Well, here's another attempt at keeping in touch with my friends and family all around the world... a blog. A blog, like a regular ministry newsletter, is something that seems great to me and I feel good about it theoretically... but making it actually happen is another story.
I'm thinking, though, that a blog might just work better than a ministry letter as I like to write when the mood strikes me but I generally can't focus long enough to get through writing a whole ministry letter, adding in photos properly, picking the right contacts to send it to, and then dealing with all the emails that bounce back because I'm terrible at keeping my contacts list up to date. So hopefully writing in or posting photos in a blog every now and again might be a better way of communicating for me! Let's see how it goes.
Seeing as I have been out of touch for my first three months here, I thought what I might do is as I have time to reflect on, and organise my photos from, these first few (crazy) months here in Sendai, that I could kind of update as thoughts come to me and catch you up with what's been happening story by story, topic by topic, photo by photo, individual by individual... How does that sound? There's so much that has happened that I would have to sit down for a long long time and basically write an essay to get in all in chronological order and communicated properly. And we all know I wouldn't be able to do that.
In the meantime, an update on what I'm up to at the moment.
For the last few months I've been living in Sendai working at the Tohoku Celebration of Hope office in Counselling and Follow-Up, working towards the event we held on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of March here in Sendai. It was also broadcast by satellite to seven other locations in the Tohoku (North-Eastern Japan) area. I'll write more about what my job was later, but basically since this event has finished I've been responsible for the area of follow-up; making sure that those who responded to the good news and gave their lives to Christ at this event are quickly connected to a loving church community where they can continue to grow. This involved a lot of (very frustrating) admin work to start with, and for the last few weeks has involved a lot of sitting around waiting to hear back from the pastors we have requested follow-up from. Praise God for the much-needed down time!! All up, including satellite venues, 400+ people came forward to the altar call, and I am currently overseeing the pastoral follow-up of about 300 of these people. So amazing that so many people responded - no crazy huge scale Christian event like this has ever happened in Tohoku, so it's definitely exciting to see how God has used the Tohoku Celebration of Hope to encourage churches and to reach many individuals with the good news of Jesus!
What's next for me? From Tuesday I'll be going down to Hiroshima for a week to stay with one of our Festival Directors, Derek, and his family. They've just recently moved down there to start planning for two large-scale Festivals that will be happening in Fukuoka and Hiroshima in October and November 2013. The Festivals are a long way off yet, but the planning and preparation for them starts now and will be gradually building up over the next year and a half. I'll be interpreting for Derek and helping him and his family settle in for a week or so, and looking at the possibility of moving down more longer-term after follow-up in Sendai is finished.
I'm enjoying opportunities I have to interpret lately, though it always makes me realise how much more I still have to learn! The other day at a pastors' meeting they all started talking about Asian politics in the 50s and 60s.... please, think of your interpreter!! She's 25, not from Asia, and can't even talk about politics in English!!!
So lots more learning coming up I think! Will aim to keep you all up to date with it too!
Blessings all =)
