Category: Uncategorized

This was originally made for my group over on Facebook, but it works here too.

Last June, when I was accepted as a missionary with SEND international, it was one of the most exciting events in my life. I suppose it was what graduating from college should have felt like; I could see exactly where God was calling me, and what He wanted me to do with my life. He was sending me to Japan to be in full time ministry as a missionary. That calling rang true with all the desires God had been cultivating in my life up till that point. My anticipation and excitement at the thought of going to Japan as a missionary could not have been any higher.

At least that’s what I thought until about a week ago, when I proposed to my girlfriend, Tomo, and she said she’d marry me. Now I’ll be going to Japan, married to a godly young woman who shares my desire to serve God and reach out to the Japanese, a young woman I love, respect, and enjoy every second of time that I spend I’m around her. I mean, come on, how could things possibly get any better than that? I guess I’ll have to wait and see; God’s proven to be infinitely more creative than I am.

I met Tomo almost five years ago, on my very first trip to Japan. If you haven’t already figured it out, she is Japanese, and normally lives in Tokyo with her family. Her father is the pastor of the church that we went to work with, and my brother Jon and I stayed with their family for six weeks. Oddly enough Tomo’s older sister Maki was also living there, and my brother is marrying her next month. So, in the summer of 2003 Jon and I both met our fiances at pretty much exactly the same time. I swear, neither of us had any idea at the time. Especially not me. I didn’t even think that was an option. Tomo was a senior in Highschool, and I had just graduated college. I wasn’t planning on going back to Japan, and as far as I knew, I would never see her again. Still we became very good friends over the course of our stay there, Tomo has a real gift when it comes to languages, and speaks amazingly good english, which meant that we dragged her along everywhere we went and she spent a lot of time with our team.

That trip was a real turning point in my life, and God used many aspects of it to instill in me a desire to serve Him in ways I hadn’t previously considered possible. I went home no longer trying to see what I could do for God, but rather what God wanted to do through me. He began to show me. One thing He did was bring me back to Japan. A lot. In fact I’ve been to Japan once a year ever since that first trip. Which meant I got to see Tomo at least once a year. Not only that, she came and visited here a couple of times as well. And I really started to like her. Still, it didn’t seem like anything could come of it. She wasn’t going to be moving to the US, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. So I just set it aside to wait and see what God would do. And then I got accepted with SEND.

Once that happened, and I knew I was going to wind up in Japan, I started to think about Tomo a lot more. Two months after that, she came to the US to spend ten months attending UCI as a foreign exchange student, living a half hour away from me. I would classify that as “God doing something.” Tomo was pretty helpless over here, since she didn’t have a drivers license, which meant that I got to spend a lot of time with her. And I couldn’t have been happier. We started dating after she’d been here about two months, and things have been awesome ever since.

We’ve still got a bit of a journey ahead of us. Tomo has to go back to Japan to finish her last year of college. She graduates in March of 2009, so we hope to get married shortly after that. Also she will be joining SEND, and so we’ll have to raise significantly more support, which will mean that Tomo will probably have to move to the US for a short time while we raise the rest of it. Getting a Visa is not an easy process. Still, God has made it so evident that He is the One who has brought things this far, and I can’t wait to see what He does in the coming year.

It’s always interesting to watch God work. I mean, we “know” he does amazing things, at least we always say we know it, but it seems far less often that we actually step out in faith enough to witness it. Last week was a small reminder of that for me.

Human nature seems to drive people to chose the path that is easiest and most comfortable, and to leave those which are difficult and seemingly unpleasant until there are no other options. For me it appears that one of the most reliable ways of determining what God wants me to do is simply to look at the things I’ve been avoiding — usually those are exactly the things He wants me to do. Call it the Jonah syndrome if you like. In this case the thing that I was avoiding was asking people, one on one, face to face, to support me financially. I hate asking people for money; and even though I know that I’m not asking them to give me money, but to give money to God, and His work, part of me still feels like I’m asking for myself.

So, naturally, I did what most any human would do to try to raise support: whatever seemed to be the most comfortable. I wrote letters, sent out little cards, set up a website, created a Facebook group, spoke in front of church and wrote Newsletters. All stuff that is necessary, beneficial, and helpful; all things I will continue to do. In fact God has been bringing in a steady, though small,stream of supporters through these methods. But the one thing I didn’t want to do was call someone up, ask them if I could meet with them and invite them to support me. And since I didn’t want to do that, I didn’t… until last week.

Last week I met with five of my closest friends that had not yet started to support me. I talked to them on the phone, or sent them an email, made an appointment, shared about what I was going to do, and asked them to support me financially. All five of them said yes. To put that in perspective, I previously had seven financial supporters, after roughly six months of support raising. In addition to those five, God brought two additional supporters that I didn’t talk with. That means that this month God doubled the number of supporters I have, and it looks likely that my percentage of support will also have doubled by the end of the month. And to make things even better, I actually enjoyed getting the chance to share one on one with my friends where God was leading me, and was incredibly encouraged to see their enthusiastic responses.

God is good; He is faithful to reward us when we place Him first and humbly obey Him, He encourages us when we are discouraged, He causes us to rejoice at the most unexpected times. I have over 10% of my needed support! Look what God has done!

I’m not sure how many of you guys watched the “American Idol Gives Back” program on Fox last night, but if you did you probably were shocked at the song they chose to close with. They sang, “Shout to the Lord.” Now, I’m a pretty cynical guy, so when I watched it on YouTube, I sort of rolled my eyes during the first minute or so. Especially when I noticed that they changed the opening line from: “My Jesus…” to “My Shepherd…”

“Here we go”, I thought, “Now the song could be acceptable to Christians, Jews, Muslims, heck, anyone who believes in a supreme diety.” However I kept watching, and the rest of the song remained unchanged, the words were still unmistakeably Christian; the song sounded like it was being sung in a church. Not like my church, maybe more like a mega church like Saddleback, what with all the lights and the big choir in the back and the full band, but it sounded like part of a church service none the less. And this was on prime time, national television, not TBN. I decided to watch it again.

This time the irony of it all hit me. Ryan Secreast announces the song this way:

“Now, singing Shout to the Lord, once again here are your American Idols!”

And then, “America’s Idols” took the stage and sang:

My Shepherd, my Savior, Lord, there is none like You;
All of my days I want to praise the wonders of Your mighty love.

I don’t know if any of these guys are saved. I don’t know if they even cared what they were singing, or if they were just doing it because they were told to. Maybe some of them were really, actually worshiping God. But the remarkable thing to me is that here we have on national TV, these people that are supposed to represent all that America Idolizes, and worships: the fame, the fortune, the talent, the lifestyle of rock stars that we as a country lust after, and these eight peple are in a contest that is supposed to give them all this – and here they all are singing that there is none like God, that all day they want to sing God’s praises, that there is something more than what they are pursuing. And that, in itself, is something to take notice of.

Now, God knows their heart, and that is the most important part of this. Clearly Christ said in Mark 7:6-7 that worship is in vain if the heart is not in it.

And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

“‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’

Maybe that was all that happened last night. Maybe all we watched on TV was a bunch of hypocrites pretending to worhsip God with their lips while their heart was set on fame and fortune. That part we don’t know. What we do know is that in front of the whole country these guys truthfully proclaimed that there is none like the Lord, and that He should be worshiped by all the earth, that nothing compares to the promise we have in Him. And with that I’ll rejoice as Paul did when he said in Phillipians 1:18

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

The “idols” may or may not have benefited from their worship last night, but who knows how many people throughout country may have been startled by the thought that there just may be something greater than all that they currently idolize.

Check out what my friend Mark thinks

Tachikawa = The name of the City in Tokyo
Ekimae = “Near the Station” or maybe “Accross from the Station”
Kyoko = “Church”

The near the station part usually gets a bit of a laugh from Japanese people, because it’s usually attatched to the names of things like convinience stores, or Pachinko Parlors, it’s almost more of a marketing term. So to use it to describe a church sounds funny. And it usually implies that whatever is “Ekimae” is within eyesight of said station. Now, the church is about three blokcks from Tachikawa station, one of the largest stations in Tokyo, however it’s no longer visible. It was when it was built, but the surrounding area now has many much taller buildings.

If anyone who speaks Japanese can correct me on this, please do (Tomo, Jon, or Yoshie).

A shot of the church service in progress. As you can see, most people dress somewhat formally, and what you can’t see is that the songs are mostly Hymns sung with accompaniment by a church organ, much like many traditional churches here in the US

Me standing out as I usually do when in Japan.

Well just a quick update. I moved last weekend. Now I’m in Capistrano Beach, sharing a house with the same two guys I was before, Jeff and Matt. Previously me and Matt were living in Jeff’s house, renting a room from him. Not Jeff sold his place, and Matt rented a new house, and Jeff and I are renting rooms from Matt. So, in a lot of ways, not much has changed. Except all my stuff is in boxes, and for now at least, I have my own room.

My plan is to rent from Matt until July, and then move back in with my parents for a year while I try to save up as much money as possible, and pay off my loans… or something. (There may be something else I could spend 10 grand on a year from now, but there’s still a lot of undefined varibles there.) The reason I’m not moving straight into my parents house is that it’s sort of crowded right now, and my little brother is getting married in June, which means that probably even more people will be staying there. At the very least my girlfriend usually stays with my parents on weekends, and will be there for two weeks between the time she’s done with UCI for the year and the time she flies back to Japan, and we like to keep things on the up and up.

Oh yes, for those of you who don’t know, I’ve been dating my younger brother’s fiance’s younger sister, Tomo for the last five months. She’s from Japan, Jon (my brother) and I met both her and Maki (his fiance) on a mission trip to work with the church her father pastors. I’ve known Tomo and her family for almost five years, but it wasn’t till she came to the states as a foriegn exchange student that I finally got the nerve to ask her out. I’m not quite as bold as Jon, who started dating Maki while he was in Japan, and then three weeks later came back to the US to continue a three year long distance relationship while he raised support to move to over there. I give him props for that.

My support raising goals for this month:

1. Contact 10 people to schedule a appointments to meet in person and share about Japan, how God’s calling me there and ask them to join my team as a financial supporter.
2. Contact three churches about supporting me and/or allowing me to come speak at one of their services, sunday schools, or Bible Studies to enlist their memebers as supporters.
3. Get monthly support up to 22%

That’s it for now, hopefully I’ll be unpacked by next week, and I’ll have some more to report.

I was reading this in my devotions the other day, and thought I’d share with you guys a little of waht God has been teaching me lately.  I’ve been going through Isaiah and came accross this verse:

“Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the LORD of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. ”

Isaiah 8:12-13

This world can be a terrifying place sometimes. Wars, catastrophes, natural disasters, there is always something to be afraid of, something people are talking about in hushed whispers or desperate cries. Certainly this was true in Isaiah’s day. When God gave this word to Isaiah, his country, Judah, was under attack by Israel and Syria. Israel and Judah were kindred nations, the same people divided under the rule of two kingdoms. They were supposed to be allies. However Israel conspired to conquer Judah and enlisted the help of Syria. Ahaz, the King of Judah planned to pay a large tribute to the king of Assyria, in hopes of persuading Assyria to side with Judah against Israel and Syria. Certainly there were many conspiracy theories floating around Judah at the time; it was a time of fear, confusion, war and turmoil.

In 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles we learn a little more about the peoples of Judah and Israel during this time. They were in the midst of a spiritually dark period of their histories. Both nations were following after false  gods, and had abandoned the Lord, the One who made them into a nation, and protected them from their enemies. Neither Israel nor Judah had any thought about God at this time, and instead were focused on the politics of the day, and the terrifying prospects of being conquered.

In a lot of ways this is similar to today, or almost any point in history for that matter. Human beings are always involved in conflicts, always scared of disasters, always coming up with conspiracy theories. And yet we as Christians are told to just trust God, he’s got everything under control, no matter how ridiculous that sounds to us sometimes. People often ask, “What is God doing?” not expecting any sort of answer, and rightly so; God has no obligation to explain Himself. The fact that He occasionally gives us glimpses of what’s going on behind the scenes is a gracious act on His part.

However, we are privileged to see God’s side of things in the opening chapters of Isaiah. It turns out that God was intentionally causing all this turmoil and strife. He was using one nation to punish another, because His people had abandoned Him. Judah and Israel were supposed to be lights among the darkness of the pagan nations surrounding them. Yet they had become just like the pagan nations but still were known to be the people of YAWEH. To allow Israel to be wicked and successful would be an affront to God’s character.

In this instance, things seemed like they were spinning wildly out of control to the people of Judah. But they were fearing the wrong thing. They feared Israel and Syria, they hoped in Assyria. They should be fearing God who brought these nations against them, they should have been hoping in God, repenting and turning back to Him, looking to Him for salvation. In truth this is what He sent Isaiah to proclaim in Judah, but the people did not listen. Nothing was out of control, everything was happening exactly as God was planning and willing it to happen, in fact in this case, it was God who was bringing calamity upon His people. The problem was just that no one trusted Him.

The same is true today. People say the world is out of control, that we are all doomed. There are hundreds of conspiracies discussed among politicians, whispered among friends and flamed across the internet. All these are ultimately a distraction from the real issue. God is in Heaven and He is doing all that He pleases. Not only is He capable of handling all the problems of this world, all of them are happening exactly according to His plan and purpose. He we must honor as Holy, He is the one we should fear. Isaiah is a testimony to God’s Sovereignty, His declaration that he knows the beginning from the end, and that He is working all things exactly according to His purpose. There is much wrong in the world today, but God is working both in spite of it, and through it to bring about the perfection of all things according to His promises.

Now, I want to be clear that I am not trying to make some point about God judging America, or that the tragedies which have befallen us lately are what we deserve. That may or may not be true, and regardless it would not justify the evils of terrorism, oppression and tyranny. My point is that if we as Christians fear these enemies, if we wrap ourselves up in politics and conspiracies at the expense of forgetting about God, then we run the same risk that the peoples of Israel and Judah did: we risk incurring God’s discipline. He will not be ignored. I believe He is more concerned with the hearts of His children, and the work of His Church than with nations and conflicts and politics. Certainly these are important, but if we fear them more than we fear the One who moves all of history according to His purpose we will be overcome with despair and hopelessness. Our focus must be on God, and His words, and His teachings, we should fear sinning and dishonoring God more than we fear wars and poverty. We should seek first to build the Kingdom of God before we concern ourselves with any earthly kingdom. Nations will rise and fall, but God reigns through eternity.

Our God is in the heavens;
he does all that he pleases

Psalm 115:3

Well, look at the time… it’s been two and a half months since my last blog post! Sorry about that, this is supposed to be updated weekly; I’ll try harder to hold up my end of the bargain, if you all will agree to stop by more often as well.

The last two months have been productive and educational. Despite the fact that I’ve technically been raising support for 8 months now, the reality is that I’ve only been really focusing on it for the last two and a half. Before I was too busy with short term trips to really sit down and work out how I’m going to get to Japan long term, but I’ve made that excuse too many times before, so here I go. Onward and upward. Since the start of this year I’ve formed my HEART (Home Encouragement And Resource Team) team, published my first Newsletter, sent out prayer updates, and started my bid to take over Facebook. Really I have no idea what I’m doing, but its exciting doing it, and even more exciting to see, little by little, God begin to bring in the support.

Most of what I’ve done so far is lay the necessary groundwork for support raising. The next phase is going to consist of actually looking for people who will partner with me, financially, so that I can go to Japan and spread the gospel and start churches, be a part of the amazing work God is doing over there. But I’m still nervous about asking people to support me. The whole process seems awkward, still, as I’ve noted before it all comes down to trusting God; if I can’t trust him to bring in the support I need, then I won’t make a good missionary anyways. I suppose this is a sort of on the job training.

Coming from a computer background (ok, so I’m only 27, and don’t really have a “background” yet), one of the things I wanted to do from the out set was to use technology as much as I could in the support raising process. That’s why I created this website, and intend to keep blogging. The internet is an incredible tool for contacting people, and support raising is all about making contacts. I’ve also been using Facebook more and more, and I’m begining to be impressed with its networking features, and the potential to get in contact with mission minded people that I’ve never met before. I started a group on Facebook for my mission to become a missionary (to do missions in Japan) and so far I have 114 people who have joined. That’s larger than my both my traditional mailing list, and my email mailing list. We’re having a great time over there right now, and I’m holding monthly contests giving away cool Japanese things that my brother Jon sent me. So if any of you are a member of Facebook, go join my group here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21081615028.

Let me know how you’re doing, leave a comment!

Well its been a week and a half since I’ve been back in the states, the remainder of my Japan trip went really well. Mom, Jen, Quentin and I all had a great time hanging out with Jon and helping to get him settled into his new apartment. It was a bus week packed with more sightseeing than I’ve ever done in Japan. I’m still waiting to get copies of pictures from other people on the team; as soon as I do I’ll post a bunch of them here.

Things have been really busy since I’ve gotten back, with the holidays and all. I’m well over jet lag, and almost back into a normal routine. Hopefully I’ll be able to get my first newsletter out to everyone in the next two weeks, as well as begin asking to speak at church’s in the area, talking about Japan and seeking support. Had a little bit of practice today as dad was down in Mexico with half the church on a short term missions trip, so I got to fill in preaching for him to the other half this morning. I put an MP3 recording of it in the downloads section of this site, or just click here if you’re like to listen to it.

Well, the team just got on the bus to go to the airport, kicking off what is sure to be a very, very long day for all of them. In the mean time, I’m still here in Japan, just starting off a week of vacation that I’ve been looking forward to for awhile. I suppose I could also classify it as “encouraging a missionary” as I’ll be hanging out with my brother Jon, who’s been here with SEND International for the last 6 months. Our good friend Quentin arrived last night, and tomorrow my mom and sister will get here to spend some time with us as well.

The Jesus Film Team was successful on all accounts. We distributed over 16,000 CDs with a team of 12 people over 10 days. The analogy of the sower comes to mind, although in the past Japan has proven to be very hard ground. However there always seems to be at least a few people who take the CD, listen to it, and show up at church to learn more, and of those few some will also come to receive Christ.  I met a young man at church who began coming after recieving one of the CDs the team handed out two years ago,and he will hopefull be baptized soon.To understand the significance of this, you need to understand a little of how Japanese Christians typically come to Christ. It is a long process.

The problem is generally getting new people to even consider Christianity. Here in Japan it is often viewed as some sort of western religion which isn’t compatible with the Japanese mindset. Often they view Christianity much the same way we view Buddhism in the states. How often have you looked at what Buddhists believe? How often do you go to a Buddhist temple? How often to do you consider converting to Buddhism? The comparison isn’t exactly equal,  given that Christians have the Holy Spirit to guide them, and confirm the truth of the Gospel, and thus I think that all true Christians are less willing to give up their faith (more specifically, I believe they can’t, but that’s another topic) than follower’s of Buddha. However it at least gives you an idea.

Usually a person hears the gospel, and is then invited to Church. If they do show up they will encounter the body of Christ for perhaps the first time in their life. If their curiosity is piqued they may begin attending church on a regular basis to learn more about this strange sounding religion. At this point these people are called “seekers.” This is sort of a transitionary period where they learn much about the gospel, often meeting one on one with the Pastor to have question’s answered. One of the biggest obstacles is the issue of syncretism.

Traditionally, the Japanese have no problem practicing a number of conflicting religions simultaneously. As a culture, Japan is both Buddhist and Shinto. The two belief systems have verry different worldviews and teachings about the after life, and conflict on many other important points. However this does not stop most Japanese from identifying with both Buddhism and Shinto. It is thus tempting for many to simply add Christianity to the list, and thus avoid any conflict with family, friends and culture, all of which exert a strong grip on the hearts and minds of the Japanese people. To leave the traditional religions is often viewed as abandoning one’s family and heritage.

The time spent as a “seeker” is one in which the person carefully considers all the ramifications of accepting Christ, and comes to understand that that will mean the renouncing of Buddhism and Shinto. It is not a choice that is made lightly. Often it will take two years before a person decides to become a Christian. If that happens, they are then baptized, and become a full member of the church.

Thus to see Tanaka-san baptized will be an incredible thing. It has taken him two years from the time he received a CD from one of our previous team members, came to church and began learning about Jesus Christ. Looking forward I wonder how God will use the 16,000 plus CDs that were distributed this year. Perhaps that one small spark of light in the midst of all the darkness and hopelessness that surrounds these people each day will result in a few more coming to find the forgiveness, peace, joy and hope that can only come through Christ.