A great encouragement :)

Last saturday i had the pleasure of attending a KGK (kirisutosha gakusei kai - Christian Student Fellowship) new students' welcome event in Tokyo with alen, a brother from KGK at my uni, my Jewish friend M, as well as about 150 - 200 Christian students from tokyo and the surrounding area. It was amazing fun and a great encouragement! It reminded me of the conferences we have back in Australia, only it was all done in Japanese - a great time to learn about the language and the culture, as well as a time to experience Christ's love in the church here in Japan (which M was also able to experience). It was certainly a huge encouragement to be able to meet so many friendly people, and it was a pleasure also to meet the staffworkers who will be helping us with our mission here next month (i can't believe there is only a month left until then!!!). I'm really looking forward to working with the churches here next month :D

Oh, and the travel to and from the location cost me about 3500 yen all up, but the organisers decided to subsidise those who had to travel far to get to the location, so i ended up paying 1500 instead :) Awesome stuff!

It was also really nice to meet my host family (from 5 years ago) again. Well i only really met Kaori (who i saw the week before anyway) and her mum again, but it was really nice to see them again and hang out. Kaori's mum, Noriko (who treats me as her own son) is one of the most friendly, loving and generous people i have ever met. The plan was to meet up and have dinner after the KGK event, and so we met up and went to eat at a Chinese restaurant. Noriko ended up paying for the whole dinner, that is, she paid for 7 people including herself, and 3 people were complete strangers to her. Not only that, but she saw that we were still hungry so she brought us downstairs to buy us some gyoza (dumplings) and sat us down for some tea and coffee in Vie De France. That kind of love and hospitality being shown to strangers is certainly something i want to model myself. It's not like this is something i have only just experienced recently though. 5 years back, they were the ones that hosted me. I never thought that i would be provided with a Christian host family, considering there are so few Christians here in Japan, but God has His awesome way of doing things, and ever since that time 5 years ago i've been keeping in contact with my host family, as i am very grateful for all the love and kindness they showed me by opening up their house for me to stay in. I should be the one serving them, and they are still the ones who are constantly showing me love and encouragement instead. I know that if i were to go to Tokyo on my own for a while, they would not for one second hesitate to let me stay again.

It was also very encouraging seeing Kaori again after so long! She's always been a Christian but she had heaps of struggles with faith. However, in more recent times, she has come to experience God's love much more and she has grown from being a shy and rather selfish girl, into a more outgoing, loving and caring sister in Christ. Her mum was explaining to us that Kaori had undergone a huge change and that she was very thankful for it. I'm just really thankful for the great love God has shown to them, and to me for allowing me to meet such an amazing family. Oh yeah, i didn't get to see her dad or her older sister or older brother again, but a little bit of background on them. The son is the only non-Christian in the family, the older sister michiru is a strong Christian, who studied at SMBC in sydney for a bit, and is now married to an Englishman :) She was the one who helped me translate things when i was struggling with the language here 5 years ago. The dad is also very warm and friendly, but is always busy with work unfortunately. They're a great family :D

I'm just really happy to have the chance to experience meeting up with the Christians here and to see how God's love has affected people from different places. Prior to my trip here i didn't know many Japanese Christians, and to be honest i thought that i had more to offer them in terms of encouragement, but now i feel that it's the other way around - i'm the one being encouraged by them! It's been an amazing trip so far, and i really look forward to what God has in store for me in the future :)

Anyways, hope everything is going well over there in Australia! God bless :D