Wednesday 28-11-07

So there were some major communication issues with letting Andy know there was a prayer meeting on – Cecilia didn’t give him the note, and then I messaged the phone, but George had it and didn’t realise that it was from me (despite the message saying “Prayer meeting, please bring laptop” :P) and so didn't even know to give it to Andy. So when I realised all of that, I had an hour to spare and ended up lying on Shiho’s bed while Esther and George made us dinner.

Dinner was really yum – fancy stir fry and rice. And then we washed up and had a quick team meeting about the week. It was here that everything changed because of all the things that are happening. Monday was just a ministry day at Gaidai, Tuesday was prayer meeting and team prayer and then team fun night. Wednesday we are at Nanzan – so because of Jody not being able to make Kaji’s discipleship, the boys were going to take care of that and come back to Gaidai for Frisbee club and then dinner and karaoke with them too. Then Thursday we have the day at Gaidai and then head over to Aichiu Med School for ESS club and Yakiniku dinner. Problems here because we usually ride to Gaidai, and the bus to get to Aichiu is in the other direction? Andy was in charge of how to sort that one out. Friday was just a day at Gaidai and then the Music Live at night, and Saturday is our personal retreat. – looking forward to all that?

Just before our meeting started, we got a text from Ibuki (which she had sent to all her Christian friends (Japanese and Aus alike) asking everyone to pray for Jody from 8:00 to 8:20 that night. What a great prayer warrior!! So excellent to know that when trouble strikes – the first thing Ibuki does is take it to God in prayer and encourages others to do so!! Praise God!

That night after our meeting we prayer for the campus and our outreach times and then we just kept praying – for Jody, for anything that sprang to mind. It was awesome to know that after a long week, and at the start of another one, we were united and talking to God together.

Monday on campus, I left home at 9 and rode there myself. It was a good ride, though I think I go slower with no other people :P then I did a quiet time and sorted out prayer stuff for Tuesday. Then the other girls turned up (boys were running late) and we prayed together and talked about what to do. Ester left for a quiet time and I went down to buy a pen.

Michael and I have been writing a story, (he’s in London, I’m in Japan, and we are writing a story about Brisbane – go figure) and he’s got to print out the form and story for us, but we both have to sign in. So I had to get the address so he can send it here so I can send it on to Australia. So I asked Shiho for the address and she pulls out a piece of paper but we can’t read the Kanji!

No good because I can’t get Michael to draw kanji, so I was like “great, I can use this as a ministry tool and ask someone to help me and then have a good conversation!” hooray! So I went down to buy a pen after chatting to the girls, praying that God would show me who would be good to talk to, and when I came out, I felt like “yep – go talk to her!” so I did.

Her name was Seiko and she was just sitting by herself eating and I came up and asked how to read the Kanji and she said she didn’t know, and just when I thought it was all over, she says, “lets go ask the people in the book store!” so we did!

The people in the book store didn't know how to read it either, but they pulled out the phone book and gave it a shot, got me the Post Code, which was handy ☺ then Seiko and I went back to where she was sitting and I asked her if she spoke English and would she like to chat? She said yes! Hooray!

I ended up talking to her for a good 40 mins or so, she was really surprised I would come to Japan just to talk to people, but it was cool. I gave her my number at the end, but she didn’t offer hers, so I hope she calls. It would be good to see her again.

After that I went and had lunch with Esther and Sachie (Christian) and Remi (not Christian yet). Sachie had gone to Universal Studios on the public holiday last Friday and had gotten everyone on the team “omiage” or souvenirs. We had a pretty good lunch and then just chilled for a while. Kahori, Shiho, Wai Ling and Mika were having lunch together and at the end, they did a Knowing God Personally booklet with Mika! Yay for spreading the gospel. (Kahori even skipped class to stay, she’s like; “this is more important than class”.) The Evangelism Team had a meeting and Andy and I talked through Romans 7 a bit.

That afternoon, Sawako (Christian) wanted us to talk to two of her friends who were not Christian, but wanting to make friends with foreigners. So we waited around for that, but when we met them, they were giggly Japanese girls who were too shy to speak Japanese, so it was a bit hard to talk to them. We ended up instigating a huge Scissors Paper Rock game and giving a serviette to the winner. ☺ weee fun!

After trying to fold the serviette into a plane (unsuccessfully) I changed it into a little origami book and gave it to one of the girls, who said she wanted to be a fantasy writer. Then we wrote a book. Andy and Shiho translated and the story went something like this (it was fantasy)

“Once apon a time, there were 2 girls. They went to uni and met new friends and laughed a lot. Then some crazy people came in with swords and started being crazy. Thankfully, one of the girls knew Karate and saved the day! Hooray! The End.”

Good times good times. ☺ Soon after Andy, Cecilia and I left to go home. C and Andy were on dinner and I was there to make sure no one made any “purple” and I had prayer stuff to do anyway. Dinner was Nachos – which was pretty yum. There was a moment where we thought “humm not enough meat” and then “humm too much salsa,” and “humm not enough corn chips” (and I had the moment “humm not enough cheese”) but it was really good. A bit of a challenge with no oven (mum if you’ve got any recipes that don’t include ovens or rice please send them on – we need variety!) but we just microwaved everyone’s separately to melt the cheese and it worked out well.

Monday night was our last team building session – we worked through some conflict resolution stuff and then “value cards”, which talked about what we value most when working in a team. My values were just “get the job done” (no surprise there). George really values “inclusion” where everyone gets a say (something that none of our other team members valued). It was interesting to see where things fell for everyone and how we worked differently. Wai Ling said that because she’s worked in Australia, now “Direction and structure” aren’t high priorities, because we are all laid back. Heheh.

Tuesday I slept in. It’s hard to get up when it’s still dark and it’s staying darker longer these days. We left home at 9:00 to go to the prayer meeting (which this time was only down the road at Kamiyashiro Church (where we have the Immanuel meeting). We got there and then started to walk to the convince store to buy lunch, when Shiho dropped her contact lenes. So we all stopped and had a look, and then some of us went on to the store and came back and kept looking while others went on. We ended up finding it, but it was cracked (after the long fall to the ground) so Shiho couldn’t wear it.

Prayer was led by Joyce, who’s theme was to pray for the world. It was really cool prayer time. When ever I do extended prayer I think back to the first Mid Year Conference I went to, when the LINC campuses were in charge of prayer time. My first reaction there was “We are going to pray for 2 hours? Are you crazy?” but now I’m like “Prayer time? Awesome!”. I think praying is something that all Christians struggle with doing, and especially when you are leading other people to do it, it’s like “ahh they are going to hate me!”. I think it’s because we find it so easy to just shoot up a prayer in the middle of the day saying “oh, God, thanks for that, and btw I need help with this…”, but when it comes to concentrated prayer – we don’t know what we are going to say.

In any case, prayer is awesome! Hooray! We read through Psalm 18:1-19 and just went around the room and read a verse each – in whatever language you had available. It is so cool to know that God understands every word we say, no matter what language we say it in.

When we came back to home after having lunch, Andy and I finally had our prayer team meeting, and then started group prayer. Esther and George were late – off talking again - but they came. We had a really good time praying for different things for campus, students, each other – yay! Then Shiho and I did some shopping for our fabulous dinner and just chilled together.

It was very cool to talk to Shiho one on one – we talked a lot about being missionaries and music and Student Life. She is very open to the idea that she wants to become a missionary one day. We made scrambled eggs for dinner. I even toasted the bread so that we had toast! Hooray! We also had mushrooms and sausages (the sweet Japanese kind) and cheese! Yum! I’m having left over toast and cheese and tomato sauce for breakfast – weee!!

Then we went up to Wai Lings room and played a few more games of take two – they are addicted! And a game of Signs (which was confusing, but fun) and then settled down to watch Speed. Pretty funny movie, I was commenting the whole way through – so was George – I think because they get together at the end and I’m trying not to think about people being together because I just miss Steve.

Tuesday was our 2 year anniversary! Wee!! I had arranged for Wade to leave Steve’s present on the kitchen table for him, but Wade thought it was the 29th and hadn’t so I was really disappointed. But Steve got it in the end. The night before, he and Andy stayed up late making me a Video message, which Andy managed to get me to watch while at Prayer. He was supposed to be getting Jeremy Camp fro me to listen to and he says “oh I’ve got a video for you to watch first” and I was thinking it was some great video of MercyMe live or something that I’d be so jealous about and I’m like “I don't’ want to watch it!” and he says “just press play!” so I did and it was Steve!! Weee!!

I got to call him after Speed and we talked for an hour. ☺ It was really good to talk to him, though I knew he was staying up late and he was already tired from last night’s efforts :P. Yay hooray God is fantastic.

Now it’s Wednesday morning. We don’t have to leave until 10:00 and I’ve been typing this since a quarter past 7. I’m starving. I had a really strange dream about 2 brothers who got super powers, except I was one of the brothers. And we were escaping the police and my brother who could walk through walls, too me through to the homework room at Wishart (where we were hiding) and there were all these birds with golden feathers and blue tips and 2 beaks (one where it’s supposed to be and the other half way down the neck) it was strange. They were really intelligent birds though. I can’t remember my other powers, but we managed to transport ourselves back before Dad (not my dad someone else’s dad – probably the brothers dad (one of whom’s body I was inhabiting) realised we were gone. It was a great dream – running from the police, getting super powers… being a boy… I dunno where that comes in but meh! Time to go write the last part of the story that I need to write and then eat breakfast and then get onto emails!