Summer's End is in Sight...

...and I have mixed feelings about it! I am looking forward to when one day the craziness will tone down. But I am also so so sad to think about the summer ending as well because that means goodbye to all the great volunteers and interns we have with us right now.

Currently on the ground, we have 120 or so high schoolers from Texas (yeehaw :P) along with our own high school and college interns. It has been great! They are almost done though, with tomorrow being a free day, and the following their last ministry day. Then they will be on a plane heading back to Texas. Please pray that they will finish strong! That many seeds will be sown, and that God will protect and care for them, and that we will even be able to see fruit!

Speaking of fruit, a girl accepted Christ today! She is a high school girl, and she was eating it all up! We will call her EK-san. Please pray that she grows in her understanding and love for Christ, and that she will want to get baptized!

Also, please pray for Shi-san. She is not confident in her new faith, so please pray for her that her desire to know Christ personally will grow, and that she will make time for us to meet to study God's Word together! And that she will want to get baptized soon! It would be so wonderful if she would get baptized before the interns go home since she is very special to some of them...

Thank you! I just want to say, even with the hard times, I love my job, being able to share Christ's love to the Japanese people. Please pray diligently for them, that God continues to work in their hearts so that they will understand and accept the Gospel!

God Stopped the Rain

I just want to share quickly an example from today that God really does answer prayers! Even the small non-important ones...Today we did 5 Minute English in Shinjuku with a mission team from Sarang Church from Anaheim, CA! Crazy...anyways last night I checked the forecast and it said 90% chance of rain...oh no! So basically my team and I were praying all day about it so that we could still do 5 Minute English, and guess what? Despite the 90% rain forecast, God held off that rain! It looked like it would start thundering and pouring any time though...and I bet it will tonight... :D yahoo!

Going to Eat Some Soba Noodles...

So today was a wonderful day and I would like to share it with you all :) (Pictures included)

Well I went with Jennifer and Sydney (summer interns on my ministry team yes!) to meet with Ko-san and her friend Mana-san. Jennifer and I met Ko-san through a volunteer team! :) Ko-san told us that she wanted to take us to the soba shop that she works at. I had no idea it would turn out to be such a delightful experience! I think it is one of the best times that I have had here in Japan...

So we went to a little suburb that is very traditional and reminiscent of an older Japan. There is a temple there, the second oldest in Tokyo, and many soba shops popped up around the temple, which gives the temple the nickname of "soba temple" (let's see how many times I can say "temple" in a sentence). I will now commence to post the pictures from this place... ;)

The cartoon artist who drew these cartoons live in this city and so they are shown here:

The other side of the previous building...the huge Japanese sandals (げた/geta) are a must see:

The cartoon characters - on the left is Kitaro, the one eyed orphaned ghost, and on the right is Nezumi Otoko, which means "mousey man" hehe...they fight demons or something:

These are people's wishes. On July 7th, was a holiday, and I forget the name and the story behind it but basically it is a time to write wishes...you can pray for the people who believe in this, that they would come to realize that only our God can answer prayers:

We are now entering her soba shop! That is Sydney going under the curtains. You see the people seated on the left? We sat there...:

We sat right next to this. How lovely it was!:

Here is the man behind the soba noodles. He is making it by hand! He rolled the dough out and then chopped them up so skillfully. Soba noodles are buckwheat noodles and you can eat them hot or cold, but it is so delicious to eat them cold during the summer:

Me with perhaps one of the best tasting green teas I've ever tasted:

My meal. It was called "tenzaru soba" and it came with the soba noodles and the tempura, which is on the top right corner of the picture. It was so so so soooo good!:

Dessert - this is called "kasa manjoo". It was sooooo good too hehe. It had red bean in the middle, and the outside was like mochi but not, and you can eat them baked or not baked, and I had it baked...It was so so good!:

Jennifer - girl is so crazy it's easy to love her!:

The lady baking the manjoo:

We were able to have good conversations about Jesus too! They both are open, and Mana-san even attended a church while she was studying overseas recently! And then it turned out that Man-san visited Sydney's hometown because Man-san's hometown has a sister city relationship with Sydney's hometown!!! How God is working in these girls' lives...I was able to share my testimony, things from the Bible, and about Jesus' love. It was great. Please pray for these girls! Thank you! :D