God is doing things in Japan

Japan is a place where missions is a little more exhausting than what you would think. Most of the time, you don't get the results you were praying and hoping for, and it can be very discouraging. We've felt like that a few times here, but we've seen God work in people's hearts in our English classes and in the church! I'll tell you of one....

I co-teach an "English Music Class" with Amber Solski on Saturdays from 3:30-4:45, and we have one student, Misa. She has lived in Kentucky for 3 years because her husband was transferred there because of his job. She's been back in Japan for about a year now and is taking a "North American Culture" class on Friday nights with Brianna and Darlene, and also taking the music class on Saturdays. The first day of the music class, we asked Misa what she wanted to get out of the class and if she had any specific songs she wanted to go over, and the only song she mentioned was Amazing Grace. That made us wonder why, but we had that ready for last week, the 2nd class time. So while I was explaining the song Amazing Grace to Misa last Saturday, I noticed that after the first verse, she was tearing up and basically crying. When I realized that she was crying, I prayed that God would continue working in her heart. She has asked Brianna and Darlene questions about their faith and God is doing something so please pray that He continues to use us to water that seed that was planted long ago.

God is doing things in Japan and we're excited to be a part of it. Please continue praying that His name and renown be the desire of our hearts and that we continue to be sensitive to His Spirit and be led by The Spirit. Blessings to you all!

Nagashima Spaland

Today (Monday) we went to Nagashima Spaland amusement park. The Hieberts all went and took our team and Sean. We had a blast riding all the different rides and roller coasters, and since it was a school day, the longest wait for a ride was probably around 20 minutes. Nagashima is infamous for the "Steel Dragon 2000." The Steel Dragon is put in the "gigacoaster" group because of it's size. It set a record for longest track length in the world - 8133 feet, 2 inches (2479 m), which it currently holds. It is the 5th tallest roller coaster and has the 5th biggest drop in the world. The ride last 4 minutes! And let me tell you, it's the fastest 4 minutes of your life! We got on it twice! With a break in between of course, to catch our breath. It was so much fun! Here's a picture of the huge drop, and only half of the track is in this picture because it's just that huge!

I don't know if I've mentioned this already in my blog before, but Japan is the land of vending machines! They have them everywhere! And sometimes lined up like this.......10 in a row! This was at Nagashima Spaland, so it was a little overpriced, but what do you expect.



Today was a beautiful day, and we couldn't have asked for a better day!
We are in our last full week of April this week and that's insane! Time has gone by so fast it's crazy! We have so much planned for these next 2 months. Please pray that we stay diligent and most of all faithful in Him. Pray that the Lord's name and renown be spread here in Japan through His daughters.

So now I'm 22

I turned 22 on Wednesday, April 16. It was a good day. I started off the day by doing my morning devotional and digging into the Word. Lately I've been extra hungry and thirsty for the words of Jesus. As I've already read through Matthew and Mark, I've realized how much I want my life to reflect Jesus more and more! Seriously, He's a pretty sweet guy! He had some amazing compassion, love, authority, power, grace, mercy, and so many other things that will make this list go on and on, but you can read more into His words on your own.

After reading my Bible and doing my devotional, I talked to Josh (my brother), my parents, and my Grandma Lupita. It was good to talk to these people because they have played and still play a huge part in my life. The days before my birthday, and especially on my birthday, I like to reflect on my life in the past year. I ask myself if my life meant anything? Did it change anything? Did it bring glory to God? Did my life point to Jesus? I realize that I'm not perfect and have failed a lot, but I pray that I continue focusing my life on bringing Jesus the glory and honor through my life. I want for people to know Jesus more because of my life. When I leave this earth, I want people to remember Jesus Christ more than me!

After one of the ESL classes that I and Amber-Lee help Sean with, we had the 2 ladies who attend the class come over to our house and have dessert, coffee/tea (water for me), and play some Dutch Blitz (a card game). We talked a bit about us, and they talked a little bit about themselves. The ladies really enjoyed coming over and we loved having them over because we had never really had any visitors come to our house. As they were leaving, they invited us to one of the ladies house for an "Okonomiyaki Party." Okonomiyaki is a very traditional, famous Japanese dish and is something that our whole team enjoys immensely! We're really looking forward to May 12 so that we can build those relationships a bit more.

Yesterday night, Friday night, our team, the Hieberts and Sean surprised Amber-Lee and I with a really good dinner cooked by Leona (it's Amber-Lee's birthday today, April 19). And after we ate and had an amazing dessert, Amber-Lee and I opened our gifts that our team bought for us. I got 2 sweet Japanese shirts with some awesome English sayings that make absolutely no sense and a notebook.

After dinner and the gift opening, they made Amber-Lee and I go to the house to "relax." I knew they were up to something else, but obeyed anyways. At around 8:30ish, Brianna, Simone, Darlene, and Amber came into the house and started telling us to put on jeans! They were being very pushy as well. They hurried us and then blind folded us. They then lead us to the Hieberts van. They didn't tell us what we were doing or where we were going and kept us blind folded until we got to our destination. We ended up in a small room which was at a Karaoke place. Japan has these Karaoke places that you rent a room and have your own private room with your own Karaoke machine! It was so much fun and we took some awesome videos, but I won't put those up here because we all know how embarrassing Karaoke can be! We had a really good time and it was a really fun night of "surprises." I love my team! They're awesome!

Feeling better

Hey all, I'm sorry I have not posted lately, but my laptop is not working at the present moment. I dropped my laptop before leaving for Japan and I ruined my charger. My actual laptop works fine, but since the charger doesn't work, I can't charge my laptop. I ordered a charger on the internet and it'll be here in like 3-4 weeks, so I'm using someone else's laptop mean while. Anyways, that's the reason why I haven't posted lately.

I've been feeling better from the pain caused by my ulcer. I've also been eating a lot less because I feel full fast, and I've stayed away from salty, spicy, caffeine, raw vegetables and citrus fruits. It's been hard at times to get used to it, but I think I'm used to it now. My team has been a huge encouragement and they have challenged me to not be as stubborn and not feel like I have to be strong all the time. I've always been the type of person that has felt that I have to be the strongest person in the team in all areas. It's not something that I feel everyone else is expecting, but especially as the leader, I feel like I have to be the one that people can lean on. But my team has told me that they don't expect for me to be the strongest. They have continually verbalized that we are all in this together and I couldn't say enough words on how much I appreciate them.

We have about 7 students for our English classes that start on Friday and Saturday of this week/weekend. It has been a bit discouraging to get so little response out of 10,000 fliers, but we know that God has plans that we don't know about yet. We have confidence in our God and know that He knows what's going on and the purpose of all of this. We've learned about patience a lot through all of this. Please continue to pray that we look for His will in everything and we wait upon the Lord for everything. Thank you for the prayers and blessings upon blessings for all of you! Much love from Japan! Sayonara!

My doctor's visit...

While we were in our team meeting on Saturday morning, before we left to Komaki for the weekend, I got a really really sharp pain in my abdomen. So my team "forced me" to go the doctor, and I say forced, because those of you who know me, know that I'm not the type who would just rush to the doctor to inconvenience others. They went to go tell Laurence that I was needing to go to the doctor before leaving, and "my health was more important than going to Komaki." And that was hard for me to say was true, and I don't think that statement is true, but we can debate that later.
So Laurence took me to a clinic and Amber-Lee came along to be with me. The clinic we went to was a fairly new clinic and so it looked very modern and "not sketchy" at all. While with the doctor, he asked me (through Laurence translating) where I was feeling pain and also what "type and color" of poop I had. I told him I had really really sharp pain in my upper/middle abdomen and my poop was dark (almost black), tar looking. Sorry for being graphic but that's an important part of what was going on in my body. After examining me and taking a blood test, he told me that it seemed like I had a peptic ulcer, but it was in the process of getting better. So he gave me 2 types of medication (don't ask me what type because it's all in Japanese, and I can't really read Japanese, sorry). One of the pills I take after breakfast, while the other I take after each meal (3 times a day).
Today (Sunday), after dinner, I had the pain again, and it's still lingering after about 4 hours. I've been praying and ask you to join me, that if it's in God's will, for this medication to work and heal me of this ulcer. The part that bugs me the most of this whole thing, is that because of the sharp, unbearable pain, sometimes I can't do things with my team. I have to admit that sometimes I've felt like a failure because I haven't been able to be the team leader that I'm supposed to be, and that's why this pain is so annoying and discouraging.

After getting home from the doctors office and getting my medication, we left to Komaki. The people there were some of the most, if not the most hospitable people I have ever met. The Hope Chapel Church is a very small congregation and cute, small chapel/church building. We ate with them, sang with them, saw The Chronicles of Narnia, read scripture with them, and shared life together. Even though we were only together for less than 2 days, God's love definitely bonded us. Over and over again, I've been convinced of how much Christ love is a lot more binding than a language. A language can be a barrier to a certain extent, but with the love of Christ shared between people, that barrier means nothing. These people constantly asked me how I was feeling, if I needed something, and continually poured into all of us. Pastor Abe and his wife were awesome. They knew a little bit of English and sometimes we just ended up laughing because we couldn't understand what the other person was saying, but that was ok.
I've also been learning how much power there is in prayer. Sometimes we don't realize and try to comprehend how much prayer is the best weapon that we can use. And as I've been learning this, please, dig into prayer, dig in the Word, dig into what God has for you right now, at this very moment. Please pray that prayer would be more than mere words that we feel we have to say to have a good and valid prayer, rather, that prayer would be the cries and praises given up to our Creator, Provider, Counselor, Healer, etc. And as I've been here in Japan, I've realized how privileged I am to be able to call Him Father and know that He is the True God and He's my Father.
Blessings as you seek to find God in the everything, the everyday.

Komaki pictures

The lady in the picture is a calligraphy teacher, and she made 6 different calligraphy pieces, one for each one of us. The picture below is her handing me the piece that says, "God."

This is the calligraphy teacher with our team. She was very excited to take a picture with us.

This is the Hope Chapel Church congregation and our team.

Some pics...

This is a picture of our "Easter Dinner".....yes, we had sushi for our Easter dinner.

Sometimes we fail at making rice...actually, this was our first failure at making rice and it was the rice makers fault! But we're not keeping our "rice ball" outside so that we can paint it and have fun with it.

This is a picture of Trenton Hiebert (the son of Laurence and Leona Hiebert, the MBMSI missionaries in Japan that we're working alongside) and some kids lined up and getting ready to hit the pinata......yes a pinata in Japan! It was probably the smallest pinata I've ever seen, but then again, everything in Japan seems to be smaller.



Suniki and me. This was a kid from Hirakata Christ Church who loved us so much and was hilarious! He is going to be an amazing Japanese comedian!



















This is our team in front of the Golden Castle in Kyoto, Japan.

I slept in an old bar this past weekend...

This past Saturday, we left with Pastor Junichi Fujino (pastor of Hirakata Christ Church) to Hirakata. He pastors a small Japanese Mennonite Brethren church in Hirakata, Japan. He has been the pastor of this church for over 25 years.
As we were pulling up to a very small parking lot (of 5 spaces) after a 2-hour drive, Pastor Fujino asked us if we saw the church, and we were so confused. What we didn't know was that the church was a small building that was wedged in between other small buildings, and it looked like a house amongst a business and another house. We stayed in a "church building" that was right next to the church. And as Pastor Fujino was showing us how to work the complicated lighting system, he casually mentioned that the building used to be a bar. At the bottom level of the building you could guess that it was a bar, but the 2nd level was made up of 2 small rooms. We slept on some futon mattresses on the floor....all 6 girls in one nice cozy room (team bonding I'll tell you that much). This building had a shower, but it did not have hot water, so we had to go to the public bath every night. Public bath? Are you wondering what that is? Well, it's just what the name says, it's a public bath. In the old days, when there was not any running water, the Japanese people invented this thing called "public baths." Everyone from the surrounding area would come and bathe at the public bath. Japanese people are very cautious about being clean, and going to the public bath is a good time to get clean and have some good chats with people. What happens at a public bath you ask? Well, you pay a fee to get in, then you go to this locker type room, strip your clothes off (all of them) and place them in a locker, then you go rinse off before entering the showers. At the particular bath we went to, we had to take our own shampoo, conditioner, and soap, so you would rinse in a spot with a small scoop and then to sit down at a "station" that was open to all the other stations. One big rule at these public baths is that you get really clean before entering the actual bath or pool part. After you get clean, you walk to which ever pool you want to soak in, with only a small washcloth to cover you. Once you got the soaking part, it was very relaxing. Did we have a hard time doing this? Umm, yeah. As North Americans, we are not comfortable with or in our own bodies. We, especially being girls, are not very comfortable with others seeing our bodies and we had a lot to pray about before hand. One thing that I learned was to realize that when I continually criticize my body and how much I don't like it, I'm saying that to my Creator, my God. There are things that I can work on, but there are things that I can't, and it's those things that I have to realize that my Creator created me in that way for a reason.
On Sunday morning, we attended the Sunday morning service at Hirakata Christ Church. Even though this church is small, God is amazingly evident through their lives, love, services, and fellowship. We experienced God's family to a new level. Even though most of them spoke only a few words in English, and we speak only a few words in Japanese, we spent all day Sunday having fellowship. Of course there was some interpreting from Pastor Fujino and the international students from Kansai Gaidai University that attend Hirakata Christ Church. We sang some songs during the church service and I shared my testimony with them (with interpretation from Pastor Fujino).
On Monday and Tuesday Pastor Fujino gave us a guided tour of Kyoto and Osaka. We went to Kiyomizu Temple, Yasaka shrine, the Golden Pavilion (pictured below), the Osaka castle, and some other Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. Our initial reaction to seeing these different places and seeing these amazingly beautiful buildings, was to be in awe of what was in front of us. Millions of people visit these sites every year and have no idea of what actually goes on in these buildings. As we entered some shrines or temples, I could feel a spiritual heaviness. These shrines and temples are so dark, and people go to them looking for light. The picture below the Golden Pavilion temple is a picture of what is done in the Buddhist and Shinto religions. Outside the temples or shrines are really long big ropes that if swung hard enough, they ring a bell. People go to these places with their requests and present them before the gods. As they're approaching the rope, they throw in some money over the railing, then put their hands together and I guess basically present their request before the god or gods, and then when done they swing the rope to ring the bell as a sign of worship. My heart broke when I would see the deep sincerity in the people. They would come presenting their request to a god that they don't even know. They have no idea who the god they're praying to is. As I saw people "coming to the rope," I realized how awesome my God, The God is. We have hope in Him, we have a relationship with Him, and we're important to Him. Please help pray for those people that are searching for a god, and that they may find The God, Yahweh. And that Japan may be overflowing with God-fearing Christians.
This weekend was long, and exhausting, and I thank God for every minute of it. Thank you for your prayers! Blessings upon blessings.

So I feel like a Kindergarten student...

This morning we had a "Japanese Manners" class given to us by Misaka-san and another lady from the church (I forgot her name). They taught us to say things like "itadaki-mass" (means "I receive" and you say it before you start eating), "sumi-masen" (means "excuse me"), "wakari-masen" (means "I don't understand" or "I don't know"), and a lot more. They taught us to do a lot of things, here are few: how to pick up chop-sticks, how to pick up the rice bowl, how to pick up the soup bowl, how to pick up and hold our tea cups. They also taught us a lot of things we shouldn't do because they are rude to do in the Japanese culture. It was really helpful to get these pieces of information that we will most definitely use while here in Japan. There are a lot of things that are completely opposite of what we're used to from home, but there are also a few similarities.

In the afternoon, we had our first Japanese language class from Kasama-sensei (you add -san at the end of everyone's name, but when you have a teacher, you add -sensei as a sign of respect). She will be teaching us every Tuesday afternoon while we're here in Japan. I'll tell you, I have not felt like I was kindergarten since..........well, since I was in kindergarten. I realized that Japanese is not a very easy language to learn, but it is so intriguing and beautiful. We learned how to write some of the letters or characters. Japanese uses3 different alphabets: the most traditional one (I don't remember the name and we will probably not learn), Katakana (which is the alphabet for foreign things and people), and Hiragana (this is what Japanese mainly use. It is written up and down, and this is the main alphabet we learned today). If there's one language that you need to be a semi-good artist in, it's Japanese! We learned how to write a, e, i, o, u, ka, ki, ku, ke, and ko. She gave us a lot of homework to write out and things to say for practice.
I have a lot to learn, but our team is determined to practice with each other and get as much Japanese in our minds as possible!
Please pray that we focus in our lessons, practice as much as possible, but most importantly, come to love the beauty of the Japanese language.
Sayonara (good-bye)!
Blessings.

Some videos of our house in Toyota

These are videos of the house we live in here in Toyota, Japan. Start with video #1.......in case you didn't figure that one out.

Video #1


Video #2 (continuation of #1)

We're here!!!!!!!

So we made it safe and sound! We left the MARK Centre at 4 am, and got to Toyota at 9 pm, which is 4 am pacific time or 6 am central time a day behind. We traveled around 29 hours over all. It was a long long day of traveling, but it was awesomely coordinated by our Father up above, that's for sure!
When we arrived at the Vancouver International Airport, we were told that our flight to San Francisco was canceled......not delayed, canceled! So we laughed about it and got in line to get a new flight out. We were kinda scared that we weren't going to get a flight early enough to get our Tokyo flight from San Francisco, because we only had a 2 hour lay-over in San Francisco. BUT, God having everything in His control, had a 7 am flight to Portland ready for us, and then we went from Portland to San Francisco at our original time.
We were a bit nervous of some things, but everything worked out. I'm telling ya, God definitely had everything under control! We even sang "God is on our side" while in the Vancouver airport, and that was definitely truth throughout the trip.
Our close to 11 hour flight from Portland to Tokyo/Narita, was kinda long but it was good. It was quite interesting getting from gate to gate in Narita, because most things are in Japanese, but then again, most things also have English on them as well. So it was fun.
On our flight from Narita to Nagoya, we were all really tired, and we all pretty much slept the whole flight. Laurence Hiebert (the head MBMSI missionary here in Japan) and a man from the church, were at the airport to greet us. As we were getting into the van, I almost got on the driver's side, because they drive on the other side. I'll tell you one thing, most of the stuff in Japan is really nice. I really enjoyed the 1 hour drive from the Nagoya airport, which is on a man-made island, to Toyota because we got to connect and talk to Laurence about quite a few things.
I'm so excited to be here! I'm really looking forward to jumping into the culture, ministry, and everything else about Japan.
Thank you for your prayers! They were definitely answered!

Just a few more days...

I can't believe that it's already Wednesday of the last week of training. So many things have happened in the last 2 months while at training, but like I shared with everyone on TREK this morning, this whole time, the most significant thing that has happened in my life has been looking at my life from the outside in (in a sense). So many times as Christians we can go on with life just okay with being okay, and not really realizing that being a Christian is a day to day decision to come under God's authority. After hearing all the speakers, I've realized that there is so much that I have learned, and there is even more stuff that I still have to learn. In a way, being on TREK is like getting taken out of "real life" and being able to look into our lives from the outside. TREK staff has really emphasized that these 6 months should not be it......but that it should be a lifetime commitment to becoming more like Christ, and this is just the beginning.
I've been able to see things in my life that I need to surrender to Him, give up to Him, ask Him, and praise Him for the grace that He has for me. I want to challenge you as you stay updated with me, that you may feel God calling you to a deeper relationship with Him and I pray that you come to that realization DAILY! I pray that you be encouraged to be "covered in the dust of your Rabbi."
As I'm preparing to go lead a team into a country that I have no idea about the language, culture, people, etc., I hope that I will be surrendering everything to Him in every second! I am praying that our team jump into this opportunity to jump alongside with God and into what He's already doing in Japan.
Please pray that as we leave Vancouver on Monday morning and get to Toyota City, Japan (city we'll be living in) 24 hours later, that we would have safe travel, stay healthy, patience for our team members, and most of all, be witnesses for Him wherever we're at. Thank you for all your support, love, prayer, etc. I feel so blessed to have people like you come alongside us in prayer! Blessings upon blessings!
In Christ abounding Love,
Joanna

That was Breanne

By the way...Breanne wrote that last blog update. Just so you know.

I was at "Tabor" today!

So today we went to Tabor home. It's a nursing home, and we went there for our work duties. We introduced our teams and sang 3 hymns. We were really feeding off the energy of the crowd, it was a great audience, and we only came to know this more as we engaged with our fan club later on. After putting Blue in the back, I moved towards a group of ladies as the staff handed out some sort of juice beverage. "Does this have beer??" asked one of the decrepid, elderly women. "No? Then I don't want it." Later she drank two glasses and when an attendant asked if she would like more she replied "NO I DON'T WANT ANY."
Later I met a cute little old lady with pink lipstick, pink nail polish and pink blush, and slightly unevenly drawn eyebrows. Her name is Emily and she almost made me cry from laughing. I don't really remember what we were talking about before Breanne came to join me and really get the conversation going, it was the best social experience I've had in Canada so far. Breanne kept asking about the cat fights and wrestling matches that probably happen at the nursing home, and about what another lady, named Mary, told her earlier. Emily put up her fluffy, sparse eyebrows and rolled her eyes, implying that Mary doesn't always tell the truth. Mary told Breanne (who is my favourite) that she was a famous tap dancer/actress and traveled Europe, and when asked how old she is she wasn't entirely sure, but suspected she was in her late 20s by now. Mary once told Emily as they sat by the window that she saw her sister coming to get her, but Emily said no body was there, and that made Mary angry. When telling this story for the third time, Emily laughed to herself and closed her eyes, saying she should've said there was only a bulldog outside.
When we finally left the home, we all laughed heartily in the afternoon sunshine about the senile (and sometimes creepy) old people we met.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
-CS LEWIS (The Weight of Glory)

A 3-hour trip to the emergency room...

One of the things that we do twice weekly while on TREK is "work duties," which is basically serving God and His people in practical ways like doing gardening, cleaning gutters, rake leaves, pull weeds, etc.
So today, while doing some work duties around the MARK Centre, Dave (the only guy on TREK) carried a heavy broken pot that was filled with soil and while he was lifting it up to place it in the trailer, it slipped and a chunk of the pot cut into his left hand and made it bleed profusely. I, along with Lisa (another fellow TREKer), took him into the Abbotsford Emergency room. I would say that the gash in his hand was about 2-3 inches long. It was also about half an inch wide. It was bleeding a lot (did I already mention that?). But once the doctor gave him that sweet shot, Dave was all good! The doctor told us, "You guys can watch this...but I don't want for you faint!" So I got to see everything! Lisa chose not to watch most of it. It was awesome! Stitching is such an art...I kinda figured that out seeing the doctor give him the 10 stitches on his hand.
We praise God that it wasn't a deeper cut because that would've really been a lot worse for Dave and all of us! Please join us in praising God for keeping Dave safe, and pray that this will heal properly, not get infected, and not stop Dave from learning and growing everything that God has for him at this point.
Thank you for keeping up with me on this blog! This week, Randy Friesen (General Director of MBMSI, the organization TREK is under) is speaking to us about "Spiritual Authority." We have already learned so much, and we still have 2 more sessions with him. One of the main statements that has really stayed with me since he said it on Monday, was "Satan knows how much authority Christians have. But Christians don't know how much authority they have!" Wow, there have been so many things that Randy has said, that I'm just amazed! I have written things down, and once he finishes tomorrow (Wednesday), I will write a more in depth description on here.
Once again, thank you for your prayers and support! Blessings upon blessings!
In Christ,
Joanna

The Amazing TREK

So Saturday morning, the TREK leaders and interns came banging on our doors at 5 in the morning, and were yelling, "GET UP! You have 7 minutes to be downstairs and ready for breakfast or there will be a penalty!" Little did we know that it was ready for the day! As we came out to the rainy dark morning, they told us that we were going to be doing the Amazing Race all day and we had 5 minutes to go back to our room to get a change of clothes for later, a backpack, a water bottle, and a toothbrush. So just imagine how hilarious we all looked with our disorganized faces and bodies. Yeah, we looked hott all day (I was sarcastic right there)!
The Amazing Race, for those of you who don't know what it is, is a game where teams compete with each other by completing different missions and after every mission, you receive a clue that leads you to the next mission.
We did about 20 some missions throughout the whole day. Close to half of our missions we had to walk/run through the misty day, and so we were pretty wet. And since I injured my knee this past summer, it was really painful at times, but it was worth it! We had an assigned driver, and we had to tell her where to go. I was appointed the navigator because "I have good direction," or at least that's what people around here say. So it was a fun day of figuring things out as a team.
In our team we discovered that everyone rose to the level and excelled in what they are good at. It was awesome to see how our team fit together and how everyone had different talents that we needed at certain points of the day.
These are a few of the things that we did throughout the day:
search for 6 bandannas (1 per team member) outside at 5 o'clock in the morning when it was dark and raining, eat rice, sardines, and drink a liter of Coke for breakfast, literally search for a needle in a haystack, do a firemen work-out outside in the wet and cold day, each person dip there face in a bowl of chocolate pudding and get a gummy worm with our mouth, and before wiping the pudding off our faces, dip our faces into a bowl of Rice Krispies cereal to get another gummy worm, as a team eat about 2 really dehydrated squids (tentacles and all), eat lunch at a Sikh temple (an Indian religion that branch off of Hinduism) and some of the food was good, but some of it made me gag (but it was a good experience to be in a different culture, religion, and see the hospitality that these people offered us), take the SkyTrain from Surrey to Vancouver, and our final mission, take the SkyTrain to the SeaBus, and then run a huge flight of stairs to find the 3 TREK interns screaming, "YEAH, team Japan! Go team Japan! You got it!"
Yup, our team won! After a long, wet, tiresome, crazy, gagging, adventurous day, we won! But even if we hadn't won, our team would've been just as happy with the day, because of the memories and how we worked together.
Some of you might be asking, "Why did they make you do this? What does this have to do with missions?" Well, it has everything to do with missions. You see, sometimes, while on the mission field, we will be thrown into situations that are unusual, uncomfortable, and sometimes, not rational. We will have to eat food that we are not used to eating, we will have to run to get to some places, we will have to work together as a team, and we have to figure how we will resolve problems or in the Amazing TREK was the clues or hints.
We learned a lot from this day. We learned a lot about each other and got a glimpse of how we will work as a team in Japan and the other team in Peru. God is going to do some amazing things through both of the teams, because both teams have discovered that as we join our talents and gifts together for the sole purpose of furthering His Kingdom, there is no stopping!

God speaks when we become silent...

There are a lot of things that I learned over the Silent Retreat. But I will highlight on the ones that really stuck out for me. The first few hours, I took a nap. Then woke up 5 minutes before dinner was over......not too much fun to jet out of bed and eat cold, dry hamburgers. After dinner, I wrote in my journal for a while and it was awesome. I read a lot of my Bible and had some awesome down time with God.
Then........I fell asleep on Wednesday night.......and woke up at around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. If you're wondering, it was around a 15 hour sleep. Yeah, I'm a good sleeper, what can I say, it's my gift.
From around 2:30 until 5, I read some more of my Bible, wrote in my journal, prayed, and sat in silence. At 5, I, along with everyone else headed down to the Great Room for dinner. We didn't start eating until around 5:20ish, so we sat around for 20 some minutes in silence, with everyone else sitting around each other. Some people might have felt weird, but there is something powerful about enjoying each other's company without feeling like we had to talk, be crazy, or funny (that was hard for me). After an amazing dinner that SonJa prepared, I went out with my mentor, Joanna (yes, we are both named Joanna and she is my mentor) for about an hour. MBMSI has set us up with mentors from the Abbotsford area, and they assigned Joanna Shantz as my mentor. She's awesome! She did TREK about 4 years ago, and she was the leader of her group as well. It has been awesome to get insight and wisdom from someone who has been in the same position as me. And so during the Silent Retreat, TREK set us up to meet with our mentors for about an hour and talk through stuff half-way through the retreat. It was really good to get some thoughts straightened out by verbalizing them and Joanna helping me. As she prayed for me, she quoted some verses from Psalm 23, and after she finished praying she told me that she felt like I should read and look into Psalm 23. So I got back to my room and did that. I drew a line down the middle of my journal, wrote one verse of the Psalm on one side and then wrote some things that really stuck out at me about the verse on the other side of the line. Then went on to the next verse. I did that to all 6 verses of the Psalm and it was a very affirming time from God. The main thing that I got out of that, and it was probably the highlight of the whole Silent Retreat was that "I will not fear evil, for You [God] are with me." Even though there have been some very hard times in life, God has always been there for me, He's here for me right now, and He will be there for me later. And that was very evident as I went through the Psalm.
After I finished with that Psalm, I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning and we had our debrief with Steve Klassen (TREK founder and MARK Centre owner), and it was really good to hear everyone else share a bit about what they had experienced throughout the retreat. I love the people here. I think I've mentioned that before on my blog, but in case you missed it, I love the people here! God is evident in everyone of us and it's awesome to dive into this time of my life with them.
That's kinda a small overview of the Silent Retreat from my perspective. I will be writing about our "adventure" that we had yesterday and it started at 5 a.m. Stay tuned.......

Silent Retreat!

Tomorrow we start our Silent Retreat! We are all a little tired, exhausted, and ready for this Silent Retreat. We have been learning so much and have had so much wisdom and knowledge poured out to us that we are really looking forward to these next few days so that we can process what God is trying to teach us. We can't have any form of communication with anyone. So that means not talking to people here or people at home. So no internet. Just so you know that I will not be on here or Facebook and MySpace for the next few days. We can only read our Bible, use our journal, and be with God from 12 pm Wednesday thru 12 pm Friday. We're staying here at the MARK Centre and we will have the whole Centre to spread out in. It will probably be raining all week so we can't really go outside much, unless we don't mind getting wet, which is not really cool. We all really wanted to be outside, but we'll see what happens.
Please pray that God shows me what He wants for me to grasp on to right now, and what He wants for me to let go of. I'll be praying for a lot of things and most of all, people. I'm really looking forward to just having it be God and me to communicate with each other. Thank you for your prayers! Blessings!

Some pics...

This is most of the people that are here on TREK .
Some introductions of who is who and what team they're on: Me (Japan), Amber-Lee (Japan), Roxie (Peru), Simone (Japan), Brianna (Japan), Lisa (Peru), Amber (Japan), Dave (Peru). We crammed into an elevator, after I forced some of them, and took this picture after we met with all the people that work at the MBMSI office here in Abbotsford.

Lisa, me, and Amber-Lee after church.

Simone, me, and Darlene......Darlene likes to be down with her bad self.

Brianna, me, and Amber-Lee at After Thoughts (an amazing "dessert cafe" that is known all over Abbotsford for their desserts like amazing cheesecakes, etc.) at our first Team Time.

So one night, Amber-Lee, Breanne, and I wanted to write a poem for our cooks, Gay and SonJa, so we wrote this one. Their names were cut off when the picture was taken, but the poem starts with: Gay and SonJa...and then you have the rest.
And the part of them using the rice "thrice" is because they know how to use leftovers to where we can't even tell....and it's amazing food! We love them......a lot!

Ok.........too much to soak in!

So these past few days have been crazy learning time! Today, Philip Serez spoke to us! Some of you South Texas peeps know Philip from the good ole SOAR days, but for those of you who don't know who he is, he is currently the MBMSI regional mobilizer for eastern Canada. He was a big part of SOAR going down to South Texas for many years.
He spoke to us about our "Identity in Christ." He made us imagine that if we were in a path, and we had to choose 1 out of 2 paths, which one would it be? The 2 paths were "Pleasing God," or "Trusting God." On the pleasing God path, we try to do the religious thing and do things for God, to love Him, to maybe somehow make Him love us more, or be considered more. And the trusting God is about realizing that the reason we are who we are is because of Him, because of grace, because of His unconditional Love for us.....no matter what!
I will write some more later, but just thought I'd update before going to bed. :D
Blessings and Shalom!