Christmas!

Heidi and I spent the night at the Cooksey's house on Christmas Eve, and we woke up (early!) to open presents with four of the five children. Kathy fed us WELL throughout the day... There were home-baked cookies, chips and French onion dip, and all the goodies not normally found in Japan, plus a wonderful Christmas dinner.

My Christmas gift of green elephant slippers (perfect for the cold floor!) from Cornelia.


Josh (age 4) in a monkey suit, running around the living room.


Mattie (age 2), who loved ripping the paper off boxes and running around with it.


Josh, on the hunt for another new present...


The status of the living room after four children, two parents and two journeymen opening presents. Bethany, the baby, slept soundly through it all and then explored the wonders of chewing on wrapping paper.

Life

The last few weeks have been difficult here - cold, barren, a desolate wash of unanswered questions and dreams that lie like dirty snow in the gutters, almost unrecognizable. I love the call of God, the Japanese faces and prayer times with other missionaries... but sometimes there are just THOSE DAYS, the days you wake up (too early, too tired) and mull over what's been accomplished so far.

And the unthinkable: Nothing comes to mind.

Nothing, that is, except the big piece of shrimp you dropped on the floor at a friend's house or the blank look in the subway ticket lady's eyes when you try to figure out what's wrong with your subway card.

No messages in the inbox... a cheerful good-bye from junior college students you will probably never see again, girls who ended the last Bible discussion group by unanimously agreeing that they don't believe Jesus is God.

THOSE DAYS... there is just no other way to describe it.

All that and seeing friends and weddings and lives going on thousands of miles from where you are and knowing you can't be there.

"I wish I could be there," I remember saying to my sister over the phone (2 a.m. her time), "but I know this is where God wants me to be."

What hollow-sounding words, I thought. I can't say, "It's worth it because my friend got saved" or even "It's worth it because people are seeking God."

No, "but this is where God wants me to be."

I said it as a statement, but my heart said it as a question.

I left the apartment this way yesterday, cold wind stinging my face, and opened my little blue travel Bible on the bus to read. The words from Isaiah 49 surprised me:

"He said to me, 'You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.' But I said, 'I have labored to NO PURPOSE; I HAVE SPENT MY STRENGTH IN VAIN AND FOR NOTHING. Yet what is due me is in the Lord's hand, and my reward is with my God.

"And now the Lord says - He who formed me in the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob back to Him and gather Israel to Himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength - ...This is what the Lord says: 'In the day of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances, to say to the captives, "Come out," and to those in darkness, 'Be free!'

"...Though you were ruined and made desolate... the children born during your bereavement will yet say in your hearing, 'This is place is too small for us; give us more space to live in.' Then you will say in your heart, 'Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. Who brought these up? I was left all alone, but these - where have they come from?'"

Oh, Lord God - I have no words - only a prayer for mercy! How can a God like You have such compassion on a child of dust like me?

How can I believe that giving my life into His hands is laboring to no purpose?

I am in tears now, remembering, looking back over the wonders He has done in my life.

On that same bus I read and re-read a folded email from a dear college professor who saw me through many dark days. "(Think of) the seeds you've planted under the Lord's direction sprouting under the snow-covered earth; I'm as sure of that as I am of the sun and the Son," she wrote - and called me "honey."

After walking the snowy streets of my city between appointments, watching White Illumination lights come on against the dusky blue sky, I sat at a corner table in a bright coffee shop, alone - listening, thinking, writing, my journal and Bible and printed out emails spread out on the little round table.

I watched the people come and go - the businessmen with waxed-looking hair, the people alone with books and cell phones, clouds of smoke curling up from tables with fashionable young women in high heeled boots. Them and me, together in a warm room, separate lives lived, for the moment, within inches of each other.

Words from Christian friends poured back into my mind: "Nothing about me - not my country, not my tribe, not my ability makes me worthy to preach the gospel," one said on the phone yesterday. "Only the fact that Jesus died for me makes me worthy."

An email from another: "Give also your dreams to God. I have but one thing to say: God will provide new dreams. God will provide new memories. God will provide."

The chair opposite mine was empty, save my black wool coat.

But, in reality, my table was filled with the presence of Christ - for He lives in me! I was not alone - I, in fact, was the honored guest at the feet of the One who allows me to come near!

The other tables were the empty ones!

When I came home there were three letters waiting for me on the table: one to confirm that a college loan was paid in full, one from a new Japanese Christian girl I met at English worship, and a packet of precious, hand-drawn construction paper cards from Sunday school children in a little Virginia country church.

I was still holding the cards in awe, tracing the crooked letters with my finger ("To: Jenny Rogers in JAPAN. God bless you! Merry Christmas!") and white chalk snowflakes when the phone rang.

It was Hyun-Sook, a wonderful Korean Christian missionary I studied with at language school and hadn't heard from in a long time, calling to tell me about the language school Christmas party Friday and that she hadn't forgotten about me.

Oh, Lord, neither have You... for there in the middle of Isaiah 49 are Your words, to unworthy me, chosen not because of my ability but because of Christ:

"But Zion has said, 'The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.' Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forgot, I WILL NOT FORGET YOU! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands..."

And 2,000 years ago He did, in His own red blood...
for my sake
for your sake
for the Japanese sake
and for the sake of HIS NAME, His precious name,
that still goes out to bring LIFE.

Merry Christmas from Japan, where I plead that His name will be heard.

Top Ten Ways I Knew I Was In Japan This Christmas

10. The holly berries on Christmas wrapping paper instantly reminded me of fish eggs (I covered it up).

9. I ate sushi at a church Christmas party.

8. Heidi and I stored ice cream on our porch (it melted).

7. The mail ran on Christmas Day, and most of my friends had to work.

6. The statue of Col. Sanders outside every KFC was dressed in a Santa suit and hat.

5. The only real, dressed-up Santa Claus I saw needed to gain about 400 pounds. The suit bagged around his middle, arms and legs.

4. As I was typing number six I debated on how many kilos that would be. I gave up.

3. I had a white Christmas... a white Christmas Eve... a white Thanksgiving... a white Halloween... a white...

2. I asked college students if they knew the real meaning of Christmas, and they said, with blank looks, "No."

1. I missed your beautiful faces!!! I pray God's great blessings not only on the Japanese, but on YOU - whose friendship is the greatest Christmas present I could hope for! Thank you for your love and faithfulness that warms me all the way from north Japan!

We've had an early blizzard here, dumping more than three feet of snow in some places. I've never seen anything like it! Everything is totally covered. Walking down streets is like a bizarre dream - lumps of strange shapes and sizes rise out of the snow, trees and ditches are glutted with huge globs of white. Roadsides are lined with massive walls of snow taller than my head... what do you think??



Snow, snow, and snow!

It began to fall yesterday evening, and during the night snow accumulated to about five feet. It was piled on top of cars, completely covering everything. I've never seen anything like it!

This morning it was still snowing lightly, so while Heidi was having a women's class in the apartment, I decided to get out a bit. I did the unthinkable: I dressed for snow and went outside, to the local park, for a walk. There was nobody out "walking"... obviously during the end of a blizzard isn't a good time for a stroll, but I needed to have some rest and the solace of nature. So went, carrying nothing but my camera plus some writing paper and a pen.

The park was completely choked with snow - it was so deep that it was even impossible to walk through unless a path had been made first. It stretched across the empty field like a white canvas that someone had elevated - showing only tips of takenoko (bamboo shrubs) and small trees.

I found a spot under a little covered shelter and just sat there, in absolutely solitude - the only soul for what seemed miles. It was great. I listened to the tiny "clink-clink" of snowflakes as they hit my down jacket (they do make a sound), and then noticed how the extreme cold began to leak slowly through the openings - where my sleeves met my gloves, for example, or around the collar of my coat. I sat and wrote, listened, watched the white continue to fall, and then got cold enough to leave.

I was just about to leave when I was greeted by a construction crew, wading through waist-deep snow on their way to their parked cars for lunch. I don't know who was more surprised - them or me! After all, it isn't every day you see a white foreign girl in the park in the middle of a blizzard...

Snowy morning

This is the place for snow! Sapporo gets lots of snow because it's near the ocean, but it actually doesn't get as cold as it does in other places in Hokkaido (like Kushiro on the eastern coast). Snow starts falling in October or November and keeps falling until April or even May, when it finally starts to melt. This is my first winter in Sapporo, so we'll see how it goes! So far I LOVE the snow!




Winter in Sapporo is something to behold. Snow can fall fast and furious for a few minutes or all night, leaving blankets of white that cover everything - trees, plants, sidewalks, roads - leaving them all but indistinguishable.


A modern tool for getting traffic through busy roads is this road-heating system. Metal coils are buried below the asphalt, and when activated, they heat up and melt the ice and snow off the roads. They're remarkable! Everywhere you look the roads are covered with white, but then sometimes you'll see a long black strip of slush and melted snow, doing its job to uncover the road. They're expensive, so they're only used on major roads. But to see this is like a dream come true. You know those things you say, "What if somebody made a..."? Well, this is one of them. And it really works!


It's cold out! Many Japanese ladies use these warm tea-cup shaped hats in the snow and cold. For the younger girls, though, it's not very hip... so you don't see as many of them wearing them. They usually just stand there and let snow fall on them (as I do on occasion, when I don't want my hair messed up).


I'm waiting at the bus stop to go to church on a cold, cold morning. Don't go out with your hair damp - it'll freeze! I know this from experience... The bus stops are generally tiled little buildings like this one. They keep out some of the wind, but not much else, as they have open windows and doors - and they're colder than your freezing brain can imagine inside. Usually we just huddle inside (unless it stinks from trash, which people actually do throw in the bins) or just from old age.


Heidi, being accustomed to Montana snows, is used to the cold.


Can you believe people actually drive in this? The roads are heavily laden with salt, and the main roads use road-heaters. Drivers of buses and cars often use chains, but the undercarriages get VERY dirty, as you can imagine. The funny thing is that the road gets completely covered by snow until it's indistinguishable, and then it sort of hardens into a hard, compacted layer of multiple snowings and icings and meltings. The new snow falls on top of it, and no one stops - or is more worse for the wear.


A street crossing button all laden with snow. When you press it to stop traffic and clear the crossing, you'll hear a distinctly Japanese "chirp-chirp" sound that sounds like a pretty good rendition of an electronic bird call.


Riding a bus! This is something we do every day, but they're usually more crowded than this! Today is Sunday, which is why the bus is nearly empty. The red, lighted characters in the front tell the upcoming stops (which are also announced verbally by a recording in a nice-sounding, high-pitched woman's voice) and the price. To pay, you take a slip of paper with a number on it when you enter the bus. DON'T LOSE IT! When you leave, you hand the driver the ticket and pay according to the time/distance you were on the bus. Your coins go into a machine, and out drops your change. Then you thank the bus driver (who wears a dark blue uniform, cap, and white gloves) politely ("Arigatou gozaimashita") and then go down the steps - carefully! they are slick from melted snow! - and into the cold. Oh, and the buses are heated (notice the steam on the windows).

Notice that the bus driver is on the RIGHT!

Quick prayer

Would you join me in praying for my friend Aki, a girl my age who recently lost her job? She, like me, has lost one parent, and the holidays are often difficult for us. Please pray that this Christmas she will know the true joy that comes from knowing her Heavenly Father. She knows some of the Christmas story but is not a believer.

Next week we plan to meet on Monday, as we did tonight, and then go to a gospel concert on Thursday.

Please pray that Aki's heart will be prepared and ready for a relationship with Jesus Christ - the best present of all!!

Thank you so much for praying!!!

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening

I have seen lovely things and lovely places, but I have never been so moved by raw natural beauty as I have these past two or three days in Sapporo.

For the first time in my life I actually wanted to weep at the sight of snow on trees from a frosty bus window.

I felt tears welling up as I watched the trees glide by, snow whirling like white rose petals, everything coated with a brilliant, deep, whitest-of-all-whites. The stark contrast of light and dark was almost more beautiful than I could bear.

The mountains, hushed and powdered in layers of white... the brooding grey sky stretching from horizon to horizon, snow falling like a veil over the whitening ground... trees dressed in veils like lace, pines and tamarasks frosted like Christmas cookies... the gentle silence that descends on the fields and roadsides like angels...

Winter in northern Japan.

Snow falling giddily, dizzily, joyfully in a blur of happy flakes, light as goose down.

I would be a snowflake if I could.

The tears surprised me. I have no explanation, except the overpowering thought that kept pushing its way into my mind: It's not fair that I should get to experience this beauty without the rest of the world!

God, why are you so good to me? I am more blessed than I can sing or write or shout. To think that I, the chief of sinners, should find myself by a silent mountainside with snow lacing the tree branches like satin wedding ribbons, confetti falling in a exuberant parade around my face.

I remember the words of a missionary to India years ago: "What an amazing Christ! He never seeks for our approval, just the faith to know that He is at work... To put one's life into His hands is not to be led astray."

Praise God--what an amazing Christ! I see this clearly: "O Lord God Almighty, blessed is the man who puts his trust in you!" (Psalm 84:12).

Tonight Heidi and walked downtown with snow pouring around us, flakes on our noses and eyelashes dappling our hair like blossoms, our cheeks pink and lungs full of cold, invigorating air. The trees along the main street were hung with garlands of white lights, shining ivory against their delicate stripes of snow. The city streets were silver and gold.

Sapporo's White Illumination displays glimmered in the thick falling snow: a bright white Christmas tree, giant lilys-of-the-valley drooping pale blooms, colored flowers.

And here am I, with Heidi as my roommate and my eternity in heaven, an unworthy and yet dearly-loved tool in the hand of God, privileged to know His only Son and chosen to reach the precious Japanese people.

All of this plus the glory of a snowfall in northern Japan.

No wonder the tears well up in my eyes.

Oh, God, may I never doubt again. For blessed, BLESSED is the man who puts his trust in you!

Snow!

Beautiful Things

It's late at night, after midnight, but I can't sleep until I write this last little note.

I saw three beautiful things today. The first two I saw as I walked down to a local mall to meet my friend Mariko, a friend from our college days in North Carolina. There was snow and ice on the sidewalks with a thin layer of fresh powder lying soft on top. My boots crunched like a whisper through the snow. I love winter.

I looked up, and there it was - a cobalt blue sky with white flakes whirling against it, so lovely it took my breath away.

Then as I turned the corner past a lonely schoolyard, I saw the moon. It was almost full, round and bright, ducking in and out of a swirl of thick, puffy clouds - deep stone grey, lined with fine, bright silver. The moon over snow. White over white. Snowfall at dusk. Has the color white ever been so beautiful?

And then, in the car after dinner with Mariko at her home (an unusual thing in Japan), she asked me suddenly, "Do you think you'll go to a Christmas service at your church?"

"Yes, I hope so," I replied.

"Good," she said. "Can I go, too? I mean, if it's not any trouble?"

I was dumbfounded but managed to answer a resounding yes! Yes! Yes!

There was more.

"I think about Buddhism and Christianity sometimes, and I'm a lot more comfortable with Christianity than Buddhism," she said as we passed by the same park, now black and grey, where I had seen the moon. "I feel so good when I do Christian things. But I want to know more before I make up my mind, because it's a really important decision. And," there was a pause as we turned the corner, "I'd really like to meet some Japanese Christians. I've never met Japanese Christians before. Maybe I could meet some if I go to church with you at Christmas, and then I could see how they do things."

We were at the apartment now, and I was shaking with excitement. I could feel my face getting red with joy in the dark of the car.

"Do you have a Japanese Bible?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said, with another pause. "But I don't really understand it."

"I have some Japanese and English Bibles and some Bibles in Manga," I told her. "And the Jesus film. Would you like to see any of those?"

"Oh, yes," she said, with more enthusiasm than politeness. "Maybe they will help me understand better."

It's after midnight now. There is no more blue left in the sky, and the moon is gone. But I have just witnessed, in one evening, more beauty than one small heart can hold.

*Please pray for Mariko, who is so earnestly searching for the truth. She is so pretty and so lonely, wondering what to do with the rest of her life. God brought her all the way to North Carolina to hear the gospel, and now He has caused our paths to cross again. What an amazing Father we have... Oh, please pray that Mariko would soon find that He is her Father, too! Pray that she will open her heart to God and experience more beauty in His presence than in a thousand moons over snow.

Conference in Amagi

My favorite part of all... MOUNT FUJI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kathy said she's been to Amagi several times, and it's very unusual to see Mount Fuji so clearly - and BOTH times on the way there and back. Usually Mount Fuji is hard to see because of the clouds and smog, and if you can see it, there is often a ring of clouds that obscures the top. But not this time. God was so gracious! I saw beautiful Mount Fuji, much more beautiful and clear than I ever imagined, BOTH times. I love Japan!!!!!!!!!!!!



This is the famous Shinkansen, or "bullet train," that I've always dreamed of riding!! The picture looks like it's coming in from right to left, but actually it's pulling out of the station in Tokyo from left to right. It's so fast - up to 200 miles an hour, Ronny said - but as smooth as riding a Cadillac. I actually had no perception of how fast I was going, but it was so much fun!!!





Gorgeous morning in Amagi, nestled in the mountains. It was warmer there, so it felt like we got to experience fall all over again, since it was already winter up in the north.







We journeymen visited a little gift shop down the street one evening, and the owner and his wife gave us each a rose. Such a sweet welcome to Amagi!

Friends in Amagi

Heidi, all ready to go before the long trip to Amagi - by plane, train, and car.


Traveling together with the Cookseys, our fellow missionaries, and their five children is alawys fun. The kids draw lots of attention in the airports with their blue eyes and light-colored hair, and even the most serious Japanese businessman will stop and crack a smile. We play games with the kids, draw pictures, hold hands along busy subway lines, and make it to Amagi tired but happy.


Kathy, the mother of a missionary family in Sapporo - my co-worker and friend, on the way to Amagi. We ate honey toast in a little shop in the airport en route to Tokyo.


Naomi and the gorgeous fall leaves in Amagi.


A missionary couple in southern Japan. He plays a unique Okinawan instrument in a band and knows some college students in my city who used to go to his church... Pray for possible connections here! You know how much I love college students! P.S. - isn't the sink great?


This is the owner of the shop whose wife gave us roses in Amagi. You can see the owner and his dad(?) in the middle, his wife and little girl to the left. You can also see Heidi in the back, plus other journeymen. Naomi, a Japanese Christian from Tokyo Baptist Church, is in the front to the right. She was one of the people I interviewed several weeks ago in Tokyo for an article about the IOJ (Internationalized and Overseas Japanese) team.


The journeyman of Japan gathered around the dinner table in the conference room, all with our roses from the gift shop.


Our treat on the way back through Tokyo - Wendy's!!! I had a cheeseburger, Wendy's fries (with ketchup and napkins) and, of course, a Frosty. What could be better?

Suffer the children

"But Jesus called them unto him, and said, 'Suffer little children to come unto
me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.'" - Luke 18:16.

Such is the kingdom of God indeed. It has been a hard adjustment to get used to Japanese children, with their fear of foreigners and things that are "different." I always loved pictures of Japanese children when I was in the U.S. - children with big, black, almond eyes, little upturned faces, big smiles.

Unfortunately for me, those smiles did not appear quite so frequently as I hoped. More often than not these beautiful children hid their faces from me or pointed, whispering to the close-by parent, "Gaijin! Gaijin!" or, "Foreigner! Foreigner!"

When I gave Heidi a hand with her children's class a few weeks ago, pandemonium ensued. Children were screaming, jumping up and down on the tatami floor, doing imitation karate kicks with each other within inches of our laptop computers. I tried to rehearse what I would say in Japanese in case the man downstairs came to tell us the neighbors were complaining.

Even in the children's classes I helped with at the missionary family's house, the children's response to me was less than impressive. Since the man of the house was there, they generally refrained from karate kicks and fighting. But for me, a twenty-something newcomer on the floor who could do little more than grunt a strange word or two in Japanese, it seemed hopeless. One girl said, "Bye, bye!" to me in English, just once, before scampering out the door. It made my day. But try as I might, I couldn't seem to connect with the children. They virtually ignored me unless they needed something.

A far cry from the grand images I'd had of ministering to beautiful Japanese children, giving them a torch to carry into the next generation.

My favorite part of the English classes at the missionary family's house, though, has always been the five minutes of children's Bible stories at the end. The lady of the house pulls out the fat Japanese children's Bible, full of bright watercolor pictures, and for those five minutes an absolute miracle occurs. You would have to be there to believe me.

No matter how much goofing off, pencil-throwing or noisy horseplay has been going on during the English lesson, all activity CEASES. You could hear a pin drop in the room. The children (all young boys except one girl, mind you) gather around Cornelia, silent as mice, riveted to the Bible stories. Last week one of the boys actually crept forward on his knees and took hold of the Bible as she read, straining to see the Japanese better.

A miracle. In the missionary family's living room.

I gave up, so to speak, trying to "connect" with the children. My best was enough. And if God used me in obscurity just to hand out pencils and point to correct letters while He planted the seeds of the gospel in their young hearts, that is, and should be, enough.

In fact, in the whole scheme of things, whether or not they connect with me is unimportant so long as they connect with Christ.

If I hand out pencils for Christ's sake, then may He alone be pleased with my work, my best, given solely for Him.

That would be the end of my letter if not for Daisuke.

About two weeks ago I was sitting on the floor with six lively children as usual, bent over English worksheets and writing furiously. I always loved to watch Takumi, the littlest (and probably the brightest) of all the children as he carefully and painstakingly wrote, his long eyelashes pointing downward on his smooth, white cheeks like brush strokes.

But today Daisuke caught my attention. Rather than putting his few Styrofoam letters back in the alphabet frame properly, as everyone else had, he gave up and dumped the whole frame on the floor in a huff. Twenty-six Stryofoam letters piled on the floor.

While the lady of the house continued teaching, I went over to Daisuke (who had barely acknowledged my existence) and helped him pick the letters up and put them in the right place.

Daisuke is a little bigger than the other boys his age, skinny, all smiles, and tends to be a bit of a bully, especially to little Takumi. He's also a little slower than the others. His mind drifts, he plays with his pencil, he is more interested in flicking the spongy letters across the room than reading them.

He stuffed the letters into their spaces awkwardly, sometimes grabbing the wrong one.

"They don't get much praise and affirmation at home," I remember the man of the house saying. "Their dads are gone most of the time. And when they do get attention, most of the time it's negative attention."

As I picked up several colored letters, Daisuke suddenly held out his hand.

I put the letter in it. He put it in the right space and held out his hand again.

There, in the space of thirty second, another miracle had just happened. The tiniest, tiniest flutter of communication between Daisuke and me, Japanese boy and gaijin missionary.

We were silent, save my occasional whisper, "Good job!" and nod of the head when he put the right letter in the right space.

Once or twice he looked at me to see if he was doing it right, and I nodded at him.

I don't remember a thing about the class going on around us. I just remember his small hand, taking my letters, as we finished the alphabet together. Connecting. Communicating.

When Daisuke put "Z" in its place, I took the alphabet frame with a nod.

"Thank you," he said in English, giving me a strange sort of smile. Then he grabbed his pencil and began the worksheet with the others.

As Daisuke struggled with one of the worksheet activities, he did the unthinkable - he turned around and looked at me and asked in Japanese, "Is this right?" I leaned over the table and pointed to the right answer.

He scrubbed at his paper with the eraser, almost tearing it, and wrote the right word.

Then as he went on to the next one, he looked up at me for approval.

"This one?" he asked, pointing to the right word.

I beamed at him and nodded. For the rest of the lesson I was his personal helper, sitting by the table and pointing to the right answers when he needed help. When we split up for groups, he rattled off a long question to me in Japanese. I couldn't understand, and he didn't seem to mind. He found that by putting his pencil through the loops of "P's" and "B's" he could spin them around his pencil. He laughed out loud and, when he caught my attention, pointed to his new activity in exuberance.

Daisuke didn't say good-bye. He bounded out the door when class was over, clumsily grabbing his worksheet and leaving his nametag flung on the table. I didn't care.

Today we connected.

I was amazed at how that tiny, tiny moment affected me. I have been to Mexico and Brazil. I have held dirty children on my lap and watched them fight over who got to hold my fingers (because two hands were not enough).

And yet that one slight interaction with Daisuke, the simple act of holding out a hand, weighed almost as warm in my heart as any of those days.

Perhaps the reason is simple: This is Japan. Everything is different in Japan.

And perhaps there's more to it than that... I think, more certainly than ever before, that God speaks more often in the still, in the quiet, in the imperceptible slivers of time and space that only the hushed heart - the expectant heart straining for His voice - can hear.

God speaks in the bright, the fireworks, the powerful lots of times.

But here in Japan I find Him often speaking as He did to Elijah - in a "still, small voice."

Can you hear Him? Can you read between the commands and Biblical injunctions and hear the WISHES of God, the thoughts of God, the cries of His heart for a people He loves even without reason?

How could anyone not love such a God?

How have we as a people so filled our lives with stuff and business and noise that His voice is lost among the days and weeks and only noticed if it is big, noisy, a billboard with neon lights?

No wonder I have missed Him so many times, settling for the crumbs when He has a feast spread out just for me.

As snow falls here, without a sound, from dove grey skies, I wonder all the more who this God really is and why I have waited so long in pursuing Him. Really pursuing Him.

I know about the call of God. But what about His whispers?

Pray for the country of Japan, where millions have not heard even His loudest shouts.

A winter day

Taco Party!

Here are some pictures of the local Buddhist junior college students who came to our apartment last week to eat tacos. Please, please pray for them!



Minoru, the only guy. He comes only once in a while because he's a little embarrassed. :) He also goes to Amiko's church but is not a Christian.



Kumi, one of my favorite girls. She teaches me all kinds of Japanese slang.





Most of these girls have never had tacos before, so this was their first time.

Special assignment - Tokyo

Ferdie, a Filipino Christian, was one of the first people with a Japanese ministry group I met in Australia. The first night we met he sat up almost all night with me, talking about ministry among the Japanese and my questions about going. I was so moved that I remember tears as we prayed. My life has never been the same.



The missionary couple who asked me to come to Tokyo and do the article and interviews. They are so much fun! If you ever get to meet them you'll come away smiling (and full of Tokyo Mexican food)! :)



The Japanese Christians I interviewed who became Christians either in the U.S. or as a result of their time in the U.S. Such an awesome bunch! I am so incredibly blessed to have met them.