Author: dave.chen

Sup lads, I know you guys been missing me writing the blog, but I’m back with even more stories to share. Since we’ve come back from the kid’s camp we’ve been recovering from the intense sweat session. Some of the souvenirs we’ve taken back from the camp include a couple of mosquito bites, multiple sweaty shirts and a healthy dose of camping in Japan. For me in particular I took back more than 6 bites. Got rekt by nature.

Let’s get onto the real stuff though

So today we experienced for the first time the youth/Sunday school program at 9.30am and a full Sunday morning service at 10.30am. It was enlightening to watch the kids get really into the activities organised by the youth and Sunday school teams.    This included a brief talk, some singing and some memory verse. I personally joined the youth group, where we spent time to share with one and another about how we feel living our lives for God every day. I shared about how I found it hard to keep looking at God with all the busyness of Uni and life. Overall it was encouraging to see how the kids can get really into listening to God’s word even tho it’s their summer holiday, they could spend that precious free time elsewhere. Then we had the actual church service that involved 6 songs, a talk from Dave on Isaiah 2:1-4 about the ingathering of the nations that was translated into Japanese and 2 songs led by us and a testimony from Jimmy. One thing that really stood out for me was how after the general welcoming, everyone got up from their seats and started to say good morning to each other. For me this was a highlight as each and every person would go out of their way to say hello to EVERYONE in the service, even people that were sticking to the edge of the room. Overall the service went well, Dave spoke faithfully to the church, challenging the congregation to not be afraid being a Christian in Japan but rather be an example and talk to others in whatever place they are. Jimmy pretty much was a tank, taking on his full testimony in Japanese even though it is his 3^rd language. And the whole congregation got into the English songs we led, which was Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone) and My God is so Big.

After the service we had a delicious lunch that included a yaki-udon and watermelon and cake that was baked by one of the Japanese members who used to be patisserie chef.

Some of the prayer points the church raised included

• For the Nagayama Church to reach their vision of having 50 members in the congregation and for an expansion in the church itself
• For the Australian team to be well rested and continue their mission in Japan devoted to God
• Plant more churches in North Hokkaido
• Unity between us and them

 The Fun Stuff

So after the church service, the Nagayama Church kindly set up a cross-cultural session for us. This included 5 stations that involved Origami, Japanese Calligraphy, experience traditional Japanese tea ritual, wearing a yukata and eating some shaved ice! It was pretty fun watching the other members getting into each station. At the origami station, there was this hectic old woman who was pro with origami. She legit made a spinning top from paper. The calligraphy session was also very popular; here Vivian had a draw-off against Aika who learned how to do Japanese calligraphy. There were some nice designs made by everyone. At the tea stations, we learned how there is a fine art in drinking tea, which involved particular hand gestures and how you make the tea and drink the tea. For example we had to sit on our knees for the whole duration, leading to some of us having pins and needles in our legs as we couldn’t hold on anymore. Kana who took care of the tea told us she could hold the position up to 3 hours!!!!! Moreover the yukata station was only for girls, were Naomi had a go at wearing the dress. The whole time she had this funny expression as if she was dreaming and in a dazed by the whole experience. What a weirdo… Lastly the shave ice is what you expected; it was homemade and really refreshing as the weather has been hot lately. Overall as a team we are really thankful for the Yamamotos and the Nagayama Church congregations, who have graciously taken care of us and provide us with the necessities we need. It truly highlights the generosity and kindness in Japanese people. An example of this is lately they have been giving us fruit such as rockmelon, watermelon and cherries. Fruit in Japan is actually quite expensive as for example a single apple cost about 300 yen which is about $3; the rockmelon itself is over $10 per melon. As a team we are extremely thankful for this and we are continually praying for the growth of the Nagayama Church.

After some chill time, we headed to a Matsuri which is a summer festival that was happening over the weekend. It was extremely wild as there were HEAPS of peeps and lots of loud Japanese chanting throughout the night. Throughout the night we ate heaps of grilled and fried food which included yakitori sticks, karaage chicken and some soda and kiwi flavour ice cream. Pretty much we got fat over the night and we watched a ridiculously long parade that involved the local community. Actually went on for like forever so like cbbs, we left afterwards to go to the bath house for the usual personal and quality time that we have together. Then we duked it out on the taiko (drum) arcade game.

The Best Moment

* Trying to drink tea in a respectful manner*

Phillip: “ARGH MY LEGS I CAN’T HOLD THIS POSITION ANYMORE!!!”

Hey all, Calvin here! Once again thanks for reading our blogs and praying for us, as we can really see God’s work here in Japan during our stay. I hope you’ve been enjoying reading it and having a small laugh, and we’ll continue to be keeping you updated… as long as there WIFI.

We haven’t updated yesterday because we were at the KIDS CAMP, sleeping and appreciating nature by all the MOSQUITOS EVERYWHERE! But hey it was great and it pretty much started like this:

So in the afternoon we waited for all the kids to come, trying to familiarise with them and not standing in our own group making a whole lot of NOISE! It was great so a few people turning up, including their mothers and fathers, and they weren’t shy enough to back away from our conversations. We listened to a small talk from Yamamoto-sensei to the children which talked about how God doesn’t lie, make mistakes and knows us and after praying we left to see this campsite.

The campsite was quite wide and it had a lot of facilities with it, ranging from an obstacle course to a smaller version of a golf course (weird huh? That’s not what you see everyday). There were a lot of people who came with us and there was still more to come! Turns out that the people who came to church were only primary schoolers and the junior higher schoolers (year 7 to 10) were coming afterwards! According to Hoi Yan there actually wasn’t enough tents for everyone, but praise the Lord that the Park Manager was able to lend the tents that they stopped lending since years ago! The males set up the tents and the females (including the children!) prepared the dinner. Dinner was delicious, the theme being barbeque and involved: marinated beef, yakitori (fried chicken) sticks, squid and sausages… ON A BONE. Are you salivating yet?

After dinner we played games with them, which included poison ball and octopus and tip. It was super fun and although we ended getting sweaty and getting INVADED by an army of mozzies, we were able to connect more towards the children and made them more willing to talk to us. Then came the best part: FIREWORKS!!! Technically they were just sparklers, but they were much bigger and had brighter. Each of them finished quite quickly and we all thought it ended already. Until one of the moms came and placed A BOX FULL OF FIREWORKS!!! We all grabbed a lot and played with so many sparkles that the smoke scared away all the mozzies! And then there were those gigantic fireworks, which exploded sparks upwards for a few seconds. It was like having a mini New Years Eve celebration right in front of us.

By then everyone went to his or her tents and had the children had discussion groups with their leaders. Everyone was tired and the day was almost over… but the kids weren’t satisfied with that. They called us out and went for a walk around the campsite, trying to scare each other in whatever manner they could: randomly appearing from the dark like Yamamoto-sensei, tapping their shoulder from behind like Isaac and making very loud noises like me, Calvin. Once again the walk was quite short but it was another great way for the children to get comfortable around us. The sleep was difficult from the flat ground, hot air and sweaty skin from all the running, but none of us really had a bad night.

The next morning the children had their bible study whilst the rest of us tried to catch a few more z’s. After eating bread with eggs, ham and vegetables for breakfast, we started packing up the tents and the kitchen. While we were doing this, the kids where playing on the obstacle course, which turned out to be a lot more challenging than the tiny obstacle courses in Australia. Sweating once more from the obstacle challenges, we finally headed back with a COOL welcome from the air conditioning in the car and our minds filled with the thought of being in a hot bath after this.

Returning to the church we had another talk from Yamamoto-sensei, which followed up on the previous talk. We learnt how despite our rejection to God such as “He loves us, so what?” and “I don’t believe that God is always right”, he will always love us and forgive us when we realise those mistakes. Lunch was served afterwards; with once again the delicious cold somen noodles that we can never find a rival in Australia. With the children all warmed up to us we talked and played with them and even had one particular girl, Noa, to draw people from the team in manga-style. Also Isaac showed the boys a slapping game where you have to dodge the slap, which ended up giving them lots of fun and red hands. After we prayed to finish off and let the children go home, we enjoyed our long-awaited hot bath and ate dinner at a local ramen place. CAN’T GET TIRED OF RAMEN! EVER!

Overall these two days have been a real encouragement for me, seeing how many people coming and their backgrounds. One of the boys, Eriya, was only 12 years old and despite growing into the church he already managed to pluck the courage and invite his non-Christian friend over. Also seeing how everyone worked together in preparing food and the tents really made me see how they can really provide for one another and be a family under Christ, whether this is how typical Japanese families act towards each other or not. The most regret we have is not spending enough time with the children and emphasis on inviting them over to Sunday service and next Tuesday’s “Australian Party”

So in response to little Sam’s question “How do we share the gospel if we can’t speak Japanese?”
Dav answered “We can always pray for them”. So here’s a list of things to pray for!
• Thank God for your work in this church and this society.
• Thank God for providing us in this trip
• Thank God for giving us the gift to speak Japanese in which helps us communicate to the people in this camp
• Pray for the people at the camp, whether children or adult, to come to know Christ by this event or by the attitudes of others to them
• Pray for the services tomorrow and that our presence will make a positive impact on their faith
• Pray for the team as we recover from the camp. Most of the team members had a bad night of sleep

The Best Moment:
Sam: “When I grow up, I want to be a tomato!”
Dave: “That’s not my son”

Isaac: “Hey Phillip check this photo out … hehehe”
Phillip: “You freaken stirrer”

-Calvin Klein

Hey guys! This is Isaac here, and thank you for taking your time to read this blog and praying for us. I came to Japan to see how God is working here, in a country where Christianity is a minority, a presence continually washed out by the busy-ness of work and life. It’s my first time in Japan, but not my first time doing a short term mission.

We started off the day eating breakfast that we bought from the convenience store, and a devotion on 2 Corinthians 1, then we had an orientation by Yamamoto-sensei (Pastor Yamamoto, Sensei refers to a respectable person, rather than just teacher) on how we can help them live in their home, as well as the different places that are around the vicinity of the church.

We were given a map to explore Nagayama, and then we took off by ourselves to explore! We then helped them out with handing out flyers about the Australian party (coming soon to a website near you, next Tuesday), and then planning for the camp that we are going tomorrow! Like an actual camp with tents and stuff. Then we had dinner and went to the bathhouse.

Here’s what the church looks like! Architecture is pretty cool aye? The roof is flat so that the snow wouldn’t fall onto people, so considerate!

I’m falling in love with the Japanese gi- I mean culture. At first when I came I felt like I was in a dream because everywhere we went it was like ANIME BECAME REAL LIFE. I could see why Miyazaki-san (Studio Ghibli) drew trains and houses the way he drew them, even the forests! I love the manners of the Japanese people, and how staff would bow for every bus, plane and train that departed. Prior to coming, we were scared that we would offend the Japanese people for our misconduct on the trains, the buses, public areas (especially because Phillip is hysterical and Naomi laughs loudly). However, Hoi Yan encouraged us by sharing that she also had this struggle when she first came to Japan, and she told us that;

“The people at the church are very thankful that you have come all the way from Australia to get to know them, and their church, so don’t be so afraid to offend them by saying the wrong things or doing the wrong things because they are very gracious and thankful.”

To me this was my biggest encouragement coming to Japan so far. All this time leading up to this trip and especially when we arrived I had felt incompetent since I had forgotten so much of my Japanese (because I haven’t been using it for 2 years after high school) and I had no confidence to talk to them because of my incompetency. However after prayer for boldness, and just trying to speak to the people at church, I realised how true Hoi Yan’s encouragement was, and I felt very comfortable speaking to them. In fact, we are all trying; the church people are trying to speak English so that we can understand, whilst we are trying to speak Japanese, it all works out well!

A great moment today was when we all finished our exploring in Nagayama, and we sat down to have lunch with Yamamoto-sensei. He shared why he became a Pastor of Nagayama Church (this church has been blessed with over 30 years of history). He wanted to raise a family of children that would grow up glorifying God, however he was found to not be able to have children with his wife. He constantly prayed, asking God for guidance, and funnily enough, as he and his wife prayed for guidance, they both found Isaiah 6 which says, ‘Here I am, send me’. They both decided to go to Bible college, and he chose to become a pastor for the church that he has been going to ever since he had to work in Asahikawa. He also shared about struggles being the only Christian in his school. There was a school training camp that started on the same day as his baptism. They were both very important events and he asked his Pastor if they could move the baptism to next week. But the Pastor said No. Yamamoto-sensei prayed about this, and he talked to his teacher in high school about this, and funnily enough he found out that his teacher was Catholic, who acknowledged that the Baptism was a very important day. So he told Yamamoto-sensei to come to the training camp after his baptism. It is very common for there to only be one Christian in your school, high school, university, or workplace. Please pray that these Christians can be bold in living out their faith, and trusting God to work in their lives.

The best thing that happened today was handing out flyers for the children to come to the Australian Party that we will be running next week. Hoi Yan and some people run a regular English club, and we are the spin off series of that club. The kids were SUPER KAWAII! They are so cute!!! KYAAA~! Especially their squeaky little voices!

ANYWAYS, we ended up handing out all the flyers, and we even got a phone call back from one of their parents asking about the event! Praise God! Pray that lots of children would come, not only to learn English but to plant seeds in them to know God. It reminds me of the story of a Japanese old man, who is 80 years old. He saw the church as a young boy but never really entered the church until he was 80. Also pray that the parents would be encouraged to bring their children to the church regularly, that the church’s reputation will be a loving community to Nagayama, and that the children’s parents would be encouraged to come to the church as well.

I am very thankful for the Yamamoto family, opening up their place for us to stay in. We have futon, we have a fridge, water, bathroom, shelter, and WiFi, which is not the most important…but it does help you read this post so….there are convenience stores everywhere, squat toilets, and the most awesome bathhouses in the world! I am very thankful being a part of this team, and being a small part of God’s big plan for Japan. I will be praying for the growth of this church, and all the churches in Japan, will you be praying with me too?

Here’s some other things that you can pray for:

• Thank God that we are safe
• Thank God that he has given me the courage to use my limited Japanese, and pray that it will continue to get better.
• Pray for Hoi-Yan’s back, which is still sore.
• Pray that Hoi-Yan will have enough rest and wisdom. It is very tiring for her to be translating conversations from English to Japanese and vice versa. She is a gun! And doing a great job!
• Pray for the camp that is happening tomorrow (Friday), that it can be run smoothly. We are going to be playing games with children, preparing food and also setting up tents.
• Pray for a safe drive to the camp site.

Quote of the day

Hoi-Yan: “You guys should probably go find something interesting and tell us about it”
Phillip: “NAHHHH we’re going straight for AEON (a shopping center) and taking a DUMP”

-Isaac Lee

The Real Stuff

Sup guys its day 2 andddddd right now we’ve just finished a day of orientation at OMF Japan in Sapporo. Its been a really eye opening experience since we’ve began. Coming from Sydney, I’ve come to realise how blessed we are as we are rich in resources and gospel centred teaching.

It’s really apparent how lacking Hokkaido is in terms of available young pastors there are and comparatively low amount of church going Christians. In addition there is a lack of evangelism that is going out towards students and young people, due to stigma of religion as a “cult”. Obviously this is starkly different to the big campus groups we have at universities around Australia. Even though there are low numbers of Christians and a lack of resources, over the past couple of years there has been evidence of God working through the northern region of Japan. There have been a number of new churches that have been planted across Hokkaido and slowly a number of people being baptised. So yeah please pray OMF Japan as they continue working in in northern Japan. Please also pray for the people of Japan, that god will work in their hearts and it will bring many opportunities for evangelism.

We’ve also settled into the local Japanese Church Nagayama in Asahikawa. The local pastor Yamamoto sensei and 4 other ladies hosted a dinner with us, which was a traditional Japanese meal of somen noodle. More importantly we did some worship in both Japanese and English and similar in-group prayer. Afterwards Isaac and Anita shared their testimony with the team, which was deeply encouraging for the Japanese Christian.

Pastor Yamamoto noted, “Even though we have met for the first time, through God it feels like we’ve known each other for a long time”

Please pray for us that both the local church and the mission team can develop strong relationships with one and another and we can encourage each other.

The Dumb Stuff

So far as a team we have learned that convenience store is DA BEST THING EEEVVVVAAAAAARRRRRRR. Food is good, its convenient and etc. Other members of the group are also becoming addicted to the drinks from the vending machines, which are vastly superior and cheaper than the machines back in Sydney. Isaac is driving the whole team insane with his puns. Naomi, Sam and Calvin have started to catch onto his dreadful habit. I fear that this team will not last til the end of this week. GG. We’ve also experienced as a group going to a public bathhouse. For some of us this is the first time and others it isn’t, but overall no one was afraid and it was a good time. Boys became men and girls stayed as girls. For instance Naomi poured ice-cold water over Anita while she was in the bath while the men just enjoyed each other’s company. Highly recommend to others if you visit Japan, you should try out either the public bathhouse or an Onsen! Also Dave didn’t realise that Yamamoto Sensei was driving him for like 5 minutes in the car, lolololololol.

The Best Moment

Everyone: “parties, parties, parties, I love parties”

Dave: “I’m glad you know the story, but do you know the main point?”

– Phillip

Dear friends.

We arrived in Tokyo at 5.00pm and then caught another plane to Sapporo and arrived here about 9.30pm. So the team is tired and hungry. At the moment Vivian, Dave and Samuel are waiting for the others to arrive at the motel as they went by train. It might be a midnight ramen vigil! Tomorrow we have orientation at 9.30am.

And we’re off to Japan! Thank you for your prayers and support. All on schedule. Please pray for safety and for Hoi Yan at the moment who has had a recent back injury. Pray for healing as she’ll be driving us around a lot. We’ll be meeting Anita in Sapporo.

Hi all

As we’re about to depart, we’d love you to pray for us, Hoi Yan and the Japanese people.

For Japan:

1. Pray for revival in Japan, for spiritual breakthrough. Remember the leaders, especially Prime Minister Abe.
2. Pray for the unity and cooperation among churches.
3. Pray for leaders and pastors to live out and model holiness. Their struggles in little church growth and financial stresses.
4. Pray for a holistic witness in society by believers. Protection for Christians in spiritual battle.

 For OMF Japan

1. Pray for OMF’s direction and new structure in Japan.
2. Pray for their works in raising Japanese Christians becoming pastors/evangelists as well as Christians seeking to be salt and light where they work.

 For Hoi Yan

1. Pray for Hoi Yan and the team, to relate to all church members with humility and love.
2. Pray for her participation in the OMF International Gathering and for safety in travels.
3. Pray for opportunities to be involved in the community and with her non-Christian contacts (the Miyazakis, her neighbours downstairs; Miyuki, owner of a bakery)

 For the team members: Pastor David Chen (and Samuel), Jimmy and Vivian Wong, Anita Chau, Isaac Lee, Naomi Zhen, Calvin Chung and Philip Cheung

1. Pray for safety in travels.
2. Pray for the unity and harmony among members.
3. Pray for all the preparation works, the programs for English camp and kids camp.
4. Pray for the testimony sharing to churches.

A big thank you for all those who were able to come along to our sharing arvo tea a couple of weeks ago. It was an encouraging time to see so many people willing to support us prayerfully and practically. During the afternoon we were able to share about where we’re going, what we’re doing, have some some with culture games and enjoy a delicious traditional Japanese arvo tea.  Here are some photos: