Flat3D

Habakkuk

Sunday night was Kris’ baptism. Kris is an English teacher working in a school in Hirosaki (I think it’s in Hirosaki) He came to faith some time ago (4 years) and wasn’t baptised, when he came to Japan and joined a church here (Itayanagi’s English Fellowship) he decided to get baptised and last night he did. His testimony was incredible, lots of experiences and changed etc. But that’s not what I’m going to write about…

His testimony was quite long (and no one was complaining!) and it left little time for John (Elliot) to do a sermon, so he scrapped the one he had prepared talking about the reformation (was reformation sunday) and did one on Habakkuk, his inspiration was related to Kris’ testimony in some way, but I am going to talk about verse 5 of chapter 1:

Look at the nations, and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told. For I am rousing the Chaldeans.

Now this very verse has stood out to me three times since last night. When John first read it, tonight in the car coming home from the English Bible study in Hirosaki and then when I opened my inbox there was an email from the LICC’s Word of the Week series with the verse as the opening bit.

Each time it was saying the same thing to me, it initially made me feel excited about the possibilities of the things God can do in Japan (and across the world) and how I can be a part of it. But the point of the verse is that Habakkuk was complaining about the state of things, the state of Israel and wanting God to do something. God tells Habakkuk what He is going to do (and we now know He did) using the Chaldeans (the Babylonians, aka the bad guys). This surprised Habakkuk somewhat because God wasn’t supposed to work through bad guys. He was supposed to use good upright men and deliver the israelites all the time (like the Exodus, Judges, etc etc). But this time God was using the bad guys.

It reminds me that God is poised to do great things. But it also reminds me that God will do His work the way that He sees fit. Not the way that I probably expect Him to. We spent some time in the mornings studying Revelation and how people imagine how things will be then put themselves in danger of missing it when it does happen because they are expecting something else. Much like the Jews did with Jesus.

I’m at the stage where I don’t really know what God has in store for me after this year. I am waiting to see what He tells me. I have ideas but I need to be sure they are of from God and not just things I have come up with as a possible plan as I don’t want to miss the great things God has in store.

A longer update

Ok, so I said I’d write a longer update, so here goes…

the Iwaki climb was a good day, we cheated and went up in the cable car and climbed hardly any, so I feel like I should go back and do it again. But it is going to be closing soon, the first snow appeared on the top of Iwaki on monday and usually they close it at this time of year to deter people from going up and freezing etc… There are pictures of our ascent in the gallery…

Last weekend we had a prayer meeting for all OMFers in Tohoku. Tohoku is the are of Japan encompassing an area from down about Sendai right up to the top of Honshu. It was a good chance to meet all the people whose names I keep reading about in prayer letters and stuff. It also made for a fairly relaxed time at Aomori Christian Centre, which is a very nice place indeed!

After the prayer meeting The Elliots son, Luke, and his wife, Yuko, came to stay for a night. The opportunity was seen and seized to get out and dust off “Chopper Command” from the shed and demonstrate our toy-helicopter control prowess with landings and picking things up etc etc. There are a few photos in the gallery
We took some video of the chopper in action, Luke may edit it up and post it on his blog. If not I will perhaps do it and post it up in the gallery with the photos.

I went with John (Elliot) to the sports centre today to assess the situation. Every time I had been until now I found it closed and thought perhaps I was in the wrong place. But it turns out I was in the right place and it may well have closed down… So now I am not sure exactly what I am going to do… Maybe if everyone prays really hard I will meet some people who are into kayaking and kayak-surfing and want to lend me the gear so I can go too… Maybe the local swimming pool will have a kayak-polo team… Maybe the moon will be blue tonight… But really, if you feel like praying for me, pray for me to find something to do…

So thats all for now, I have reorganised the gallery if you want to go look at photos. There are even a few new ones in there…

Hmmm

Quite a lot of stuff has been going on since the last time I posted, mostly the same stuff I have posted about before, teaching english and so on, but also some new stuff. I have climbed mount Iwaki, I have been to Aomori, I was at the KGK bible study in Hirosaki, the english bible study began on Monday night…. So yeah its all been pretty busy, also the Elliots are preparing to go to the US for their daughter’s wedding and so there has been a lot going on around here.

I have quite a few photos to post, but not really the time to shrink them down and rotate them etc… Maybe another day…

Sorry this is such a short update, but hopefully I will write a longer one soon.

Just offal…

Here in Japan they eat some strange things. Most of these things they drag protesting from the sea.
So imagine my surprise when I turned up to a BBQ greeted by a local delicacy that wasn’t wiggly or raw or fishy. yesterday us lucky folk got to eat pig’s intestines!

then you think about it it isn’t so bad, I mean sausages originally used them for skin and often still do… But in reality with Japanese food it is often best not to think about it and be surprised by how good it actually tastes. Pig’s intestines were a real exception to this rule.

But it got me thinking about how many things we eat, like liver and kidney and really any meat… for the most port we can only eat it because we learned what a kidney or whatever was after we found out how tasty it was…

I also went for a swim in the sea:) which prompted me to put up photos of the (kayak) surfing trip at Whiterocks beach which was my goodbye weekend before I left for Japan. Maybe thee will be photos of Aaron and I in the Japan Sea later on.

Junk???

So my cold is getting better… Thanks to all those who prayed!

I have been informed that my prayer letters sometimes get filtered by hotmail and friends into junk mail! So if you are a prayer partner and you haven’t gotten any prayer letters from me this could be the reason! I have recently written one (sent it in on Monday) so it should have gone out or be going out soon! So keep an eye on the junk mail folders for anything that looks like it could be a “prayer news bulletin” or you may not get any of them! And if you know someone who is a partner, please let them know that this could be happening to them too!