After returning to Morioka from our trip to Tokyo we promptly packed up again and headed up to the mountains for a church winter retreat. But before that we helped my brother and his family move out of their house and saw them leave to head back to the US for their first home service since they arrived in Morioka two years ago. We’re going to miss having them around, and Titus will certainly miss seeing his cousins on a regular basis, but we’ll see them again in about 6 months when we also head back to the US for our first home service.
While Tokyo was relatively warm (rarely did the temperature drop below the high 40s) and snow free, Morioka is cold and covered in ice, and when we went up to the mountains for our church retreat we spent time in a beautiful camp covered in over a meter of light fluffy powdered snow. It was a wonderful time of fellowship with our church family here in Japan, and for me one of the best opportunities to practice Japanese since my arrival. One highlight was playing a game of “Mafia” in Japanese, there’s nothing like the motivation of trying to convince people not to execute you to get over the nervousness of trying to speak a foreign language. Lately it feels like I’ve really turned a corner in Japanese speaking ability, I’m getting fairly comfortable at having one on one conversations with people (though I quickly get lost in group conversations which tend to flow much faster). At Prayer meeting last Wednesday I was able to share what I learned from the sermon on Sunday and my prayer requests without writing all that down ahead of time like I normally do. Please continue to pray that I am able to communicate well in Japanese, and particularly that I can navigate spiritual topics which is significantly more difficult than talking about the weather.
There are two college students at our church who recently became Christians, which is very exciting. One of them is a student at a college where Pastor Kondo teaches a class on Christianity, and the other is a student in Okinawa who took time off to come volunteer to help out Tsunami survivors. Both of their stories are quite unique and it has been a tremendous joy to see them at church every Sunday and to see the way that Christ is working in their lives. Pray that God works in the hearts of many more to bring salvation to the lost. Next Friday we’ll be having our January English Cafe, please pray that God would use this ministry to reveal the truth of His gospel to those who attend.