June 10th

Yesterday Michelle and I worked together to continue cleaning the coffee shop. The shop will open on Monday officially for business.
In the evening, we took an extended bike ride. We picked the closest looking mountains and decided to bike until we reached them. Surprisingly it didn’t take that long and it was a lot of fun.
Then we went over the Sadowitz’s for some Japanese Pizza Hut. Very good but very expensive. One of the pizza’s was delicious even though I had no idea what the toppings were. Sometimes it’s better not knowing. A young Japanese guy came over to eat pizza and get to know us. His name is Norihito, which I’m told means seaweed man. Chris told me that he has studied the Bible with him and that one day Norihito ran out to him and said that he believes half-way. I hope that he will have the courage to believe all the way and accept the implications of following Christ:
1) Turning his back on his family’s traditions
2) Significantly narrowing the options for someone to marry
3) Giving up his favorite pastime of Japanese archery because the competitions are on Sunday.
These are some common stumbling blocks in the Japanese culture. I really think that the up and coming generation in Japan may be poised to throw off some of these stumbling blocks (this from my limited expereince over the past couple of weeks).

Today, is Sunday and the service here went really well. Tom Carr preached a great sermon from Ephesians 1. During a testimony time a woman stood up and said that this morning she became a Christian. I asked Chris Sadowitz about it later. He said that she had been wanting to study the Bible with someone. She recently had hit rock bottom and was just ready to receive Christ. So, Chris shared the gospel with her and she prayed to receive Christ. I was impressed with her boldness in wanting everyone to know of her recent profession.

In the evening, we went to a concert put on by a gospel choir led by Tom Carr. One of Tom’s passions is music and he does a great job leading this choir. Surprisingly, gospel music is just now becoming popular in Japan, even though they do not believe/understand the messages of the songs. It saddens my heart to hear 20+ Japanese people sing gospel songs like “Jesus is the answer for the world today”, “Amazing Grace”, “Holy, Holy, Holy” and know that they’re hearts are still in darkness. Tom uses this as an outreach by building relationships, explaining the songs they are singing, and inviting the members to church events.I was given the opportunity to play the guitar in two of the songs, which was a neat experience.