Creatures of Habit

6/19/07

I did a bit of exploring the other day. The camp is really a beautiful area. It sits on the side of a mountain covered with pine trees. Bamboo shoots are visible just about everywhere. Breathing in the fresh air is like taking a Centrum vitamin pill and there is an innumerable amount of creatures as I’m sure you intuited from my previous posts. Lizards play tag with the flies using their teeth instead of their hands and the birds chirp much louder at the camp, too loud and too early if you ask me. It’s as if they have no awareness whatsoever of the sleeping habits of humans, me in particular. Along with the birds and lizards, there are several other animals such as snakes, tanuki, raccoons, giraffes, elephants, rhinos, and I even saw a jackalope. To tell the truth, there are too many to list.

In addition to the mammals and reptiles there exists a vast assortment of bugs. So many bugs, in fact, that I am convinced the land upon which this camp sits is very place God himself formed and fashioned each and every species of insect ever known to man or beast. It’s absolutely astounding. Never in all my days did I think it possible to have 77 insect bites on my body at one time. But the truly amazing thing is that none of the bites are repeated. Each comes from a different species. I’ve gained five pounds due to the insect venom alone. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry, I’m too awestruck to get angry. Every night before I tuck myself in, I “ooh” and “ahh” at all the new bites I’ve acquired during my days work. Seeing my body’s reaction to each new poison is extremely interesting. It has become my favorite past time. Some days the swelling is so bad that the Takahashi’s nearly lose consciousness when they see my disfigured face. I’ve tried insect repellant but I’m pretty sure the smell only allows the bugs to locate me faster so I’ve switched to coating myself with insecticide. It stings the first few times you get it in your eyes but after awhile you don’t even notice. It’s really not that bad and it seems to be much more effective. Of course there are side effects but I’m sure the ticks and twitches will go away once I stop using it.

On a more serious note, I ate dinner with the Takahashi’s and the Koga’s last night. After the meal, we got to talking about the difficulties they face each week having such small churches and not many opportunities for fellowship. It seems like the missionaries and pastors are all spread out across Japan. Often times a single couple (a pastor and his wife) will try to start a church on their own because there are no other Christians to with them. Pastor Koga’s wife was telling me that she gets anxious every Sunday morning before Sunday school because she doesn’t know if anyone will show up. She said she spends so much time preparing but rarely gets to teach. It must be frustrating to put so much time and effort into ministry and then see so little fruit for their labor. From what I understand, Japanese people just aren’t interested in Christianity and most don’t even know who Jesus is. Telling the Japanese people about Christ’s love can be done but how do you overcome indifference?