nothing.
September 13, 2006
oh wow, ive been neglecting to update this for some reason or another, i have to keep up! So i have been doing a lot lately, especially homework! But now I have to get on top of chuck tracks! and get them done before the middle mark of the semester. So im starting out my first ministry at the coffeeshop, which is a movie night for the highschoolers out here in okinawa. We are not going to be showing strictly christian movies, but movies that are aimed toward the youth of today. this is not going to be so we can preach to them, but its going to be strictly to hang out with the kids and just love on them and show them that this coffee shop is here for them and used as a place of not just worship, but a place of just chilling and having fun with each other. So my japanese is getting so much better, I can fully read hiragana now, and I can read a bunch of Kanji, so to practice Ive been getting a lot of manga and just reading it over and over, although I dont know what like %95 of the words mean, im able to read it almost fluently in the sense that i can read the characters without any hesitation. So its really been coming fast to me. The only problem im really having is the speaking part, im just like afraid to go up to random people and start speaking to them, because as a Japanese normality, they normally dont go up to random people and start talking to them and having conversations, so if foreigners come up to them and just started rambling off any type of half good Japanese, then i dont know what would happen, they would probably just blow up. So Ive really bene enjoying it out here. I got to talk to most people out here and they have such a good idea of who God is, its really cool. Especially the chaplin of calvary chapel on the foster base. The best thing hes said is that he knows how to differentiate between USA and the Kingdom of heaven, he knows that God is not head over heels in love with America, because america is the worst country when it comes to christianity, like when it states in Revelation about the Church Of Leodoceia 3:16 “So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” as a church, america is the worst. They are infatuated with the world. with their big cars, their gold plated cross necklaces, and the way they live their lives. The cross should never be gold plated. Its making Jesus’s death seem like a good thing. It was not a good thing, sure its good because we can enter heaven, but no its not good because we had to have our forgotten groom killed so that we can enter in, and thats so bad. Im ashamed and im ashamed of most if not all christians, because no one has a clue of what it truly means to be a christian. ugh. But yeah so im enjoying myself, I might wanna stay out here for a while. Im not sure yet….
Happy birthday Jacqui!
long weekend!
September 6, 2006
hey guys, yeah this weekend was really event filled and busy. To start it off on friday, we had a little birthday thing for joel as well as helping out at the Ginowan city youth group. It was pretty cool because I really got to just spend time with some of the japanese kids (even though the 3 kids that attended all spoke english in perfect form) But we hung out with them. I met a kid by the name of Kento, who was such a cool kid, he really is an awesome kid. He was born in the states but his dad is military and his mom is japanese, and they moved back to Japan when he was 12, which is pretty cool. then on saturday we woke up mad early and went out to the Okinawa city church, where I helped out for the two services doing the powerpoint presentation, and then after wards, they gave me a bike they had lying around. This is such an answer to an unspoken prayer, because Ive been looking for a road bike, and i went to all the stores around us and all the USED third rate road bikes were minimum 25,000Y so i didnt buy one, turns out later, God really provided and it turns out there was a Kronos Giant laying around their church for a year. Now the best thing about this bike is that its not a third rate bike, or some crap bike you find lying around, this bike is a really sweet bike, plus it had a pump, a headlight and some other sweet stuff with it, so i got a new innertube today and now i am going to start riding it to school everyday starting tommorow and then from that day on. word. So then after I got the bike, we headed out to a beach that was private (pricate in the sense that it was secluded, because there is no such thing as a private beach, your not allowed to own a beach so therefore any beach on any piece of property you are allowed to walk right onto it, even if its in a resort or a backyard, because no one owns the beaches in okinawa). As we were walking down the beach we found a deserted old cave that was used by the okinawa military during world war 2. It had seats carved out of the stone and gun turrets for the guns to come out of and it was most likely used for ww2. A lot of the caves out here were used for WW2 purposes, because America really destroyed all of okinawa for the most part. It is really sad, but Okinawa was devistated, and even those troops who had given up and retreated to the caves were still sought out and killed, even if they surrendered to the Americans. Shows how loving and caring the american troops were right? There is no excuse for killing un armed men or women. Ever. So a majority of the caves are still there, with everything left in them. Including all the bodies from ww2, which are now just bones but all the bones are still their, all their clothes, medals old stuff is still in those caves, as a memior to those who were killed unjustly in the war. But it was cool because in really faded out 30+ year old paint it said on the wall “Jesus Saves”. SO then we climbed up the cliff and got to this patch of grass that was on top of it with like 100’s of dragon flying flying all around us and all these yellow flowers and crazy plants, it was really cool. so then we went home. then, on monday, we went to a waterfall that was located in the middle of the jungle out in northern okinawa, which was so beautiful, it was all fresh water, the water fall was about 50 feet high and right below the waterfall the water was roughly 10 feet deep, so what do we do? we climb up a 10 foot ledge and jump off. That was fun, then we proceeded to do flips and back flips off of it. Then that got a little boring, so we climbed about 30 feet up the waterfall, and aaron(meggide) jumped off of it into the water, I was about to when tommy was getting concerned so I decided not to, I would of, but i didnt want to get him worried. So i got down, but then I face climed up about 17 feet and jumped off of it there and that was pretty cool. Higher then the first jump at least. so it was relatively a good time. and so we just hung out there, found some really cool golden dragonflies, and some blue and green dragon flies, some 5 inch spiders and almost got bit by things i felt swimming around me in the water. Now the best part about this whole trip, that made it the coolest, was that it was raining, and raining hard, so it was some crazy tropical shower, it was about 85 degrees out and the water felt amazing. This place was so beautiful, and i will always refuse to believe that an artist did not sculpt this landscape in the past to make it a work of art. So i got a bunch of pictures, but then we stopped by some crazy Japanese restaurant on the way home (I Got chicken KAtsu and a bowl of Miso Ramen for about 860Y and it was more then enough for me to finish) The bowl of ramen was more liquid and noodles to equal up to a 64 oz big gulp at 7 eleven. hahaha plus like 30 pieces of chicken, all for around 7.50 in american dollars. Then we went home and called it a night. So now its wensday and i have taken all my classes for the day, and Im really thinking. Tom was talking about how if you feel called to a place, then go. Thats the best you can do. Dont procrastinate, dont hesitate and dont second guess yourself, if God wants you there he will give you a vision for that place, if you get that vision then its right for you, if not then just move on. I feel called to mainland Japan. One of the hardest places in the world to talk to someone about God, because they are so deep into their culture and families and superstitions and weird religious practices that its considered a dead area. But if God wants to work through me he will, and thats all the answer I need. I will wait and see, but for now, I am loving Okinawa, it is so amazing and beautiful and so much better then america. If i had a change i would permanently live here, away from all of the american companies and corporations, away from george bush, away from the narrow minded punk scene (that for some reason everyone STILL proclaims that their different, when they all believe, dress, act and listen in all the same ways, there is RARELY one person that mixes in that goes against this flow of cliche counter culture humans that although they think alternatively to what america does, a majority of them still dont have a mind of their own), away from past mistakes and away from things I dont need in my life. This might be my home soon. And if it is, I cant wait.