Saturday 24-11-07

Well that was Wednesday and now I’ve got quite a few days to catch up on. Thankfully today we aren’t doing anything till 10:30, so I’ve got a while. ☺

On Thursday, we didn’t leave home till 10:30 because we were going for lunch at Aichiu Medical School. We managed to get there at by 12 for Lunch (rode to the train station (Kamiyashiro), trained to Fujigaoka, and then took a bus from there to the Hospitial which is right beside the university. Wai Ling and Shiho left earlier to try to bank the money for our apartments, but Wai Ling forgot her passport, they didn't’ want money from gaijin and Shiho didn’t have anything to prove she was from Japan (except her passport which si not proof because it has no address on it :P). Oh Well.

We had lunch with the students who are involved in the English Club, which was pretty fun. I was a bit worried because on Gaidai, we have to be subtle about going in and walking around in big groups, but at Aichiu we just waltzed in together looking like a big group of gaijin. Jody (who meet us there) said that because we were invited (for lunch and ESS) it meant that we had a reason to be on campus, where as at Gaidai, we aren’t strictly invited on.

So after lunch we had a quick team meeting – tyring to come up with themes for the “Friendship Party”. It turns out the Christmas party isn’t done by us – but it’s done by the Immanuel people. So we only have to organise a “Friendship party” and then the “Farewell Party”. I’m not on the outreach team, so I don’t have to organise much there. After that the Newsletter team (which I am on) had a meeting, just talking about what we want in the newsletter. Wai Ling also wants us to do a video to advertise megumi for next year, but none of us know anything about viedo editing. :P Pretty much we’ve decided that since someone in Melbourne is lined up to do that, we will just get raw footage and he can go wild with it. I don’t think it’s something we need to be focused on though.

Then we just hung out for a bit before going to ESS. Aichiu is pretty much one main building with a few others just next to a hospital. Everyone goes through their classes together for the whole 6 years, so they are pretty tight. The ESS club was really open, lots of good conversations there. Jody does a good job of leading it. We talked about stress and what makes us stressed and how we get relaxed. Ibuki mentioned that she really likes to go to the onsen (yay!) so we were thinking of going today, but more on that later. After ESS, we drove to Immanuel Meeting, which is the Nagoya version of a Tuesday Night Social.

Ibuki is ususally the only one that goes, but after ESS, six of the other students wanted to come too! (Masato, Chisato, Mayu, Midori, Nobu and Shu-Chan) Pretty exciting. In the car there, I was with Shu-chan and Nobu, I asked if they had ever been to church before and what they thought of church. Nobu said he had never been but thought it was a serious place where everyone prayed and no one smiled.

When we got there, there was worship time (3 songs) and then we jumped into the message by Jung (Korean student life missionary) who talked about like and love and how guys and girls think differently. We divided up into groups of 4 and talked about it and shouted out answers to questions. It was really fun, if a bit long. There was so much Japanese though! Jody, Shiho and Pamela were all translating for the English speakers in their groups, but I wasn’t sitting near them and I was getting most of it anyway. Still it was really tyring. Sometimes I just tunned out and then I was like “what was that joke?”

After that, we did a Mission Megumi introduction. Earlier in the day Shoubu (who had been to Austraila with the J-team last year (strongly bonded with Andy) had called and asked for a strange fact about each of us. They put these up on the powerpoint and the students had to guess which one of us matched the fact.

Andy: I have been to ten countries – this confused a lot of people who stood in front of Wai Ling

George: I have the oldest father in the group (his dad is 75!!) – again, most people were in front of Wai Ling.

Cecilia: I work in an ice cream store – pretty evenly spaced, though some people thought it might be a trick question and stood in front of me, incase the donut shop sold ice cream.

Shiho: I fainted at work at was taken to hospital in an ambulance – evenly spaced again, though I didn’t get many people except the students I’d talked to about my scars. :D

Esther: I don't travel to uni any more - again got things confused, She's graduated, so she doenst' go to uni any more - Wai Ling does becuase she's at worker!!

Wai Ling: I am an only child – Wai Ling and I were the only ones left at this stage, and we were pretty well split, except that all the people who had already talked to me were infront of her and everyone else was infront of me :D

Paula: I had my appendix out on Christmas Day – I was the last one, so there was no real challenge here :P

Then there were advertisements for upcoming events and we all went downstairs to have dinner.

The church is actually on our way to Kamiyashiro Station! It is a little building which has a fluro light cross out the front. When you go in – shoes off and slippers on. Then we headed upstairs to a small room where the main meeting took place – when you get into the room, it’s slippers off to sit on the mats on the floor. The room is set up with music and sound equipment, but is pretty small. I doubt you could put many chairs so it’s good we were sitting on the floor. When you come downstairs for dinner, there is a kitchen and then a room to eat in. There was a bookshelf against one wall, and we put low tables out on the floor to eat off. Everyone helped washing up, Seiji took the lead here – I think he sets a good example of leading the men in the movement to be like Christ as opposed to being like Japanese males.

Dinner was rice and soupy stuff, I was at a table with Chisato from ESS and a guy called Yuhei, from I don’t know where. Esther and Shiho were next to me. I noticed that Yuhei had a WDJD braclet on and I asked what it meant – “Why did Jesus die?”. After that Chisato asked what it was and I said it was an English question, and she asked if we have the answer! I prompted Yuhei to have a go at explaining it, which he did. Gospel presentation number 1! High five for Jesus! He ended by hitting home the line that once you are saved you have no fear of death.

Then I asked Chisato what she thought of church. This was her first time at one, and she said that before hand she thought it was boring and praying and no smiles, but now she saw it was interesting. Shiho commented that she felt the same way, so I was like “Tell us about how you feel now and why you feel differently?” so Shiho shared her testimony with Chisato – Gospel presentation number 2 – High five for Jesus! It was really good. Later on Wai Ling and Esther got into some more good conversation with Chisato, and I know she took home a gospel tract, so yay!

I was really spaced out by the time we left – at 11:00. We walked down to Kamiyashiro and then rode home, Wai Ling’s bike light bulb was still not fixed – ops! But we got home safely.

Friday morning I didn’t set an alarm. It was a public holiday, so we didn’t need to get up to go anywhere. I was still sleeping (dreaming about our team being in a band, a musical and then someone’s dad being taken hostage by someone else…) at 10:30 when Cecilia was in the shower and Wai Ling rang the doorbell to be let in. My head was all stuffed up from over sleep, but it was good.

We had an early ish lunch at about 11:45 of pasta and then headed down to the station to take a train into town for shopping. *sigh* I don’t really like shopping, but I knew I had to do some. When we got in to Sakae, we did a bit of a group split again. :P I got a few things from the 100Yen shop for home and then Andy and I went over to the Christian bookstore to see if they had any good CD’s. We both ended up getting English/Japanese New Testaments (he had given his away Thursday night to Masato who wanted to read the bible more). It was only $17.85, which was really good price and the Japanese had all furigana (pronunciation) above the Kanji – which is really good for me! Also the Japanese is “wakari yasui” – easy to understand. Hooray!

I kept looking in stores for kimono’s on sale, but no luck. We asked a information chick, but apparently there is a second hand area, but it would be a train trip away, so we didn’t bother go there. Maybe another day I’ll be able to go. I also looked around for a cool trench coat for Steve, but no luck there either. Pretty much my looking is go in, walk walk walk, walk out. :D Andy and I were sick of shopping by then so we found a macca’s and had some food and then started to do our quiet times, but then Andy wanted to leave instead of sit around in maccas, so we did :P. We were on our way to find a place for dinner (because we are organised (no one else on the team is)) when we ran into Masayoshi (Japanese Missionary) and Shubo. They were on their way to an Electric Store, and considering Andy was looking for an Electric dictionary, we went with them. It was about a 20 min walk and then in the store Andy spent 40 mins looking at dictionaries. I was REALLY bored. I hate that kind of indecisive shopping, though I can understand he wanted to get a good one and he had a budget to consider and what not. :P I looked around at games, thinking of getting one for Steve, but they didn't’ have bio shock and though the Japanese games looked cool, it might not be as fun to play them because they would just be in Japanese :P. I also looked at headphones, because the ones I have seem to not be working :P too bad I have 3 other sets at home, but I didn’t get any anyway.

After hurrying the dictionary buying along slightly, they went to buy the Black one and it came up 4000Yen more expensive than the price tag. We asked about it, they said the silver is the inexpensive, but then they agreed that didn’t make sense, so they made a phone call to their superiors and it was ok, then they discounted it even further because of the wait, so it only ended up costing $210 (21000Yen) instead of $280 (28000Yen). Pretty handy. ☺

Then we headed back to have dinner with the team. It was George’s birthday so we had ramen – yum! There was a “Ramen Street” in one of the buildings with all these different ramen stores, we took a few photos there later ☺ After dinner we headed home and made it back by 8:00. Then we sang George a Happy Birthday Song and asked him to make a speech (in the doorway of Esther and Shiho’s place :P). He started off in a traditional birthday speech way “Thanks for being here, and the ramen…” and then he said; “Well I have your attention, what do I want to say? I think we should pray more.”

It was a really good point, he said we have been putting it off and finding it hard to get into and our excuses have been tiredness and fatigue and busyness, but really, we have been getting enough sleep now, and we are settled in. We all have room buddies we can share with, and encourage each other, so lets pray!

After that, the boys headed home and the girls went to their rooms. Cecilia and Shiho had hit the shops hard and so C showed me her buys – some really nice shoes. After that, she and I went upstairs to hang out with Wai Ling, and we ended up watching a movie about a famous Geisha – it was pretty funny translating all the emotional looks. I left about half way and had a shower and did a quiet time before going to bed at about 11:30.

I had another dream about our team being a band last night. I think the Friday night Live is on my mind too much – when I woke up I had both of my songs stuck in my head. What to do!? I got up about 7:30 I guess, which was good. Now It’s nearly 10 and I’ve caught up on daily stuff! Hooray!

I don’t know what to do with our prayer time next Tuesday – probably pray through our bible verse and I also want us to try do conversational prayer, so that we get into the practice of praying wherever we are.

My throat is a lot better now, though I’m still sniffly. It’s been going round and breathing in recycled air from the heater is probably not helping :P I only turn it on in the morning to heat up the room and then we switch ours off.

Today we have a team meeting at 10:45 and then lunch at about 1. After that we are free until 5, when we are going to Karoke until 7. Then we have dinner and then coming home – and I get to talk to STEVE!! HOORAY!!