of the dangerous prayers* that started this most recent journey out: "God, please do whatever is necessary to make it so that you, and not my environment, are the source of my joy and fulfillment."

And I hope tonight, as I look up at Jesus, that as lots of gunk rises up in my heart from pressure, that He'll work this river bed down low, low, low. Because I want to be a river of life regardless of pain, regardless of an ability to protect my personal time, regardless of what kind of church I'm attending. Lord, have mercy! I need transforming grace. Thanks be to God...the goal of all this isn't to destroy me, nor to leave me hopeless or in despair. Please, Lord, don't let me forget it.

*I define a dangerous prayers as some of those that rise up from deep in our spirits...prayers that are of great cost to our fleshy, sinful natures when God answers them. They are prayers along the lines of, "God, please do whatever is necessary to keep me humble." They are nods to the surgeon God waiting only for that consent before He will take the cancer out of us painfully, life-savingly.

Standing

2011-09-25T21:04:00.002-05:00

"Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand." ~Ephesians 6:13

"As you can see, this army is marching, but there will be times when it camps. The camping is as important as the marching. It is the time for planning, training, and sharpening skills and weapons...Until now when my army has camped, most of the time has been wasted. Just as I only lead My people forward with a clear objective, so it is that when I call My army to camp, there is a purpose. The strength of the army that marches will be determined by the quality of its camp. When it is time to stop and camp for a season, it is to teach My people My ways. An army is an army whether it is in battle or at peace. You must learn how to camp, how to march, and how to fight. You will not do any one of these well unless you do them all well." Rick Joyner's "The Vision", Jesus speaking

It is a strange season of life. The past few years of life in America seem like they've been filled with dangerous prayers and info dumps. No matter how I tried, it didn't seem like I could move forward. Over the past few years, all that has seemed clear is how lacking I am.

My attempts to speak truth about God--truth that is meant to set free--didn't turn people towards God, but towards themselves, so they reacted with shame or anger.

I found that I was so affected by the environment that I was in that I couldn't change it for the better, only react to it.

My persistent sense that people don't like me or understand me has caused me to hide from them when I should be loving them.

I was so fearful of affecting people and places in a bad way that I refused to risk being the one to decide, or the one to stand out, even if I was the one who had the most experience and should be stepping forward boldly because of what God has shown me.

Rather than carrying the goodness of the mission field back home by just BEING the truth that I had learned on the field, I hid the truth--except to use it as a weapon--attacking loved ones for not already being transformed into the part of the Kingdom that I was longing for, and never willing to actually SHOW them what that truth was.

Especially as I stepped into a marriage relationship, it became obvious that most of what I was seeking in life wasn't to love God or others, but just to be loved myself.

All of this adds up to one sin, and there was something freeing about being able to be on my face before God one Sunday at Bethel and say to Him: I am lukewarm. My love for You is so shallow. Please, please, make me passionate for you! Not in outside actions, but from the inside out.

I don't know that much has changed this time by journeying across an ocean. Fukushima is more "on the edge" than Tokyo, and there aren't easy ways to jump into ministry. Our church is a small, Lutheran church with about nine regular members, mostly over the age of 60, and then us, four foreigners in our 20s and 30s. There are a few precious moments when the people here open up and share something that feels real, but mostly the city feels busy. Not in the rushing way like Tokyo, but in a rural: we do our work, not talk. I feel sometimes like we are church planters who are missing the defined vision of being church planters. There is, as of yet, no vision to get lost in and borrow passion from. The passion can only come from knowing Jesus.

Yet, it is not a time for sitting and resting. Over and over again, it seems that I come back to this idea: just stand.

Stand in choosing faith over fear.
Stand in choosing love over self-protection.
Stand in seeking God in all things, and stand by guarding the truth that knowing Him is the treasure that can be found no matter what the circumstances.
Stand in worship.
Stand in thanksgiving.
Stand in joy that is founded in God, not the situation I'm in.
Stand in seeking truth and speaking truth in love.
Stand in serving people and submitting to authorities in order to choose humility with my actions.
Stand in praying without ceasing.
Stand in hope, both of God's ability to bring life to the present, and in the goodness of heaven that is coming.
Stand no matter what any other person, Christian or not, is doing or tells me to do.

I don't know when the time to march will come again. But it seems to be a season for stocking up oil in the lamps, waiting for when we'll see our Bridegroom, and making ready for Him.

What are you doing here?!

2011-07-08T23:28:00.003-05:00

Cindy and I were crossing the train tracks when a man pulled his car over, got out and called from behind us, "What are you doing here?"

In India, people frequently called out from behind me: "Hello! Where are you from?"

But I don't think this kind of thing has ever happened to me in Japan. Yet so many foreigners have left Fukushima. Many mothers and children have left Fukushima too. Sometimes it seems like Cindy and Haidee learn of more young students leaving every week. Fukushima, as a missionary friend in Tokyo put it, is the most unpopular city in Japan.

The man came up to us, and I listened and prayed for his heart to be opened as Cindy told him in Japanese, "We're here because we believe in Jesus. He can protect us. And if we are harmed, even if we die, we will be with Him. He is the real God who created the world. You'd better believe in Him too!"

I thought of coming over prayers...prayers that God would allow our presence in Fukushima to be a witness of his love that is not lost with the shaking of the ground, or with the invisible danger of radiation. I think of Proverbs 10:25, "When the storm has swept by, the wicked are gone, but the righteous stand firm forever." We live in the middle of many storms...some are very personal struggles that are very painful, some seem to just be huge storms we are swept into along with many other people.

Either way, I am blessed (sometimes bittersweetly) when God allows me to stand through it and witness that He is the rock that can be trusted. Some days this feels very weak to me...tears in public, spilling out the yucky inner parts and how God is dealing with them, letting people see (willingly or not) how I cling to Him when I can't find any other strength. But it's fun to have the other side of it too...of being able to smile in the face of radiation, of knowing that my unseen protector is far and away above the unseen danger, and being able to express joy in passing on the good news from Jesus: "In this world, you may have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world," (John 16:33) to those people who think that the world's troubles have the final say.

Joy in Tokyo

2011-06-29T08:37:00.002-05:00

"There's nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." ~Nelson Mandela

When I returned to the States two years ago, it seemed that this quotation was always in my head. Fitting into American culture, or being useful, or appearing loving seemed absolutely impossible. I feared a little as I crossed the ocean back to Japan that it would be true again.

We spent our first two weeks in Japan in Fukushima, which is where we will be living. This past week, God blessed us with a trip back to Tokyo, my old stomping grounds. Joel will be in Tokyo until July 9th getting training to be an English teacher. I get to stay with him in Tokyo until my English company calls me back to Fukushima for visa or teaching purposes (so, it could be tomorrow or not until Joel comes back on the 9th).

This quotation has been in my head again as I've wandered around Tokyo for the first time in two years. Not because it describes me this time, but because of how markedly it doesn't. I feel as though I've been reunited with the Pamela I lost when I crossed the ocean last time. The one who is passionate, extroverted-ish, and warmly loving. (I have many flaws too, but these stayed with me when I crossed the ocean, so I didn't need to reclaim them. ;) ) The past week in Tokyo has been a time to rest by remembering.

Over the past few days I've sat around meals with a few of my dearest friends from the Hongo. Etsuko was still as fiery as Japanese women come, speaking passionately about her hopes that our student center would result in baptisms and in people coming to know Jesus. We got to sit and brainstorm how to keep their ministry alive if funds are cut. Ken quietly and sincerely talked about his hopes for the future. All of them questioned Joel about when he knew he wanted to marry me and what he liked about me--I think it was the fiercest interrogation the poor guy has received during our relationship.

A past student, one who came very close to being baptized, ate with Joel and I later. At one point he had seemed very open to Christianity, and then suddenly something had changed. He had been at every church activity, and then suddenly he vanished. Conversations about God that he had hungered for suddenly seemed an unbearable strain to him. I hadn't known if I would see him again. But Joel and I got to sit with him and hear about his life. He's in the same stage as many friends from the last time around, which is trying to pass major exams that will qualify him for his desired job. I think he's busy enough that he won't think much about God for the time being, but being able to encourage him, gently remind him about God, and reconnect was a blessing.

This afternoon, I got to sit with another friend for a few hours, and the conversation has left me just bubbling over. My dear friend Ayumi was baptized a little more than a year ago, and I hadn't heard from her since then. I emailed her to find out we could meet, and it turned out that God carved out about three hours in her busy medical residency life for us to see each other. We both rejoiced in the miracle of time. I got to hear her whole story about how she came to be baptized. She has always been a joyful person, but hearing her express joy about God instead of doubt was amazing. Some people convert because other people convince them to, but Ayumi shared a story that was one of those, "I came because I met Him" type stories. I cannot express the joy that I feel at seeing God call Japanese people to be rock-solid for Him.

Also, as Ayumi is possibly becoming an ob/gyn, so we were able to talk about childbirth in Japan and America, and doulas in Japan. It sounds like it might even be possible for me to work as a doula if I were in Tokyo. So, not now, but maybe someday. I was greatly encouraged by this.

In addition to childbirth, we talked about abortion in Japan, and possible Christian responses. I'm super passionate, though I haven't had the chance to live the passion out, about ministries that counter abortion not through political tyrades, but through supporting the expecting mothers. Ministries that are both truthful and merciful. Abortion is not an often discussed subject in Japan, but Ayumi confirmed much of what I suspected. There are many, many abortions performed here. I was surprised to learn that the biggest group is not teenagers or college students, however, but women in their 40s. Ayumi suspected that affairs (she said it more subtly and gracefully than that) might be the reason for it. We didn't come to many conclusions about how a ministry might reach these women, as the abortion is usually kept ultra-secret, but being able to begin to brainstorm possibilities brought so many things I'm passionate about together. I would need Japanese about 5000 times better than my current Japanese to do anything with a ministry like this, so maybe now this will remain just something to pray about. But I hope someday I can do more.

The hard part of being in Tokyo is realizing how different it is from Fukushima. I'm very excited to have the opportunity to serve God in a place where people are scared, and hope that by being there I'll be able to share some of the peace God has given me when facing things like death (and radiation, and earthquakes). But the journey into Fukushima is a journey even deeper into Japanese culture. I had no idea how much I ministered in English until this trip back to Tokyo. It suddenly makes sense why the amount and level of Japanese needed in Fukushima has been a bit overwhelming. And then there are simple little things like the fact that all the food in Fukushima seems to be Japanese. Tokyo, which once seemed so homogeneous, suddenly has turned into a diverse city in my mind. There are ethnic restaurants here. On a bigger scale for me personally, Tokyo is diverse enough that I could possible continue to pursue my doula career while living in Japan.

But really...language barriers, and getting used to new levels of Japanese eating are smaller barriers than they seem. And while it hurts to give up the immediate chance to work comforting mothers who are delivering babies, God has blessed us with many things in Fukushima too. There is a "pre-assembled" Christian community. We've been praying many times a week with Haidee, Cindy, and the Nomuras--all old friends and people I love seeking God alongside. I've also learned that traveling to a new city with a husband is drastically less lonely that appearing somewhere new all alone.

Then there is the feeling that I can't operate or communicate at the needed level to reach people in Fukushima as I want to--truly, this is the same feeling that led me to fall on God in Tokyo at the beginning of my ministry there. But God transformed it: it is so clear now that I am back in Tokyo after two years. God has done and is still doing much in the lives of the Japanese people I came to love. That initial feeling of inadequacy led to God showing me that Tokyo, and my ministry here, with all its weaknesses, could be holy with His presence. Perhaps inadequacy is the place that all true ministry flows out of: that realization that God's plans are impossible for anyone but Him to carry out, but somehow He has invited us along to be His body anyway.

Joel and I are still waiting in many ways...waiting for visas, waiting for His vision for how He wants us to serve in Fukushima, waiting to see what dear friends He will bring into our lives this time around. But I am strengthened as I remember what God has done before. And strengthened to learn that sometimes, when you return to a place that remains unchanged, you find old parts of yourself that you desperately hoped were still alive.

One Hundred Thousand Changes

2011-06-02T17:58:00.002-05:00

I don't know how many people read this blog who don't know about what is going on with me already. It's been awhile since I've had words to update. Here are the cliff notes:

In January, God told Joel and I that we would go back to Japan this year. We believed Him just enough to think about it for a couple weeks and then continue with life as normal.

In February, I decided to take a doula training course and experiment with the career path of helping moms birth babies. The Christian community house and I prayed about whether to stay together after Joel and I got married.

In March, "the big one" hit Japan. Wedding preparations seemed to take over life. But the question hung behind the busyness...would this earthquake mean that God actually was going to send us back to Japan this year?

On April 2nd, Joel and I got married. :D

We drove to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and had a lovely time of a honeymoon. And, on the way, got an email from a good missionary friend. She was seeking Christians who would fill English teaching positions in Fukushima City and praying that God would send witnesses and build Christian community there.

Despite all of my longing to go to Japan, I found myself wrestling a lot before I could say 'yes'. It was hard to imagine how my single missionary life and my new married life would come together. And was it best to put this kind of pressure on our relationship right at the beginning of our marriage?

Our car broke down while Joel and I were avoiding the questions. We got it to a shop, and a repairman drove us to a park where we walked in circles, laid in the grass, watched the river flow, and asked each other what we thought about this opportunity for the three hours while our car was fixed. We realized that, while we had much to be afraid and worried about, we had seen little to show us that God was *not* calling us to Japan, and much to suggest that He was. Surrender together as a couple is a pretty cool thing.

I think for awhile I thought having a husband would mean that there would be someone who would pull me along...someone who would ease the burden when those hard surrender moments come so that I didn't have to dig deep into my unwillingness and turn my heart over to the Living God. Not that I ever would have said it in words like that. I more would have said, "I want him to encourage me! And be bold in following Jesus to draw out my own boldness and courage!" But then, there is the realization that it is somehow sweeter to be scared together and to lay our lives in His hands, neither one of us knowing or understanding fully what it will mean.

May has given us quite a few more curve balls, which I don't seem to have words for right now, but all of those aside, we are flying to Japan on June 13th. We'll be living and working in Fukushima City, which is a little bit outside of the evacuation zone from the nuclear power plant. We've both been in touch with a different English school, and are working out the final details to be employed.

It's kind of funny to think about Joel and I wandering through the park on our honeymoon, afraid of what might come. A chance to love on the Japanese people during one of the greatest trials they've known. A chance to live our own lives and struggles towards God, not only because I need His goodness and provision in my life, but because I have the chance to show that to a people who are also much afraid, and whose lives have also been shaken. A chance to continue watering the seeds in Japan I have already sown and prayed over. A chance to shake my heart out of the complacency of ordinary life and back into a life where the need for urgent prayer is right in front of my face. A chance to see God's light shining in darkness, yet again.

I cannot help but smile. God is good.

Unexpected Kindness

2010-12-07T19:30:00.004-06:00

I met a man very briefly a few days ago, but he had a large impact. Doug tends to introduce me to everyone who comes into the gymnastics office, and this man was going to lunch with him. He told John that I had lived in Japan and was going to get married in April. John had been stationed in Japan during a war and talked about working in the post room on an army base. He was one of those people I trusted instinctually because of the gentleness and sincerity of his questions. I told him about teaching Bible classes and the Japanese response to it.

It was the end of the conversation that really moved me, though. John had one of those sets of eyes that just seems to see you. And he looked at me very sincerely and said, "So you've gone from that life to getting married in less than two years. That's a lot of change."

I was relieved that he and Doug left for lunch at that point, because I was fighting back grateful tears at someone seeing me like that. It's crazy how rare it is for us to truly stop and be present, and how amazing to be the recipient of the gift of five minutes of real attention.

Community Sabbath Night

2010-11-29T15:59:00.002-06:00

A couple weeks ago, a sermon sparked an idea for the house in my mind, which was to open up our doors on Sundays for a community Sabbath time. Yesterday was our first run at the experiment, and I have to say, it was really great. The best stories about community can't be recorded in blogs, because they're about the growth that each individual is experiencing within the community. I love seeing everyone being more fully the person that God has created them to be.

The day started at church, with my sister bravely inviting a whole host of people over. We ended up having three people from church, plus Joel, Becca's boyfriend Carleton, and the four of us who live in the house. Becca is really beginning to find her courage in making invitations, and I'm thrilled to see it!

Lexi had planned an incredible meal for the day. I haven't met anyone who plans meals quite like Lexi. We had butternut squash soup with chicken, Swedish meatballs with lingonberry, mashed potatoes, and a breaded apple dessert. All amazing, as usual.

While all of this was going on, Becca assembled our little prayer room. We have a beautiful sun room with windows on all three sides. Rachel was using it as a computer room for awhile, but she finally got a loft so her computer could go into her room and we make a space just for prayer. We spread out pillows, a keyboard, and a guitar. Becca got out colorful scarves and hung them as decorations.

I spent the afternoon planning a last minute Bible study on Sabbath, and enjoying deep conversations about what holy rest really is, and what keeps us from it. Rachel sat with me a lot of the time and helped ask great clarifying questions to help me get my thoughts focused.

Joel, in the middle of this, was making bread from scratch. I don't think he's managed it quite to his satisfaction yet, but it seems pretty tasty to me! I've been talking to Joel about how much I'd love for him to be part of ministry along with me--and it was amazing to see him really step up to it yesterday. He was in the kitchen washing dishes and supporting Lexi and Becca, out in the living room with Rachel and me adding wise comments about rest--and baking bread in the midst of all that.

Our guests arrived in time for dinner, and it was fun just to see the diversity. The leader of Macalaster's Christian fellowship, who was scribbling down questions for her group to process together that evening. A girl who had stood in front of the church that Sunday and told the congregation how she'd tried to commit suicide four years ago and been saved, and implored them to look to God for hope during the holidays. Our third planned guest is a single mom, and couldn't make it because her daughter fell asleep.

The guests were mostly only there for dinner, but there was a wonderful restful time after that. There was dancing. Community stretching. :) Fresh baked bread. Red velvet holiday milk. (I had to try it...)

The four of us and Joel got to study Sabbath in the Bible and talk about how to get into that mindset, and I was blown over by the depth that the people in our house are reaching. I don't know why it was so clear yesterday how much everyone has grown--but I feel like people have been having spiritual growth spurts recently. And it was incredible to see...Joel being willing to really engage in the community...Becca realizing that she wants to be more sacrificial with people and learn how to listen...Lexi being open to change in a way that's vulnerable and humble...Rachel growing in a desire to live without fear...me actually stepping up into leadership without my usual excuses.

We all had to laugh at ourselves at the end of the day, because we actually did a pretty lousy job of resting. It almost felt like a day when we saw what the opposite of resting was for most of us. But, despite the mad rush of cooking and cleaning and dish washing and Bible study planning, it was a pretty wonderful community day. We may learn how to rest yet one of these days. :)

Leaving things behind

2010-10-23T14:55:00.004-05:00

When I moved to Japan, I worked on this picture over the course of a month as part of the process of letting go of my old life and embracing a new one. I drew all the things in the boxes "behind me" that couldn't come along. There was a Spanish dictionary, and my preschool Sunday school curriculum. I drew remnants of past activities: handbell gloves, a rapier sword, my baby bonsai tree, my ballet slippers. I drew photographs of family and friends, though these pictures came along with me in real life, as a reminder of the people I was leaving behind. I drew Ebony's toy bone. My favorite childhood teddy bear. I drew my college diploma on the wall behind me. The only objects in front in the picture were my packed bags and my little homemade alter, a framed "Footprints" picture on the wall to show that I was following Jesus now.

It was hard to put all of those things in boxes when I moved to Japan, but there was this rush of excitement about the whole thing too. It was so easy to love Jesus as I was taking off in this adventure with him--and so easy to feel his excitement and love at getting to bring me along with him across the ocean.

I've been thinking about this because the past few days my relationship with Joel keeps putting me in tears. I hate it when that happens. Joel is one of the biggest blessings in my life--and my sadness always feels like ingratitude. But I realized today that I think it is a normal part of the transition. So I've been trying to figure out what part of it is healthy.

This is what life has looked like the past few weeks: there are so many huge decisions to be made with Joel, and we approach major (and minor) decisions completely oppositely. In fact, we approach life in general completely oppositely. So, we end up having intense conversations about these decisions and life long into the night. Then, we manage to reach a resolution and find the way we're going to love each other in the midst of these intense differences--and it creates the sweetest love (at least emotionally speaking). And for a period of time we are mushy and inseparable with joy at the victory.

In the midst of that, I usually have about a 30 item to do list for Spirit Gymnastics--I've helped Doug make some major financial victories over the past few weeks, and the business is much healthier than it was. I have admin meetings three mornings a week now. When new people come into the office Doug introduces himself as *my* administrative assistant, and he's only half joking. I'm also still trying to create a healthy Christian community in the house I started, though that mostly involves fighting guilt because of how little energy I have for it most days, unfortunately. But, we now have a really nice time three mornings a week. We wake up at 7 on Monday and Wednesday to spend time with God individually together. And Thursdays at 7 we pray together. And I keep processing and praying about ways to try to lead the girls and myself deeper and further with Jesus. And then processing and praying about how leadership works in my head vs. how it actually seems to work in reality. Somewhere in the middle of my relationship building with Joel, doing admin for Spirit, and attempting to lead the House, I'm also finding and settling on a caterer, potential reception site, photographer, and florist . . . and figure out this whole cake / pie / whatever dilemma for the wedding.

Sheesh. I don't have nearly enough praying hours in my week to manage that kind of busyness. Having written all of that down, I'm not as surprised that I found myself researching plane tickets this afternoon so I could run away to India or Japan. Yes, of course the whole time I knew that I couldn't go, and that I wouldn't go, and that I didn't even really want to run away from everything right now . . . but I was still surprisingly and honestly disappointed when I realized that, even if I wanted to run away and just take care of sick people in India, or go process life with some of my good friends in Japan, I couldn't. My passport has been MIA for about two moves now. And the plane ticket would wipe out pretty much every cent I have.

But somewhere in the middle of my silly freaking out today, I ended up at an internet page talking about the emotional aspect of getting married. There were a few really freeing quotes (I've kind of pasted them together here):

Why would a bride feel fear and sadness in the months preceding her most cherished day? In order to answer this question, we must look at the wedding as a rite of passage. ... Simply, a rite of passage is a major turning point in life where we experience a change in identity. It is a time of transition where the old way of life ceases to fit and the new life has not yet taken hold. ... A change of identity involves loss; and loss always, no matter how beautiful and bountiful the gains, involves grief. ... The problem is not the sadness or fear; the problem is an ingrained cultural belief that equates these feelings with the notion that you are making a mistake. ... This realization of all that [you're] giving up is an essential part of the letting go and grieving process. In order to prepare the ground for the new identity to take root, the old identity needs to be weeded and grieved.

So, I was thinking about my picture from moving to Japan, and how it had been nice to draw it and acknowledge what was being left behind. It was a part of the weeding and grieving. The move to Japan was wonderful--and terribly painful. But it didn't take very long before I saw that the boxes behind me were things I was ready to leave behind, and was overjoyed at some wonderful new additions to my identity.

This time my boxes feel a little more abstract. It's "Pamela the Missionary" who feels like she's fading out of existence. And to put "Pamela the Missionary" in a coffin feels like it would mean not following God anymore. Needless to say, I would not be cool with that. But I also don't think it's true. At least, I don't think that giving up the job title of missionary has anything to do with following God or not. But I haven't figured out what following God is supposed to look like at this stage of life. And the tension between the old way of following him and this new, unknown way is painful and confusing, and is resulting in me feeling guilty nearly perpetually as I am not living up to my old expectations.

Regardless of how abstract the boxes are, though, it was nice to realize that all that's going on is that I'm moving again--only this time there will be no ocean to cross and no literal suitcases to pack. It's a time to sort out the old life from the new. A time to cross into just as much of an unknown territory as a foreign country was--existing as a person who is being made into "one flesh" instead of being a single person. If that were the only identity shift, I don't know if it would even be as intense as it is. But I suppose this has been a triple whammy. I've gone from living in Japan to living in America. From working as a church worker to becoming an administrative assistant in a sports institution. The past year and a half has been the identity lobotomy of a lifetime. Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself...I don't know.

But it was nice to read the article and finally feel like there is permission to cry over the self that I'm losing--and permission to sit back and contemplate which parts of me that feel threatened need to be protected and supported, and which parts I can pack up and put into storage or throw away. I may not really have as much control of the process as that, but it always puts me at ease if I can see my emotions in a context of healthy transitioning, rather than as a mysterious, destructive force. :) It's funny how looking at it that way seems to make me feel much more free to experience both sadness and joy in my upcoming marriage all at the same time.

Excitement for Health Care Reform

2010-09-29T13:03:00.002-05:00

This will probably be one of the only political posts you will ever see on this blog, but I just got a social action e-newsletter I receive which reminded me that the first wave of health care reform changes came into affect on Sept. 23rd. They don't do anything to change my uninsured condition, but the list of what is coming into affect still excites me a lot. It feels fair and good. And I am still an idealist at heart who likes to think that even major corporate insurance companies can be run in a way that is both sustainable and good. Joel and I had a lot of conversations about this back before we were dating and when we just started dating, because I am the idealist who celebrates whenever any additional "goodness" seems to enter the world, and he is the business major who wonders how insurance companies are going to stay standing now that they must dole out this "additional goodness". I also heard from a nurse practitioner who runs a street clinic that, if the whole nation got health insurance, we actually wouldn't have enough doctors to treat people.

There are problems. But there will be problems no matter what. And now, if our problem is trying to find a way to increase the number of doctors to what the nation actually needs . . . or if the problem is re-managing the exchange of money in the health care system so that insurance companies can stay afloat without abusing their clients . . . it feels better to me than the low income person who goes completely under financially because their health insurance dropped them after they became sick.

So, here's what I am excited about today. It's from www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform.

Starting this past week:
-There is a ban on discriminating against kids with pre-existing conditions. In 2014, no one seeking coverage can be discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition.
-Ban on insurance companies dropping coverage because of an unintentional mistake on your insurance application.
-Ban on insurance companies limiting coverage over a lifetime.
-Ban on insurance companies limiting choice of doctors
-Ban on insurance companies restricting ER care to a specific emergency room.
-Guarantee you a right to appeal to an independent 3rd party if you are denied coverage or have your treatment restricted.
-Covering young adults on parent's plan. You're allowed to be on your parents' plan now until the age of 26 or until you have job related insurance of your own.
-Covering preventive care with no cost. "Services like mammograms, colonoscopies, immunizations, pre-natal and new baby care will be covered and insurance companies will be prohibited from charging deductibles, co-payments or co-insurance".

I don't know about you, especially those of you out there who are economically minded enough to understand the financial impacts of these bans on the companies we rely on to even have insurance in the first place--but I'm pretty excited. :D

Wedding Planning Revisited

2010-08-20T12:46:00.002-05:00

I feel like I have done way too much talking about weddings this past week. I knew it was bad when I woke up this morning, having dreamed that my wedding was today and just exactly as planned as it is right now (a.k.a. nothing was planned). On top of the complete lack of anything being done, the wedding was going to start at 5pm, and it was 4:38 and my family had not shown up to drive me to the site, so I had to get completely ready for the wedding and plan whatever was happening for the reception afterwards in 22 minutes. This is when I have to wake up and decide it's time for a spiritual retreat or something.

My parents have been visiting this week, and we have gotten some time actually getting through the brainstorming about the wedding, which means potentially I'll be able to decide some details in the near future. Actually, a few of them already have been decided. I have a dress. :D And I am girlishly, irrationally, giddily excited about said dress. After my last blog entry, Joel and I, and with my parents' visit our families too, have been in pretty serious conversation about how to incorporate the spiritual aspect into our wedding, and also have the time for more intimate relationship with the people closest to us. The night I wrote the blog, Joel and I came to a late-night conclusion that we should have two wedding ceremonies...one on Friday that was casual, worshipful, and close community...one on Saturday that was bigger, more formal, more traditional.

Our families got together (at least in part--we were missing a few people (we missed you, Haidee!) last Sunday, and we got to discuss the two ceremonies idea with both sets of parents. I think the biggest thing I got out of the conversation was when my mom was questioning me about my desire to have genuine worship at my wedding. It's kind of an abstract desire...I know it. But there was something about the passion I felt in explaining to her what genuine worship is that made it clear to me: we need to have one ceremony. If we do something "real and genuine" in the first and something more for show in the second, it's just being afraid of people. Might as well go ahead and scare people by being spiritual and treating God "like He's real" in our actual ceremony. Anything else feels like hiding, and the Bible isn't too kind towards people who hide light or talents or anything else God has given. Hiding is much more my natural tendency...I have to fight it all the time. And it's a new thing to fight it when I'm making decisions along with Joel. But it was fun to see both of us come to the same realization together after the talk with our parents: we want the worship to shine.

Wedding Planning

2010-08-05T10:19:00.004-05:00

Sometime during college, my cousin Rachel was planning her wedding. She and her mom were rifling through magazines thinking about ways to be artistic. I can remember the excited rush to the back closet where her wedding dress was tucked secretly away, ready and preserved for a few months later. Rachel turned to me in the middle of all this and said, "Pamela, if anyone ever says to you: I'll give you $10,000 to elope instead of spending all this money on the wedding, you should take it." My friend Kat, who got married last summer, told me over skype when I told her I was engaged, "If I were doing it again, I would elope. Seriously." It seems that anyone planning a wedding starts thinking about eloping very quickly.

I can see why. The level of cultural expectation around weddings is paralyzing and insane. Anywhere you look for help in planning them, you can feel the pressure to be perfect, beautiful, and extravagant oozing off the page and into you. What is perhaps most stressful about it is that, while everyone admits the process is ridiculous, everyone has different ideas about what you can actually cut out of it. So, whereas it would be easy to buck the whole system if it were me by myself, a wedding by definition is a community affair. It's a relational thing. And so, while my inner value system is groaning in agony about materialism, fake showiness, and religion that is more about traditions than God, another part of me must say, "These showy aspects of weddings are important to people who are important to me...therefore I have to consider them."

But this feels so much to me like Christmas in America. We've stolen something beautiful and turned it into a duty-laden, stuff-focused, shallow game. So much so that we don't recognize the real thing when we see it. We don't expect Jesus to show up in a manger any more today than we did 2000 years ago.

I don't want to elope. But this is what I do wish I could do: I wish I could go out and find a simple white dress, not even necessarily floor length, and have Joel wear the kind of blue shirt that makes his eyes look vibrant and stunning. :) I would gather my immediate family, Joel's immediate family, and our closest friends and get married in my church in St. Paul. We'd lose track of the time praising our hearts out together, and be more focused on God than on Joel and me...I'd put the two of us in front just long enough to make our promises to God and each other. My brother and my dad would take pictures throughout the day, because they have nice cameras and rock at it. We'd all go out afterwards and eat Indian food (and get to order all the fun things that are normally too expensive to order) and go swing dancing and then come back home and eat pie and talk until midnight and laugh lots and lots. And then Joel and I would run away and find a little cabin or bed and breakfast or somewhere to be hidden away from the world for a week or so before reluctantly rejoining society. ;)

What is ironic is that it feels like that version of reality, which would cost probably a quarter of what a "normal" wedding will cost, would push more people's buttons than spending $8000-10,000 on a glamorous, busy, stressful day. But I write the paragraph above with tears of setsunai ~ longing for something that cannot be, because my reality has nothing to do with that paragraph. My reality right now is about choosing between $1000 and $2300 photography packages; it's about debating the fine line between using pale green, lavender, or light yellow as the backdrop for orange and yellow flowers; it's trying to figure out how to choose bridesmaids without feeling like I'm ranking the people I love most, or leaving someone out; it's about trying to choose an expensive dress that will be worn for all of six hours; it's about gathering addresses for a 150 person guest list.

I feel like a bird used to flying free who is being stuffed in a cage. And, lest you get me wrong, the cage isn't marriage. I can't wait to be married, and have no fears whatsoever about being with Joel for the rest of my life. Some days the nine-month countdown feels as eternal as three life sentences. But I want my wedding, as the rest of my life, to radiate the kind of freedom, life, joy, and love that are what the Kingdom of God is about. And that kind of life has nothing to do with money, the kind of beauty that fades, or even keeping as many people "happy" as possible. It's lived for an audience of One. It's lived in real relationship with God and people. It's a joyful declaration of the greatest news there has ever been. Sigh...I want to stay free.

A big life change

2010-07-15T00:10:00.004-05:00

I sat on my futon in Japan sometime the last few months in the country, mind spinning with thoughts about where I would be headed to next. Would God allow me to stay in Tokyo and be involved with the prayer movements that just seemed to be getting going? Was he going to send me to Hong Kong to take another global mission position? Would he send me back to the States forever? I can remember an unsettling feeling as I lifted my fear of this uncertainty up to God...and rather than feeling an empathetic comfort from the Holy Spirit, I felt joy. It was like the Spirit was barely able to hold back the excitement at what was coming, wished to tell me what it was, but couldn't. I was holding on too tightly to where I was at to hear it. But I could sense the emotion, and knew how different it was from how I was feeling. So, I tucked it away as a "Was that God?" type impression.

Just to warn you, this will probably be a girly entry. Which is to say, it is all about a boy. :)

Several weeks ago, Joel and I went out with his sister, and my good friend, Haidee, for lunch. Haidee's back in Japan now, and it was our day to have some time just the three of us. I think it was maybe the week before that I had told Joel we needed to be careful about talking like we were assuming we were getting married, because I kept leaving those conversations a little freaked out...feeling like I had promised something I wasn't quite ready to promise yet. But, somehow, Haidee guided us past that defense of mine in perhaps three seconds flat, and, soon afterwards, we weren't talking about "if" Joel and I would get married, but processing out many of the details, like exactly when, who would do the ceremony, what I should do about the fact that I hate ranking friends or choosing between people when I have to choose bridesmaids, etc. When Haidee left for the bathroom, Joel asked me rather concerned, "Are you going to be freaking out about this conversation tomorrow?" As it turned out, I wasn't. And that conversation blossomed into quite a few more which also should have created freaking out type emotions, but in fact have felt very natural. Conversations like: "So, when we get married, how do we feel about birth control?" and "What is the proper amount of time to wait before diving into the mission field, or some other kind of intense life situation, after getting married?" Without really meaning to, I think both of us walked into being engaged. Which we tried to keep secret...and Joel did an excellent job of it, whereas I told nearly everyone...I'm no good at keeping secrets like that. :)

Anyway, the engagement became official a week ago now. We had a fun day of getting engaged. Perhaps the most amusing part was that I started the day out positive that I was getting engaged that day, and by the time he actually got down on one knee I had become convinced we were on a "trick date" so that he could throw me off from knowing when he was really going to do it. Joel and I had discussed how I would be on to him immediately if we went on a real date, because both of us are more stay at home people, and don't tend to go out. Apparently even Joel wasn't sure whether this was the real thing or a trick date...he was just walking around with a ring burning a hole in his pocket.

We biked up to Como Park in the afternoon, and got to wander through some of the exhibits we hadn't seen before. One was a jungle exhibit. I always feel like such a little kid in Como Park...at least, I don't know many adults who can bubble over about seeing sting rays, a huge snake skin that had been shed off of an anaconda, or leaf cutter ants shuttling around leaves six times as big as they are. There was also a butterfly pavilion--my favorite. We got to see real blue morpho butterflies, which are amazingly drab and brown on the outside, and then they flip open and are a dazzling iridescent blue. We were the last ones out of the pavilion as it was closing, and one attendant joked to the other, "Should we lock in the two love birds?" But, she checked us for stowaway butterflies and let us on our way. :)

We wandered through the park after that, looking for any place to sit that would be romantic (a.k.a. not inhabited by other people, not overlooking Lexington Ave., and not the residence of 10,000 mosquitoes). When we couldn't find a place like that, we headed back to our bikes, which was pretty much when I gave up on a proposal happening that day, because Joel was completely indifferent about what we should do next. Joel isn't normally so opinionated about things like dinner, but I imagined he would be if he were trying to propose. As it was, he said he didn't care if we went home or if we went out. But he seemed to want to eat out, so we biked another two miles to a little Italian restaurant where my parents had gone occasionally when they were dating. It was lovely...salmon and ravioli and lovely chocolate dessert...and still no proposal. This was becoming quite an elaborate "trick date".

We got on our bikes to head home, and when we got to Como Park again, Joel led us through some back trails. I zoomed ahead of him to try to get up a steep hill, and when he said, "Wait!" shouted back, "No, you have to use momentum to get up the hill." So, we got to the top, and he said, "And now we go back down." I followed, a little perplexed, and soon we were on a side path and he was putting his bike down.

Joel gave a very well thought out speech, starting with our conversation the night before. He had been thinking about the life he'd always thought he'd have, with a business type job, a normal family and kids. I'd asked him if it was sad to realize that marrying me might mean letting the normal life go. He continued on with that for the proposal, letting me know that the relationship he had with me was much more important to him than all those dreams (*blush*). He said quite a bit more than that, but I'm guessing you all don't need the whole thing. :) Now, Joel and I had gone shopping for rings a couple weeks before this, but I was convinced that he hadn't had the time to actually buy one, and didn't think he had the means to until August. So, I am embarrassed to say that the first words out of my mouth after his whole lovely, serious speech just popped out of my mouth when he knelt down and pulled out a jewelry box. "You have a ring?!?!" Though I quickly got myself together enough (after a little bit of babbling) to remember that the correct response he was waiting for was a good clean, "Yes." And then we ran away from the 50,000,000 mosquitoes who didn't seem to respect our 'private moment'. ;)

I suppose the proposal is the part of the story that people like hearing about...and the part I was asked to write down. But really, it feels like a pretty small part of the story. Here's what is huge: I'm getting married to a guy who prays with me and for me on a moment's notice. He has worked harder to understand me than anyone I've ever met; and he understands me better than anyone else because of it. He cooks bread with me and runs downstairs to join me if I try to do his laundry without him. Once I was off unloading the dishwasher alone and he came running into the room and said, "No going off and being a servant without me!" It is so safe to give to him all the time, because he constantly looks out for me and protects me too. Even when my craziness about God pushes him too far, he still prays for God to protect my passion. And he even lets on from time to time that he is excited that we might end up a missionary couple off somewhere--even though he hasn't really imagined serving God that way before, and I know it would be a sacrifice for him.

There was one other random part to the proposal that should go down even though it was mostly a joke. :) Joel has played an online game called Travian for awhile (I really hope I spelled that right...haha). He's really good about asking permission before doing computer things while I'm around, and I always jokingly tell him that, as long as the war he's involved in is a just war, I'm fine with it. But, it's end game in Travian right now, which means everyone is racing to build wonders of the world. One of Joel's Travian friends found out he was going to propose to me, and so he renamed their wonder of the world, "Pamela, marry Joel?" Joel knows I don't care much for Travian, but I have to admit I was a little touched to have a wonder of the world named after me. ;)

So, I should be getting married in April next year, about when the lease on our community house runs out. I'm hoping to have a nice God-centered wedding ceremony, and excited to plan it. (aside from all those detail things like flowers and photographers...oi...) However, if I start talking about everything I'm excited about right now, this will become a 20 page entry instead of 10. But now you're all in the know. :)

Strong Men

2010-06-25T12:26:00.003-05:00

These past two weeks have been spent with a drastic increase in working hours for me. I was coaching gymnastics about 14 hours a week, but these past two weeks have been our annual summer gymnastics camp. I've actually gotten used to the alarm going off at seven, though I have been reaffirmed in the fact that having a full time job always feels like not having time to live. I need time for my close relationships so that I have time to pray without feeling pressured about the people I'm 'ignoring' by spending time with God. But this is not a reflection on full time work and how to balance life...I was struck by one of the gymnastics coaches this week, and the effect that he had on the gymnasts.

My group at camp is "Group One". They are the rec gymnasts--the ones mastering basic skills. They're my favorite, but not so well liked by many of the other coaches. However, one of the big, buff, super spotter guys has taken quite a liking to my group. You can always hear his voice booming across the gym. He is always 100% engaged while coaching them. He cheers them on. He jokes with them. He is the one shoving them out of their comfort zones.

I was most surprised the other day when he took a moment to correct some bad behaviors that had been going on. One girl had a perfect back handspring (jumping backwards to your hands and then going over) with a spot. I was spotting her, doing nothing, and trying to gently nudge her forward to doing it by herself. He saw what was going on, and came over and boomed, "You're a scardy cat! You're always baulking on things. You're too good to be baulking. You would have all these moves already if you weren't so scared all the time." My insides were squirming at the intensity. Then, she moved over to his station and he boomed at her again, this time adding, "If you baulk one more time on floor, every person in the gym is going to get 50 push-ups." This was loud enough for most of the 30 some girls in the gym to pay attention. But I was shocked...there were no tears, no drama, no nothing. The girl went on practicing without hesitating even one more time, completely confidently.

Another girl has been sitting on the sidelines with various minor injuries for the vast majority of the two weeks she's been here. This same coach came up to her and said, "What are you doing lying around?? You're the laziest kid in the gym." She protested that she wasn't, and that she was hurt. He just repeated, "You're the laziest kid here." This girl, also, was up and joining the group with no tears or visible hard feelings within thirty seconds.

Why is there no drama? Because the girls trust that this coach genuinely likes them for one. But I think there's something bigger...I think when a guy steps up and takes a stand like that, assuming that it's out of love and focus on the other person and not our of a temper...some of that strength actually gets passed on to the people he's working with. We need the people in our life who can take all the strength they have to tell us, "You're too good to be failing this way!" And, for whatever reason, when a guy is willing to do this, it brings a special kind of freedom. I wish we saw more male strength in our churches!

Influencing Younglings

2010-06-18T12:39:00.002-05:00

Today I sat down to lunch with two of the other coaches, one of whom has a young daughter. She said to me, "Brooke said something funny yesterday...we were playing tennis and she came up to me and said, 'Mommy, I want you to sell our cars.'" The mom was confused about where this had come from until Brooke said, "Pamela walks and rides her bike to work. It's good for the earth. We should sell our cars."

Hee...I remember the girls reacting when they found out I didn't have a car yesterday, but I didn't figure this would translate so much into action. Yay for little kids and their hearts that are so ready to give up everything for what seems good!

Best. Birthday Present. Ever.

2010-06-17T09:08:00.003-05:00

I got an email yesterday for my birthday! It was from Ayumi, one of my dear Japanese friends. Ayumi and I bonded over computer slideshows of our trips to Africa. She's the one who told me how to get to India to volunteer at Mother Theresa's houses. Like a lot of other Tokyoites, She is always in motion, and following her when we would ride bicycles taught me more about how to weave through people and maintain speed on Japanese streets than anything else. She self-described herself as 50-60% Christian the first year I was in Japan, and we used to sit in cafes and talk about God and deep things until midnight...and then some of her other Christian friends did some hurtful things like tell her that they couldn't really be friends with her if she didn't become a Christian. I lent her a book about Christianity and she vanished for a year, returning to let me know she was worried I didn't want to be her friend either since she couldn't become a Christian or believe in God. Though I reassured her that what she believed wouldn't affect our my friendship towards her, we haven't talked much since that first year at Hongo...she showed up from time to time to ask for help on English corrections for resumes or papers, but she seemed to have that wall of politeness up that tells me all is not quite well in a relationship. I was starting to fear I wouldn't hear from her again.

I woke up yesterday to the first email from Ayumi in eons. It was wishing me a happy birthday, and then also that she had some news to tell me. She got baptized on April 25th!!! I've been walking around at gymnastics these past two days with a secret smile. It's one of those joys that there is literally no way to express in words. There is no way to write down how much it means to see someone I've spent hours speaking with...prayed for with tears...longed for so badly it ached... I long stopped hoping that I would actually *see* Ayumi start following Jesus. She's the first person I've ever seen cross that line.

Return to the virtual world

2010-06-01T12:58:00.002-05:00

My memorial day was spent running two errands I've been wanting to run for a long time. One was to take my poor, crippled computer into the Apple Store to figure out why it was dead and how much it would cost to make it undead. The other was to visit a bicycle store and continue my search to find a bike I will love enough to ride on a regular basis. This has been a crazy season of trusting God for money. I made the decision a couple months ago that, no matter how much I was living paycheck to paycheck, I was going to tithe anyway. I've lectured people before about how tithing isn't a legalistic thing, but a declaration of trust. It's one thing to be able to tell that sermon. It's a completely different thing to look at a $500 paycheck, $375 of which will be used for rent...to say nothing of other bills...and decide to place a tenth of it back in God's hands. Questions come up like, "If God is merciful, why would he expect this of me? He does want me to be able to eat, right?"

Then things happen like broken computers, moves away from the person who was providing a mattress for me...

It's been a strange season of life financially. I walk into stores knowing what I have to buy, and those things are on sale. Much less supernaturally feeling, but no less God's blessing, friends and family members have been so generous with me. My parents visited and bought Becc and I a cartload of groceries--which was the reason we had food that month when we had to pay all kinds of up-front rent. My parents were also the reason I was able to buy a bicycle yesterday. Friends have fed me dinner so that we could afford to spend time eating together. Theresa (my old housemate) gave me and Becc so much I will be in her debt forever. Maybe the cool thing about this season is gaining the ability to be thankful and to receive with open hands. I think being able to receive freely and with joy is one of the heart abilities that makes it possible to give cheerfully in return. It's realizing that everything on earth is God's, and that He has been generous with me to such an extent that there isn't fear in poverty. And there is a kind of crazy, cheerful generosity that is possible when there is little. I now feel this little surge of victory every time I'm able to give away my tithe. That knowledge that, if God didn't exist and care for me, it would be insanity to put money in the offering plate.

When I was getting ready to go home to the States, one of the things that made me (in a very Pamela way) excited was the thought that I would have the ability to trust God in the midst of an economic crisis. But my imagination of this was still very American...I imagined that I would have plenty, and that I would be able to give, and open my home, etc. I did not imagine that my vision for a house would become a safe place for my sister as she needed a new start. Or a safe place for my boyfriend as he is in the ranks of unemployed people, and probably in a stage in life where God is teaching him how to receive and trust too. Funny how we always imagined that the poor will be strangers. I certainly never imagined that I would hardly be making enough money to know exactly how things would be taken care of. There was a point when I was making a list in my head of ways poverty was far less romantic than I had somehow previously pictured. I think much of this list was composed in January. Because poverty means you can't skip work if you're sick but well enough to make it there, even if it is 0 degrees outside and you have to walk for half an hour.

On the other hand, living with little gives opportunities for God to show off in his generosity. And yesterday was one of those days. I brought my computer into the Apple Store because I knew that they would tell me what was wrong with it for free. I assumed this would mean I would have to hide away any extra money I could earn for potentially months and then hopefully get it fixed. Because something else I've learned these past few months is that I'd rather have a working computer than a mattress. I need to be connected with my "community across an ocean". I also need to be able to rest by researching silly things (I had no idea how often I do this until my computer was gone...). So, I scheduled an appointment, gave it to them, explained all my problem solving attempts.

The apple store "genius" told me that apple will fix anything hardware for $280 if we shipped it in. This is a flat rate...so, even if the display, the board, and the hard drive were fried, they would replace all three for $280. This was already sounding much better than I'd feared. Then he said they could possibly fix it in house, and booted it from an external hard drive. The diagnostic showed that it was indeed my hard drive that was fried. He asked a few more questions, and then told me, "Actually, we're authorized to replace a hard drive on this model for free, and it will have more space than the one you have now." I have no idea how this all worked out...I didn't ask questions aside from, "Are you for real?!?!" I have no warranty on my computer. They just...gave me a hard drive. I have a working computer.

I don't believe in a prosperity gospel. I'm bothered greatly by the idea that believing in Jesus means we're entitled to anything material. But sometimes love is spoken in material ways, and God speaks that language too. He is not a Santa Claus, granting our every wish and meeting our American materialistic desires. But he does provide, and he can be trusted, and we can give victoriously and generously because of it.

The Lord is my shepherd; I have everything I need. :-)

House Updates

2010-03-23T16:12:00.003-05:00

My computer is not well at the moment, and I'm using the last four minutes of my time at the local library to jot down some updates here. Make that three minutes. :)

I've been spending more time with Rachel and Lexi, two of the girls who, God willing, will be living with me starting in May. So far we are sharing the struggle of finding a place to live. We had just found a place that seemed wonderful...only to have another group get in the day after us and turn in their applications immediately. We'll hear this weekend whether that house is still open to us or not. So...a time of waiting and seeking yet again. It's nice to have people along with me for it now.

Anyway...less than a minute before this computer logs me out, but that's what I'm up to at the moment. Hopefully God shows us our new home soon!

Earthquakes from across the ocean

2010-03-15T17:09:00.002-05:00

In church on Sunday during the prayers, the pastor in the church I was at lifted up countries that were recovering from earthquakes. He mentioned Haiti, Chili, Indonesia, and Japan. That caught my interest...he had included Japan in the group he was asking God to send workers and financial support to as they recovered. After the service, another man approached me and mentioned that a 6.6 magnitude earthquake had hit Tokyo. At this point, I'm actually getting a little nervous...could "the" earthquake have hit Tokyo at a point in my life when I am *not* a missionary there?!?! (Yes...I would actually be crushed to be on the other side of the ocean if a major earthquake hit Tokyo...I'm just crazy that way...)

I pulled Joel aside to let him know that I needed a computer. And once I found one, I was reminded why reports of earthquakes in Japan from Americans just shouldn't be taken seriously. The report I found was interviewing an office worker who said, "The office was shaken up, but nothing fell off the shelves." ...yep. Tokyo is not quite in need of prayers for relief.

Thinking about how I would feel if an earthquake hit Tokyo and I wasn't there still made my thoughts spin all day, though.

The weekend with Joel and his family was wonderful. And today was a very good first talk with my potential housemate Jennifer. And in the midst of God calling on this side of the ocean for the time being, and so many people and visions and churches to love over here, I still feel the ache for Japan. That's a good thing, I suppose.

Houses and Trust

2010-03-08T13:23:00.003-06:00

I've spent the past month or so of blog silence dating a guy named Joel and trying to set up the ministry house I mentioned in an earlier blog entry. That being said, there haven't been too many dull moments, and it seems that life is particularly "exciting" right about now. And I mean exciting in every sense of the word...from thrilling to terrifying.

This morning, I am sitting trying to respond to an email from one potential housemate. I need to email the other potential housemate too. I need to talk to another friend who needs to know what's going on with moving last week if not earlier. A communication with my landlord also may become necessary. Yesterday I spent probably two hours with God at church, trying to get my heart to claw its way back to trust. Not that figurative, abstract kind of trust...but the kind of trust that is real and necessary for me to move forward with this vision...or backward with it, for that matter. This morning, I find my heart right back in an un-trusting place. I actually found myself whining in my head as I tried to figure out who to communicate with first, "I have nothing solid to stand on as I make these decisions! No concrete, solid information!" The realization of the wrongness of what I had just thought was instantaneous...but I had still thought it. I can only imagine God saying: "Ouch." As though the solid place I have to stand is my own knowledge of what will come to pass...sigh.

From a worldly perspective, I suppose there is good reason to be afraid. On March 1st, I only knew that my sister, the good friend of a friend who was in need of somewhere to move, and me would be living together. So, I had to call my landlord and say: "I can't promise you I can stay in the house, go ahead and show it." I was ready to lay this vision down on the alter of sacrifice again.

Then, within the next week, I get word from two potential people who are both very excited about the possibility of living in an intentional, Christian community. The first one lifted my heart so much, even as I could only imagine Jesus saying, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" about not telling the landlord I would stay despite lack of physical evidence it would be okay. By the second, I had done a little more research into finding a new house for us. Needless to say, there are no prospects yet that do not leave this little, potential community homeless in May. I checked out every idea I had last week...and couldn't even find any possibilities with a hint of an open door.

Trust. I don't know if I would be so convicted of my lack of trust these past two weeks if it weren't for my relationship with Joel and what it teaches me about God. My entire relationship with Joel has been founded on mutual trust. That started with one conversation until 2am back at Thanksgiving with his family (before we were dating). Joel looks back on that conversation and says that he just knew I was a person who could be trusted. I don't know if I ever trust quite that instinctively, for whatever reason. But it has felt like God is saying: "Trust him." And so, whenever I find myself constructing familiar walls: walls of not wanting to tell him what I need, walls of not wanting to tell him if I'm scared or am weak, walls of trying to hide the intensity with which I relate to God and experience things spiritually...the reminder comes up that I have chosen to trust Joel. And I am constantly delighted to see what happens when I do.

The unexpected thing is that, the decision I make multiple times a week to trust him, actually is trust itself. Trust is not an expectation that Joel will help me or support me in a given way. Choosing to trust IS trust. It is placing my real self in his hands. For the first time in my life, the statement: "Love always trusts" finally makes sense to me.

So, having watched myself trusting Joel, and watched Joel's responses to my trust...it is easy to see how my attitude towards God with this whole crazy house search is, in fact, wildly insulting to Him. I may not be able to tell these potential housemates that I'm just meeting that I have it all worked out. But I can invite them along, give them the freedom to come follow Jesus with me or be free to follow him elsewhere, and then see how He provides for us. Will He give me this vision I've been hoping for? I don't know. Will he allow us to go forward in this in a way that feels safe? I doubt it. Will it look anything like what I am imagining? Probably not. I hope it is 10,000,000 times better, because His ideas always are. I am in a relationship with the very real God who created me, holds up the whole world, and for whom all things are possible. Not only that, I've *witnessed* Him providing in unexpected, timely ways that show He is taking care of me and my ministry. I have no reason to doubt His faithfulness.

Please pray. I depend on Him completely to even have a roof over my head in May. And it is taking everything I have to go forward in Him verses in my own strength and plan.

Two photos from the weekend

2010-01-18T12:45:00.004-06:00

These are my level 5 gymnasts, looking very proud because they won 3rd place as a team at the meet we attended on Saturday.

This weekend I baked bread for the first time, and it turned out amazing! I'm very impressed with this new cookbook that I got for Christmas called More With Less. So...this is high protein bread, made with a portion of soy flour. The lesson learned was to not start baking bread at 8:00pm. But, fortunately, refrigerating the dough once it had nearly risen all the way and then baking it the next morning went well. ;-)

Excitement and a Vision

2010-01-08T12:09:00.002-06:00

I've never been one to enjoy change if it means that the people I love will no longer live in the same city as I do. Any other kind of change, I welcome, encourage, and even strive for...but I tend to want to hold very tightly to the people who make a place into a home. So, this past week, even as I told Theresa,"Oh, there have been so many changes recently, it doesn't register so much to have another one coming up...I'm happy that you feel you'll be moving towards your calling," even as I can look at Angela and say, "It's so great that you have a job now!" I have found myself on the inside just groaning and wanting to avoid most people altogether.

It's nothing that the people have done...it's just that, if all goes as planned, nearly everyone I know in the Cities will be gone in April or May...and I need time to rest in God's arms and to allow Him to remind me that I have a home and a stable place no matter how many people dear to me are called to follow Him in a different location. I need time with Him for Him to remind me that He is good, that He knows what is going on, that He can be trusted. I want so badly to be a person who can serve Him with or without a vision; with or without solid relationships in my life; with or without being "in the mission field". And when I am aware that He is my home, all of that becomes so much more possible.

I've been doing a lot of imagining futures recently. And this week I have had one, more simple question for God, which is: "Do you want me to build any kind of foundation in the Twin Cities, or not?"

Before last night, I had been laughing at the idea of staying in my house beyond April. Rent is $1500 plus utilities...I would have to find new housemates and everyone I know is planning to move...I am sleeping on a borrowed bed that will disappear in April...I don't have any furniture at all...

But in the back of my mind this week, I have been quietly thinking, "I have a house. That's all I've wanted for a few years now...a house to have intentional Christian community in and to do ministry out of...all I need are the people." And my thoughts have kept playing the song that was in my thoughts when I first moved into this place, "This is home, yeah I'm finally back where I belong, where I belong. Yeah this is home, I've been searching for a place of my own, now I've found it." This song always springs to mind at exactly the moments when this house should feel *least* like home...when it's obvious that the current situation is very temporary.

Last night, it suddenly occurred to me that, if I am free to find my own housemates in April, and if I must start completely from scratch, I can look for whoever I want. I can specifically seek out Christians who are interested in living in an intentional, missional community. I can find people who want to pray together, seek God together, and use the house they live in for Christian outreach. We do so much! We could prayer walk the streets, get to know our neighbors and do random acts of service for them, we could invite homeless people over for dinner, we could invite neighboring college students in for prayer retreats and be a safe place of rest for them, we could take in teens who are pregnant and have been kicked out of the home because of it and just love them...okay, so those are the sorts of things *I'd* like to do...but first and foremost we could pray together, get to know each other, and take off on whatever visions we share. The goal would be to be generous and gutsy with everything God gives us.

And what better way to start connecting to the Christian community in America than by actually being myself? Rather than trying to pretend to be an ordinary Sunday Christian, slowly working my way into the community, I can just enter churches in my usual, "Come along on this crazy vision!" style. Some of my best relationships in Tokyo were made when I was running around asking anyone and everyone to pray 24/7 with me.

This doesn't mean that I'm planning to stay in America long term...and, in fact, this vision is only about 13 hours old, which means it still might fade or change. But, as I pray this week about whether to start building connections here, I still haven't gotten the sense of any open doors for ministry elsewhere. So, if I've still got some time in the Cities, I'd rather use it doing crazy things for God. I suppose the next couple weeks will tell if this is yet another wacky stage of transition or a vision God has placed on my heart.

A long overdue update

2010-01-05T11:41:00.003-06:00

I think I have written 8 blog drafts since my last entry, so I felt like I was communicating a little better than I was...*sheepish grin* This is actually pretty typical of my communication struggles in general...I've thought so much at people in my head, that it never occurs to me that they can't know it because it hasn't "been published".

So, here's what's up: Bud is fine, but probably not in charge of writing a book anymore. While we were working on the book, he often talked about things that had been sacrificed with his own family for this job...and it is with some joy that I watch him loosen up on what he felt a duty to do and focus on his family more. So, this leaves me with a gymnastics coaching job and many, many questions about what else I should be doing, either in the present or in the future. I moved into a new house in St. Paul at the beginning of December. I now live with two wonderful ladies, Angela and Theresa. Theresa is about my mom's age, a nurse practitioner in geriatrics, with her heart truly in organic farming. Angela is at a similar level of unemployment to me, and is a music teacher who is currently doing odd jobs and teaching music lessons in at least three locations around Minnesota.

Both of my housemates are of Bohemian ancestry, which is amusing because I'm about three quarters Bohemian--my mom's side of the family is 100%. When they found out I was Bohemian too, it was during our first meeting, and Angela asked, "Are you stubborn?" I smiled as innocently as possible.

I learned shortly after moving in that both ladies were Catholic, and both had wanted to become Sisters at one point in life. I think I walked around grinning a very silly grin at how awesome God is the day I found that out.

In general, I've been impressed by how safe I've felt in the new house. They managed to get me to play piano for them my first night there...and even somewhat unapologetically. By maybe the second week we had decided to do the evening prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours together whenever we could. Our schedules don't match up so well, but the times we have prayed together have been a blessing.

In the middle of all of this, I applied for an English teaching job in Japan, and then I didn't finish the application process. I'm finding myself extremely reluctant to teach English as a career, even for the sake of returning to Japan as a tent-making type missionary. I am longing for a job as a church-worker missionary. The struggle is that I can't do that through the ELCA. I've found a couple mission agencies that I love. They all involve fundraising. When I talked to one of them on the phone, they let me know that I could apply, but that I probably wasn't connected enough in the States for a fundraising mission job. They suggested I take a year or two and keep building a foundation of relationships, and maybe get a master's degree from a seminary or something in the meantime.

I find this insanely frustrating. And I've been surprised these past few weeks at how strong the longing to return to Japan and the mission field has been.

It seems almost amusing that anyone would think I am at a place of building stable foundations for anything. What I'm about to say might sound like whining, but it's really not. I more look at these events and can't help but chuckle at how ridiculous the current lack of stability is. I have a job...and then Bud has a stroke and that is gone. The state of Minnesota was supposed to send me a driver's license and never did (at least, they said it would be within 6 weeks...and it's been 10). My cell phone vanished in between my apartment and Haidee's house over Thanksgiving break when I wasn't using it. Because I have no Minnesota driver's license and they voided my Wyoming license, I wanted to bring my passport to the airport this Christmas. I searched for it for two hours, taking apart literally everything that I own, the night before I left...all that remains of my passport is the sneaking remnant of a memory of seeing it in my orange binder (I carried it around to make a copy of it when I was applying for the job in Japan). It is not in my orange binder, where it belongs, or in any of my belongings that I could find. Thankfully, they let me through airport security with a voided license.

Both of my housemates are also in a state of transition. Angela is applying for a job today, and if she gets it, she'll move out--but probably still see us some weekends. And as for Theresa, I don't really understand how she ever ended up living in the city in the first place. Her heart is quite obviously in the country. :-) She told me when I came back last night that her move out date might be earlier than summer, like she had been predicting. She might end up leaving the house in April. This doesn't particularly surprise me--and I'm happy for Theresa. She belongs on a farm growing her own vegetables and worshiping God through passionately caring for the earth that He's made. And despite the fact that my home is temporary, I still feel this complete certainty that I am where I belong living in this house.

So...I may have to laugh at anyone who implies that I should be building stability in the States right now. But this has been a season of seeing God's love in very tangible ways. Tokyo was not a place of relational wealth. I had dear, precious close friends there...all of whom lived across a huge city. It was a place where I lived alone and had to reach out very intentionally for every contact. Living with people who love me and whom I can love is healing in a way I can't express. Living in a place where I am enjoyed, but not needed and not a burden is freeing me to love and serve in ways I normally can't...I race outside on snowy days to try to be the one who shovels our driveway, and I can spend an hour outside with the snow grinning from ear to ear at the thought of Theresa and Angela coming home to find they don't have to shovel. I've yet to actually achieve that goal...the job is big enough that they usually come home and immediately come out and help me. But being able to shovel without feeling a trace of duty or guilty obligation is so wonderful.

So, that's the long story of what's been going on with me in my Minnesota life. I appreciate your prayers so much...my longing to get back to the mission field right now is really great. But whatever my emotions are up to, I want to follow God. Sorting out my own desires and what God is saying is trickier than normal right now, but I know from experience that His voice will come just in time...and probably not a moment sooner. I think the parable of the virgins waiting for the bridegroom and keeping their lamps lit is much what listening for God entails...I want to be there with my ears open, my lamp lit, when he comes and says it's time to move forward.

Real Life...Sigh

2009-11-15T15:02:00.003-06:00

Bud--the man I'm working for to help write the story of Lutheran Health Care: Bangladesh, apparently had a stroke on Friday. I don't know how bad is was, but it sounds like his speech has been affected. :-/ I don't know anything more than that yet. But prayers appreciated.

God apparently is quite keen to get it into my head that He is my stability. I'm so glad I know Him.

Follow Up on Righteousness

2009-10-29T15:58:00.001-05:00

So, apparently I freaked out at least my parents with my last entry. I wish I could say things well. But, I found another blog that explains what I'm talking about better, I think. It's here.

I think one of the reasons these things I'm figuring out are so radical to me is that I have always kind of lumped sin and The Law into one. So, when Paul does something like chew out the Galatians for 4 chapters about relying on the law, and then spends the chapter after that telling them, "Don't follow the sinful nature!", I get confused, and have to figure out what that means for me and people I love.

One of these days I'll figure this Christianity thing out. ;-)

Holiness, Righteousness, and Truth (Oh my?)

2009-10-27T11:32:00.003-05:00

I have no way to make this short. My apologies in advance for how long this entry is going to be...

At the Holy Spirit Conference this past August, a speaker got up just after a period of sweet worship and challenged our group. He said that the people in this group were to be praised for their seeking the Spirit, but that sometimes we fell short in the truth department. He went on to talk about righteousness...and there was a mind blowing idea for me in this. He said that, if one does a word study on righteousness, you'll find that it is a lot more than being a good person. A righteous person is one who will stand adamantly for truth. (I'd like to look into this a little more to see where he got it). He believed that God had shown him that one would be hard pressed to find three righteous people in all of America.

It was one of those nights where God was so close that it was easy to mutter rash prayers, like, "God, if you will show me how to be righteous, I will follow you." These past few weeks I've decided that any time I've sung the song, "Righteousness, righteousness is what I long for..." it's probably been a lie. Sigh. I am sometimes so content to allow people around me to stand deceived. There are a million strategies I employ almost daily to keep people from knowing what I believe. Truth is not such a popular thing in America or Japan. We prefer comfort. And it's much easier for me to cater to the need for comfort of those around me than to allow any truths I believe to come out and throw that off.

I think of words like righteousness and holiness as religious words that have lost any real meaning in the English language. They're most often used to reflect hollow piety. I suspect that most Americans using the word "righteous" mean 'self-righteous, Pharisaical, and hypocritical'. And this is a far cry--and a twisting--of the true meaning. True righteousness and holiness, I believe, would result in a kind of courageous, strong beauty. The kind of greatness that Jesus lived as he both lowered himself to wash his disciples feet and reamed the Pharisees with passionate truth.

A little while ago, a friend's comment left me reeling for several days. It was this: "God's first priority is not actually us...it is his glory...we are the crown of creation, true, but sometimes he just wants someone to go around preaching judgment and calling people to account...not for their good, but actually for their destruction." This comment overlapped with me reading Romans 9 and feeling as though I actually understood it for the first time...what it might mean when Paul says, "What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory" (9:22-23). These are the kinds of statements that leave me quivering. They clash violently with everything I grew up knowing...with every way I've learned and sought to serve God. They are the kinds of realizations that make me identify completely with Isaiah falling on his face and declaring woes on himself and his people upon getting a glimpse of the Holy One.

Two nights ago I sat down with the most intense person I have ever met. He's a Nigerian Christian named Miracle. We had prayed together at a student mission organization at Concordia, and he'd decided we should get together and talk some more. It felt something like an interview. We sat down across from each other on some couches and he would ask me question after question with a blank, unreadable expression on his face. He is, without question, one of those black-and-white truth people I would (affectionately) label a prophet.

Perhaps the most amusing part was when I was saying how I didn't know if I would go back to Japan or not. He kind of smiled and said, "You'll go back." I started to argue with him just because he was so sure about it, and so he stopped me, and this followed:

M: What if God says, "Go back to Japan, but it's going to be hard." Will you go?
P: Of course.
M: What if he says, "Go to Japan, but they're going to torture you for following me," Will you go?
P: If God says it, I'm going.
M: What if he says, "Go, but they're going to kill you." What then?
P: If God says 'go', I'm going! The consequences have nothing to do with it.

He sat back against the couch and said very matter-of-factly: "You'll go back". I tried to insist to him that I would answer any question beginning with "If God says..." with an "of course!". So, he then asked me, "Okay, so God says go to South Africa. Are you going?" I said yes. Thirty seconds later, I said, "But...I don't really think I'm going to South Africa." He just laughed at me then and wanted to know what was holding me back from returning to Japan.

...the power of good questions.

So, I "passed" all of the questions in his interview until we got to his question, "How does a person get to heaven?" Apparently what's been bugging him the most about being with all these Lutherans is the idea of 'grace alone'. So, we argued about this until Haidee came to rescue me sometime around 12:45am. His argument is that an unrighteous person will not be saved.

I ended up at home the next day devouring the entire book of Romans...and I am amazed at how much righteousness enters into this book about grace and mercy. Paul talks about salvation as being "slavery to righteousness". There are verses like this:

"To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger." (2:7-8)
"For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ" (5:17)
"But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (5:21)
"But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life" (6:22)
"And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. ... For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" (8:3-4;13-14).

Here's what I make of this...righteousness is one of the fruits of salvation. So often as Lutherans, we focus on that moment of salvation...we are well aware that God can and does forgive any sin...and so we might go around living our lives like we aren't any different and like we haven't been given a spirit of power for the sake of righteousness. I think Miracle is right to be frustrated with us about that. A Christian should look different from a non-Christian. A person who has been bought out of slavery to sin and made a slave to Christ shouldn't be walking around in bondage to sin--not in bondage to addictions, to jealousy, to anger, to fear, to pornography, to greed, to idolatry. We can't win these battles in any way other than by the power of God's Spirit...and that is where grace comes in. Grace doesn't mean sitting apathetic towards our sin knowing that God has accounted for it. If the fruit of our salvation is apathy, it might be time to question the reality of our faith--and whether we know this Jesus Christ that we profess to believe in.

Fondness for my boss

2009-10-20T12:32:00.003-05:00

I've realized over the past week that I am growing exceptionally fond of my 80-year-old, retired doctor, boss. I wish I had a picture of him to show you. He has wispy white hair and wears high-top sneakers. He talks in a way that's somewhat dry, and he's never said goodbye on the telephone...he just kind of hangs up when he figures the conversation is over. But this past week I'm starting to recognize the way he cares about people. He's a protector. And I am exceptionally fond of protectors...as long as they aren't the clingy, worried type. My lifestyle tends to alarm clingy, worried type protectors...and that's a shut-down, because usually the aspects that worry them are the paths I've chosen out of love and faith.

Bud's lifestyle is probably equally "unwise" to mine...at 80 years old, he's still out organizing conventions on immigration churches, to say nothing of the book we're working on. A couple weeks ago he scratched himself and started bleeding all over the place and he just slipped out to the hospital and came back an hour later so we could do a four hour interview with one of the missionaries who helped start the hospital in Bangladesh. I joked with him on the way to the car yesterday, "So, you're going to rest in heaven, huh?" He just grinned.

I was reminded today that Bud, retired though he may be, is definitely still a doctor, though. I had a slight, slight, slight fever on Sunday. And so we had an interview on Monday and I was having a little trouble concentrating because of my cold. I apologized to Bud for not being quite with it...though in our conversation in the car on the way back from the interview we decided that the trouble concentrating had been mutual and was possibly due to our interviewee's tendency to switch subjects very quickly and then ramble about them. But, today I got a phone call from Bud--a typical 1.5 minute long one. It went something like this:

B: Umm...are you alright?
P: Yeah...I just have a cold. That's all.
B: But...is it getting better and not worse?
P: Yeah. Yeah, it's getting better.
B: Well, do you want to rest tomorrow?
P: Really, it's just a cold. I can do anything.
B: I think you'd better rest tomorrow too. We'll meet on Thursday.
P: Well...if that's when you want to meet, but really...
B: *click*

I don't know what it was about that short conversation that left me feeling loved. Even though I'm still sitting here thinking that a headache and sore throat do not justify a day off.

In Which I Laugh at Myself

2009-10-11T21:05:00.002-05:00

I have a tendency to give other people the advice I actually need to hear. My younger sister has been trying to figure out her path in life recently. And when she went from, "I'm going to culinary school" to "I'm going to be an aquarium scientist!"...I told her, "Just give yourself permission to be lost for a little while! You don't have to figure out your life just yet."

Do you ever have those times in life when you desperately want God to have spoken, and so you keep trying to see his speaking everywhere...yet he hasn't really spoken yet? I have this problem sometimes. Especially during transitions. My projections of the future have been flopping from continent to continent like crazy these past few weeks. It's looked something like this:

-I'm pretty sure God's not going to let me go back to Japan. But, India has been popping up a lot. I think I might be going there.
-On second thought, maybe I should go to med school...
-Never mind...I still hate needles. On a different note...that guy was really interesting and he might move to Afghanistan to do Bible translating. We could get married, and...
-No planning marriages with people you've only met once, Pamela! Moving on...isn't it interesting how easy it was to pray for Albania compared to other countries...and there is church planting ministry there! Maybe I'll look for mission work in Albania.
-Though I also have a heart for Burma...but that's tricky. I wonder where I'd need to be to become part of that...
-No, I think I might be going back to Japan after all. In fact, I'm going to join a ministry fairly similar to the one I was just a part of...
-What, am I crazy?! I really don't want English teaching to be my ministry anymore. It drains energy from the ministries I think are really important...*returns to Asian Access website for the first time in several months* ...maybe I'll be a church planter in Japan.

This all seems suspiciously like an indication that God has not spoken yet about what I'm doing next. But, the fun part about discerning is that, God actually is speaking. I just won't recognize the pieces until He thinks I'm ready. I was realizing that a lot of the countries I'm attracted to have something in common: they're underdog countries in the spiritual world.

Did you know that Albania has a super high concentration of Muslims? I ached for them while we were praying just thinking of how many lies they've heard throughout their existence. Under the iron curtain, their government told them they were the most developed nation in the world. The curtain fell and the truth was obvious. The lies continue, though...as the outside world tries to tell them that material things will bring the satisfaction they want. Islam promises satisfaction through a religious system and one's own holiness rather than Christ's. I yearn for truth in Albania.

Burma / Myanmar grabbed my heart when the cyclone hit during my first 24/7 week at Hongo. That meant I had plenty of time to pray for things, and, not knowing *anything* about Burma I pleaded that God would use the disaster to open the doors for His love to make it in. Only later did I realize how serious the need for this is. I looked everywhere for a group to go with to do volunteer work in Burma during that summer vacation...the government thwarted the Assemblies of God group I found. We were told by our Christian contact we would be allowed to go and be driven around to see the damage, but if we tried to rebuild anything we would be arrested. We didn't go.

Though the outside is completely different, I think Japan has a lot in common with Albania and Burma. I know I can't put that into words.

I don't know if God will give me a chance to touch all these places that I love...or a chance for my love for Albania or Burma to actually be tested and purified into something deep and real rather than a surface emotion. But it's been a good realization these past few weeks: I can serve God anywhere. There isn't a corner of this world that doesn't need missionaries. And I think the front line of mission work is going to be defined more by *who* God has made us to be than *where* God has placed us. There is a kind of freedom in that...freedom to laugh at myself when I don't have a clue and make ridiculous grand assumptions about where I'm going. And freedom to continue to be a missionary all the same, because that is who I am, wherever I am.

Going Fishing

2009-09-29T22:05:00.000-05:00

While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him,

"Simon, three men are looking for you. So get up and go downstairs.

Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them."

Peter went down and said to the men, "I'm the one you're looking for. Why have you come?"

(Acts 10:19-21)

A friend and I have been going through the book of Acts for a class she's taking about cross-cultural outreach. Usually we're supposed to be looking for new outreach ideas, but this last week, the verses I quoted above hit me more strongly than any of the content around them. What struck me is that Peter has reached the place where he truly is Peter, the Rock. And yet, the Spirit of God does not call him Peter, but rather 'Simon'. I went back and looked at the section where Jesus asks Peter if he loves him and tells Peter to feed his sheep...again, Jesus says, "Simon, son of John."

I didn't really know why this struck me so strongly...I think it was Haidee who made the connection of God addressing Peter based on his identity rather than by his function. Though God had appointed Peter as the rock of His church, when they were alone He still spoke to 'Simon' the man.

I was talking to another friend a couple nights ago and I left that conversation thinking about times 'in the desert' when God strips us down to only that identity of "child of God". It's strange to have 'old' parts of my identity popping back into my life again...things that I feel a little like, "But God, I let that go to be a missionary."

I'm coaching gymnastics right now for the first time in seven years. It is so good, and so bizarre, to come home with the smell of chalk on my hands and repetitious routine music running around my head. It feels strange to be putting all this energy into remembering how to do something that has nothing to do with God...the reason I'm at this gym is that I need money and it's something I enjoy doing. I have none of my usual "missionary ulterior motives" there whatsoever.

Anyway, I wrote a poem when I was wrapping up my time in Japan talking about what it felt like to go home...I was putting myself in Peter's sandals when the disciples return to fishing after Jesus has died and resurrected. I didn't share it with anyone when I wrote it, but I feel like doing so now. It still seems very apt for this season of my life:

I'm Going Fishing

Coarse rope grates at my palms again

The nets are in the water

And now is for waiting. Waiting and waiting
That was life with You

It has ended.

Once there were demons fleeing

Once the healed clung to our waists with glee
Once we stood and proclaimed the coming of the great King
And the King was our own friend.

But his skin went cold and clammy
Linen cloths shrouded his blood-stained side

But then

Those same arms moved

I saw his legs holding him up again.

I tremble.
My friend has risen
But I am left the fool
Failure
My life betrayed by my own fearful words

His dream continues.
Is He even human anymore?
He who comes and goes and refuses to be the same.

I'm going fishing.
The net hangs empty in the water
Will He steal this one thing I can do?
At least the rock of the boat is familiar.

I'm going fishing.
Unless You appear to me again
Unless You speak so that dream and reality are redefined in this new world.
Until then, dearest of friends,
My hands wait for the nets to pull taunt.
Why do my eyes still stray to the shore?

A new job!

2009-09-10T17:01:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I visited the World Mission Prayer League with one of my missionary friends who was doing a presentation about Japan. I unknowingly sat down with the director of the organization at dinner time and ended up getting to tell him about Japan and my experiences and what I was up to at the moment (hoping to get back to Japan and looking for some temporary work in the meantime). I was assuming temporary work would be through a temp agency or something like a college summer job...I planned to apply to Starbucks or another coffee shop.

Because of this conversation at WMPL, however, I found myself busing across the Cities last week to meet Bud for the first time. Bud is a retired OB/GYN doctor who has gone on a number of short term medical missions. He was one of the founding members of Lutheran Health Care: Bangladesh (LHC:B). The number of acronyms in my life has gone up significantly since meeting him. ;-)

Right now Bud is trying to get the story of LHC:B on paper, and I've been hired in a temporary position to help him do that. I cannot help grinning when I think about what an awesome job God found for me. Basically, I need to run a digital recorder and coax a story out of Bud. The story is hidden underneath a lot of details and business strategies, but there are moments when I see the real story...the story of God and the people He loves...in the middle of all that. I just need to uncover it and draw it out with good questions.

Entertaining Short People

2009-08-23T13:50:00.006-05:00

Some missionaries that I worked with in Japan live about two doors down from me in the temporary missionary apartments. Jessica (their six year old daughter) has been knocking on my door fairly frequently. I've been trying to find ways to entertain her when I don't have so many kid type things around the house.

She came into my apartment today after church and wanted to know what we were going to do. She wanted to play a computer game on my computer, but I really don't want to get into the relationship with kids where they're coming over to play on my computer, and I told her 'no'. And she immediately replied, "Well, what are we going to do? You're bored and don't have anything to do right now, right?" Ah, the honesty of children. It really is time to start working again. I just got settled back in temporary housing again after some visits with friends, a trip to IHOP (prayer, not pancakes), and a good friend's wedding. So, now I have the time to get settled in at least some kind of temporary job as well. I'm really looking forward to that!

Anyway, for now I just wanted to share the...um..."musical genius" with you of my friend Jessica.
She says: Hello, everyone! I have been playing the guitar two songs. Bye!

One knows the adjustment phase can't quite have ended yet when...

2009-07-27T23:02:00.003-05:00

While figuring out how to navigate the subway system in Chicago, my mind wonders, "Will I be able to recognize the kanji for O'Hare International Airport if that's all that's on the signs?"

*chuckle*

I want to tell 1000 stories

2009-07-26T11:40:00.000-05:00

But I really do try not to do that in blog entries. I've had an exciting past couple weeks!

But today I'm not going to blog about my train ride. I will not tell you my story about accidentally renting a car with a black leather interior, climate control system, two gps systems, and so many buttons I was afraid I would break it.

I won't tell you about Amtrak sticking us on buses from Reno to Sacramento and how annoyed it makes me that people shout at Amtrak employees when the reason for the change is that three people died when they drove through a guard railing into a train.

I will not tell you my train evangelism stories.

I will not tell you about Sachiko, wonderful Japanese hamburger chef wannabe and her notebook of American hamburger sketches. I will most definitely not spend two whole paragraphs raving about how I got to talk to Sachiko in Japanese for five hours on the train.

I won't tell you about meeting with good old friends, about picking 15 some pounds of cherries, braving territory where a homicidal turkey was out on a revenge mission to get my friend, cooking Indian food with freshly butchered lamb, picking 10 pounds of raspberries, hiking to one of the most beautiful views I've ever seen, sitting quietly watching the sunset with a good friend who will soon enter a convent, renting a kayak, or eating tapas.

I won't tell you what it felt like to show up at my new apartment with next to no sleep after the train ride only to find no landlord and no key into the building. (It worked out)

I won't tell you about seeing Liz again, and I won't go off for twenty pages on just how much better short distance relationships are to long distance ones.

I won't talk about Woodland Hills church (at least today), and getting to meet Greg Boyd, and the 100,000 reflections on megachurches that I gathered from one church service.

But I do have one story that I really want to tell today. And now that I've told you all the things I'm not going to tell you, I'm ready to write that blog. ;-)

A Happy Surprise

2009-07-26T11:35:00.000-05:00

I was walking from the missionary apartments to Roseville yesterday to buy a bus pass. It's about an hour walk, and about halfway through, I stumble on a church with a sign that says: "Christian Alliance Church. Worship in English and Japanese, 9:30". I was shocked and thrilled to see it so close to my new home. I'd planned on trying to find a Japanese church to attend every once in awhile, but never expected one to just show up on my doorstep.

The view upon walking in the next morning was definitely not what I expected, though. The crowd was distinctly 98% Caucasian with gray hair. I couldn't see a single Japanese person. I introduced myself to one of the greeters and was immediately introduced to another elderly lady who had been a missionary in Indonesia. Normally that would have been fun, but my brain is just racing on the topic, "Where are the Japanese people?" I went in and sat down, skimming the bulletin. The topic for this Sunday was something along the lines of "Countering Attacks on Biblical Interpretation!!!" With a small sigh, I kept reading. And saw at the bottom, "All English worship: 9:30. Japanese worship: 9:30".

I slid across the pew to the nearest person, who led me out of the large sanctuary and pointed down a hallway to a small room. Warm familiarity. In this room there were only 20 chairs, and three Japanese women with hymn books, practicing singing a hymn because it would be sung for the first time that day. As worship started we were joined by two bi-cultural families with and a couple more individuals. We sang, and then they closed the shades and played a video of a Japanese church for the sermon.

The subject of the Japanese side of things was Jesus the Great High Priest who understands our weaknesses. I spent most of the 45 minute sermon not quite understanding the Japanese and wondering what part of my heart wants to subject itself to this. My love for the Japanese people has never been a rational thing.

I spent last evening talking to a girl at Woodland Hills who is involved in ministry in the Philips neighborhood--one of the poorest in Minneapolis, and the place I did an internship another lifetime ago before Japan. People connected to her church that she knows do undercover mission work in the middle east. They've started riots and risked their lives. "Is there persecution in Japan?" she wants to know. I don't know how to answer. I tell her it's very physically safe, and then try to explain what it's like with rather awkward words. I leave feeling somehow inferior. And my mind strayed back to this as I was sitting through the sermon.

I don't like formal situations. I'm not a fan of politeness for politeness sake (though occasionally I am a hypocrite about not being a fan of that one). I like to be able to believe what people tell me and not have to intuit very deeply to figure out where they're actually at. Some of the Japanese people who look the most open to God on the surface are no where near actually open to him...which I suppose is true many places, but sometimes I get tired of that. People tell me I am a patient person, but in Japan I feel impatient all the time. I find the stereotypical church services there to be somewhat dry...and the church service this morning was similar except for the songs at the beginning.

My favorite cultures can be found in Africa...India...South America...places where people are community oriented and emotionally free. Places where need is a part of life and so the people are somehow more real.

I dream of a ministry that is exciting. I would be afraid sometimes, but part of me longs for a situation where I would need to be undercover. Or in danger. Or struggling just to get food because Jesus had called me out with the poorest of the poor. All of this is much to the dismay of my mother. But no...with all that longing, somehow the greatest longing of all is still this safe, nice, wealthy, educated, polite, slow and yet steadily moving, mission field of Japan.

I conclude that I have no way to explain myself about Japan.

Chatting with people after the church service, members discover that I graduated from St. Olaf. They excitedly motion to the two young women sitting apart from us and say that they attend St. Olaf. I'm stunned...I'm in Minnesota, but not a Lutheran Church. And St. Olaf is hardly something I expect to bond with people over. One of them has lived in the States since she was an infant, and she laughs at me that I can't help but speak "English Teacher English" to her just because she's Japanese. I'll have to work on that one.

A woman asks me if I am interested in connecting with Japanese exchange students while I'm here and gets my email address.

I notice that this is the first church service I've attended where people actually seem to stick around afterward to talk. Just like in Japan, a small box of senbei is passed around, and they insist on giving me the leftovers.

I leave the church with a smile I can't suppress and a skip in my step. I may never understand why, but I love these people. I suspect God could be found the culprit. ;-)

Father's Day Indian Feast

2009-06-23T15:43:00.015-05:00

I got a book for my birthday called "Classic Indian Cooking". It was recommended by my cousin--at least, I hope it was. She couldn't remember the title, but this book seemed to fit her description. I'm excited about it...I've dabbled a little in making curry with recipes from allrecipes.com, but wanted to learn how to do it really well.

<--Step One: Mixing spices, roasting them in the oven, and grinding them to make the spice mix garam masala. This is a close-up of the spices before roasting.

Since I got the cookbook, my dad and I have been planning to cook together. The project would take two days...we planned to go all out...making as many ingredients from scratch as possible. And, it turned out that the two of us (with help from Becc and Mom as they were willing and needed) cooked all through Father's Day...we started around 2:30 and got dinner on the table by 8:30. (much earlier than our mid-cooking estimates of 11pm ;-)

The day before, my dad and I boiled milk to make homemade Indian cheese (paneer). -->
It was fascinating. You boil the milk and then dump in some lemon juice and the curds form almost immediately. You rinse all the lemon out of the cheese curds, squeeze them in cheese cloth, hang them to dry for a couple hours, squish them under a pot of water for a couple more hours, and then cut them into chunks, as in the picture.

This was the main curry I made
<--(matar paneer) and Becc graciously joined me when things got tricky. It's a tomato based sauce with cheese and peas...and lots of spices, of course!

In the end, we realized we wanted lassis! -->
(sweet yogurt drinks) My sister is the queen of smoothies, and quickly took over the project. Even though we had no mango,
these were maybe the best lassis I've ever had.

My dad is an amazing cook. I keep telling him that his next job should be owning his own restaurant...I can imagine him having a blast talking to all kinds of neighborhood people and unveiling his new masterpieces every day. He's the kind of guy who will make an eight course Indian meal--never having made any of the eight courses before--and invites 24 people to our house to eat it. He started cooking Indian at my urging sometime around when I graduated from college. I think he's come to really love it too. He keeps telling me he doesn't want to be this crazy everyday, though...I guess he likes being a pastor. ;-)

These are my dad's four dishes he made. (over achiever!!!) He made a dal (lentil dish), an egg curry, a rice pilaf, and plain basmati rice. Oh...and also chai for after dinner. Yum!

2009-06-22T13:48:00.002-05:00

Once, in Tokyo, I sat in a Denny's with my stateside program director and my Japanese program director. They asked me, among other things, about the inter-denominational work I was doing. This led to a discussion about the difference between a "theology of the cross" and a "theology of glory". I found myself arguing that the theologies were two sides of the same coin...one a mark of our complete dependence on God and the other the glory of God that flows through us as a result of the cross and the giving of the Holy Spirit. My Japanese program director exclaimed, "That's very Lutheran!"

Sometime around then, I was worshiping in "the church next door to my church." An Assemblies of God church called GAP (Gospel Assembly of Praise). There is a time for sharing and prayer requests, and one girl told us a fairly heavy burden. The pastor invited her up, and invited all of us to pray for her. We got up and gathered around her...it was one of those times when I felt a particularly strong need to pray, and so I didn't even think...I leaped up and laid hands on her along with some others. It wasn't until we were done praying that I realized that the people who had laid hands on her and who had prayed aloud were: the pastor, two girls from the worship team, another girl strongly involved in church leadership, and me. Thankfully, it seemed that was fine. One of those church leaders said to me afterward, "You fit in really well here."

I've tried to describe my need for both churches to various people. In one discussion it came down to: I worship with my mind with the Lutherans, and I worship with my heart at GAP. To another person I confessed: I feel a lack of freedom in the Lutheran church when I'm happy, and I feel a lack of freedom in the Assemblies church when I'm sad. Lutherans look at you with funny eyebrows if you throw your hands up in the air or suggest that dancing is one of the best ways to worship. Pentecostals look at you with a "deer in the headlights" expression if you tell them that you're very frustrated with something you're doing for God...God is going to come through, after all, isn't he? (these are all stereotypes, of course...and I'll be the first to let you know that there are people throughout both churches that shatter the stereotypes)

My hometown has 27 churches for 7000 people. Compare this with Tokyo which has a little more than half a church per 7000 people. But even with all those options, I haven't found a church where I can get that "GAP" style worship and still attend my home Lutheran congregation in the same week. Starving for "hands in the air", "spirit-led" worship, I finally gave in and attended a local foursquare church yesterday morning as a break from my regular home church.

The worship was what I was longing for, and it filled me somewhere very deep. I had to be very amused as well, because the pastor got up for his message and started talking about change and transition. His whole sermon centered around the idea of God forcing us into times of change we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves with the purpose of giving us a broader picture of who He is. A few things he said really struck me. One was that, in times of change, in his experience, God won't give enough answers to satisfy our attempts to cling to a feeling of security. God wants us to trust Him, not to feel like everything is secure and worked through. He also said that, in any time of change, we would have a choice. And the choice is this: 1) grumble or 2) allow the life of Jesus to flow through you in the midst of the uncertainty or pain.

I like being told I have a choice. I feel like God has been dead silent about whatever my future holds...even as some choices have had to be made and discussions and searching begin...I sometimes feel like all my future thoughts are conducted with God just silently watching, an unreadable expression on His face. That kind of eerie silence that eventually drives me back to him with some kind of exasperation...saying something like, "What?! Be happy for me! Be mad at me! Be sad about what I'm doing! Be...anything other than silent!"

And, truthfully, he hasn't been silent. If I could summarize my interactions with God over the past few weeks into a short conversation, it might go like this:

Pamela: God, where am I going? Am I messing up? Am I overstepping in any way? Am I hoping for something I shouldn't be hoping in?
God: Put me first. I'm the only one you can trust.
Pamela: Right. Got that. Now...since I'm trying to put you first, how about letting me know if these future talks are getting in the way of anything you're planning for me?
God: Have you noticed the special place you're in right now? You really don't want to miss it.
Pamela: I don't think we're talking about the same thing here...
God: You're right. I'm talking about where you are. I'm setting life and death before you in your present circumstances...choose life!

Choices...to grumble, or to be life-giving? There's something about being told: "you're choosing between grumbling and allowing Jesus to work through you" that fills me with determination. I want so badly to learn how to serve him and be faithful to him in this day to day stuff...in the indefinite with no goals, agendas, or plans.

June 19th, 2009

2009-06-19T11:48:00.002-05:00

I would like to ask you a favor. Would you please get on your knees, right now while you're reading this and not some later undefined time, and spend at least 5-10 minutes praying for Japan? Please. I think the timing is crucial.

Please cry out for God to be glorified, for his purposes to be accomplished, for the devil's plots to be disarmed, for God to anoint those speaking and that his words would be heard, for the kind of sweep through of the Holy Spirit that brings clarity of sin and therefore true repentance and transformation, and also ask the Holy Spirit to pray through you as he promises when you don't know how to pray.

Thank you, friend.

I got to take a Japanese class!!!

2009-05-29T21:02:00.002-05:00

So, in the past few weeks I went from thinking I might be going to Hong Kong...and then I figured out I probably wasn't going to Hong Kong...and then I went on vacation, had a wonderful time with my friend Haidee, got to go visit my uncle with Leukemia in the hospital and be encouraged by his heart and spirit in the middle of something that's got to be kind of scary, and spent several days with my mom and sister at my 92-year-old grandpa's house. On Sunday I take off again with the family for Utah and Colorado to see national parks and my dad's family. There is my 2 second update.

The night I got home from all my travelling, I had a conversation with a friend that kicked me into high action mode again. Not to say that running around the nation visiting people isn't high action...but that kind of action gear that I kick into when I have a vision.

And so...the next day, I found myself hardcore spending time with God...as well as making myself a budget, planning my next move, and searching for an online Japanese class.

Tonight I tried my first online Japanese class for the trial price of $3 for 50 minutes. I tried the Beginner 2 level, which still uses a textbook and should be about JLPT 3kyu level. The class was super structured and quite easy...a very safe place to pull out Japanese that's gotten a little rusty. And at the end the teacher recommended I try the next level up. But despite not learning too much that was new...I found myself glowing from head to foot once the class was over. The teacher is a Japanese person living in Japan. I'm excited to try the intermediate class next time and see if I get to talk freely more...even though I know I could use the structure of learning the grammar at the Beginner 2 level. But really, I can study grammar on my own. It was just so wonderful to speak Japanese!

Today I also made the semi-decision that when I move to the Twin Cities I'm going to move by train. The train system in America is ridiculously lacking...and I want to do whatever possible to support it. So, the plan I am super excited about is to buy a 15 day rail pass and travel to the Twin Cities in the following way: Denver-->Sacramento-->Portland-->Seattle-->Glacier National Park-->Minneapolis. This is less than half the cost of renting a car, will allow me to see my Northwest friends, get the nice long processing time I have been longing for, get some possible quality time with beautiful scenary in Montana...I've never been to Glacier before...I can bring slightly more luggage than on an airplane...and I get to support the American train system all at the same time.

Anyway...it's been so good to be able to spend the past two days more or less withdrawn and with God. I can never sing enough praises for the way a day with God changes absolutely everything. Like the entire world goes from being this threatening thing that's trying to beat me up to a place that seems to just radiate with possibilities and His presence. The problems don't necessarily go away, but it's like they change from giants into mice. And then I can laugh at them. ^_~

This entry feels splattered all over the place, but that's kind of what my brain has been doing the past few days anyway.

I like building things

2009-05-13T16:33:00.003-05:00

We have a bird feeder in our backyard that has been around about as long as I have. So it got to where it looked like this...

You can't tell in the picture, but it got to where it's held together with string and all that.

For mother's day, my dad had the idea that we could take it to a church member's workshop and fix it up. I've been to this workshop two times before. The first was in sixth grade when I was building a huge rat maze for the science fair. The second was for high school youth group when Doug (the church member) helped us design and construct little alters to keep at home. Even though my ideas always end up more elaborate than what I can actually build, each time has been memorable to me.

This time made me think about the spiritual gift of craftsmanship...how many spiritual gifts discussions include it and how I've seen so little of it in action. Doug's workshop is a collection of a bazillion little odds and ends...random nuts and bolts, hinges, rare African woods...anything you could need to build anything. And there's something different about the entire place...not that I've been in too many workshops, but this one is a real spiritual place.

Even though we were repairing a bird feeder for my mom, Doug had set up a project for me to make a new bird feeder too. It's made out of the plastic container some Venetian blinds were in, four chopsticks, a Wyoming license plate and a few more wood parts. It was super easy to put together...just drilling holes, using a nail gun, a sander. But it reminded me of the little bedside table I made in Tokyo...that was just a board that I painted, but putting a coat of red on that board would light up my whole day.

(I was fascinated also when I brought my guitar into the Christian music store to get repaired. The man working on it was blind. He proclaimed, "Let me see your guitar!" and then laughed and said, "Well, that's an oxymoron for a blind guy." I liked him immediately. I watched him tinker around with it...he fixed the peg and by touch could tell that the neck wasn't quite in alignment, and with a couple screws he made my guitar play better than it ever has. And I found myself wondering how many years it would take me to learn how to make something like a guitar from scratch. Haha. Yep...I'm still on vacation with no vision.)

But anyway...back to Doug's workshop...we fixed up my family's bird feeder. In the end, we left almost all the outer parts, but we took the whole thing apart and strengthened it. It was straighter and everything. When we were done, Doug asked if anyone had a blessing for it. I was thinking...yeah...it's a bird feeder. I'll do blessings for a lot of things...but not bird feeders.

But he got out a candle and set it in front of the bird feeder. We were silent for a few moments. Doug and my dad prayed. And Doug started talking about how this bird feeder reminded him of our church. They're in the middle of doing Natural Church Development, and they were told their weakest aspect was passionate spirituality. So, right now, they're looking at how to grow in that.

As he talked about how we had revamped the whole bird feeder but we had kept the old, beautiful parts, and how that was like our church right now, I felt as though the Holy Spirit had just dropped down on us. It wasn't his words, so to speak...just one of those times that feels very sacred. I was holding back tears at the beauty of the whole experience as we said goodbye to Doug.

It's so funny how God keeps answering the heart cry of, "Where can I go and be with God?". The places haven't been anywhere I would think to look for him...I usually look for churches, not workshops or international student houses. It's also notable that none of these places are places I can return to...they're "rest stops" on the way to somewhere else...somewhere to get a drink of water before the journey continues. And I am incredibly thankful for the gift.

Cause for Celebration

2009-05-05T18:32:00.002-05:00

My guitar made it home!!!

I was started to get really worried, because the post office in Japan said 2 weeks, and it's been something like a month. Apparently they did not take rural Wyoming into consideration. So, my mom came into the house today with our backed up mail from while we were gone last week, and my guitar was with it!

Unfortunately, one of the pegs broke in transport, so my d-string is unalterably something like ten octaves lower than the other strings and horribly out of tune. But I don't think replacing the peg should be such a big deal.

I am especially celebrating the return of my guitar case along with my guitar. Since my friends all got together to give it to me, it actually has more sentimental value to me than the guitar itself. (Shh...don't tell my guitar!) ;-)

In case any of you were very concerned about Ebony, I also was able to rescue him yesterday morning. He was very excited to make it out of that teeny cage and nearly took my arm off when I walked him to the car. So, I headed for the hills with him and we went out to run and play in Red Canyon. That dog remains a stubborn rebel, though. He found a deer carcass and ran off with a five inch long bone from the leg. I'm chasing after him, trying to woo the bone out of his mouth with treats, but apparently the bone looked nicer to him than treats and obeying me. I finally sat down about twenty feet away from him. I ate my sandwich. He ate an entire deer leg bone. And once he had (I kid you not) swallowed the whole thing, he was willing to trot alongside me again. Sigh...you try to make a dog happy...

I think he was still cranky from being in jail. He was so exhausted he slept the entire rest of the day. ;-)

Where is home anyway?

2009-05-04T12:09:00.003-05:00

I had a whole new blog entry spiraling off the end of the last one, so I'm just going to write two entries back to back.

Some of the most painful words spoken to me since I've been in the States came from a complete stranger, who was very well-meaning. He said brightly and cheerfully, "Welcome home!" Not only was I in the States, but separated from my family and friends, and in midst of a culture shock attack. I couldn't even respond for a moment, but finally put on a nice smile and said, "Thank you."

It's also been surprising to see many Christians calling my hometown "God's country". I've seen or heard this three times now. Once was in a prayer meeting where they made reference to someone "being back in God's country". My heart had been crying out Psalm 42 the whole meeting, "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God?" Now, I know that when they call Lander "God's country", what they mean is that the mountains are to die for. But it seemed so ironic while I'm longing for the kind of intimacy with God that only comes in a community...welcome to God's country.

I've been thinking a lot about citizenship in the Kingdom of God. The real one, that is. Not something special about Lander, Wyoming. There are a couple of times that I've felt very at home since coming back. It always feels like a safe place has just descended around me in the middle of the storm.

My brother took me into his dorm room for two nights while I was traveling this week. He was generous to me way beyond what was necessary. My favorite was that there was this bathroom that was co-ed at the end of his hallway. The problem was that the door wouldn't lock, and my brother swears that some of the guys will just storm in there without knocking. So, it didn't matter what time of day it was, if I was going to go to the bathroom, Charlie was going to stand guard. We were up watching movies until 3am one night, and I tried to tell him I would be just fine when I headed for the restroom afterwards. But he insisted that the guys might be drunk, and stood guard all the same, putting on this wonderful stern guard face for the occasion.

While I was with my brother, I had the strongest sense of home I have had yet on one particular occasion. Charlie showed a kind of understanding that had to have been Holy Spirit inspired, because even *I* couldn't have told him it was a good idea ahead of time. He took me to the international student house on his college campus to play Settlers of Catan. The house is home to a Christian group as well as many international students. And I found that I really felt at home there, and like I could connect to people again. We stayed for hours...ate cheesy bread, played Settlers, talked about God a bit...I didn't know a soul there besides my brother, and yet I was suddenly safe.

There was a guy there who didn't really like our board game playing too much, I don't think. He kept saying, "A bunch of Christians acting like non-Christians." I didn't know him well enough to know if he was teasing us or serious. But it seemed so funny to me...that one person's "a bunch of Christians acting like non-Christians" seemed like beautiful Christian community to me...where we just sit back and laugh and eat together; and Jesus' name is dropped in casual conversation.

Still Homesick

2009-05-04T10:49:00.003-05:00

I keep wanting to update my blog...but I can't do it without feeling like I'm whining at the moment. Much of my life right now is spent battling a complete lack of gratefulness for where I am, and writing whiny blog entries certainly doesn't help with that. So, this is an attempt to name the deeper culture shocks for what they are without being whiny. I hope it works. :-)

When you are a stranger in your own country, no one expects you to be a stranger. I find myself going into my "Japanese coping mode" on a regular basic, which is to say...lots and lots of passive listening. If there's something I don't understand, I shove it into a back corner of my brain and listen all the harder to try to figure out what is going on. And there is a surprisingly large number of things going on that I don't understand.

Some of them are similar to being in Japan. For example, I've been present for a number of conversations that go something like this:

Person A: So-and-so did (or didn't) do ______.
Person B: Wow. That's really offensive!
Pamela (thinking): Umm...wow...how could that possibly be offensive? *begins thinking very hard to try to figure it out*

Pamela: *shares about one sentence of personal experience*
Person A: *manages to turn my experience into a theological argument*
Pamela: *gives in and responds to the theological argument, all the while mourning the lack of intimacy with anyone*

In some of them I am obviously the one at fault...

Pamela: America is $^*#@&)*(%@*&$*#@&$@*#&$*)@&#%(&)(%$@(*%&()$
Poor suffering family member of Pamela: ...umm...don't you think that's a little negative, Pamela?
Pamela: (Someone is listening to me!!!) No! It's not negative! Because $^*#&$*&#!@%(*&$)%&@)%&*#@&%@)($@) (huh...that actually does sound kind of negative...)

I'm also finding myself with a high need to save the world at the moment. Pamela without a vision is a sad sight...I am convinced that the reason God usually lets me have a vision is that I would destroy the world with my self-created visions otherwise.

Last night, my vision was not a world-destroying one, though, thankfully. But it was still ridiculous. If I got home from my church visiting between 5 and 6, I was supposed to go rescue my dog Ebony from the dog hotel (here after called "jail"). (My parents and I have been gone this week...me visiting sponsoring churches and my parents catching swine flu...er...going to church convention in El Paso) [No...they haven't caught swine flu. They were just crossing the border, so we've been joking about it.] Anyway. Somehow in my mind I translated 5-6 to 5:30 to 6:30. I hit the outskirts of my hometown right at 6:30, not having stopped to rest or eat for the past three hours. Normally I can't do that in a car, but I was fueled by this crazy vision to break my dog out of jail that night. I raced over to try to find the jail per my parents insane directions, and all the while my mind was shouting, "I'm coming, Ebony!" While a very small voice was saying to me: "There is no way you can make it, Pamela...just drive home."

(I'm laughing at myself telling you this story, by the way. So I hope you're laughing too!)

Needless to say, when I pulled into the jail, the desk was empty and the door locked. I could hear Ebony barking, but there was nothing I could do but slip away again as quietly as possible--not wanting to upset him by letting him know I'd been there.

So...on the non-laughing-at-myself level...I keep trying to figure out how to connect to God without a vision. This is something I've been trying to figure out for *months* now...not just since coming to the States, but pretty much ever since I understood that God was going to ask me to move away from the vision I'd thrown my heart into. It bothers me that I don't know how. I haven't been able to talk to many people about it, because as soon as I do, they criticize me for my inability to do it. And I know it's bad that I can't do it...that's why I try to reach out about it...to get other people's wisdom and try to learn from it.

But I'm fighting against actually learning how to just 'be' with all my heart...it often turns into this crazy quest to figure out what I'm doing next. And in my processing the other day, I realized the one option I wasn't considering was that it wasn't time to figure out what to do next.

As I was driving home in the car, I was thinking all these frustrations up at God, and it was kind of like he said, "What if I just want a vacation with you?" My response to this was pretty much to be horrified.

And I'm reminded of my mom, who just wishes home were a place of comfort for me. My constant need for a vision is actually wounding to the people who are trying to give me a place to rest.

Like Ebony, maybe it's me who's turning the hotel into a prison. Maybe the small cage is meant to protect me from wearing myself out with too much running. Or maybe I'm taking the metaphor too far...it just seemed to fall in place. But I'm so afraid to make the cage my home. What if my world stays this small? What if God asked me to "settle down" in America instead of in a foreign mission field?

Across the Pacific

2009-04-10T00:36:00.002-05:00

Today I am blogging from my old bed in my old basement room. And let me tell you, it is *strange* to be in America after two and a half solid years of not being here. There's this almost mystical familiar air to everything...while at the same time the whole place feels foreign. Getting into the airport in Seattle didn't feel so different from getting into the airport in Kolkata, India for my trip a year and a half ago.

A lot of little shallow things are shocking...

I keep looking at streets and wondering what happened to the houses in between the other houses...and then I remember that houses were always that far apart in the States.

It feels weird to tear toilet paper without the flap over the top of the roll.

Remembering that it's normal not to be able to see anything above the trees.

I also panic when my mom makes right hand turns and there are cars coming at us in the left lane.

I spent a solid 30 seconds searching for the part in the wrapping on a box of chocolates that I could pull open before remembering that it's everything in *Japan* that is easy open, not in America.

I really keep wondering where all the people are.

Leaving Denver International Airport, I wondered where the city was.

When I arrived in Denver, it was 71 degrees. On the road home to Wyoming, it was 31 degrees with blowing snow and ice. The mountains were gorgeous!

Cheese is NOT a priceless commodity and does not need to be rationed.

We have a dishwasher!!!

Beds are *really* soft.

People say, "Hi, how are you?" when you walk into gas stations.

Seattle did not look green from the airport.

My dog is *really* big. But he still remembers me! We're now fighting about who's going to be boss. ;-)

Some things are exactly the same. My church is started a prayer vigil last night that will go until tonight, and after the Maundy Thursday service I stood with a guy who was shaking in his socks about his half hour prayer time. I got to meet the woman at church who is running the prayer vigil and she said how everyone was really freaking out, but she had a guide for them to pray and knew they would realize the half hour slots were really short, and get really blessed by it besides.

Anyway...this is the shallow stuff. The deeper stuff will take me a few more days of mulling over...but for now, I am back in the States, and feeling rather displaced.

We Laugh at Key

2009-03-16T00:30:00.024-05:00

This Saturday at Key was a particularly sweet time, in my opinion. One of the Japanese guys was supposed to lead a Bible study. I sent him an email around 4:00 when he wasn't there yet, and it turns out he was asleep, but came right over after getting my email. We spent the first hour just hanging out, speaking broken Japanese or broken English...often both in the same sentence. In the end, Kim came up with a great game for us to play. Which is the source of all the pictures in this entry. The game is kind of a combination of pictionary and telephone. It's a little difficult to explain, but everyone started by drawing a picture or writing a phrase. So, if I draw a picture, I pass it to the person on my right. That person looks at what I've drawn and writes on another paper what they think the picture is. Then, they pass what they've written to the next person, who has to draw a picture of what was written down without seeing my original picture. The results are hilarious.

We had a woman come in to see Key for the first time. She actually walked in after we were finished. Three people were in a backrub line and we were just laying around and talking. She asked us what we normally did at Key, which is always a hard question to answer. But one of the Japanese guys rescued us from our efforts to explain and said very simply, "We laugh." And we certainly laughed a lot last Saturday. Here are some of our pictures from Saturday (and hopefully some laughter) to share with you guys:

Here is the first picture, drawn by my good friend Jenae. Later, she explained to us that this picture was supposed to represent "Allergy Season".

The next person (who may or may not have been me) wrote,
She sang a song to her favorite forest flower.
Followed by...(I think you're getting the idea now)

A hermit sings in the garden.

There is a strange man dancing in flowers.

Here's the next round. Note that we had non-native English speakers in the group, which is how this lovely situation came about. :-) :

Loving my planetes.

Save the earth.

Don't smoke for the future of the earth.

And my personal favorite:

This one started with a caption rather than a picture: A Shepherd.

An astrologer is standing with chicken.

Watching the stars with my best friend the chicken.

Yay for laughter!

Jesus Sightings at Key

2009-03-16T00:29:00.000-05:00

Aside from all our laughing at Key, I was struck really strongly as we sat around in a group that every person there was a person who had been impacted personally by Jesus. As we were sitting around, one of the guys pulled out a book of pictures from Israel. He showed me one of Mt. Sinai--a landscape of jagged, rocky mountains that I can't imagine how a person could climb--and he told me that he had been in a prayer group and seen a picture of him and Jesus with mountains like that. He said before he'd had that experience, he hadn't really believed in Jesus. He described the picture he had seen: Jesus flying down a mountain to him.

Key is supposed to end at 5:00, but we were still hanging out and talking at 7:00. For about an hour we'd been saying we should go eat. But at this point it was 7:00, Bibles were spread all over the place, and another Japanese guy had enlisted us to help us find this Psalm he'd been meditating on recently. I proposed we bring Bibles along to the restaurant. And while we waited for food, he told us all about how his life had been changed so much...how he had gone from being a person who had been scared away from the harsh teachings of the church he was attending and had recently been touched by Jesus through the Lutheran youth gathering we attended last fall. Now he had quit his job and was considering going to seminary.

Another Japanese member of the group was suicidal and snatched to safety when Jesus found him.

It's a special group of people...a group that can sit together and say, "We have known the Lord."

Kazuhiro said it best maybe when someone said "It's like He chose you." And he flipped right to John 15 and read, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last."

I wonder what this fruit will be. If it will be fruit that the group bears together or if everyone in the end will scatter out to be planted in a different place. But for now, the fruit seems to be that young Christians, Japanese and English, have a place where they're coming together and starting to trust each other. We're starting to learn how to communicate and how to share our joys and struggles, and it's a group where His name comes up all the time, whether we're doing Bible study or drawing silly pictures.

Kids make me happy, plus more transitional ramblings

2009-03-01T09:33:00.006-06:00

On Saturday, the ELCA missionaries got together to have lunch, kind of to recognize me and also the new J3s who have finished language training and will be starting their assignments soon. The highlight of this time for me was teaching Aaron's daughter Cassidy how to do a headstand. I just can't help it...after several years of coaching beginner gymnastics, I see a kid trying to stand on their head with their hands by their ears and I have to help them learn how to balance. :-)

Anyway...apparently I made a friend. During church today, I received these notes in sequence. The last one was my very favorite. :-)

Tonight I rented a movie on itunes about three soldiers who are returning home from Iraq. I mostly got it because I figured I would be able to identify very well with the return culture shock. There were a couple really good return culture shock moments, but my favorite part was when they were in Colorado. There was dust blowing around. I realized I haven't been anywhere dry enough for there to be dust blowing around in about two and a half years. And something else really strange...they were outside in the Rockies, and I realized the sound their feet made on the ground was familiar...it was the crunch of dry pine needles on mountain soil. It's comforting in a way. Today, I finished my last human-given responsibilities in Japan, with the exception of moving myself out. It was nice to feel a longing for home. I'm excited to sit up on a mountain where the air is fresh and dry and the ground crunches and dust blows around and gets in your eyes...I'm excited to see the sky jam packed with stars...and I can't wait to go back to a small town pace of life if only for a little while...

I guess what all of that means is that I'm finally letting go...I've been letting go for several months now as God has gently helped me pry away one finger at a time, but it's to the point where I dare to let my heart remember some things it loves about home. I don't know if that seems like a big step to anyone else, but I was surprised to find that my heart had made it.

Things to be happy about one's last week of teaching classes in Japan

2009-02-26T00:16:00.003-06:00

1) A huge bouquet of orange, yellow, and white flowers
2) A lovely simply bouquet of greens, two pink tulips, and three daisies
3) It is the first week of my entire time in Japan that there has been enough touch
4) I got to hold Mirai's baby (Kentaro) off and on all afternoon.
5) Playing "Life Stories" is an adequate lesson plan for any level of class when it's the last week.
6) I get to give away a couple Bibles with verses in them
7) God gave me one class with two Chinese students (no Japanese students) this term, and with them I can really rejoice about my future even as I'm saying goodbye.

The End of an Era

2009-02-03T00:00:00.002-06:00

Yesterday morning there was a mini-prayer summit at the Assemblies church close to mine. The day started at 9:30, and it took every ounce of courage I had to get myself in the doors at all...it was 11:00, just half an hour before the end of the prayer meeting. So much courage was necessary because these people have only seen "Pamela with a Tokyo-wide vision". And I knew that if I went I would have to tell them what is now the truth: I am leaving. And at the moment I can make no promises that I will ever be back.

If I could have teleported straight from giving them that news to an airplane, I would have done it.

Many other people have accepted my leaving with a calm lack of surprise. But this group is, of course, different... A Brazilian pastor said to me, "I'll keep that in prayer. Maybe God is calling us to start off from your prayers without you...but I hope not. I think you have the same heart [for prayer in Tokyo]." It sums it up well. These are the people I found when I felt all alone in my vision...we encourage each other just by existing at the same time in the same city. And it seems like people are finally starting to come together so that it's more than a vision...something is beginning to be built.

I keep thinking back to the IHOP prayer seminar a few months ago, and one experience in particular. I had dragged a number of friends along to the seminar, and they were all sitting in the back of the room. I had been dragged to the front and given a microphone to help lead harp and bowl worship. But the distance between me and the Lutheran missionaries was driving me *crazy*. I had the strong, strong urge to be sitting next to Jenae in particular. Finally, I set down my microphone and did it, earning me a strange look from the other girl who was leading.

Yesterday, they announced the time that they are going to start holding prayer meetings in the hope of building something bigger. It will be 1st and 3rd Saturdays from 2-4. Now, let me tell you something amusing. There are 52 hours in a week. There are exactly two activities I have felt a responsibility to be involved in during my last months in Japan: the building of a house of prayer and the building up of our fellowship group called Key. What do you suppose the odds are they would be in direct conflict with each other? Sigh.

But the decision was really made a long time ago at that prayer meeting where I moved out of the front to sit with Jenae. Key will keep my loyalty for the remaining months that I am here. The decision makes no sense in terms of greatest numbers, greatest efficiency, greatest value...it only makes sense in an upside down world where Jesus is King, where love is the greatest law, and where "important" is defined by that law and His calling. For now, a precious vision has been given back into His hands. And as Stan said yesterday, "Well...He is still King. And He's not surprised."

I sent in my application this afternoon.

Fathers

2009-02-02T00:17:00.002-06:00

A couple snapshots from church yesterday:

-It was our annual meeting and a very heated discussion was going on. Something to do with how many people are on the church council, whether we are mistreating people by electing them over and over again, etc. One of those times when everyone has gotten very serious. In the middle of it all, Aaron's daughter Cassidy started drawing a picture on the white board. She didn't know Aaron was watching her, but in the middle of all this debating, he was distracted completely from the task at hand. Just looking at his daughter's art with a smile. Sometimes, it doesn't seem like other people are recognizing our work, but often I think God is watching it, secretly and silently from behind us so as not to distract us, but with a huge grin on His face.

-After the meeting, we came out to the office to discover that the pastor's son had been doing some "art" of his own. That is to say, there were now permanent marker "signatures" all over the chairs, desks and table. Once most of the church members had left, the pastor sat his son down, showed him the damage, and let him know why it was damage. Yuki began wailing in the middle of this, but his father continued to patiently and persistently tell him what he had done. After that, the rest of their family went back upstairs (home) and Yuki and dad remained, clean up tools in hand. Yuki is three years old, so I know he wasn't actually helping so much. But the two went around side by side until all the marker was erased.

It's interesting to me that other people are often the first ones to confirm the fears in our head that we are not doing any good, or to confirm that our greatest efforts are actually increasing the mess instead of decreasing it. There is this truth that we as Christians have to come face to face with at some point: God does not need us.

Some of us stop there. Some refuse to believe it and stake their entire identity on the fact that they are needed by God...their ministry looks frantic, and they have a lot to lose if something goes wrong. Others hear they are not needed and drop out of the game altogether...if God doesn't need them, what's the point? Still others understand but not fully...they feel a contradiction between the truth that God doesn't need them and the truth that God calls them to obedience. Fear of God and failing keeps them "in line", but they haven't understood the whole picture.

The truth is that God wants us with him. I believe we can make him smile. The Bible tells us he rejoices over us, and the Hebrew for that word actually means "spins around in circles". I love to think about God getting all "improper" and spinning around in circles of joy over the little actions, the small prayers, the heroic sacrifices of a moment that are made in his name. He knows we make messes sometimes, but isn't that what being a kid is? I remember another time when one of Aaron's daughters was upset and she cried to him, "But you're the dad, and that means you can fix it!" Human dads can't fix everything. But our heavenly Dad really can and does bring all things around for good. Often by handing us the cleaning supplies and cheerfully saying, "Let's get to work. I've got just the thing for this stain."

The Beautiful Mess

2009-01-23T20:06:00.004-06:00

It is interesting to notice the way that my perception of how long I'm going to be in Japan changes the way I minister. When I told God back more than a year ago how I was willing to stay in Japan however long He called me to, I remember noticing that it changed everything...my heart through all of itself into the mission here because of that belief that I was here for a long time. Now that (pending any major surprises) I am heading back to the U.S. in April, I find the result has been a throwing aside of caution. I am teaching boldly...at least for me. No more patience...the days are numbered. And this is what my teaching looks like when I am being bold...

My Beginner Bible class has stopped being beginner in any sense of the word. Part of this is because Winter Term has characteristic low numbers, and rather than being a true class, it's almost a cell group with me, two church members, and Takaaki. The poor guy hears more sermons a week than anyone else I know. ;-)

I've borrowed a curriculum called The Beautiful Mess from a Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. I love telling my Japanese students the title for the course, because they can't fathom what "beautiful" and "mess" are doing so close to each other. Our first week was all about ways that we try to hide our messes from God. It was amazing. We had a list on the board of what the mess was and how we tried to hide it from God. Etsuko came up with something brilliant. One mess we wrote down was "sin, guilt, and shame" and when I asked how we tried to hide it, Etsuko immediately said, "charity." Once she had explained about doing good out of guilt rather than out of love, the other church member was sitting with a very intense, concentrating look on her face. I don't know if I've ever before gotten this woman to turn her eyes to herself and not just look to others...she's one of the people who serves *all* the time. And I found myself wondering and hoping for the possibility that this woman could serve not out of feeling shameful or inferior, but out of the knowledge of how awesome God thinks she is. I imagine her shining instead of trembling.

The Beautiful Mess curriculum always ends with time praying for each other, and I decided we would do so every week. And that has been powerful.

My pastor's son speaks English

2009-01-13T00:13:00.004-06:00

Today, Yuki came into the office singing jibberish that sounded suspiciously like English. His dad called him back and told him to speak English. This is the result... :-D

EDIT: No, no...it's not really English. But you can hear in the sounds that it's what he's imitating. Anyway...

Africa meets Japan

2009-01-09T09:19:00.003-06:00

I went out tonight.

And what's more, I went out of my own free will. But there was very good reason for this...one of the new J3s, Carolyn, discovered a concert in Shinjuku that was combining Taiko (those huge Japanese drums you may have seen before) and drums from Ghana. We walked about thirty minutes in nearly freezing rain to find it, were lost, had to stand up through the whole concert, and all in all, it was one of the greatest concerts I have ever been to. Carolyn turned to me at one point during the night and said, "I would have walked out there all night for this!!!"

I've always loved Taiko. It's dance and drums together, and it just doesn't get so much better than that.

But I did have to laugh a little bit at one part of the concert. Two men from Ghana were on stage. One was playing drums, the other was trying to get a Japanese crowd to clap. I'll come back to this in a minute.

When I was in South Africa, we were put to shame by a music group. It was January. They sang a number of energetic songs with all the heart they had. At one point, they came up close to the microphones, stood up straight and still, and sang "Deck the Halls" as though they were members of a fine choir. It was very boring. Then, those mischievous African grins overtook their faces once again, they stepped back from the microphones, and they swayed and sang "Deck the Halls" for real.

Later, they announced how this group of students from St. Olaf was there and how we were going to sing. They tried everything to get us to have spirit. But we were up there, still and stern, singing beautifully but with something missing. I couldn't help thinking how dead we had to look...we were exactly like their jokingly stern version of "Deck the Halls"!

There weren't nearly enough opportunities in Africa to make music with Africans. Being in a circle with Africans making music is pretty close to pure freedom for me. Heaven on earth.

So...back to the Shinjuku Japanese / Ghana drum performance...

I had to laugh because one of the Africans got us to clap in this rhythm. We were supposed to clap on the second and third beat. The whole audience got this down and ran with it. The beat never altered, but was a steady "ichi NI SAN ichi NI SAN"...except that the drummers weren't sticking to the same beat. They would speed up or slow down. The man who had led us into clapping eventually changed the beat he was going at from two beats together to three and the audience continued it's steady "ichi NI SAN"...never changing or adjusting to the music.

Later, I was saddened by it, because the man who had been leading the clapping got off the stage. As part of the audience, I watched him try to start clapping along with the next song. No one joined him. He lasted about a minute before he started pausing longer between claps, and finally stopped all together and faded against the wall. It's hard to be the only one clapping. I was thinking about being in South Africa and how hard they worked to get us to be alive while we were singing.

The different kinds of beauty struck me, though. Japanese beauty is intentional, balanced, artistic, masterful. The taiko drummers were perfectly synchronized, and everything from the beat to the position of their arms is structured.

The African drums had little visual appeal. But while I had no urge to move at all during the taiko, I couldn't stop moving during the African drumming. That contagious freedom is what is most beautiful to me about it. I feel like I'm part of the music.

I always wonder how that freedom fits into Japan. If it's just my culture that makes me long for it, and culture shock that makes me feel like it's missing. Do people born and raised in Japan long for that kind of freedom too? Somewhere inside? Do any of the taiko drummers ever just get the urge to break out and start doing a dance all their own, leaping from drum to drum in some spontaneous, crazy way? I wonder.

Life Goes On

2009-01-05T01:02:00.002-06:00

I woke up this morning to a Japanese voice shouting outside my apartment. "Yakiiiiimoh! Yaaaakimoooh! Ishi yaaaaakiimoh!" Or, directly translated, "Baaaaked potato! Baked pooootatooo! Rock-baked potato!!!" Living in the middle of Tokyo, such sounds do not usually wake me up anymore. But recently it's been the New Year's holiday and the streets have been strangely silent and empty. Today they are back to normal...business men rushing about, bicycles ringing bells to shoo pedestrians out of their path, and the occasional baked potato van running by.

But with all this going on, I almost feel like I'm not in Tokyo anymore. Don't ask me where I feel like I am. Maybe Limbo, or the State of Transition, or the Land of Too Much Thinking. I wonder if it's a little how to feels to know you are dying...all around you plans are being made, new ministries born, friends are changing and growing, churches are changing and growing...I watch it all with a kind of wary distance, knowing that I will leave it all very, very soon...but wanting to cherish everyone and everything that surrounds me.

I think as a result of this cherishing, it was the first Christmas that I didn't miss America. We had a handbell choir at church this year...a group of high school girls, some of whom were the tiny and yet able to throw around the huge bucket bells. I watched some men from the congregation go up and try to play those same bells after church and fail.

A special joy for me this Christmas was Etsuko. I've watched her get bolder and bolder about sharing her faith, and this year she took it to a new level. We were setting up candles to get ready for the service, and as soon as it was just the two of us, she told me, "Pamela, a miracle happened!!!" Apparently she prayed up the courage to give Christmas cards to all her neighbors in her apartment building. She told all of them that she was a Christian, that she prayed God would bless them that Christmas. One woman came up and met Etsuko for the first time, deeply moved. She told Etsuko that she had attended a Christian school and so she had studied the Bible as a teenager, but she hadn't thought about it for years until she got the card. Etsuko took her boldness to a new level and asked the woman if she would like to read the Bible or some Christian books together sometime, and the woman agreed.

Part of real life being on pause has been a lot of time with my missionary community these past few weeks. We're all pretty scattered when breaks aren't happening, but when they do happen it seems like lots of time gets made up for. And bottled up loving and arguing all seems to come out at once. So, basically, God has given lots of time with my Japan family. Life is never, ever boring in this group of people. :-) This break included:

getting news of a really good friend's engagement
getting news of another friend's engagement not a week later (something is in the air in Tokyo!)
setting up a lot of futon pads as a giant maze and then failing miserably in attempting to convince the missionaries to come upstairs and rescue a kidnapped companion (my friends have no compassion, I tell you! ;-) )
worshiping and leading prayer without a voice--but yay for good prayer and worship time in English!
the creation of a major earthquake contingency plan including the need for boats and Morse Code transmission devices...which most of the other missionaries somehow don't seem to want to go along with. ;-)
After all the talk about major earthquakes, a minor earthquake the day AFTER all my friends left my apartment...I was shaking harder than the ground. I'm not afraid of being in Tokyo during a major earthquake, but the thought of being trapped alone is really not appealing.
Broke the silence barrier...at least once more.
Going out to a shrine on New Years to shiver with my two friends and be available in case Jesus had anyone for us to talk to. Got videotaped by three drunk Japanese girls who now think they've met three missionaries from Nebraska. Stood watching crowd after crowd of people throw 5 yen coins into the shrine, bow to a false god and wish for a good New Year until our feet and hearts were numb. Reflecting on this, I am thankful that I am in a group of people where such "adventures" can take place.
Slept in the latest I ever have in my un-sick life (1:40pm...hehe)
Cheese fondue. Need more be said? :-D
Interrogated my sister's new boyfriend over the webcam while he was on the other side of her cellphone.
Managed to come up with words for my Hongo report. Sent my report to a church member to translate. Decided that I really need lessons on how to speak / write so a translator can do something with it. :-/
Discovered that my friend Jenae is as competitive and into games as I am. Felt silly about how long it took us to figure that out (2 years). Had an awesome time trying to cream each other at a bunch of games.

So...life goes on. And this list doesn't even include three rather major things. Some doors are closing much more quickly than I thought they would...others are opening up. And slowly, slowly, God pushes me into going on too. Now...if only I could apply that to lesson plans... ;-)

It all comes back to Big Bird in Japan

2008-12-17T06:16:00.003-06:00

Go ahead, call me a nerd. :-)

In 1989, Sesame Street came up with this super quality t.v. special called "Big Bird in Japan". I was quite enamored with it. I'm pretty sure I watched it every morning when I was five years old. The day my dad accidentally recorded an orchestra concert over Big Bird in Japan was a particularly tense one in my family. I didn't watch it again for years until one of my college roommates bought me the dvd for Christmas one year. Shockingly, the quality of the story and singing had decreased dramatically over the years. I'm not quite sure how that happened. ;-)

Of course, now when I think about Big Bird in Japan, my brain comes up with obnoxious thoughts like, "Random Japanese people coming up to Big Bird on the street and saying "ohayo"?! Not only would they not greet a stranger, they would never use casual form when they first met him!!!"

Anyway...a few nights ago I was out on a walk, determined to have good quality communication with God about this whole transition thing that is coming up. This as opposed to pretending we don't need to talk about all that. I was sitting out by my ponds. Ueno's skyscrapers and a near full moon were reflecting off the water, and I found myself thinking about Big Bird in Japan. The movie adopts an old Japanese folktale about Kaguya Hime, a princess sent to earth from the moon for a short period of time. At the end of the story, Kaguya Hime has to return to the moon.

There is a song in the movie where she is singing to the moon, and I don't know that I'd ever thought of the lyrics before. But I dug up the song on YouTube and listened and found that the whole song was this sad transition song. A goodbye song. A journey into uncertainty. In the song, she says to the moon, "I don't know what's coming. What do you see? Moon, moon, what's in store for you and for me?" and later, "Moon, moon I don't know the future. What can you say?" I can't figure out all the words in the chorus, but here's what I can get, "Sometimes the darkness holds something bright. Sometimes the sadness turns into morning, sweet [something that rhymes with bright]. I feel so alone, but I have to go home tonight."

I watched the Big Bird in Japan clips with this kind of eerie recognition. There is a play of the folktale inside the movie, and at the end the princess is waving goodbye to Japan. And the narration says, "...and almost as she spoke, the procession from the moon appeared to escort the tearful princess back to the palace of the moon. But her old mother and father always believed that one day another golden light would appear in a bamboo stump in the forest to signal that Kaguya Hime had come back to them on earth. And who knows? One day, perhaps Kaguya Hime will return."

Me in my transition ridden state watched that with a reaction somewhere along the lines of, "WHAT?! **PERHAPS** she will return?! What kind of children's show is this being all bittersweet and sad like that?! The happy ending should be, "And Kaguya Hime told the messengers of the moon that she had come to belong in Japan, and they said, "Very well. We'll send you back to Japan very soon." ;-)

I read on good ol' Wikipedia that in the original story of Kaguya Hime, when the messengers come from the moon come to take her back, they slip a robe of some kind onto her shoulders, and as soon as she is wearing it she forgets Japan.

And this is the real uncertainty in going home this coming March. What will Japan look like from American soil? What will the vision look like with new visions, conveniently packaged in my own language, begin coming around me? What is "eternal" and what is fleeting? The only way to find out is to return, and risk that the robe dropping back onto my shoulders will erase the memory of Japan forever.

"Sometimes the darkness holds something bright." Something I treasure about transitions is that it is a good reminder of where our true stability comes from. So many things get built up as stability...friends, places, jobs, stuff...moving across an ocean with no plans for the future puts all of those in perspective. They are all flighty. Nothing can be trusted to stay the same except for Christ. But praise our unchanging God, the true rock! I'm really glad he appreciates it when I'm clingy.

A Rant

2008-12-12T08:35:00.003-06:00

Not that I should be allowed to write rants about evangelism...but this one's got to come out.

I saw an old friend today. Old in "Pamela's life in Japan" terms, which is to say, I've known her for about two years. She's one of the people I would qualify "a seeker" and we used to have a really close relationship. But recently, she dropped off my map. I hadn't seen her in seven months.

Tonight I learned part of the reason I hadn't seen her. I loaned her a Christian book a little more than a year ago, and she had only just worked up the guts to return it. She was worried about the conversation that would follow...something I hadn't expected since part of my early encounters with this friend was her being very excited when I offered to have dinner with her and discuss Christianity.

She has another close Christian friend, and in the course of our conversation I learned something disturbing. Her other friend had made the comment, "I can't really be friends with someone who isn't a Christian." The way my friend took this was to become afraid that if she told me she still wasn't sure about Christianity, she was going to lose my friendship. And so, we have hardly seen each other for about a year. And not at all in six months.

And this is what I have to say about that...is the Kingdom of God such a lie that we need to try to manipulate people into it? Is our God so unlovable that the only way to woe people into His arms is by threatening to remove our own friendship if they don't? Do we honestly expect such tactics to create true Christ followers? Are we running some sort of social club that we get to pick and choose who our love goes to?

The lost are treated as though they are our enemies. But they are not the enemy. They are lost. They are Christ's missing beloved.

I know that I'm really far from perfect. But I look at this situation and think that evangelism based in fear yields a lot of bad things. Maybe because the fear part isn't Gospel...it's the bad news. Are there things to be afraid of? Sure. The thought of a loved one spending eternity in hell actually scares me much less than it probably should. But the ultimate Truth is God. Whatever we see on the surface...whatever we guess is happening with our loved ones...He knows better. Love always hopes and always perseveres. Manipulation, on the other hand, gives the message that truth and love were not strong enough. Which doesn't sound much like the Kingdom of God to me.

It's that time of year...

2008-12-09T23:38:00.004-06:00

Japanese people are gift givers. It can make holiday seasons rather interesting. Sometimes it feels like we are playing some kind of game. You lose points when you are given a gift and you get points by giving gifts. This is how I feel, anyway. I asked Aaron how many points I started with by being their English teacher and he just responded that God's grace is enough for him.

I am especially confused by my landlord. Who starts out with positive points? Is it me, because I pay him money to live there? Is it him, because he does things like rescue me with fancy drain cleaners that make my shower drain work again? I don't know. But he is constantly giving me vegetables, and once even a chocolate cake that was possibly the best cake I had ever eaten. Day before yesterday, he told me to wait when I was leaving my apartment, and then ran inside, returning moments later with a sweet potato the size of a small cat. A year ago I tried to gain some positive points with my landlord. I had baked pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and I brought him some for him and his wife. Not five minutes after I had delivered the pie, he was upstairs at my door delivering sweets of his own.

One of my students has been supplying me with baked goods every week. She told me, "I want to support your Japanese test taking in this way." And I must admit...it was the greatest thing ever to return to Hongo Sunday night, the monster Japanese test out of the way, and find chocolate cake on my desk with a note saying, "To: Pamela. You must be tired! Have some "sweats". Fm: N." Only after she came back and asked me if she'd written down "sweets" or "sweats" did I realize she had written "sweats", but it makes the note ten times more precious. :-)

Today I received an email from a student that said, "C. and I are planning to give you a Christmas present today. She has taken care of it for 3 weeks." I kind of chuckled, wondering if I am about to receive a puppy. I'm not sure what it will be. But I am reflecting on how living in Japan has helped me a lot to receive gifts freely and thankfully. There are so many times that I get something that is *impossible* to reciprocate. And believe it or not, it is good for me. The "points" system kind of breaks down after awhile. It's no longer about "am I okay with my landlord?" It's more about...what does it mean to live thankfully and generously? This is what our relationship with God is too...He's already given us so much that the point system is broken. There is no way to "get enough points" to work our way back to equal. There is an incredible freedom in that...the "point system" being broken, what is left to do but give from the heart?

This question is, naturally, a little more persistent and weighty during Thanksgiving and Christmas. The social pressure to give out of obligation is very high. Last year I think I pretty much boycotted the social aspect of Christmas all together out of sheer rebellion against the thing. But this year, I am trying to come out and live the new life...a life founded on true generosity. It's going to be considerably more challenging than the normal way of looking at Christmas.

I'm encouraged by the fact that other Christians are thinking this way too. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend this video.

Key this Saturday and Japanese Tests

2008-12-07T02:19:00.003-06:00

There were ten minutes left in our Key meeting this Saturday when Jenae asked us, "What has God been teaching you recently?" Normally at Key we are struggling to figure out what language to speak in. We have a commitment to being bilingual...which really means we have a commitment to everyone understanding what's going on, not necessarily true bilingualness at this point. This often simplifies our conversation quite a bit.

Yesterday, however, a Korean church member came to Key for the first time. Without being asked, he started translating what everyone was saying. I am in awe. I enjoy translating from Japanese to English quite a bit when I actually know what's going on...but his first language is Korean. It would be like me going from Japanese to Spanish.

So, we were able to get quite a bit of depth. It was lovely! This is a group of people that has never been the same even one meeting...we are constantly getting newcomers. But with one question it was obvious we have managed to create a really safe place for people to share.

I also really enjoyed the fact that, even though I brought my guitar, I did not play one stroke on it, nor was I asked to. Ken and Sungbong had the guitar the whole time and were freely sharing their worship gifts with us. I love it when people just volunteer to play instruments!

In other news, I took my impossible Japanese test today.

A nice surprise was meeting up with a girl I knew when we got off the subway. We got to check in afterwards, bemoan what a hard test it was, and hang out for awhile to take pictures of the ginkgo trees with golden leaves at the university where the test was held. My friend said she thought it would be a miracle if she passed the test, but I had to think it wouldn't be a miracle if I passed...it would be a sure sign of some kind of error at the test center. ;-)

Actually, I think the listening section went okay. But the reading and grammar section was potentially the biggest joke in the world. I was filling in bubbles thinking..."I wonder why I am even bothering to do this? I could just mark all the answers "2" and then put my head down and take a nap and I'd probably do just as well."

On the one hand, I did understand a little of one of the reading sections...it was about a girl on a date in Roppongi who saw a cat in a plastic bucket, but she thought it was a penguin. And then she got mad at her boyfriend for laughing at her. At least...that was my interpretation of it. :-)

Perhaps one day I will be able to read Japanese, and it will be an awesome day. But for now, my two months of "intensive" Japanese study are over and I'm going to return to life as usual again. Yay!

Sunday

2008-12-01T21:55:00.002-06:00

This is the real story, verses all the abstract processing in the other entry.

So, Sunday was really great this week. This was partially because I was really sick this week, and so I was actually somewhat rested when Sunday came around. But it was one of those days for just being present at church.

In Japan there is a day once a year when children are brought to shrines to be blessed. Many churches have an alternative day to this where the children can get blessed. Our day was today, and we had maybe ten kids and babies in church. Everything from a month old baby nestled quietly against her mother to a missionary kid still sniffling over not being allowed candy during church.

There was also a guy at our church for the first time who I met at the youth gathering two months ago. He and Ken and I got Chinese bentos for lunch and hung out, while the kids ran around and caused fun chaos. One girl came in and gave us a crash "English" lesson. It began by asking us if she should write in Japanese or English, and I shouted out "Spanish". We had a ten section lesson of how to say "Hola" and then they dashed out again.

Apparently they are getting ready for a Christmas play which has all the elements in the making to be a wonderful time. Mostly I am excited about Jessica (the missionaries' 5 year old daughter) being Mary and Sungbong (A 30-something Korean guy at Hongo who is well loved by all the kids) being Joseph. He was informed this by Jessica's mother, and he turned to Jessica's father and said "Yoroshiku". That doesn't really translate, but in that context it probably means something like, "Please look kindly on me since I am about to marry your daughter."

The new guy at church was a good guy as well, and commented how everyone just left after the service at his other church, but he really liked being able to hang out at Hongo. He definitely got baptized into our community...we young folk were all enlisted to stuff pew cushions into covers that Etsuko accidentally shrunk while ironing. After a valiant battle we managed it. :-)

I was reminded just how much I love my church...where else can you get a 10 second "English" lesson from a seven year old Japanese girl, check in with a woman you've been praying with and talking to for months since she got evicted from her apartment and hear about the new place she's moved into, get in pew cushion cover stuffing contest which is looked on by a bunch of women making pumpkin bread, get in deep conversations about how we figure out our future and depend on God at the same time...and what it really means to depend on God anyway, and worship all in the same day?!

Being and Doing

2008-12-01T20:38:00.002-06:00

My senior year at college I took a seminar about vocation. For my final project, I wrote this paper about the vocation of the church as an institution...I had to make the title that long and fancy because the professor didn't know what I was talking about when I said I wanted to write about the calling of the church. Really the issue I was wondering about was one that had bothered me ever since I did an internship in urban ministry...what is more important: evangelism or social action?

But amid the "Great Commission" enthusiasts that I read about, and those with bleeding hearts for the materially poor, there was one dissident voice. I think it was Mennonite. They said that the church existed simply "to be".

Actually, I scoffed at this at the time. I was a senior in college, trapped in a classroom when there was a world out there in need of acting Christians. I wanted out. I was through with books and wanted real people, the needier the better. I wanted to DO.

Recently I was listening to a friend talking about her ministry and she talked about it being simply to "be"...to live among the people she was living with. I've heard people say other things like that before, and it always strikes me. I've had friends tell me they are jealous of my sense of calling before...this idea that I know what I want to do. I am constantly off trying to start prayer movements, prayer rooms, activities...but what is the goal of all this?

The reason I pray is not because I'm one of those people who really gets a kick out of praying. I once read an article by an intercessor who was describing one day where it was really difficult for her to pray and how it made her understand Christians who were not intercessors. I read the article thinking..."That's amazing...her one day having a hard time praying is what prayer is for me EVERY day." I pray out of a love for God, not out of a love for prayer. The reason I take a whole day to do it a week is because I spent the first half of the day fighting to even sit down at all. It takes me a day to get a good hour with God.

So, no. The goal isn't the activities themselves. The goal is that a whole lot of people, whether Christian or non (the difference in ministering to the two groups doesn't seem so different anymore) would come to know God's heart for them. The activities are just trying to set up situations where that will happen.

There is a book called "Captivating" about women. In the book, I remember there being one woman who they described as constantly striving. They presented this idea that all that was really required of her from God was to exist...that she was enough as she was without all the projects. The book describes her as "softening" at that point and saying how it would be both sad and a relief. Sad because she had spent so much time striving.

There was another woman in the book who was very active in the church. She made the decision to stop leading Bible studies and women's groups and the like, earning her intense criticism from other church leaders. But there was a peace around her after that that hadn't been there before.

These two stories stuck out to me quite a bit at the time, and I've been remembering them again recently (though I've probably butchered the retelling a bit). Part of me is yearning with everything it has just to let go...to let the world run itself and Jesus be savior. Another part of me is condemning myself as apathetic or complacent or lazy or whatever.

This week a girl named April is praying and fasting about starting a prayer house in Tokyo. She felt led to ask me and two other people to be especially devoted to the project this week and to pray and fast along with her. Yesterday she asked me to come to the prayer house and pray with them, and I was filled with dread. Do you want to know what I did? It was a Monday...I always stay at home on Mondays. But I just wanted to be with Kat and Jenae. So, I went out and watched a super intense movie and hung out in a five person group (an awkward dynamic in and of itself). Not the most restful, Sabbath type activity. But, as I am sitting here writing this, I have to think I would do it again. Because, at the end of the day...it's the people I have close relationships with that I really want to give myself to.

Is it really possible that the best way to give oneself to God, that the greatest calling one can have, is simply to be?

Transitional times come again

2008-11-16T23:58:00.003-06:00

These past few weeks, I have observed that I am in all out Transitional State of Being. But it feels different from how it's ever felt before. Usually, to be in transition is to be in mourning. Usually, my mind is flipping through morbid thoughts like, "This is the seventh to last time I'll be doing this." But I haven't found myself filled with dread at all. My reaction has been more along the lines of falling in and out of love with every vision, person, and opportunity that comes my way. The whole world feels like it is charged with potential.

I'm watching all the prayer things happening in Tokyo with this kind of joyful confusion. Well...joyful confusion is kind of my normal state anyway. Joy because it is witnessing what I have watched and prayed for. Joy in knowing that, even if my prayers were the tiniest part in this coming about, part of the wall we are building in Tokyo has been constructed by my hands. Confusion because...I hardly feel part of it now. But at the same time, different groups come up to me and say, "We hope we can count on you to help with this!" and yet I still must pray for and encourage them to reach out to each other. To me this is another 2+2...if multiple people are called to raise up a house of prayer, they are automatically a team. Especially if one of them has a house and the other does not. We shall see how God brings all of it about, though.

On the homefront, I listened to my parents talk about things happening in Lander. It is exciting stuff. A few Sundays ago they had a special service where they pulled all the pews and opened up stations for worship, art, intercession, confession, healing, and maybe other things. The line for healing was so long that the service went almost two hours. There were so many people in the confession line that they had to reallocate people to help out there. So, good stuff.

In the meantime, my dad has done a lot of work with setting up a "One Stop Center" in Lander. It is designed to be a place where the poor can come and get spiritually based support. The Center should ideally be connected to churches and aid organizations throughout the town and be able to refer people to the appropriate organization. It's a little ironic, because the center has always struggled with money. They were recently given a large amount of money, but they are struggling now with staffing and vision.

When the One Stop Center opened my senior year of college, I was so jealous that it was opening several months before I graduated, because I would have gone back home and taken that job in a heartbeat. But the timing was never right, and then God called me to Japan.

And I find myself asking my dad today, "Can you hold it open until April when I get back?"

In my mind there is this fully formed vision. Is it part of the One Stop Center in Lander? Is it part of one of these prayer rooms in Tokyo? Is it something completely new? Is it with friends I already have? Will it be with people I have yet to meet? It's like I have the what and the why but the who, when, and where are completely missing.

But this is what I know...with all my heart I long to have a house that is a safe place. Not for a family, though I might have a family and they might be part of it too. And not as a pastor of a church, though I hope many churches will be involved. It will be a house of prayer. It will be a house where people can stop in to talk at any time. It will be a place where the poor are welcomed and transformed. I have had this vision in some way, shape or form since I was in preschool. And so, ministry sometimes feels like dating...it's like I'm running from ministry to ministry and person to person asking, "Is this the place? Are you the people?"

And so, over and over again, I get pulled into these ministries that are close...but then so confused when they don't come together like what I am looking for. Other dreamers are sometimes the most painful because they'll come alongside and dream, but won't fully commit to it.

Transition times always bring the vision out more fully because I feel myself tempted by so many options...there are so many places that I imagine could be transformed into this place I've always carried in my heart. Sometimes I feel like I see it everywhere. Maybe the potential really is everywhere, and it's waiting for me to be ready rather than the environment to be right. I don't know. But these days, I feel like a walking contradiction so much of the time...falling in and out of love, in and out of excitement, in and out of even feeling like I'm part of a group. I'm afraid to reach out because there is a strong chance that 24 hours later my heart will be cold about the very thing it was ablaze about. And so, I wait.

Because I shall be too excited to sleep for awhile...

2008-11-10T10:15:00.003-06:00

Today was incredibly awesome. Just...awesome. My thoughts are still dancing.

Today a speaker from the International House of Prayer in Kansas City (IHOP) came to speak in Tokyo. She is Portuguese. I think I mentioned in another blog entry that a Portuguese pastor working in Tokyo is one of the people with a vision for a prayer house. What I didn't realize is that part of the reason the speaker came was because her daughter had moved to Tokyo. Her daughter is one of the many worship leaders for IHOP...she is a young Portuguese American woman with a five year old daughter...and she is awesome on the piano.

I honestly think I have found my heart. Prayer on its own isn't my heart. But this. Oh my. I called one of my friends tonight to explain it to her and spent the first five minutes or so just babbling absolute nonsense. Something along the lines of, "It was so...oh, it was amazing! I mean...It was...it was the best thing ever...it was just...it was like...you use some instruments, and...man, it was great!" Somehow, she wasn't getting the picture from that stunning description. ;-)

But what this is, is the prayer and worship style used at IHOP called "Harp and Bowl". The Harp is worship and the Bowl is intercession, and it is a loose structure that puts the two things together. I found myself on the worship side of it and just. blown. away.

It works like this...a worship leader begins with a song based in pretty simple chord progressions. Everyone sings it together, and then a lead intercessor takes up the prayer. They pray a Biblical passage, and emphasize a specific phrase they want the worshipers to focus on. For example, we worked out of Ephesians where it says, "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you". The emphasis would be on hope. And so one of the worship leaders sings ad lib about hope...using another Bible verse that comes to mind or repeating the same verse as the intercessor. Out of that, a simple melody is taken and built on. The intercessor grabs things out of that and goes back to crying out to God, and then it returns to the worshipers who praise God based on the prayer.

I don't know if that sounds overly complicated...it's actually pretty simple. The feel of it is a simple melody everyone can just weave their own worship into. So...I came up to try leading it with one other woman and the "pro" worship leader and it was basically three people who had never sung together before making absolutely beautiful three part harmony on the spot.

And I realized that my favorite part of praying with people really isn't being the one who "leads out"...that one takes courage for me every time. But this. It is my favorite part. Listening to the person who leads out and agreeing along with them. Adding my little tidbits to what they are praying. Praising the awesome God who is hearing every word. I never considered that that part of corporate prayer could be done with music, but my heart has been won forever. I am reasonably certain I could do this for my entire life and never get tired of it.

Things are crazy insane in Tokyo right now in the best possible way. As of yesterday, I have spoken to or heard about four separate people not connected to each other who have all decided it is time to start a house of prayer here. I listen to the Portuguese pastor talk and nearly explode from the way he is able to put the vision I thought I had been carrying all my myself into words. He stood in front of us to close us tonight and said, "I have this vision for a house of prayer in the center of Tokyo...God is doing something here, and I don't think it's a church, but a ministry that we will all need to come together and contribute to." And it takes all my strength to keep myself in my chair. Though these people are the sorts who might not be so put off by a young missionary getting up to dance in the middle of their meeting. ;-)

I keep looking at all of this and thinking...this is crazy. God pulled me into this vision only 10-11 months ago, and already it is exploding everywhere. I look at others who have had to wait for so long. And the suffering I have endured waiting for things to get to this point feels like absolutely nothing. Haha...may I remember that the next time it seems like God is doing nothing for an eternity and that I feel I will die because of it. He always returns. And in the silences, His great plans are born.

Full Saturday

2008-11-01T09:59:00.002-05:00

This morning I dragged myself out of my apartment to do something I had never done before. One of my Korean friends invited me out to do evangelism on the campus close to our church eons ago. I could write an entire entry on my thoughts on tracts, evangelism without relationship building, and perhaps five or six more related topics. But needless to say, a rather frightened, praying-under-her-breath Pamela arrived at the university clock tower about ten minutes late.

We gathered under a tree, sang some hymns in Korean and English, and then took some time to share what God had been showing us during the week in our Bible reading. It's been awhile since I had been in a group that did that, and I was reminded how much I love the accountability. It was a long time of exhortations. The leader of the group retold the whole story of Elijah running from Jezebel, waiting for God on the mountain through the earthquake and fire, and how God finally spoke in a still voice. A British man gave a long, animated exhortation about the book of Ruth and told how God uses the weakest, smallest people. His Japanese wife stood next and, with many fewer words, reminded us of the verse of the cross being foolishness to those who are perishing, but the power of God to those of us being saved. She took comfort in this in the rejection that often comes with sharing the message of the cross.

We all prayed aloud together at the same time, and there was power in the prayer. We didn't "lead anyone to Christ" today, but one high schooler heard the Gospel for the first time; we had a decent conversation with a girl who had studied abroad in Australia and didn't wish to discuss delicate things such as religion; and at the end we had a really fun chat with three guys who were smoking and hanging out by a motorcycle. The guys kind of laughed with us and let us know that Japan has no religion (an often said phrase). Japan has no needs. They repeated. Perhaps two minutes later they had revealed that one of them went to church with his grandma rather often and another had read the whole Bible. This country blows my mind, I tell you! I love Japanese young people a lot.

My verdict on this kind of outreach...dangerous and probably harmful if you think you can just drop a message and run, but potentially wonderful if one is willing to show love and be vulnerable.

It also opened up a connection I had been hoping to make for awhile, because one of the Assemblies girls came to my church afterwards. We had a small Key meeting...truthfully I hadn't expected anyone because I hadn't initiated at all. But it turned out to be four of us. Conversation was deep, real, and God centered. Yay!

I went straight from Key to western Tokyo for the "Sixth Month Checkup" of Global Day of Prayer. We decided once a year wasn't enough. But I must say, this meeting was far more meaningful to me than the one last May.

Stan--the leader of a revival prayer group there--had a wonderful program he called "A Concert of Prayer". With each subject, we would pray as a solo (just on our own), a trio (with the people next to us), and then as a symphony (as the whole group). Every section was moved on by worship songs.

I knew I was "in for it" as soon as I was pulled in for the pre-prayer meeting prayer session and the Holy Spirit just dropped down. Stan was choked up. I could hardly manage words without trembling at who God was. A man I didn't know said that God was holy and the whole group was taken over with awed whispered praises at the holiness of our God. And this was the PRE prayer meeting prayer session.

We praised. We cried out for forgiveness. We stood before God on behalf of Japan, and dozens of other countries as their flags were projected on the screen--including some nation of approximately 7000 people that live off the coast of Newfoundland that Stan is particularly enamored with. ;-) We had five minutes of silence that was the most holy time of the whole evening for me. During the time of silence, I had this picture in my head. It was a father and a little girl. He would try to pick the girl up, but she would hit him on the head, and he would set her down, even though he wanted nothing more than to hold her. Stan called on Pastor Bill to pray after the silence, and he asked forgiveness because we had been holding God at arms length. It seemed very appropriate to me. I could say very little after we were done praying except for, "That was so wonderful and lovely!"

Oh, I should also add, if one more person tells me they are starting a house of prayer anytime soon, I'm not sure what I'll do. One of my Assemblies friends was called to start one a few weeks ago, and is moving into a house / student ministry center to do so sometime this month. As I was walking to the prayer meeting tonight, I heard someone behind me say "Pamela." I turned around, and there was a Brazilian pastor I tried to connect with last May. We had a good talk, obviously both on prayer pages, but didn't really find a connection point. I was surprised he remembered my name. Tonight, as we walked to the meeting, he told me how they really were working to get a continuous prayer ministry (hopefully eventually 24/7) going, and he hoped I would be on board. I have to admit, when I asked God for a 24/7 prayer house in Tokyo back in January, I really didn't expect I was part of this larger vision...and I certainly didn't expect to be told by two separate people in a month less than a year later that it really might happen very, very soon. Pray big, my friends!

Christianity Today--God and Idolatry

2008-10-31T08:42:00.003-05:00

Christianity Today has been going much better recently. My dad gave me maybe the best advice for teaching Isaiah ever. I was feeling so frustrated about how hard it was to help them understand the concepts I find so beautiful, and he pointed out that that is right in Isaiah's calling. God told Isaiah, "Go and tell this people: 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.'" (Isaiah 6:9). While I still really hope my students will someday understand, it is comforting to know that it is Biblical for God to call people to give messages that are not understood by the listeners.

We started a unit on what God thinks about idolatry last Friday and it overflowed into this week. And I was amazed, because people got it. They came up with lots of their own examples...we discussed how things like nature are good, but not God. How both poor and rich people can make a god out of money if they think it can save them. How Christians and non-Christians a like may be guilty of idolatry, and how the idols may be statues or invisible things that happen in our minds.

We read Isaiah 44 to go along with it, which is wonderful because it has no mercy on idolaters but is sandwiched by promises of God's love, capability, and worthiness. The judgment is surrounded by the heart cry of a God who wants so, so much to be the One His people depend on. Who is the only One His people *can* depend on.

At the end of class I asked them what they could see about who God was from this passage, and they came up with such a wonderful list. God is the One and Only. God is savior. God is calling out to His people.

I looked out at them, and saw that some of them looked like they had just been run over. One woman in particular, who when I ask them to tell me about who God is will often give answers like, "the sun". How do you explain the idea of conviction in easy English? I knew I had to wrap it all up for them...it was time to not beat around the bush.

"Some of you might be feeling pretty bad right now..." At times I can tell people about God with ease and cheerfulness. This time I had good news for them, but my breathing felt restricted and it was work to get each word out. Sometimes talking is spiritual warfare. But word by word I got out the message that God was beckoning to them...that He didn't let us feel bad just for the sake of seeing miserable people but that He convicts us because He wants us to come home to Him.

I don't know if they got it or not...maybe not yet...but it's the message I feel like I could tell the Japanese people as many times as they let me open my mouth. How the Father loves you, Japan.

Surprises are new all the time

2008-10-31T08:16:00.002-05:00

Tonight after coffee hour, one of my old students was hanging around a lot. It surprised me, because she is a doctor and usually quite busy. We have wonderful conversations in class, and then she flies out of the building to return to work. She didn't approach me--other people were around talking to me--but when I left the building she was hanging out on the corner talking to Aaron.

I should back up and say this is a student I've been a little worried about. She was one of my most loyal students, always announcing to classes at the beginning of the term that she had come originally to learn English but how she came now because the discussions were so good and she liked to see me. She has had kind of a long courtship with Christianity as well...one that started in college and is still continuing. She told me sadly one class that she wished she could believe it was true, but she just couldn't believe. This started a letter exchange of two letters, and we spoke pretty personally. Then, this term, she didn't register for class. Another student told me she was very busy, and would only have time to come on Fridays, and as it turned out she only came to Coffee Hour, not Christianity Today. I was worried I had pushed her too far...even though I have yet to push someone too far for real even once I still worry about this quite a bit.

So, she was hanging out outside waiting, she joined me and the girl I was walking with, announced that she had forgotten her bicycle, and also that she had something to tell me, though she could write it down...

I walked back with her, and the following conversation occurred:

N.: I have to tell you something, but it's personal.
Pamela: (gearing up for N. to give me extremely personal news) What's up?
N.: Well...actually...I got married.
Pamela: !!!!! When? To who?
N.: To a man, of course!
Pamela: No, no, no...I mean, I know to a man, but...who?!
N.: Oh, I've known him for maybe 20 years. And there's one more thing...we adopted a baby a few months ago.

I'm so glad she finally decided to tell me...I understand a little bit why she is in a dilemma about telling people, though. Adoption is not at all common in Japan. She says she will have to decide whether or not to tell her friends, though she told me she will certainly tell her daughter. Also, since she is still a busy doctor, her husband has become a stay-at-home dad, the first I have heard of in this country. I hope I still have the chance to stay in touch with her!

Tired Days

2008-10-29T00:24:00.002-05:00

It never ceases to amaze me how my predictions about "tired days" are often completely wrong nowadays. In college, it seemed like multiple nights of six hours of sleep would result in feeling sick almost immediately. I really couldn't function without sleep, and I fought for it bravely.

Today I am going on seven hours of sleep from the past two nights combined...about two hours last night and five the night before. I dropped friends off at the train station this morning, and I'd been saying to them how I thought this would be one of the days when I would be trying to lead my classes in conversations about their weeks, and my brain would be completely gone...or at least out on a prayer mission rather than listening.

It's interesting for me to walk into my classes feeling like there is nothing in my head. And there's something very peaceful about walking in telling God, "This one's all on You...really."

This morning I found it easier to focus on my students than it has been in possibly two or three weeks. They had wonderful questions during Bible study, and I felt the discussion was great. I found myself with social energy abounding to go into the kitchen and help them clean up afterwards, where the two women told me about some of their confusions about the Holy Spirit and told me they were really looking forward to understanding better. There was a chance to share the Gospel with them in a more personal way than in the whole class.

I'm not saying going without sleep is a magic recipe for God moving...but relying on Him for real is...well, real. There is a strength that is not from inside of me, not from how much sleep I get, not from how much alone time I've had or from how many chances I've had to connect with another person deeply...these are all things that fill me. But there is a kind of strength that surpasses all of those and makes no rational sense to me at all.

On being a Pray-er

2008-10-24T09:56:00.002-05:00

Something that tends to stick out to other people about me is that I seem to like to pray a lot. To be honest, this mystified me for awhile. Completely, totally mystified me. Prayer itself never felt like it was my focus...I prayed because I wanted to see God. My whole life I had never really thought prayer worked. I mean...I liked talking to God. But it wasn't until just before I came to Japan and the crash course in prayer that ensued the next six months that I really knew God answered prayer. And to me this is two plus two...that if God answers prayer, then we must pray.

It was jarring and shocking for awhile to learn that my two plus two didn't look like simple addition to other people. In my mind when I told them about prayer, I was saying, "2+2=4", but what they heard seemed to involve a combination of differential equations, ancient Greek, and neurobiology.

A few months ago God kind of pushed me on this issue. And I accepted that, no matter what I WANTED to be true, God calls some people to a kind of praying that is different. It is costly. It will take time. Steal opportunities. Limit relationships. Be a wasted life from the viewpoint of the world. It is the one place in ministry where really NO credit can be given to the person involved, because when prayer is answered, you praise God, not the pray-er. And besides, ANYONE can pray.

Of course, the reward is out of this world. There is nothing sweeter than watching something happen and sharing that secret smile with the creator of the all...knowing that we discussed it happening a couple months ago, and now He has really brought it about.

This has been a long introduction, but the point is that this whole prayer calling thing has come up once again. Last night this was a smaller part of a much larger conversation:

A: Have you heard of the Anna anointing?
Me: Well...I know who Anna is an I know what an anointing is...but no, not really.
A: Well, that is you, my dear. And I would love to tell you about it before I go home for Christmas.

I have to admit, I was a little concerned. Anna is the woman who greeted the baby Jesus who had been praying and fasting in the temple for upwards of sixty years. The idea of being "cloistered" frightens me a lot. I want to pour out my heart in prayer...I want to do it over and over and over again...but I do not want to be stuck in a room. I want to be on the streets. I want to meet people who don't know who Jesus is and share about him. I want to meet people living in cardboard boxes and people losing heart in their battles with cancer and people who have given up hope...I want to take the fire that has been given to me and pass it out to them until they feel joy bubbling up in them. I want to stand holding a bright light that shows them the way to the source of life. I want to watch when God touches them and their whole lives get flipped upside down by Him.

Anyway, A. passed me Mike Bickel's teaching on the Anna anointing, and I got to listen to it this evening. IHOP (not pancakes...the International House of Prayer) talks about "Annas" as people having "the grace to spend long hours in prayer with fasting and to sustain it for many years. "Annas" are men or women, old and young, whose primary ministry is fasting and prayer aimed at changing the spiritual atmosphere of a city or nation. This is not their only ministry, as Anna did the work of an evangelist and was a prophetess; she is recorded as the first evangelist in the New Testament as well."

Mike Bickel talks about himself as having this anointing, and when he describes his work, he says he is in the prayer room about 40 hours a week, and does teaching, pastoring, etc. type ministry stuff for about 20 hours a week outside of that. I cannot even begin to tell you how wonderful I would find that kind of schedule. It always amazes me when I have vacations in Japan that I finally feel like I am able to do what I am called to do. When I am at the student center 40 some hours a week it always seems impossible. In the past, I've only really felt free when my workload was 20 hours a week or less. And I don't mean free to run around doing whatever...I mean free to exist in general. Anything more than 20 hours and I can't keep up with myself.

But one thing really, really struck me from the CD, and it wasn't about who I am, but about the way that the church needs to respond to pray-ers. He praised the Catholic church as having made a home for Annas and Marys (Anna is focused on intercession and Mary is focused on worship) throughout the centuries. But this "home" has been mostly missing from Protestant churches. He told us that we could not do it from an isolated place...which is my tendency a lot these days, I have to say. Sometimes the battle to not be isolated feels not even remotely worth it. And he talked about the need for leaders who would not only be excited about the pray-ers, but push them to go all the way.

I was challenged by that...there are needs that I have as a person called to intercession first, other ministry second, that I rarely communicate. Or if I try to communicate them, it turns into one of those "2+2=4" is now super complicated math situations. But I have real needs...a need for a corporate worship place where it is safe to pray however the Lord calls me to, whether intercessing, worshiping, or waiting on Him silently...people who are willing to drop everything and pray with me if needed...occasionally, I actually need to be let off the hook of other obligations so that I can pray (I still always feel guilty about this one)...and I have a real need for people to encourage me and remind me that I can go further than I have gone so far.

Anyway, I don't know if there's a real point to this entry...just rambling, I guess. And processing.

Passion Tokyo

2008-10-16T00:53:00.005-05:00

Monday after the retreat we Shinkansened back to Tokyo and went immediately to Shibuya for the Passion Conference. Charity, Ken and I shoved our backpacks in coin lockers and had about two hours of craziness after that. I won't blog the whole story here, but it is an epic tale of bravery, missing tickets, missing people, dying cell phones, oversleeping people, and lots of running around. Needless to say, by the time the conference was fifteen minutes in, all 17 of us missionaries and Japanese friends were finally all assembled with seats and tickets.

We were still missing one person the first fifteen minutes of the concert, and he was the one person out of the whole group that I had a strong conviction needed to be there. When we arrived in the hall, there was a sign saying that all saved seats needed to be released. I draped his ticket over the seat. In the meantime, attendants began asking about saved seats just in front of us. They would have people scoot into them and bring in people from outside. I began praying rather frantically, "God...please blind their eyes to our seat" over and over again. I sprinted down with his ticket and let him in fifteen minutes later. And then I could finally worship.

Never before in Tokyo have I praised God along with 2000 people. Not that numbers are so impressive in and of themselves, but on the other hand...2000 people were praising God in Tokyo! The conference lasted about 3 hours, and here are the highlights from my perspective:

-Chris Tomlin sang "How Great is Our God" and he did part of the song translated into Japanese. I can't put into words how meaningful that is to me...hearing people (even American people) really praise God in Japanese has got to be one of the most beautiful sounds in the whole world.

-The Passion Conference is traveling around the world, and each city prays for the city that the conference will go to next. It so happens that the city before Tokyo was Seoul, Korea. Apparently some of the older Koreans thought it might be a problem to ask the Korean crowd to pray for Tokyo, but, as the speaker said, "Luckily, the auditorium was full of young people." He told us, "Just in case you weren't sure the Koreans wanted to pray for you, we got their answer on video." On the screen came up the video of 20,000 or something Koreans, he asked them if they would be praying for Tokyo, and they errupted in cheering. The video swept across the front row, and there was one girl who was obviously speaking right to the camera, reaching out to it and mouthing (or possibly shouting with all the noise) that she was praying, that she loved us. Then, the speaker told us that these signs had started popping up in the Korean crowd, and he had brought them to share with us tonight. Those are the pictures in this entry. I got teary eyed at other parts of the conference, but at this part I could not stop outright crying. If you don't know the history between Korea and Japan, it is not pretty, and it was so moving to see the love that they had.

-Dancing! Yay worship dancing!

-The reactions of the young Japanese guys we had with us. They said:

"The conference brought a huge earthquake in me. Singing with all the people in the hall, praying together,and listening to Louie's talk, the joy to worshiping the Lord and feeling His grace arose in me, which is the sense I had lost for a long time more than a year! And I have never been such proud that Tokyo is my home town! I used to dream to evacuate from this suffocating place. I used to spend time thinking over a "exit from Tokyo" plan. But what I witnessed yesterday was that Chris Tomlin was praying for Tokyo, people in the hall were praying forTokyo,and you guys were praying for Tokyo. I remember that one of my friend tolds me on the very last day at Illinois 2 years ago, that he was envious about my going to a mission field of vast expanse. Now I fully understand what he meant."
"I love Jesus more and more!"
"I didn't know Christians could be exciting." (hee hee...I think he meant "excited", but I kind of like it this way. ;-) )

Anyway, it was a super cool night. We went out to dinner afterwards and I watched people become friends, plans for Christian bands get discussed, and Jesus' name lifted up in general. It was a wonderful evening!

Grape Vines and Japanese Youth

2008-10-16T00:20:00.004-05:00

This is the first of maybe three blogs that I want to write...we'll see how many entries I actually get through. ;-)

Last weekend was a three day weekend for Japan, Monday being "Sports Day". I hit a Shinkansen Saturday morning and arrived in Gifu Prefecture a few hours later for the All Japan Lutheran Youth Retreat. When I am at my church, I sometimes forget that I can't really speak Japanese, because the people who know me have gotten very good at speaking to me. But when I became the only American in a group of 50, I very quickly knew my lack. But the weekend was a good time of connection nonetheless.

We met at a monastery, complete with vineyards. I've never seen a vineyard up close before, and laughed because I had tried to draw one on the white board only the day before when we were talking about Jesus saying 'I am the vine, you are the branches'...the picture had failed miserably and I had to turn the drawing into a tree instead. But after seeing real grape vines, I realized they really do look kinda like a tree...but that's neither here nor there.

The weekend was a really nice blend of relational time and God connection time. We spent the entire first day building people connections with each other...including icebreakers, which is always amusing when you don't really understand the instructions...I would hear, "blah blah blah stop blah blah two or three blah blah blah introduction" they would say "go", and suddenly all were moving around shaking hands. They shouted out a number, and we all had to get into groups of that many people. When I've played this game before, anyone who couldn't get into a group was eliminated...but this is the land of cooperation, and we had a minor miracle in that when they shouted 3, 5, 7 and 8 we were able to form perfect groups every time. We are all still trying to figure out how that worked.

Saturday night I was so tired from complete immersion that I went to bed at 9:45. Or tried to. People kept coming and checking on me and tried to lure me downstairs by telling me about all the snacks they had...but there is a point where there can be no more Japanese.

Luckily, my Japanese brain had turned on by Sunday morning. I love it when that works. So, I started the morning with a couple really nice conversations. As long as we're talking one-to-one, Japanese really is okay. We joined the Catholics at the Monastery for mass, and it was a really beautiful liturgy. I found myself reflecting during the service how, even though my heart is much more freedom, hands in the air, spontaneous celebration, there is a kind of deep holiness in Catholic masses that I really love. I think Catholic churches and monasteries really are one of the secret pillars holding the whole world up. At least, that's what was going through my mind while I was there.

For lunch on Sunday we made "Rinjin Origiri" or "Neighbor Rice Balls". Basically, we were randomly assigned a partner and supposed to find out their rice ball preferences and then prepare lunch for them. I had made rice balls a grand total of one time before, so I was feeling some pity for my partner, but it turned out he was a young guy who seemed to have about the same amount of experience. We both presented each other with somewhat less than perfectly shaped rice balls and got some smiling and laughing out of the whole experience.

We also got to hand make paper on Sunday, which was really, really fun!

Sunday afternoon we took our discussion about connections a step deeper and got in small groups to look back at our relationship with God and discuss that connection. I had a great small group, but the subject matter was still pretty above my Japanese level. I really couldn't understand the other members, but could tell we were having a really incredible, deep discussion. :-) They had trouble understanding me. But with a little help, some English, and some Japanese I finally communicated a little. We were able to communicate just enough to look at each other longingly...wishing there wasn't this huge language barier in between us and the questions we wanted to ask each other.

Charity arrived Sunday afternoon, and I have never been so glad to see another American in my life. I realized that, even if the two of us are split up way across the room from each other, the ability to pass each other after an event is over and say, "Did you understand any of that?! A little...yeah...I didn't get it either...this Japanese stuff is so tiring!" gave me the energy to really keep at making the effort. Also, there was a girl who had been looking really sad who was always by herself, and being able to tag team with Charity we finally pulled her into the group a little more. Charity is so good at helping people open up!

Monday morning we got to pray for each other in small groups! It was lovely.

Charity, Ken and I headed back home early from the retreat, and I found myself wishing we could have stayed at least two more days. But perhaps we'll see each other around again. :-)

In other news...

2008-10-09T09:13:00.002-05:00

I registered a while ago to take a very hard Japanese test. But, my plan has backfired a little. In the beginning, I hoped that everyone would realize how impossible it was for me to pass it and that they would all tell me so. I function *extremely* well when everyone tells me my efforts are pointless because my task is impossible. Sometimes I think only impossible things are worth doing...I'm not sure what that says about me.

But the opposite has been happening! And this is Japanese culture for you...I explain to them that I have to learn 700 kanji in three months (to say nothing of studying grammar), and they become very encouraging. It is the most bizarre thing in the world...they should be saying, "Pamela, you stupid idiot, why are you wasting your time studying 700 kanji?!"

Instead, I find that they are suddenly helpful about my Japanese studying. People who used to look cross-eyed and exhausted the moment I say, "I have a Japanese question..." are suddenly asking me how the studying is going, looking at my flashcards over my shoulder, marveling at the words I am using and giving me examples of them without me even needing to ask.

Etsuko has begun praying that I will understand the test. Now, normally I am in favor of praying, but I keep telling her, "It's no use! Don't trouble God with whether I pass this test or not!"

Aaron, who understands a little at least, will then chime in, "I don't know...you might need prayers to at least understand the instructions!" :-)

But Etsuko continues her praying. The other day she told me she'd been praying about it just that morning and then wondered to herself, "Why, I wonder?" I wonder too. And I realize that somewhere inside of me, something feels like God helping me on a test is cheating. And I would struggle a lot to praise God if I passed the test, miracle though it would be. (I took a shortened form of it to practice...I think I got a whopping 15% on the reading section, and most of the questions I answered correctly were luck). All in all, I would be hesitant to praise...fearful that I might encourage the relationship with God that so many have of "Dear God, please let me pass this test, amen."

God's help or not, passing the test in general would feel dishonest to me...I'm good at test taking, but this test is a high enough level to potentially help me get a non-English teaching job in Japan if I passed it, and anyone who has seen me trying to communicate with my pastor knows my Japanese is not at that level.

But it's interesting to me how my Japanese language striving has suddenly been made culturally legitimate because I am taking a test. And it's fascinating to me that even people like my Japanese teacher, who knows just how crazy this endeavor of mine is, will only go so far as to give me a book to practice out of and say, "Please tell me if you don't understand anything...though I think there will be many places."

Still, I am learning lots of kanji. Not nearly as many as are necessary (I'd have to learn 70 a week), but I'm learning to read for real now! I like knowing how to read.

Why I Love my Job

2008-10-09T09:08:00.002-05:00

Pamela: Do you have a Bible, H?
H: Eh? No...I don't have one.
P: Do you want one? We have these free little ones...
H: That's great! Now I will not need to steal one.

In Which Pamela is Surprised

2008-10-05T07:34:00.002-05:00

Today was English Book Club again. And it was good. Yay!

There is a man in that club who isn't a Christian and who has gotten into a lot of arguments with the other class members. I personally think he's rather good for the church members...he forces them to defend their faith. But often I've been frustrated when they end up arguing over a grammar point when it seems like the fact that he's talking about the particular grammar point is significant. At least, I've always felt like there was something different about him. Something more than just an argumentative white-haired man.

Today, he prepared a speech to give us in English because he felt bad for me and Paul since the group almost always speaks in Japanese.

He shared in the speech which parts of the book had been most impressive to him, and began the whole thing off by apologizing that he did "not believe in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ." He also said he didn't understand it. He had been surprised that Brother Yun did not believe in politics but said that the Kingdom of God was separate. He had been shocked by Yun's statement that God had allowed the Chinese government to destroy the church so He could build it back up again His way. And he had been deeply impressed by Yun's pleading for God to receive his spirit while he was being tortured and the fact that Yun was able to rest in the fact that Jesus had sacrificed His life for him.

When he was done, I repeated to him how he had said he didn't understand the Gospel, and I asked if anyone had explained it to him before.

And this is where the surprise came in.

He kind of laughed, and said he had had a girlfriend something like 60 years ago who was a sincere Christian. (60 years seems way too long to me...maybe his numbers were off, but anyway). I asked him to explain the Gospel to me, and he said that Jesus' blood was the most important. He said that he understood the Gospel with his heart, but not with his head, and that if he understood it with his head, he would become a Christian.

He further said that he had happened to see that old girlfriend by chance two weeks ago, though he had been with his wife.

Apparently he fell out of love with her at the time when they attended church together.

Anyway...it's just one of those random stories. Though it was surprising at the time, writing it down here it strikes me how common the story really is. I've had students randomly tell me they have Christian parents months and months after I've known them. And it is amazing to me how many people really *have* heard something of the Gospel in a country where the "percentage" of Christians makes it seem like it would be unlikely. God keeps reaching. Even when our hair has turned white and we've been turning down His offers for more than half a century...He keeps reaching.

In other news, one of my non-Christian English students asked me today if I knew that Takaaki was becoming Christian. Apparently he's not holding back that information at all, which is awesome cause for celebration!

Christianity Today Back a Step

2008-09-26T22:12:00.003-05:00

For a long time, I've been planning on doing a unit on the prophetic books for my Christianity Today class. I've been building up to it for maybe a year now...teaching them about Creation, the Exodus...we did some other Old Testament studies on Ruth and King David...I expected them to have the foundation for reading the prophetic books. I was excited to share them with them and struggle through the process of finding God's love in difficult places.

Last week, I brought out Isaiah 5. It seemed a good chapter because it has beautiful love language (the vineyard) along with some "woe"s. I had a college professor who was really able to open these books up for me, in part by leading me to see God in them. I felt like I could identify with many of my students struggles with an angry God--they are harmony lovers and don't like anger--and lead them through those struggles. However, we began struggling much sooner than I had anticipated. In fact, we only made it through four verses, and all involved were still confused by the end of the class. These weren't the angry God verses...these were the verses about the vineyard.

So, I'd been turning over what to teach all this week. I still hadn't made so much progress by Friday. But I ended up leaving my Bible and lesson planning notebook an hour before the class was going to start and went and sat outside for half an hour or so. I found myself thinking about the difference between knowing ABOUT God and knowing GOD. And how hard it would be to understand the Bible if one didn't know God.

It is so much easier to teach history, theology, doctrine...anything other than God Himself. Trying to talk about God's love when there are unbelievers, pencils poised to take notes and log it all into their "knowledge about Christians" bank, without ending up in tears. It is watching them sit there, calm and unaffected, while I am aware of God's intense longing. And somehow being caught in between the two. Being one who is consumed by the love He has for me all while knowing I must be the voice that communicates that consuming fire to them...to somehow put words to that which burns through me and leaves me collapsed in awe. How badly He wants them to know.

Anyway...class last night was perhaps the least structured it had ever been. They said so many things that I could have taught a whole classes on. We switched topics maybe four times in an hour and only loosely tied them together. But there's only one thing I want to communicate to them, and I told them, "We are not moving into God's anger until you have seen His love." This is the "new" mission of Christianity Today.

laughing really hard

2008-09-22T06:17:00.002-05:00

Or, I could write a whole blog entry explaining how I've searched for an hour, go look around one more time, only to find them inside my guitar case not two minutes later.

*curtsies*

Just because I always have to share the joy of getting to laugh at myself

2008-09-22T06:01:00.003-05:00

How is it possible to unlock one's front door with one's keys and then lose them inside one's own apartment?

I just spent the last hour searching for my keys / wallet. I used the same keys to unlock my front door maybe three hours ago, so I know they are in my house, unless something quite unlikely has happened such as someone climbing up to my 2nd story balcony and entering my apartment and taking my wallet without me noticing while I was playing guitar in the other room. (NOT likely)

You know you are in trouble when you are searching for something and get the sudden, excited thought: "Ah! There is one more place I haven't checked! Maybe they're in the freezer!" No luck. And then you find yourself looking through the washing machine multiple times just because you are so out of ideas.

This rather unfortunately means that I cannot legally leave my apartment (no foreigner registration card), have no money, cannot lock my front door if I chose to leave, and must figure out a way to make dinner out of what I have in my apartment. The latter being the most serious situation, naturally. ;-)

Sunday Goodness, part two

2008-09-14T01:19:00.003-05:00

After church today, we went to put pamphlets in mail boxes, and I had another one of my lovely random street encounters that I love. I was in this neighborhood with winding narrow streets and old, wooden houses, and I came to a place where an old woman was squatting outside her house, talking to her neighbor who had just come out her door.

I paused, rather unsure what to do, because you can't put pamphlets in people's mailboxes right in front of them, but it also seemed odd to skip their houses all together.

She saw me looking confused, and asked me in Japanese what I was looking for. I explained I was giving out pamphlets and showed one to her. And she just kept talking to me. I liked her a lot. Within two minutes, I was squatted down beside her and she started explaining the neighborhood with wide hand gestures.

The funny thing about older people is that you tell them you've spoken Japanese for two years, and they assume you are fluent. She was very surprised when I had to pull out my dictionary to figure out her meaning of the word "air raid", but it turns out she was explaining that Ueno had been flattened by the air raids in WW2, but this area had been untouched, and so there were lots of old houses. I kept sitting with her as she talked and was amazed at how this place was different than anywhere else I had been in Tokyo just because of her presence.

Many people in Tokyo don't know their neighbors. This woman seemed to know her whole street. And a lot of people walked by. She would call out directions to lost people, greetings to people who seemed determined to just race out their door, and they would turn around and smile and greet her back. Finally, a young college aged guy came by, kind of smiling at seeing this 80 year old woman and 24 year old foreigner crouching together on the street. "Tomodachi?" he asked. "Friend?" She explained that we had just become friends. He knew her, and he squatted down with us for awhile too. He also looked at a pamphlet, saw I had lived in Minnesota and said, "Twins?" That made me smile. She checked in with all sorts of things in his life, gave him all sorts of advice...I think at one point he was talking about job searching and she started telling him, "You've got to go that way and check in with this business..." It was wonderful...this woman is an 80 year old fireball who seems to be the center of her whole street.

I hope I get to see her again!

Sunday Goodness, part one

2008-09-14T00:49:00.004-05:00

Last night I went out to a prayer meeting in Higashi Kurume, as is normal about once a month. I'm kind of the oddball of the group...they are five Christian adults, four of whom are married, three of whom have white hair, and all of whom attend a (as they say) "Bible Church" of some kind. We are united by a love of stories about God moving and a strong vision for united prayer among Christians in Tokyo.

Prayer meetings in Higashi Kurume often seem more like story telling sessions than traditional prayer times. At least, we often manage to spend more time cheering each other on with stories of what we're hearing in our churches, our city, or on other sides of the globe than we do praying. But the prayer is powerful, exciting, joyful as well.

Last night we were talking about on the line pre-Christians we know. There are a lot of them in Japan. We talked about things we've heard them say for why they don't become Christian (everything from fearing that the persecutions of 400 years ago will repeat and they will be persecuted to the belief that they are too old). A pastor in the group shared a story about a girlfriend and boyfriend. The girlfriend was Christian. Someone told the boyfriend the gospel and that he needed to repent and ask Jesus for salvation. He turned to his girlfriend and said, "Why didn't you tell me?" Our response: ouch.

But I was still thinking about that line and about the way I talk to my students. I give them lots of information. I explain all sorts of things about their questions. As long as they are willing to ask, I am willing to be completely honest with them. But it's kind of like the girl in Beginner Bible last Thursday...after I have drawn diagrams, spilled my heart, shared every thought I have, they are still the ones left to make the important conclusion, "So...this means I should follow God?"

I have shared before about Takaaki--the young guy who prayed for 9 hours during 24/7, who attends every Christian event that we have when school isn't killing him, who sees Bible passages and always seems to come up with the conclusion, "If this is true...we really should be responding to God, shouldn't we?". Takaaki came to Bible Study this morning. He came to church too. And the whole service through, I was thinking..."No more talking in circles...I have got to ask Takaaki if he knows how a person becomes Christian and let him know if he doesn't." He was talking to Masujima sensei--a strong leader in the congregation for awhile at the end of the service. Finally, I got to him and rather awkwardly said, "Umm...Takaaki, I have something I need to talk to you about."

I asked him if he knew how to become a Christian and he said, "I was just talking with Masujima sensei about what I do if I want to get baptized." I tried not to dance all over the sanctuary right there. But then I told him how I'd been thinking I needed to talk to him the whole service through. He said, "That was good timing."

So, I explained to him how it seems like a lot of Japanese people think you have to understand everything about Christianity to become a Christian. To which he laughed and said, "Yeah...me too." And so I told him how I don't know everything about Christianity and Yasui sensei doesn't either and we're all on this path together. He was surprised. (Which kind of surprised me, for all the questions I answer "I don't know!" in class). Then I said that the first step of becoming a Christian is just telling Jesus that you are a sinner and that you need Him and asking Him to be in control of your life. He was shocked. Which confirmed for me that I am not being as open with my students as I think I am.

He asked me where he could get "lessons" to learn about Christianity to become baptized, and so I pointed him to Yasui sensei.

But then I was a little more bold and said, "You know...you can pray that prayer to Jesus anytime. We could pray it together right now if you wanted."

He wasn't ready yet. He said he would have to think about it and that he had to go. But he didn't make it all the way out the door but instead started a conversation with a church member with the question, "Do you like talking to God?" Hee.

Please keep him in your prayers!

And we're back...

2008-09-11T07:43:00.002-05:00

My first Beginner Bible class was today!

There's something about new terms that always makes it very, very clear how little about Christianity is in the culture of the country I live in. And it is both frustrating and satisfying...satisfying because I realize how much my students have really learned about Christianity in the course of the last term, and frustrating because I have new students and must return to square one all over again.

Today there were two new students at Beginner Bible class...they are my favorite kinds of students, aka, the ones who ask difficult, honest questions. We read the creation of humans today, and I got way ahead of myself (because they didn't have the appropriate background info to actually understand the answers to their questions) and in the course of an hour and a half ended up drawing pictures and charts on the board to explain authority, the fall, the trinity, why God became a human, what it means for us, and what happened spiritually when Jesus died and rose again.

One of the new students is really observant. And I felt like she had a knack for picking out the parts of the text that cause disagreement among Christians interpreting. So, she immediately picked up on God saying "create them in our image" and asked about the "our". She also looked at what humans had originally been told to eat and asked if eating meat was considered a sin.

The other new student, on the other hand, while studying the "trinity diagram" asked if Jesus and the Holy Spirit existed at the same time.

I think they kind of got the important points, though. But man!! I was reflecting during this whole thing how good it is that God uses multiple people to share the gospel, because many of these students I don't see more than once, or at least not so consistently. But it's so impossible to explain only the important points! At least in a way that would have meaning. I could tell them simply that Jesus died for their sins...that his death set us free from slavery to sin and Satan. But that has never seemed to get through...it gets stuck in questions like: who is Jesus? Are you saying *I'm* a sinner? What is this sin thing anyway? What does that have to do with my daily life? Who is Satan? If Jesus death set us free, why is the world still screwed up? Why are you insisting that there is one God and then talking about three different parts?

But by laying the entire thing out, it makes sense. You have God's command from the moment of our creation to rule over the earth, the devastating decision to turn that authority over to Satan, and then the brilliance of God...not to keep shouting down from heaven to try to get us to get it right, but clothing himself in human skin to fix what only a human had the authority to fix.

Somehow, something worked. At least, by the end of all my board diagram, one of the new students summed it up very well: "So...we should follow God?"

Please pray for my students...the new ones are Naoko and Hirano-san.

How to see beyond?

2008-09-07T07:30:00.005-05:00

We had another English book club today. It's been interesting and frustrating to read The Heavenly Man with people from my church. At the beginning, the book causes a big explosion. There are two non-Christians in the group, and all the others are church members. One of the non-Christians went on a rant about how he didn't want to read a book that was just full of miracles. A church member went on a long processing train of thought about how this book was like reading the Bible and he couldn't figure out why the Chinese people became Christian. Multiple people were confused about why the main character became Christian (his father had cancer and was cured overnight when prayed for...the whole family followed Jesus from then on).

The way people respond to miracles often confuses me. When I read about miracles...real miracles, mind you...those things that are inexplicable aside from God existing...they make me starving to see Him in real life. Reading about them always makes me go slightly crazy...that is, I end up in my room in tears begging Him not to hide from me and not to keep His face turned from the places I live. I watch many people (Christian and non), however, hear about miracles, shake their heads, and say "I can't believe that." To me, when I read these stories, I think not believing them requires a greater leap of faith, and a much more detailed argument, than believing them. The number of things that would have to be true for this story to be anything other than God touching China with a magnificent show of power is unbelievable to me.

Anyway...we had another meeting today. I really appreciated the church member who is leading the club because he has put a tremendous amount of work into getting us maps and putting together time lines and looking up Bible verses to go along with the story. It definitely adds to the story when you see where some of the places are, and just how far they were willing to walk to carry the gospel.

What I have realized, though, is how much suffering can steal our eyes away from God in the times when He is often most visible. Today, they decided that we will read chapter eight next month, and after that we will probably skip to chapter 22 because everything in between those two chapters is pretty much "just persecutions", the leader claimed. I was not sure how to respond.

Partially, I am a little relieved. I know that this book has stirred up some of the thoughts that needed to be stirred up, and I'm not sure the church members need to read it for the next year and a half, which is about how long they would be reading it at the rate they're going. They've purchased the book, so if there are people who God is nudging to see a bigger picture of Him, they can always read it on their own.

But it brings up an interesting point to me...the sufferings that Yun goes through are horrible. But they are not the whole story, or even close to the whole story. They are going to miss stories of unbelievable transformation within prison walls...of a complete fast that lasted longer than 40 days...they'll miss Yun learning about his service to the Lord becoming an idol and how he brought his focus back...they'll miss efforts to unify the house churches in China...they'll miss seeing the amazing good things that happen because Yun stands up for the truth boldly, and the way God cares for him constantly while he is inside prison walls...and stories of God warning Yun ahead of time about what will happen through visions so that he is prepared and can continue to honor God through everything that happens to him.

But hearing from the people who have read the whole book, it's almost like they didn't see any of this stuff anyway...my non-Christian student who attends this book club described the book after she finished reading it as "a book where the man suffers through the entire thing." She made it sound like every page was nothing other than reading about a man in agony.

Perceptions are interesting things...it's interesting to me that, in a book where I see God's power overcoming in the most dramatic, awesome ways possible, others see nothing more than a man tortured around every turn.

It's something I experienced myself, especially with the prophetic books of the Bible. I remember reading Amos for the first time as a college student and feeling physically sick. When I read Amos, all I saw was God's anger, God's threats of violence, people being killed. It took until the fourth time reading it (in the course of a week...it was for class) to see the verses "They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed." (2:6-7). That was all I needed...my view of God at that time involved a God who mostly cared for the poor, homeless, etc., and seeing that the reason he was angry was because serious, serious injustice was happening was my gateway into being able to see Him in those books...but I had to have that opening first. That one view of His goodness in the middle of verses like "For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath" (which caused my stomach to ache) was all it took to begin the journey of seeing Him other places in the prophetic books.

I wonder what the opening would be for these church members. I wish I could help them see God and be inspired by this story.

Fun Registration TImes

2008-09-04T09:10:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was a good afternoon at Hongo. Classes will start next week, but this week we come and hang out at the center from about 2-7:30 to register new students. Sometimes things are pretty slow...our old students usually don't register until classes start, and we don't usually get dramatic rushes of new people. Today our first new visitors of the day were two girls who came in at 7:30 just as we were picking up our bags and getting ready to flip light switches.

But yesterday was really busy! We had something like eight people stop by. My favorite, however, was a guy named Amar. He looked Japanese to me, so when he first tried to tell me his name, I automatically tried to make it into a Japanese sounding name. "Amaru?" But no...he corrected me. And then told me his full name, which I made him write down and teach me how to pronounce. He is from Mongolia.

Normally we go pretty easy on our registering students...Etsuko gives an explanation of our free Bible classes and strongly invites people to attend those as well, even if only to get more English practice. But when she asked Amar any questions, he told her that he had seen on the internet that we were a Lutheran organization, and so he had looked up the history of the Lutheran church and Martin Luther and wondered if Etsuko would tell him more about it.

I love seeing Etsuko get the chance to do what she really loves doing. She wanted to be a pastor, but has ended up a church and English school receptionist. The days I come in when she has had to shove letters in envelopes all day I see how much it wears on her. But give her anyone who will give her the chance to talk and encourage and teach and she lights up.

This Mongolian grad student was completely engrossed in her explanation of papal bulls, sola scriptura, and salvation by faith. I was a little afraid she was overdoing it, but once she stopped he just pressed on with the questions. She had a Bible out soon enough and was showing him through that as well. Only when two more prospective students walked in the door did he jump to his feet, a little embarrassed, and apologize for taking so much of our time. We assured him he had been no trouble at all, and he assured us he would be back with more questions.

A little while later, we had a Korean guy stop by who is only in Tokyo for a few weeks, but asked if he could pray in our church.

I have a cool job. :-)

You know what kind of pray-ers you're getting involved with when...

2008-09-04T09:05:00.003-05:00

You tell them the prayer time is from 9-11 and you receive an email in response that says:

"hey is it 9am to 11am, 9pm to 11pm, or 9am to 11pm?"

Personally, I think 9pm to 11am would have been more likely than 9am to 11pm, but you know. To each his or her own. ;-)

Ah, the Tokyo Life

2008-09-01T21:04:00.002-05:00

As of checking my email this morning, if I did everything I have been invited to that would be potentially good and cool this weekend, I would be:

-Leading an overnight prayer meeting for Japan praying at the same time as a Hong Kong group from 9pm Friday to 6am Saturday.
-Taking off to meet the GAPers (Gospel Assembly of Praise) people at the beach at 1pm Saturday afternoon.
-Either making it back at 7pm to go to Tokyo Baptist to watch a girl who found me on the 24/7 site on the internet but who I haven't met yet sing in a gospel choir there (how's that for a run-on sentence?)...or going to watch the same thing Sunday morning at 9am. She didn't find me to invite me to the choir concert...she's looking for a group that prays for the nations...I'm excited to meet her someday hopefully soon!
-Hongo for morning worship at 10:30am
-And reading Brother Yun with the English Book Club at Hongo from 2-4
-And worshiping with the GAPers in the afternoon at 4:00 and hanging out with them through dinner.

I'm in one of my super-hyperactive excited phases...so I look at all this and say...yay! Nothing overlaps! That might be doable! *laughing at self* Someone hit me over the head.

So...any of you Tokyo folks want to pray for Japan overnight, come to the beach with some cool people, or go watch a gospel choir with me? Come to think of it...oh man. This might be the Saturday my revival prayer group meets as well...wow. Never mind about nothing overlapping. Happy back to regular schedules, everyone! ;-) (I am *so* excited to be moving again!)

Silence and Hiding Christians

2008-08-13T10:35:00.003-05:00

There is a very famous book about the 17th century Christian persecutions in Japan called "Silence", written by Shusaku Endo. One of my professors gave it to me to read while I was thinking about whether or not I would go to Japan. The characters in the book are being tortured for their faith, and the book centers around the complicated issues about how they will respond to the pain inflicted on them. Also threaded throughout is the theme of the silence of God and the struggle of the suffering Christians as that silence makes them feel abandoned.

Understanding the current spiritual climate in Japan requires understanding the history.

The tactic of the shogunate for determining whether people were Christian or not during the persecutions was very simple. They made whole villages come to the temples and then they brought out a round disk they called a "fumie". It had an image of either Jesus or Mary on it, and the people were forced to stamp on the image. If a person refused to tread on it, they were killed. Through this and other persecutions, the church became invisible very quickly.

Japanese Christians became very adept at hiding. There is a museum in Tokyo that is a whole collection of artifacts made by these Christians. There are many items with cleverly hidden crosses, images of Mary made to look like Buddhist images, and other ways that the Christians found ways to represent their faith so that they could practice without anyone knowing what they were doing. There's a fairly detailed website here with a picture presentation if you are interested in more about the Japanese hidden Christians.

The bans on Christianity lifted in the 19th century, and some hidden Christians came out of hiding and rejoined the Catholic church.

But there's an aspect of the Japanese church that is still hidden. You see it in the Christians who go to church on Sunday, but don't let their coworkers know they are Christian. Or it's in the many Japanese people who are waiting for a family member to die before they will get baptized.

Today, I had lunch with a young guy who recently became a Christian while he was studying abroad in Illinois. He's been back in Japan for a little more than a year now, and the adjustment has been difficult for him at times.

For awhile, I've been in something of an intense discussion with him. He decided several months ago that evangelism of any sort wasn't people's work, but God's work. He had decided it was just fine to let people be. Recently that view of his was developing even further, and he had decided from the tower of Babel story that diversity was something that needed to be defended. I am a fan of diversity, except when it goes so far as to say that all religions are equally true and should be "tolerated" in the sense of never saying "I think you're wrong" to another person. The center of our discussion has been that I believe that some things are True. And when something is True, it is worth defending to other people--especially when the Truth in question is Jesus, and a treasure of a Kingdom of God that is worth trading our entire life for.

For a couple months, we have been going around in circles with this discussion. And I couldn't quite figure out why. For whatever reason, my argument of, "This is worth standing up for because it is True", just doesn't seem to hold water when I pull it out here.

Last night I had a conversation with a friend until nearly 5am. We finished by saying, "Well...maybe we didn't solve any of Japan or the world's problems, but we discussed them all!" But there was an immediate fruit to our conversation, because we had been talking about the problem of hiding and isolation in Japan. So, this time when I came back to the discussion with this guy, that was fresh in my mind, and I explained to him that I saw Japan as a country of hiding Christians, and that it wasn't what God intended for us here.

The response was instantaneous. I was shocked at how quickly it framed his entire situation...not from my perspective, but from his. He was instantly able to summarize it as him pulling back. And then we had a super productive conversation about why he feels like hiding, how one fights the desire to hide, how one deals with reaching out when Satan is throwing condemnation after condemnation. It's amazing how changing a lens changes everything...we've been struggling all these weeks with questions of "If God doesn't need me, why should I do anything?" and "Is there even really just one truth in the first place?"...I would have thought those were central issues. Apparently they were not the core.

It's something I've been realizing more and more...sometimes the greatest faith is in leaving action alone and offering up a prayer. But very often, our prayers are weak because we are praying for God to do things that we could do ourselves, but are not willing to. "God...please heal this person, but don't ask me to spend time with them." "God...please reveal yourself to my unsaved friend, but don't make me ruin our relationship by speaking Your truth to them!" "God...please save our country...but don't give me an active role in Your work!" "God...please take care of hungry people...but don't make me give more than 10% of my income!" Our actions make our prayers hypocritical. We should pray with all our heart...we must offer the situations around us up in prayer...but if we believe that God will answer, that should create freedom and love that will propel us to act.

More on this later. I have several thousand ramifications I'm still thinking through.

Gathering Artists and Missionaries All

2008-07-13T20:50:00.003-05:00

This last Friday, a had a lot of friends over to my apartment. My birthday was back in June, and this weekend people had some time, and so my friends informed me that they would be descending upon my apartment en mass. The problem with getting together with my missionary friends is always that all of us teach English until late in the evening. I get home around 10pm on Fridays. But, undeterred by such obstacles, they kept arriving in waves until we had six of us in my apartment, the last one arriving after 11:00 sometime. And then we had a wonderful time playing Apples to Apples and finally went to bed with the sun around 4:30 in the morning.

It was a really lovely time. We don't get together very often at all just to hang out.

My friends also went against my request that they not get me anything...I tried to tell them all I wanted was for them to come over and play board games, but Jenae arrived with a guitar case on her back, and after I got over my initial incredibly gullible and naive thoughts of, "Woah...did Jenae start playing guitar?!" and realized there was a ribbon on the back of it, I decided I was really glad they had gone against my request. They had all gone together on one really awesome gift.

My old guitar case is the one that came with my guitar...I recently had to sew about a foot and a half long tear in the side of the case that was just from me walking around with it, and the pocket in front has had a tear that has made it unable to hold anything since about my second week with the case. My old case is also no good for carrying a guitar while riding a bicycle, which is a necessary skill for my existence. Since it wasn't a backpack case, I would swing the shoulder strap over one shoulder and slip my other arm through one of the handles and bumble along that way, usually knocking my guitar into various posts and things that I am much more skilled at navigating around when I don't have a guitar swinging off my back.

So, Jenae arrived with a brand new backpack guitar case with all sorts of interesting pockets. It has little pockets in the backpack straps, one of which even has a little hole so you can put your ipod inside and then pull the ear buds out and listen as you walk. In fact, upon further inspection the following day, I am pretty sure that I can put everything that really matters to me inside the case. Which is to say, there is room for my song book, a notebook, my Bible and maybe one more book, space for guitar picks and my capo, and the nice little ipod slot. There is a strap at the top that one friend suggested might be for an extra bag, and if I could find some way to attach an extra pair of clothes, brush, hairbrush, soap and little bottles of shampoo and laundry detergent, I think, as I told my friends, that I could go completely gypsy. Then they were a little worried about having given me the guitar case. But I am overjoyed with it! It was so easy to ride my bicycle to church on Sunday, and I didn't clunk my guitar into anything.

People left a couple at a time in the morning until there were three of us left, and then the guitar came out. I had promised some of them I would play a song for them that I had written. I wrote the song quite a while ago...or, at least several months ago, but I've been really shy about sharing it. Then, a couple Sundays ago, I was playing guitar while other people were milling around and talking after church, and I played my song...it's no problem to play it if no one knows it's mine. ;-) But a 12 year old ran and found someone to translate for her to let me know that she thought I should send in a demo tape because a music company would surely accept it. Now, I am very aware that what she said is not true in the slightest...but I figure that if a 12 year old thinks my song could be on the radio, it is maybe safe to share it and put my name on it.

The danger isn't even that people won't like it...though that would be sad too. But I've realized when people create something, it's not just like putting together a model airplane or making a stack of blocks (no offense to anyone who does those things in a truly artistic way), but it's like taking a small sampling of their own soul and putting it down on paper. You choose words that mean something real to you, and make a melody that flows out of somewhere so deep inside you you don't know how you even got to it, and whether it's profound or beautiful or deep or sad or joyful or simple, it's a sliver of you at the deepest level. It's not about skill, it's about beauty. As such, the greatest danger is that people will hear and be indifferent.

Some of the most beautiful music I have ever known was from a small congregation in Honduras. It was my first time in a foreign country, and I will never forget the shock of this six person church that sang with the strength of six hundred. Every note was wrong, but sung with the confidence of Pavarotti. And when I thought the song was finished (they had sung all the verses) they often continued on, either repeating a verse or adding a new verse they all knew that wasn't in the hymnal. That to me is beauty.

I wasn't the only one sharing music on Saturday, but my friend Kat had also written a song. After she heard mine, she tried to get out of playing hers. But we dragged her over to Hongo to use the piano and she shared her songs with us. After she was done playing, I was really glad I'd gotten to play first, because I thought hers were a whole lot better than mine! But the comparison is just anxiety. What is really amazing about the whole thing is hearing the music someone else has written and getting to see a little bit more of that deepest part of them which has dared to put itself on paper.

Amber was the third friend still with me in the afternoon, and she is also an artist. In addition to her painting, Amber's had the idea for a long time of putting together a liturgy written entirely by our group of missionaries. This might sound like a nice, normal idea after you've read this entry and assumed that we have original music coming out our ears or something, but when she came up with the idea, to my knowledge, only one member of the community had written music before and she wasn't even living in Tokyo. I didn't start writing music because of Amber's idea...I started because of the new, strange urge to do so. But it all kind of fits in with this vision that Amber has.

I shared my music in two ways on Saturday, and the second was almost scarier than the first. I had another song that was a simple two line melody. No words. But somehow about the deepest love song to God that was inside of me. I've been searching for words for it for more than a month now with no success. I would find some Bible verse that fit the meaning, but not the rhythm. And so, with Amber thrilled about the liturgy coming together, I offered up the two lines and asked her if she had an idea for words.

We finally ended up with some that were perfect: "Falling at Your feet I worship You, I'm giving everything to You." And that is it...the whole song. But it seemed fitting...I couldn't finish it alone.

I think about the verse, "When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church."

Worship is a blend of beauty...it's an offering of the beauty that we have. In community, that means we give over ownership of the beauty that we see. And our beauty becomes blended with the beauty of another person.

In Which Pamela Fails at Housekeeping

2008-06-16T20:47:00.002-05:00

Do you ever have one of those weeks where everything falls apart when you touch it? Or, at the very least, doesn't really fix like you intend it to?

Now, I am an intelligent person. I got an 'A' in Calculus, I was selected to be the senior recognized in math, English, and Spanish at my high school, I had a good ACT score, I was accepted to a private liberal arts college and graduated cum laude with a double major and a concentration, I have studied three languages and can get by in both Spanish and Japanese. But let me tell you! All of these credentials are just paper credentials...if you want to know my true intelligence level, just watch me try to solve any problem that your average high school dropout could solve without breaking a sweat.

My Japanese washing machine has a lint filter that is a small net bag hanging off the side of the washer. For a long time, I have been disappointed with its performance. It leaves little flecks of lint on many of my shirts. The other day when I was looking for new laundry detergent, I stumbled across a replacement net bag. Wonderful! The picture on the back showed how it went through the center of the plastic square that held the net and then tucked around the front, held in place with an elastic band.

All seemed well. Until I took the old net out of my washing machine and examined the part. I had hoped the old net would just come off and I could put the new one in. On further inspection, and with at least one very quiet warning alarm going off in my brain, I noticed that the old net was, in fact, glued to the plastic part. There was no way to test out the new net without removing the old net. So, pushing caution and the very quiet warning alarm out of my thoughts, I cut out the old net and put on the new one.

In some defense of my intelligence, I had figured out that there was maybe a problem even before I tried to put the net back in the washing machine. But trying to slide the part in revealed without any shade of doubt that the new net, which had to wrap around the outside to work, now covered up the parts that were supposed to slide into the machine. So, in effect, I broke my washing machine.

When I told this to my Christianity Today class that night, they said, "Ah, yes. Americans are always trying to fix things themselves." I protested, "It was just a net!" They laughed all the harder when I told them I still thought I could fix it if I glued the new net in and then cut away the extra material covering the plastic. Apparently Japanese would have called the washing machine company.

That was last Friday.

Yesterday I began a staining project I have wanted to do for a long time. Just a board that I bought for a makeshift table / shelf and then discovered once I removed the plastic that it was an unfinished board. The stain was actually in my apartment when I moved in, so I was happy for a chance to use it. Like everything else in this country, however, it came in a bottle with all Japanese instructions. The lesson from this project was that a red plastic plate is not a suitable place to pour out the stain. It's mostly fine, but a few "mysterious" streaks of red now decorate my board.

This morning is my cleaning day, and another ongoing problem in my apartment has been my shower drain. The period of time in which it is not clogged seems to become shorter every time I fix it. While looking in the hardware store for a new laundry machine net, I found a product that is supposed to work with any kind of drain with two holes. My bathtub drain and shower drain are connected at least partially. (The bath room in Japan is almost always a bathtub with a shower on the outside of it, so my bath room has one drain inside the tub and another just on the other side of the tub wall. Everything in this room can get wet, and the toilet is always in a separate room.)

Before you say, "Pamela! Stop buying and attempting to use mysterious Japanese products when you can't actually read Japanese so well!", know that this product was actually quite helpful. It was like a little pump that you put over one drain and then pushed on it to send water and cleaning solution through the system. But the best thing it did was somehow help me to realize, as the water was being forced through to the other side, that the shower drain problem was not what I thought...in fact, there was a whole part of my shower drain that was unexpectedly removable. I really thought it was enough to take off the drain itself. And with this discovery I entered into the dark depths of all that is evil...or at least all that gets trapped inside shower drains. But, with the help of a toothbrush, plastic bag, rubber glove, my handy Japanese shower drain pump thingy and a supply of incense burning about at nose level, I believed that good had prevailed.

It did not take long after the drain had been reassembled, however, to learn that it still was not draining properly. Better than before, but still not perfect. I'm not entirely sure what more to do, but dread is growing inside me that it might involved my parents' recommended use of a coat hanger to go as far down the pipe itself as possible.

Psalm 139:1-18 as written by my Beginner Bible students

2008-06-12T01:22:00.002-05:00

God, you know me completely.
All day you know my behavior. You can understand about me anywhere.
You see me everywhere. You know everything I do.
You even know my future.
You sometimes guide me and sometimes watch me.
You comfort me by your hand.
This makes me happy!

You are everywhere. I cannot escape from you.
Whether I go to the right place or the wrong place, you always help me there. Even after I die you are with me.
From the ocean to heaven your hand will strongly catch me and support me and you will lead me.
If I try to get in a bad place you will find me.
You can find me anywhere.
It doesn't matter if it's dark or light.

You made me very carefully in the inside of my mother's body.
Life is really wonderful and complicated! What a great work you did!
You knew me from the beginning of my making, in which I was completely alone.
You saw me before I was born. You know every action, past, present, and future, I will do. You investigated all my actions before the world was created.
Your thoughts are very precious! It's impossible to count them.
I have no way to know the specific number of your thoughts, there are lots of them! When I go to paradise, you are always beside me.

I love random encounters!

2008-06-05T08:40:00.002-05:00

The last time I had a random encounter on my street, it was a Catholic guy whose dog decided to come and say 'hi' to me. That was exciting. I think tonight was even more fun, though.

Tonight at around 10:00, I was walking home for the night and got stopped by a girl who asked for directions to a station. This is not normal. Usually, people ask me if *I* need directions because I am a foreigner out on the street. But I explained that the station in question was pretty far, and that the next stop on that same subway line was much closer. It was on my way, so I started walking with her.

We had a pretty normal exchange. I asked her if she was a college student and she said she was. She then explained to me that she was an exchange student "too", and I didn't bother to correct her. I'd just left an hour conversation on a street corner with one of my students in which we discussed cults and religions and truth and wasn't quite in the mood for starting another one. But then when she asked me what my major was I had to say, "I'm not a student, actually...I teach English in the Christian church." But then we became good friends. She is from Korea and she is a Christian. How is it that I manage two random encounters with Christians on the same street? I haven't randomly encountered any non-Christians there! That's too weird for Japan.

I ended up walking her all the way to the station. We traded email addresses. She invited me to come out to church with her sometime. She asked me if I was going to be back in the area tomorrow. It was just a really cool way to end the day...celebrating getting to meet a sister randomly on the road and help her to the train station.

I really like life on the streets. Some of the best things happen out there.

English Class Quotes

2008-06-03T08:29:00.002-05:00

A couple weeks ago I did a lesson on internet and sms English in my advanced classes.

Today, I got an email from a sixty something year old Japanese man who speaks in slow, cautious English. He said the following:

2day I can't CU.

*laughing really hard*

Saturday, May 31st

2008-05-31T07:58:00.002-05:00

It's Saturday and the world is moving at least a little more slowly than it has been. I am very ready for Monday! It is going to be a hard core sabbath. ;-)

Today began with prayer in Iidabashi. I came to the conclusion while praying about our prayer group that I had done a lot of leading structures, but not a lot of leading people and really not a lot of listening to God. So, starting today, we stopped our list making. We usually all bring in a prayer request and pray through the list. It's a good time, but something has been missing. Today we told God we were sorry for not asking him about our purpose sooner and then spent some time laying the group down and waiting on him. I enjoyed it greatly. Unfortunately, most of the time was only two of us. This gave us a good chance to get through some personal things, but we don't have new direction yet. Though it seems like the theme from both of our reactions is that more time listening for God is a good thing. So, next week will be more waiting on God. We'll see how he shapes our vision!

The afternoon was spent lazily with a friend. Lovely! We had lunch and then wandered back and sat on the couch and watched a movie on her ipod (yes, we are in the 21st century). Except that her meeting started when there were only 18 minutes left in the movie!!! Sigh for cliffhangers.

I enjoyed a free afternoon and evening completely scrubbing out my shower and bathtub. I continue to be amazed how, when the majority of my work involves teaching, listening, praying, thinking, and other mind and people sorts of things, work scrubbing a bathtub is potentially the best way to rest ever. I wish I could actually take this lesson to heart! As it is, I am still caught off guard and surprised every time a bout of cleaning leaves me feeling relaxed and ready to face the world again.

Friday, May 30th

2008-05-30T08:31:00.002-05:00

Since I was out in Suginami this morning, I had the rather nostalgic experience of being packed on a rush hour train this morning on the way into Tokyo. Nothing like standing so close to people that your feet are about three inches to the right of your center of gravity while you're holding a backpack in front of you with four people pressed in on every side. But it wasn't packed quite tight enough...the danger of falling over was real. ;-)

Friday mornings are a nice break from the norm...a Bible study of Isaiah with a couple friends and then Japanese class. Japanese class today was pretty difficult...our sensei has finally understood that, when she reviews concepts with us, she will find out how much we didn't manage to memorize the first time. I walked back home from Japanese class too tired to even get lunch and just read and napped for awhile.

Tomorrow is Etsuko's birthday, so I bought two special small cakes and brought them with me. We had a nice time talking over tea and cake. I've gradually come to understand that Etsuko is pretty much my adopted Japanese mother, and I am pretty much her adopted American daughter. We take care of each other.

Tonight for Christianity Today we were supposed to talk about David dancing and worshiping in front of the ark of the covenant, but we never actually managed to crack the Bible because we never got past the opening question of "What do you think worship is?" I let them talk for maybe 20 minutes in small groups because it was just too good. In the back of the room, a near retirement age Christian woman who seems to emit peace into any situation was carefully explaining the rituals of a worship service to a non-Christian woman, who was listening with a kind of fixed attentiveness that I don't usually see in her. To my left, an older Catholic doctor and a college aged girl were comparing their feelings of something beyond themselves in nature. To my right a Christian woman from Germany and two non-Christians (both so close to the line that when the Holy Spirit so much as hiccups they're going to go toppling into Christianity) were talking about the necessity for praising God for keeping our eyes fixed on Him in our daily lives. One of these "non-Christians" said, "The best way to praise God is to pray...but I don't pray very often." I praise God often for the students who bring raw honesty into my class. This same "non-Christian" said later on, "The best way to praise God must be by loving other people."

Every last Friday of the month our Coffee Hour topic is a Bible topic. This week we were talking about forgiveness. I was astounded once again at our students willingness to share very openly. Two things from the evening were particularly striking.

Our older Catholic doctor shared a story about forgiving his teenage son. He said that his son had been very upset after school one day and had gone into a room and broken something. He had been ready to be very angry with his son, but his wife pulled him aside and explained that the son was going through some really tough times at school. What really struck me was that the man decided to apologize, but he said, "I thought a father shouldn't have to do such a thing to his son [as apologize] because he should be respected by [his son]." Then he described how the apology really shocked his son, and it was the beginning of a new relationship between them that they had never had before. He said it was the first time that he really understood God's forgiveness of us as well.

I was also really struck by two of my "on the line pre-Christians" who are the pair I've mentioned before that I am trying to pray for daily. Both of them shared very independent stories, but both said the same thing. "Being forgiven means there is meaning to my existence." A gallop poll of Japanese teens found that 85% wonder why they exist...contrast that to the same poll done in America, where the number was 22%. I was fascinated by this link between being forgiven and purpose.

Thursday, May 29th

2008-05-29T23:40:00.002-05:00

Thursday morning is another class made up of older women, and, for whatever reason, also one college aged student. The college aged student in this class is a Korean grad school student who knows one of the top producers / director of Spiderman, a professional baseball player, and several important business executives. At one point, he was on track to become a CEO himself, but decided the dog eat dog world was not one he wanted to be in. So, now he is back in college. The ladies find him fascinating.

My Thursday morning class is the hardest class for me to connect to. They tend to talk about the kinds of topics that I usually don't discuss. I have no idea how to have a meaningful conversation about shopping, Tokyo sight-seeing, or the latest ladies' social event. They have no idea how to have a discussion about religion, justice issues, what-if scenarios, or a series of other things that are on my "I can participate in a discussion about this" list. The surest sign that the class has begun moving into an area that I actually feel comfortable leading is that one or more of the students will begin mumbling "I want to escape", "Why are we discussing such things?", or "We shouldn't really be talking about this." And they even mumble in English, so I know it's for my ears.

Today, however, we happened to stumble on a topic of mutual "interest" (for lack of a better word). One of my students has a sixth grade daughter who recently became sick. She stopped eating and was throwing up the whole weekend. Her mom took her to the doctor, who said that it was psychological, not physical. When the mom questioned her daughter, she learned that she was feeling stressed about her social group at school, and was tired of worrying about whether people were getting along and the like. The stress from this (probably also combined with regular school, cram school, and upcoming entrance exams for middle school) have landed her daughter at home every other day this week. She sleeps almost the whole day and doesn't eat.

As we talked about it in class, many of the other women (moms past and present) assured her that it was normal. That girls that age tend to have troubles like that. They urged her to take good care of herself because she needed to give a lot of love to her daughter right now. I scribbled out a prayer for her and her daughter while Aaron was leading Bible study and gave it to her. It felt good to be included even in a small way in her worries.

I had an hour to kill after class and I sat catching up with emails and blogs and the like. While I was sitting there, two women came in to have lunch. I know I had seen one of them before, but I can't remember where...she might be a church member, but she's not at Hongo so often. They asked me if I had eaten lunch, and I said I was meeting a friend for lunch in 45 minutes. Then they proceeded to give me two inarizushi (rice wrapped in...how to describe it...sweetened and vinagered tofu that has been cooked in some way), asked me how it was, and when I gave the standard "it's delicious" proceeded to give me another one. And then offer me tea thirty minutes later. Then, when I tried to leave to go have lunch with my friend, the lady who I don't know asked if I would please come out to her house sometime, even though it's about an hour away, and asked me to let her know when I have time. I am always a little confused by these kinds of interactions...are they trying to be nice to me or thank me or are they actually trying to get to know me?

I feel pressure in these kinds of situations...whether I have figured the cultural ideas surrounding them yet, I don't know, but my inner interpretation of them is as follows: the people are offering me food and invitations because it is polite to do so, but as we have never had a successful time interacting, it would be extremely awkward for me to actually take them up on the offer. However, giving is important to Japanese people, and so it seems like the polite thing to do would be to take them up on it. Which would land us in a situation where she was having me over only to be polite, and I was coming over only to be polite, and so the entire thing would be 100% for politeness' sake. I think that might make sense to them, but it doesn't to me. At any rate...Thursday's tend to be culture shock days. You'd think culture shock might end after one had been in a country for a year and a half...and maybe the "shock" aspect does end...it's the cultural confusion that is left lingering.

My second lunch was with Ken (Kentaro), a new Christian who has been attending Hongo for 9 months or so. He is overflowing with ideas, and has really picked up on the idea of having some fellowship activities to connect our young students with young Christians and our young missionary community. We're planning a hike on Takao mountain soon. He's made a flier, and a schedule, and was asking about doing songs or a Bible study. Then he gets out his computer and shows me a cd he's been making for our English students. It has a number of Christian worship songs, and he's printed out the lyrics and Japanese Bible verses to go along with them. He also discusses our worship book for the English service and how he wants to add some songs to it and put translations of difficult English words at the bottom of the songs. So, we are tentatively planning to get together some Sunday and tear our songbooks apart, take out the songs we never play, bring in new ones, and make them more accessible to beginner English students.

In the afternoon we made a group discovery between the Hongo staff about the story where Saul is converted on the road to Damascus. The katakana for Saul is サウロ (Sauro) when the narrative is talking about him, but when Jesus stops him with the bright light and calls his name, the katakana is サウル (Sauru). After much guessing, Etsuko finally figured out that this is because Jesus speaks to Saul in Aramaic, while the rest of the text is in Greek. Which makes sense, but really stumped our poor beginner students who were convinced the story was about two different Sauls.

In Beginner Bible class we started reading the Gospel of John. Every week after Beginner Bible class I go out to dinner with students, and we had been planning to go to a special restaurant this week, but I was rather surprised that every single one of them canceled. The guy who knew about the restaurant had forgotten about the engagement, another guy who has come out every single week told me he couldn't make it, the final guy who was in class said that he didn't have time that night, and the guy who was planning to come and meet us specifically for dinner sent me an email canceling. This was a pleasant surprise, because I had a friend I really wanted to have the time and energy to spend time with that night. I called her cell phone, and she almost didn't hear it because she'd put it away in her bag and was listening to music, but she felt like she needed to turn the music off and hear the tail end of the buzzing.

It was one of those small God presents...small in the sense of the world's perspective, but really cool for us. I know it was a big deal to my friend that I was able to come out and it was lovely for me to spend the evening one-on-one with a close friend being deep and real. Definitely worth the hour on the train to get out to her and the lost sleep. :-) God is really good to take care of the small "optional" things along with the huge ones.

Wednesday, May 28

2008-05-28T02:35:00.002-05:00

On Wednesday morning, I have a class of older ladies and one college aged guy. One of the church members is a student and she immediately puts me on the spot (without having any idea she was doing so) by sharing with the class how she is a Christian and therefore surprised her friend by still being willing to visit a statue connected with the Buddhist tradition that is connected with healing. She's about retirement age and her husband has cancer. I have taken to asking Japanese people 'Where does the power come from?' in these kinds of situations. Usually they don't really have an answer, but in this case they explained that, at one point awhile back, a person had swallowed a fish bone that had become stuck in his throat, and praying to the statue had caused the fish bone to dissolve.

Wednesday afternoon is free time at Hongo and I used it to read Punk Monk. It was *so* exciting. I've been wondering for a little while what the next step life (not the next big step, but the next step towards the big step) is, and it seemed like the way to set up a boiler room is to keep organizing 24/7 prayer weeks. It is to get people to fall in love with prayer by praying. I like how practical the 24/7 movement is...it's not a lot of theory about prayer or a lot of people who have all the answers. They're people who put faith into action. It's the idea that, when we hear God saying pray, we pray. When we hear Him saying, 'love your neighbor', we leave our houses and go out and love as best we can. This is becoming an increasingly important concept in my life...living who I want to be now rather than waiting for perfection to go out and love.

Wednesday evening my first class is three women, all Tokyo University College or Graduate students. M. is a Mathematical Engineering student, K. is in some sort of developing countries study, and L. is getting a Ph.D. in history. M. has volunteered abroad in Kolkata with Missionaries of Charity just like I did last summer. K.'s parents were Christian and she's been attending a church for 1-2 years (she confessed this to me when the other two students were absent last week), and L. is a Korean Christian who gets very nervous if you talk to her about Christianity at all and will quickly say, "Well...as you know, it's really hard to stay a Christian in Japan..." None of these three knew each other before this April, so the challege has been getting them to interact, but we're starting to get there.

The class after this on Wednesday is a class of all non-Christians, but a non-Baptized church member (A.) attended the class last night, and I realized just how far this Wednesday class has come. The visitor said to me afterwards, "But...those two women were Christian, weren't they?" This is the same class that I shocked maybe 10 months ago when I told them Christians believe Jesus is God. One of the same women who said at that time, "I never knew Christians believed that!" is one of the women that A. was convinced was a Christian.

In that same class, N. had returned from a trip to Ireland. N. is one of two people that I have specifically chosen to pray for every time I intercess...with a goal to pray for both of them everyday. The part about her trip that she chose to share with the class was visiting a church in Ireland and feeling (in her own words) a kind of 'holiness' there that she said, 'you cannot find in Japan'. I had dropped a New Testament and a letter for N. in her mailbox a few weeks ago, but she got it tonight because of her trip to Ireland. She was so excited to get a Bible, and she declared that she was going to read in her own Bible instead of on the class Bible study sheet...which only lasted until I told her that the English was different, but it was so fun to see her excitement!

I was realizing as I was walking home after class on Wednesday just how many on the line pre-Christians God has been sending me. And with that was the self-realization that my favorite people in the world to work with are seekers. It doesn't matter if they're Christian or not. Discipleship with pre-Christians and with Christians isn't so different, and I find myself most drawn to the people who are very close to the line on either side. The people who are looking for encouragement that God is real, and who have real deep questions that they are still willing to voice outloud.

Tuesday, May 27

2008-05-27T02:25:00.000-05:00

One Tuesday a month is a mama and baby event at Hongo, so we are invaded by about ten moms and their babies, this week including my pastor's new baby Aki (he's only a month old!), a set of twins, and Yuki (my pastors 3 year old son who is suffering greatly at the moment from "I am not the center of the universe anymore! syndrome").

I spent a lot of time with Yuki, trying to give him some attention. I've been working hard to only speak English with Yuki, but he's really struggling with it (I didn't see him for 2 months while his mom was having a baby). So, today I gave in and used Japanese. Our relationship was greatly renewed. We played a piano duet, I spent a good quanity of time being used as a tree, and we took out a globe and had fun pointing to different countries (I am pretty sure Yuki thinks he lives in Mongolia and that I live in Canada...but I suppose that isn't too far off. ;-) )

Mama / Baby days are pretty much the only time I talk to my pastor, and today was a particularly good discussion. We started out with awkward Japanese about how their baby wasn't sleeping at night, wondering when Shizuka (pastor's wife) got to sleep, etc. I can ask okay questions, but since I don't always have the ability to understand their answers, conversation tends to be a little difficult. But Shizuka asked me about what I wanted to do after Japan, and so I had the opportunity to tell her about boiler rooms. Which was difficult. But it turned into a wonderful conversation with Yasui sensei about churches without locks and without walls. He talked about how much he likes the idea about a church that is always open for prayer and a student center in Nagoya that does much more than English.

My Tuesday classes begin around dinner time with a group of advanced students. We always share about our weeks, and the highlight of this week's conversation is a student who has just returned from the island of Saipan (Saipen? Some island I've never heard of that is apparently a U.S. territory) where he and his wife tried scuba diving for the first time. Another older student usually travels to Okinawa, but vows to go to Saipan for his next trip. This class is made up of a young housewife, two students at the Tokyo University Agricultural College, a retired businessman, and a middle aged set designer who's currently working on a play that they hoped might go to Broadway, but it hasn't been popular enough.

Monday, May 26

2008-05-26T02:21:00.000-05:00

Monday is normally my day off, so usually my week starts calmly and quietly. This week, however, I was committed to praying for some friends and their church on Monday. So, the day was spent in intercession (which is not restful prayer), and a little bit of cleaning.

I left home a little before five to meet a friend and pick up an exciting new book: Punk Monk. Punk Monk is all about Boiler Rooms in the 24/7 Prayer movement. Which is to say, the book is pretty much about what I want to do with the rest of my life.

I had a little bit of time to chat with my friends and then we prayed our other friends through a meeting they were having. We prayed for about two hours as a group, which meant a lot of silent time. But the whole time, it was nearly impossible to focus. A thought kept nagging at my mind that we were not really together to pray for the meeting, or at least that there was something else God had for us. We finally began discussing, and it turned into an entire discussion about our prayer group that gathers on Saturdays, our community in general, etc., etc. We went out to a cafe to keep talking until close to midnight. I finally dropped said friends off at two different train stations and returned home around 12:30am.

This leaves me a little concerned about the rest of the week...things do not tend to go well if I don't rest on Mondays!

Sunday, May 25th

2008-05-25T02:03:00.001-05:00

I'm going to make an effort to get a blog up for every day this week for good communication purposes! Please pay no attention to the fact that it's already Thursday but I'm only now posting Sunday. ;-)

Every Sunday morning at 9:30, about six of us gather for English Bible Study. This week, the highlight was a student who has been coming regularly who had a large ah-ha moment. The Bible passage was about us being the light of the world, and he noticed at the end how it says "They will see your good works and praise your father in heaven". He talked to the group about how he normally is disappointed if people don't seem to notice when he does good things, but that he was understanding how God was supposed to get the credit anyway. It was a good moment. :-)

From English Bible Study, we go straight to Sunday worship. I spend the service either studying Japanese by looking up words I don't know or by writing prayers down in my notebook. This week it was a prayer writing sort of week. I was grateful for the time to rest and pray. This past Sunday was also 'sohji' day, or cleaning. Twice a year, we split into two groups. We younglings form a band to furiously slide pews all the way to the back of the sanctuary and then use a combination of sweepers, a vacuum cleaner, wet rags, and finally rags wet with wax to beat the floor into shiny submission.

Then, half an hours rest, and then all the pews go to the front of the sanctuary and the attack is repeated on the back half. Everyone helps out however they can. Aaron's daughter Cassidy went at it with a wax rag as well, and was gently corrected when her wax was making smudges against the grain of others' waxing rows. Yasui Sensei's (the pastor's) son, three year old Yuki, helped us in the second half by shouting out 'orai orai orai' (back up back up--used for cars, usually). We couldn't quite figure out where he was trying to get us to back up to, though. ;-)

I was almost successful in convincing Takaaki that he needed to dust every page of the Bible on the front alter individually, but in the end my merciful side got the better of me and I told him I was joking.

In between Japanese worship and our evening English worship, I head a few blocks over to a local Assemblies of God international congregation. Their afternoon worship is a diverse group of young people from America and various Asian countries. I love having a place to worship in English where I don't need to lead anything. The music is loud, and it's easy to be free there. This Sunday, there was a guest speaker from America who commanded us in the name of Jesus to not waste our time in Japan. Usually I have to slip out before the end of the message, but I would have had to step on various people to do that. Turns out I was really glad I was able to stay. They opened it up to free prayer time, which is always my favorite time to be in an Assemblies of God church. Everyone just starts praying...some in their own languages, some in tongues, some with tears. One girl nearly always begins to sing, and the melody lifts sweetly with the prayers. Hands are raised, people fall to their knees. I love being able to switch from speaking to listening for God to singing all without attracting attention.

I had to slip out in the middle of the prayer time, though, and race back to Hongo to prepare for the English worship I was about to be leading. I never thought I would be good at giving sermons, which was the big reason I never wanted to become a pastor. Now I find that I am not so bad at them, but the stress level is still out of this world. I don't really plan what to say...just a topic. Sometimes I talk for a long time, sometimes only a few minutes. This Sunday, still very much in a prayer mood, I only managed to talk for a few minutes and then announced I was just going to pray for them. Sometimes people understand me better when I'm talking to God than when I'm talking to them anyway...I might do it more often.

We gather after Evening worship to have tea downstairs and chat. By that point, I was worn out. I stayed for a little while, but then escaped for the evening.

24/7 Prayer at Hongo

2008-05-10T08:39:00.002-05:00

We were spread out around the office space at Hongo, stuffing things away in backpacks, the last of the pizza boxes having been thrown away and the dishes dried and shelved. Kat reminded us that we had planned on closing the week of prayer with prayer, and we all turned to Takaaki. We all bowed our heads, and Takaaki, not used to Christian customs, after a slight pause asked, "Do I start now?" Smiles and nods all around.

"Our Father in heaven..." He paused often as he recited the Lord's prayer, but said it with confidence. Only one small chuckle from him when he got to the last line. "The kingdom...For the kingdom, and the glory...and the power are Yours. Now and forever. Amen."

The past three weeks have been a crazy blur of excitement. Three weeks ago, I got up the guts to tell Yasui sensei that what I wanted more than anything was to run a 24/7 prayer room at Hongo during the 10 days of prep for Global Day of Prayer. Two weeks of emails flying off my fingertips, of conversations with every Christian I knew, of leaving my shyness in the gutter and running into Assemblies of God churches, Kristo Kyodan churches, random Christian offices. Of trying to commandeer every Christian and leaning towards Christian person I know into spending at least one hour with God this past week.

There were so many surprises during these three weeks.

-A friend calling me right when I was struggling about the thought of whether God was really calling me to do this and whether I could really do it or not to say, "Did you ever notice in the story of David and Goliath that God never speaks to David? That David just trusts God and goes out to fight?"
-Sitting down in the Assemblies of God church after having failed to connect with the pastor only to have the leader of a campus Christian group say, "Hey, would you come to our party on Monday night?" Me: "Umm...I'm not a college student...is that really okay?" Her: "Absolutely!" And proceeding to get connected with a great campus group where the leader really supported my idea and agreed to forward all my emails to the group.
-Walking into the Christian Center in Ochanomizu, getting shuffled to the Navigator's office, and then to the JEA office so that I walked into their meeting about the Global Day of Prayer that I didn't know they were having. They actually reported my information on a flier that went out to not a few churches in Tokyo. Yasui sensei was very surprised to see us listed on it! ;-)
-Going to the YMCA without really knowing what I would do there only to meet two of the four YMCA people I know right in the doorway because they arrived at the same time I did. One of them ran door to door and told his entire dorm.

It was the strangest thing once we actually started praying because my workload went way down. I would pause at different times of the day as I realized that someone was *always* praying in the little room my friends and I had put together. And it was amazing to think that it would flow without me doing a thing. Though there were still so many prayer hours open at the beginning that I was pretty nervous.

When I woke up Monday morning, so far as I knew, there were eight hours open on Monday and no one signed up to pray at night any night of the week (people had only signed up for Sunday night and Monday morning). There was also a huge gap Tuesday afternoon and other huge gaps later in the week.

Another huge surprise was arriving at Hongo Monday morning to look at the prayer schedule, only to find that a mysterious "Atago" had signed up to pray from 12am-4am every, single night.

We also got to meet Takaaki Monday morning. Takaaki is one of my non-Christian students who has been coming to church, English Bible study, Beginner Bible Class, and Christianity Today class for about six months now. I hadn't asked him to pray, but when he saw my schedule and all the empty blanks, he signed up to pray from 2-6 the very first night. I managed to negotiate him down to 2-5. And even after that, he saw there was an open slot from 8-9 the next morning and he signed up there as well. And later for two hours Tuesday afternoon. Then another hour on Friday and another two on Saturday.

My friend Jenae was praying from 7-8 that morning, and apparently he came right into the prayer room when it was his turn and informed her it was time for her to leave. I had been teasing Takaaki about his 2-5 prayer slot, telling him that sleeping did not count as praising God or praying. He told me very proudly when we came to take over for him at 9:00 that he had not fallen asleep.

There were still open prayer hours all day Monday, though. And I could not fill four of them. I sent out a desperate email, and by 10:00 on Monday morning I had the four hours I couldn't fill filled. Then I had some cancellations in the afternoon and had six open hours there. I was able to fill those and thought, "Well...Monday is usually my sabbath anyway..." but then I went to hang out at Carol's and Carol and Charity both signed up for two hours each. So, I thought I was at two hours of time in the prayer room. Then I got an email while I was in there praying that said, "I hope you saw on the schedule that I signed up to pray!" I only got one hour with God!!!

It became almost funny, because the same thing happened on Tuesday. There were three hours open, and I was hoping to get them, and then people signed up and left me with just one again.

Wednesday we had our first person who forgot to come. The woman before her had already been praying for two hours and was ready to go home. I was in the middle of English class. The Hongo receptionist grabbed me during our class break to explain the problem. But maybe three minutes later, she came and grabbed me again. "Harui just came! You have to go up to the prayer room and see him!"

Harui is one of my non-Christian Beginner Bible Class students. He had originally signed up to pray with a church member at six in the morning, but he had overslept and not come. He had just randomly stopped by to ask if he could pray right then. He was the only person the entire week to do that and it just so happened that it was right at the only time when a student forgot to show up. God is too good!!!

So, I went upstairs to check on Harui. He was already sitting on a cushion, the "Seek His Face" prayer guide clutched in his hands. He started to stand up when I came in and apologized for not showing up earlier. I assured him it was fine and pulled up a cushion beside him. He said, "I don't know how to pray." I gave him the best 1-2 minute set of prayer pointers I could, let him know he could talk to God however he wanted, and then demonstrated by praying for his prayer time. I asked him if he would be okay and he said, "I want to seek His face alone." I ran back down to my class.

Wednesday was the day filled almost completely by Hongo church members. It was good to see all of them. They all made a point of coming to tell me, "I prayed." Or to wave to me from the window on their way up the stairs. One woman who I have never talked to before this (in fact, I once heard Yasui sensei tell her to ask me how many people were at Bible study and she went and had Etsuko ask me instead) came down to talk to me and said, "It's hard to pray for an hour at home, but it was so easy here!" It was a short, but real conversation.

Wednesday night I had only a short period of time to actually get food before I was supposed to get food, but I never made it because a man named Toshiyuki had returned to the prayer room (after 10:00 at night, I might add) just to check the schedule and see if he could get in to pray again. He had come the very first night and come an hour early just to plan out what he would pray for that night. Then he had signed up to pray again. Now he was back for the third time, even without a slot that was his. He started telling me how much he had really liked praying the other day because the day's topic was about children, and he had so many things to pray because of his recent trip to Indonesia. He was now considering signing up for an open 5:00am slot just to get back in the prayer room. He did. :-) And then he sent me an email telling me how sorry he was not to get to pray Saturday afternoon too.

On Friday as we were leaving Coffee Hour, yet another of my non-Christian students came up to me and asked if she could spend an hour in the room. I reminded her, "This isn't an English school event. It's a Christian event. Do you want to pray?" She turned back sideways, almost as though protecting herself. "Can't I just sit quietly in the room?" she asked. I told her only if it was praying and offered to come and pray with her if she wanted some guidance. She told me that idea was scary, but somehow agreed anyway.

So, at 10:00 this morning I found myself going off to pray with a non-Christian. I wasn't sure how I would lead her, but we ended up following a prayer guide in the room. I tried to give her as much freedom to pray as possible. We spent some time reading a Psalm and discussed it a little bit. We spent some time listening for God. We spent some time singing. We spent some time praying about her needs. I asked her what she would ask God for if she could ask him for anything, and she went right from sounding as though she were explaining it to me to asking God for it. It was for her mother to be able to get hearing aids so her parents could have normal conversations again. She entered the room pretty scared and left it thanking me for the time and how much she had enjoyed it.

Rather ironically, I finally got my long period of time in the prayer room. I think it was God's special gift to me...I needed those three hours in the prayer room just to be there and realize, "Here it is...the end." I spent a lot of time pleading with God...the scariest thing about running 24/7 prayer for the week is that a lot of people will think it's extreme, when really it should be the norm in Tokyo right now. I have left the week with a longing to do it again. But it's not time yet. Now I have a better idea how to build relationships so that it will run smoother next time. It's time to do some more of that, and to rest, even if I don't want to.

We sat around boxes of pizza tonight. There was lots of laughter. The mysterious "Atago" who had been my guardian angel for filling prayer slots turned out to be a man who had been praying at Hongo at night every once in awhile for two and a half years now. He said, "I felt a difference as soon as I walked into Hongo Monday night. It was easier to connect to God and much easier to stay awake." One of the VYM girls also said, "Yeah...I got into the room and countries kept popping into my head to pray for."

Takaaki prayed us off, friends scattered, Atago said, "Mata upstairs!" Which is kind of like, "Until upstairs!" "We'll see each other upstairs praying again soon!" I cleared off the table outside the prayer room but I couldn't bring myself to take apart even one part of the room itself.

This week has been a magical week of doing what fulfills me the most. I love leading people into prayer. I love watching them fall in love with God in a way that isn't academic but is about finding Him in that secret place where our heart goes out dancing with His. This week has been a small taste of what I want to spend my life doing. And as the taste has still been pretty small, it's grown both my longing and my faith that it can happen.

Late Night Religious Deep-ness

2008-04-30T09:41:00.003-05:00

So...my Wednesday advanced class just beat all records at how late our Bible Study went overtime. The class is supposed to end at 9:10. Our previous record was 9:55, with one student continuing to ask questions privately until 10:15. Tonight we set a new record of 10:50.

Usually I do most of the talking. They toss questions at me and I try to explain them all away, with varying levels of success. It's the class where I feel like God takes over my talking most often, or at least the class where I end up spilling my entire heart about God, humanity, or my own place in the middle of all that without a second thought until all the words are already lying out there in a jumbled heap. It's only after they've been said that the touch of embarrassment can come in. That sense of, "Oops. That was the real me in unrestrained form. Is that a good idea in front of my students?"

Tonight, however, I managed to get them talking. I don't remember exactly how, but it had something to do with Buddhism. They started talking about praying for dead people, and how the prayer is connected to the spirit separating from the body. I asked where the power in the prayer came from, and I think we reached the following conclusions:

1) The prayer has no real power. The spirit separating from the body is just a natural process that will happen regardless of whether the dead are prayed for or not.
2) But prayer for the dead is still important. It shows a respect for the dead person, and that respect is deserved merely on the merit that the person is dead--kind of like respect for the completeness of their life.
3) The meaning behind this prayer is really irrelevant to the people in my class. But the action of folding their hands in memory of one who is died is important to them.
4) Even though most people in my class were arguing from a "Japanese" viewpoint, their idea of the afterlife ranges from unconsciousness (preserved in the memories of loved ones), person becoming a kind of God, or person going to Nirvana.
5) None of my students believes that Truth exists. Some make exceptions for science, some do not. It does not bother at least two of them to know about themselves that they view the world in the way that makes them feel the most comfortable.

Probably I have managed to misunderstand something in here...it was an interesting experience...several times I had to make them repeat things or explain them in a different way multiple, multiple times before I understood enough to go on.

But we finally reached this point of just raw honesty with each other. When they're sitting there like, "We can't believe in truth and we can't believe in God." And a couple of the class members said, "We wish we could believe in God." Which is the point that I start weeping inside. And I decided to dare asking a question that I had never asked in this direction before. I often talk to people about "What keeps you from believing in God?", but I asked them tonight, "What would it take for you to believe that God exists? What if God's existence and the existence of suffering are both true realities?"

I never quite got a straight answer out of them. It took a lot of times for me to repeat the question and try to help them understand it. But their answers were interesting when they did answer, one woman's especially. She talked about how she knew that believing in God would change everything...she is a doctor, and she said that the Truth was whatever the patient said it was, but that that would have to change if she believed in God. She's been thinking about the issue of when life begins and abortion recently and she said she knew she might have to deny some patients treatment if she had God to give her something absolute in her life. And I realized something as she was talking, which was that, even though she had said she wanted to believe in God, really she didn't. Not yet. She knew how difficult that switchover would be. I filed that thought away to pray for her later.

I don't know if this class has any idea how much I love them. But in my final outpouring of heart for them today I got ever so slightly teary eyed. Just enough to grab a tissue and try to dab at my eye at sneaky moments when I hoped they wouldn't notice to try to keep it from stinging and getting worse.

After we were done in class, I was at my desk cleaning up, and we must have been talking in English long enough that they forgot to switch back to Japanese while they were in the kitchen cleaning up the teapot and cups. So I get to overhear them saying, "Yeah...I realized today that I really don't understand Buddhism" and then, "Pamela was crying. I think we made her sad because we couldn't understand."

They actually filed out, the four of them who were left, and apologized for making me sad. I was speechless. Honestly, I hadn't felt so sad until they came out and said it like that. But how could I possibly explain? I finally said, "Japan often makes me a little sad. That's why I'm here. That's why I want to stay." Then they were rather speechless. But my wonderful lady doctor said, "But, Pamela, I really like hearing what you have to say."

I know God is reaching to them. I see it in their faces, in their questions, in what grabs their attention. Evangelism is child bearing. As such, it is painful work. I don't mean in terms of conflict. There is no conflict in this class. Just question asking and seeking and trying to understand. But I ache for them.

A God who allows rants

2008-04-04T07:31:00.002-05:00

A lot of my time in Japan has been spent fighting to pray. The past few months have been especially that way. They've been the kind of months where, whether alone or in groups, I sit down to talk to God and find myself wondering what I could possibly have to say to a God who knows everything, can do anything, etc.

It's odd sometimes how hard it is to be honest with myself. It seems like it would be more natural to be dishonest with other people and straight in my own thoughts, but somehow it has never worked that way for me. I will be innocently going along, really believing that everything is all right until a friend says, "You've been acting like something is bothering you." Which is usually news to me. Until about twenty minutes later when the friend has managed to drag some woe out of me that I didn't know existed.

God has done that for me a couple times now too.

I sometimes get stuck in the rut of "this is how I should approach God" and even begin to feel proud at how well I've fortified myself in trusting Him, entering His courts in praise and thanksgiving, did much more intercessing than "troubling" Him with my own problems...one could almost forget that I *have* problems.

Until God slows me down, steals my ability to pray, and we're left staring at each other, me as confused as when my friends have sat me down to say, "Something is obviously bothering you." It took me until this week to realize that I wasn't really on speaking terms with God. Oh, I knew I hadn't been talking to Him. But I'd kind of been blaming Him for that. It wasn't that I hadn't set the time aside, after all, I just hadn't really had any words for Him when I had. So the only possible explanation in my mind was that He was trying to teach me something. Which I suppose He usually is, but I usually don't figure it out until the lesson is over. If I think I've figured it out before that, there's a good chance I have no idea.

The first time He did it to me was at prayer retreat last August. Part of the retreat was to take a day apart with God. I'd been wandering around and finally "arrived" at a small clearing out in the trees. There was no one around for a *long* ways. And I felt God say, "You can shout here." To which I'm thinking, "Umm...great. But...er...I don't really feel like shouting about anything." Ten minutes later...it was a rant to end all rants.

It was the same way this week. That feeling of, "We are not going anywhere until you [Pamela] sit down and give Me your heart, even if it's hurt and angry right now." And I'm thinking, "Dude...there's no need to get angry at You. I trust You. I know it will be okay. Why do You want me to shout at You?" A theme of Japan has been God saying over and over again, "I want *everything* from you. Not just what you think is the good you have to offer. You are not allowed to choose what is good enough for Me. I want *everything*."

I think it has been about three days of ranting at God now. But something finally fell into place late this morning, and the ranting gave way to real, true, honest-to-goodness worship. The kind where each word of the song strikes my heart with how amazing this whole journey with God is and where each stroke of the guitar feels like a dance of joy. And today, as students were coming in and registering and I was sitting working on a class syllabus I found my thoughts drifting to various people to pray for. It has been *eons* (read: probably not more than several weeks) since that was true.

My ranting isn't done quite yet, but I found myself amazed right now...what kind of God really wants His people to rant at Him? Seriously?! Really...we have a God who doesn't wait for us to pretty ourselves up until we can come before Him, flawless and beautiful. He wants us to sprint up to Him, our clothes torn and dirty, our words foolish and our lips stammering. Somehow, I think we're more beautiful in His eyes that way.