So Long Japan

This will be our last update because we are back in Canada as of 4:30 in the afternoon Monday. Check back in a couple of weeks though because we will be adding a bunch of videos. After a five hour train ride, two hour wait at the airport and a thirteen hour plane ride we finally made it here. It will probably take a couple of days for all of us to overcome our jet lag as Japan is thirteen hours ahead of Canada, but hopefully it will not take too much time. I am just going to share some of our last times with the Tsugaru Church.

On Friday night, we helped out with the Young Life group for the last time. We went all out and built a huge maze in the sanctuary with all of the chairs. The object of the whole thing was to walk through blindfolded and listen to directions from your team in order to find a lego block and bring it back. The kids and parents loved it and were so much fun to watch! For our last time teaching, we showed them how to play "God of this City". It was so powerful to just watch the youth of the church playing this song which talks about the future hope for Japan and how they can be a part of what God is going to do there. After Young Life was over, the ladies of the group were invited by one of the church women to go and be dressed in kimonos. They were so beautiful! All of the girls ended up walking around in them for an hour and just soaking in one of the last tastes of Japanese culture. We found out later on that the woman who lent us the kimonos actually does that for all of the short-term workers who come because there was a couple of short-termers many years ago who greatly impacted her life. She takes great joy in doing whatever she can for those who come and we were definitely blessed by her.

The Young Life group surprised us with some special good bye cakes and chocolates that said thank you in Japanese characters. The whole time at Young Life was so amazing! We had a sleep over with a couple of the kids that night and so, after we blew out the candles on our amazing cakes, we had a little dance party to some worship songs and just celebrated together one last time. The sleep over was a great time as well. There was only one guy and one girl who came, so that was an opportunity to pour all attention on just those two. The one guy who stayed over is a grade eleven student who attends the Kanagi Chapel and just came to spend the night with the guys because he had met them the week before at the concert and really bonded with them. The girl who came has been coming to events with her seeker mother for quite some time now and is ten years old. Please continue to pray for both of these youth.

Sunday was quite an emotional day for all of us! We lead our last service at Itayanagi Chapel and we had no idea just how intense it would be. We all took turns sharing about what we have learned on this trip and most of us shared our appreciation for the church. Almost all of us could not contain our tears as we spoke of our incredible love for the people in the church and our desperation to see Japan know Jesus. As if that was not hard enough, Colin decided to play "God of this City" after we all finished sharing! That was pretty cruel! (I am just kidding obviously) Naomi Ghent and one of the young adults we had been working alongside the entire trip, Hoshi, sang it for the congregation. Almost all of us had tears dripping from our eyes at this point because it was just so hard to think of leaving and to not be a part of what is going to happen there after we leave. We have full faith though that God has planted some seeds and that so many great things are going to happen this year! Our God is the God of Japan.

After service, we were asked to help out with Sunday school. This was a very strange request as we have never helped out before and usually set the tables and help prepare for lunch. When we arrived upstairs, we were told to all stand in a line because the whole Young Life group and some parents were going to sing for us. Naomi and Hoshi sang a special good bye song for us and then after them all of the children and some parents sang. It was amazing to see that the fifteen year old that had just picked up the guitar when the team came last year was actually leading the song. They presented us each with special metal cases that have our names on them and are signed as well as Japanese wind chimes that one of the mothers bought. Once again, it was a very emotional time for all of us.

Our rice and shrimp Canadian flag :)

As if all of this was not enough, we also had a special surprise at lunch fellowship with the whole congregation. The same lady who lent us the kimonos made us a special rice dish which looked like a Canadian flag. We had to eat really quickly so we could rush off to do another concert at Harvest Chapel, but we did our best to make sure we had time to say goodbye to all of the church people.

We had a special event planned for the afternoon at Harvest Chapel. The accapella group from Hirosaki University was supposed to come and do a concert at 3:00, but they ended up postponing until 5:00. This meant that we needed to fill in the gap before the 4:00 service with our own mini concert. We also had the opportunity inbetween songs to share our testimonies of what God has taught us since being in Japan (only in less Christian sounding wording because no one would understand). We were really excited to see that even though they were going to come later on, some of the accapella group actually came at 3:00 and stayed for the whole worship service.

Not only was this really encouraging, but we also found that the two girls who came to concert at the university on Thursday night came at 3:00 as well and stayed for dinner after the entire program was over. The Ghents are really hoping to be able to maintain contact with them and invite them to future events and services. The accapella group was quite good and it was neat for our team to sit back and enjoy their concert. Another exciting part about the concert was that after the accapella group was finished, one of the ladies who I spoke about a couple of posts ago who was not able to play djembi for two years and wanted to come to church and play actually came and brought two djembis with her. She ushered Job and Adam to play djembi with her while Colin played guitar. She is not a Christian, but it was so wonderful to see the joy on her face as she played along with songs that she knew were about Jesus. All of the university students stayed for dinner after the concert and Nick and Kaitlyn tried to visit with them as much as possible (few of them know very much english). We are all really excited about the new friendships we have started with the university students and will be trying to keep in touch with some of them who we are going to add on Facebook.

The accapella group performing at Harvest

The djembi trio and...Colin :)


Later on in the evening, we had a worship concert at Grace Fellowship. Many of the people there are seekers, so it was really powerful to just be worshiping in God's presence there. There was no message this last time at Grace, but instead we each shared what we had shared earlier in the Itayanagi service about what God has taught us in our time in Japan. One really exciting thing about that night was that one of the men that comes out to English classes who is a very avid follower of Buddhism came out for the entire service. He had not come to anything else we had done those five weeks, so this was really exciting. I think that this was the hardest good bye service because it was the last one and we knew that there would not be anymore goodbyes other than the Ghents once that service was over. We were able to go to Tully's after service just like we always do and that was a great last time of fellowship.

Some of our dear friends from the church

We decided to pull an all nighter because we were trying to fight against jet lag and we had to pack. We ended up catching the sunrise at 3:30 in the morning a top the roof of the church. It was such an amazing way to end off our trip!

As I said before, after a five hour train ride, two hour wait at the airport and a thirteen hour flight, we arrived in Canada. It was a truly amazing time of ministry! Thank you all so much for all of your prayers and support! Know that God did great things during our time there and that much greater things are yet to come. Please do not forget Japan! Keep on praying for this nation in such desperate need of Him. Remember the missionaries there in all the service they put in every day.

Final Updates

The principal explaining where Canada is

The grade three class made this for us

Hello everyone!!

It seems like only yesterday that we were taking part in all of the following ministry activities, but it was actually a week ago. On Wednesday morning, we traveled to an elementary school in Hirosaki to do a full program of action songs, a puppet show, some concert songs and a Canada presentation. It took the kids a couple of songs to warm up to us, but after that they were really enthusiastic and were probably the most involved of anywhere we went.

Watching the Puppet Show

This school is very blessed to have a Christian principal. He and his wife are members of the Tsugaru Church and are some of the few mature Christians there. Some of us had spoken to him about his school a couple of Sundays before we went and he was just so excited about his job. He said that the school feels like a family and that he loves them all like his children. We definitely had a great sense of the community that is in that place.

When we were finished our presentation, we had the opportunity to eat lunch with all of the students. It was so cute because they had special representative students wearing aprons who called our names and then took our hands and lead us to our seats. The elementary schools in Japan go from grade one to grade six, so we mostly had two people sitting with each grade. It was beyond fun interacting with them! Even though some of us did not have translators at our tables, we were still able to just be attentive to them and let them know that we really wanted to understand.

Lunch time at the fourth grade table
Our name tags :)

After lunch, we were given the choice of either staying inside and resting or going out to play. We jumped at the chance of going to play on the playground. We had a group of about twenty students come to the principals office and formally invite us all to go play. We all had chains of kids latched onto our arms leading us out to play. Some of us played octopus (a chasing game where you have to tag people before they get to the other side), some played baseball, some played soccer, and others played on (really more so watched) them play on the equipment. We easily could have played with them all day, but they had to go back to class. They also said that they would love for the team to come back next year!

She really wanted to come home with us :(

Later on Wednesday afternoon, we climbed Mount Iwaki. We had been eyeing this mountain, which can be seen in the entire Tsugaru region, since the day we arrived but had not been able to climb due to poor weather and other responsibilities. We were running short on time, so after driving up sixty eight curves in the road and riding the lift as far as we could go we only had thirty minutes to climb to the top. We basically had to run up the mountain because it is usually takes a person an hour, so not everyone went all the way up. Even though it was fairly cloudy, the view was absolutely spectacular. We could see all of the Tsugaru region. At the top of the mountain, there is a little Shinto shrine. The sight of this made us feel so compelled to declare Jesus' name in that place, so Nick read a passage from the Sermon on the Mount.

On Thursday morning, we had the opportunity to go to the preschool of one of the little boys in the church. We had a great time dancing around with the kids and seeing them perform a song for us as well. The teachers were very thankful for us coming and told us that they would like us to come back again next year. It is has been such an encouragment every time we have heard from the teachers that they would like us to come back because the way is being paved for the team next year and for the Ghents to get to know more people.

Thursday evening was quite busy and quite fun! Hirosaki University invited our team to go play a concert for them. Ourselves and the Ghents were so full of anticipation as short-term workers have never been invited there before. The concert took place in a fairly small class room with a few university students and some church affiliates. We had a hilarious time with the equipment and sound as the electric drums literally fell apart at the very beginning of the first set, the sound was way off for the first while, the Canada video did not work properly and we were only given ten minutes to set up all of our equipment. In the midst of all of these struggles, we came to the realization that God is way bigger than anything we can try to do. It did not matter that all these things were happening, the people present had a great time and we were able to just really worship. After the concert, some of us had the opportunity to speak with two girls from the university. They said that they loved the concert and would like to come to anything else we had scheduled for the week. I will share a little bit later about how that played out, but it was just really encouraging to know that seeds were planted that night. Another exciting part was that even though there were so many technical difficulties, the professor who organized the concert really wants the team to come back next year and he promised a much larger facility with a lot more advertising. Praise Jesus!! We also helped out with our last English classes that night and had to say goodbye to everyone. We had such an amazing time getting to know the people in those classes and will continue to pray that they come to know Christ as most of them are either seekers or just not interested in God.

On Saturday, we traveled to the American Air Force base in Misawa (two hours away). The Ghents are really good friends with a Christin family there and so they arranged for us to play a worship concert at the International Center, which is a short drive from the base. We did not know what the facilities would be like, but when we walked into the room we were amazed at how luxurious it seemed as compared to the places we had been playing for the previous five weeks. Some of us commented that it was kind of strange to go from what we had grown accustomed to in Japan back to having everything and more in a Western setting. This helped us realize even more that we really do not need all of the luxuries we have in our usual worship services. We had very minimal equipment and poor acoustics in most places we played in Japan and yet people met with God in such a powerful way. All of this said, God was really present in this worship service as well. Most of those in attendance were actually either American Christians who live on and around the base or English speaking Japanese, but a few were non-Christians. It was very different worshiping in English with mostly American people because it felt like we were back in our usual worship setting. We found after the service that people were telling us how encouraged they were with what the Ghents are doing in Japan, how much hope they have for the area of Misawa and how the churches there are reaching out to both the Japanese and Americans. It was so amazing to hear what God is working in that area and how Christians on the base have the great opportunity to witness to both their own people and the Japanese.

The International Centre

It was so nice!

There is much more to come for this blog, so check back in a couple of days!! I will be sharing about our last goodbyes in Japan.

A Sunday Apart: Kanagi and Itayanagi/Harvest Chapels

The concert at the hall in Kanagi

Some of the people at the concert

Sunday was a very eventful day for all of the team. For the first time since we have been here, we separated into two worship teams. In order to lead worship for Itayanagi Chapel and Harvest Chapel, Nick, Aimee, Rebecca, Kaitlyn and Job stayed behind while Colin, Soo Jin, Kelsey and Adam left at 9:30 to go and lead worship for the morning service at Kanagi Chapel thirty minutes north. They were very blessed to see that twelve people came to the service. The Messers, the missionary couple and their three young children who have been in Kanagi for five years, were very encouraged by the turn out as there have been only one or two church members coming for the past while.

For the afternoon concert, the team performed an acoustic set at the town hall centre. Once again, the Messers and another missionary there named Angela were very encouraged by the fact that around twenty-five people came. Half of these were church members while the others were either new faces or those who have some sort of affiliation with the church. It is exciting not only that the missionaries could be encouraged to keep persevering, but even more so that more people were reached through this event. During the event, the atmosphere was really warm and the people got really into the music. They all clapped and had big smiles on their faces. Everything went on smoothly as the team played music and also performed a puppet show. After the concert, the team had the chance to eat and talk with some people. It was a great time of fellowship. We hope that those who attended will remember the event favourably and that God will bring them back to the Kanagi Chapel.

Back at Itayanagi, Nick and Rebecca lead the worship service with all Japanese songs. This was the first time that Nick has lead worship in Japanese and, according to the Ghents, his Japanese was quite good. Nick also lead the children’s share time during service. He used an orange in a pitcher of water as an illustration for how we are able to stay afloat when we have on the whole armour of God, but sink when we allow it to be stripped from us. The kids and adults were all so attentive and seemed to really take in the short message. We had the great opportunity of sharing communion with the church and eating lunch with them after service.

Job spending some quality time with Amie after service

At Harvest Chapel, there were fewer people than usual as one of the families just welcomed their third baby into the world on Saturday. We have been in so much anticipation of this baby because we knew that he would come before our flight home. He and his mom are both healthy and the whole church is just surrounding them in prayer.

New baby Enju (his parents wanted it to sound like angel :)

At the service, Rebecca, Nick and Aimee all lead the Japanese songs together while Job played the djembi. Nick once again gave the short talk time from the morning service and the congregation was quite intrigued. When the adults went into the room opposite the sanctuary to hear Martin's message, our team got to hang out with the one little boy that was there. He is truly a remarkable child. He is only seven years old and can play piano better than Adam (according to Adam). We had so much fun just pouring all of our attention onto him by playing games with him, playing copy cat on the djembi and just being silly. His mom sat in the entire time and after the service we found that she was very happy that we had such a great time with her son because he has experienced some bullying by teachers and students at his school and is not always readily accepted. His mother is not a Christian and we are just so thankful that she is finding the church to be a safe haven for herself and her little boy to come and just be accepted and loved. Please pray that she and her family will continue to come out to service and will come to know Jesus personally.

We were all reunited for the evening service at Grace Fellowship. We did not realize how much we missed each other until we saw each other again. Thank God for unity!! Anyways, it was so encouraging to see the hall full of people. There were the most people we have seen yet and even then some people were absent. The worship time was truly powerful. The most powerful part of the worship time was when Colin lead the song "God of This City". This song states that God is the God of this city and of this people, that there is no one like our God and that he promises that greater things are yet to come. Looking around at the group in that place knowing that many in attendance do not yet know Christ, but are seeking Him so much was a powerful reminder of all that God has been doing in Japan and the fact that we need to be in so much anticipation and have faith that He is going to do much greater things yet.

Prayer Requests for Week 5

1. Sunday is a busy day as we are spending the afternoon with the accapella singing group from a nearby university and have a concert at Grace Fellowship later in the evening. Please pray that ourselves and the Ghents will begin to make connections with those in the singing group. Also, please pray that many new people will come out the evening concert and that those who come who already know Him will be encouraged and will have the boldness to reach out to the new people.

2. We will be heading to the American Air Force base on Saturday to give a concert and presentations. Please pray that many will attend and that they will be receptive to the gospel.

3. On Wednesday morning, we are going to a small elementary school to do a mini concert and to eat lunch with the students. We more than likely will not really be able to speak with the students very much, so please pray that our actions will somehow express the love of Jesus to them.

4. We are onto our fifth week in Japan and we really need prayer that we will not get distracted by thoughts of going home or by how much we will miss being here. Please pray for a clear focus and passion right up to the end of our time here.

Praise Reports from Week 4

1. We decided not to do a barbeque on Saturday, but planned for a Young Life event instead. The planning went reallly smoothly and so did the day. There were thirty-three children many of which were new faces!

2. Those who attended the Kanagi concert appeared to have a great time and there were some new people who came out. Also, the Messers and Angela have been discouraged as of late due to lack of attendance at church meetings and found this Sunday to be very uplifting.

3. We haven't told you about this yet, but we are doing a concert and presentation at the American millitary base. We found out late last week that there was a large potential that we would be unable to get in due to schedule conflicts only to find out early this week that things have been worked out and that we will be going there on Saturday.

Updates from the second half of Week 4

Hello again,

We have some exciting updates to share with you from the second half of last week. We went to another pre-school on Thursday morning. This school was different than the others we visited as it had less than forty children in total. It was an interesting change to have such a small group because it allowed us to be a lot more interactive with the kids during the actions songs. We could all dance around with them without any children being left out of the fun. One great thing about going there was that the Tyndale team had gone there last year and this year they invited us back. Even though we did not share about Jesus directly with them, we can only pray that they could sense God’s love living in us.

Everyone was dancing! :)

He took a good five minutes putting on his shoes. So cute!!

On Thursday afternoon, Rebecca, Job, Kelsey, Soo Jin and Kaitlyn had the opportunity to work on finishing up the dry wall on an upstairs room at Harvest Chapel. In a couple of months, this room will house a couple from the US who are coming to work alongside the Ghents. As I am writing this right now, some of the team is at Harvest putting the final coats of paint on the room. They have had a lot of fun being able to help out in such a tangible way and we are all excited to see the finished product on Sunday.

On Friday night we had planned to have a campfire night for Young Life, but a thunderstorm hit about an hour before. Instead of making smores over the campfire, we let the kids and youth cook their marshmallows over the gas stove in the kitchen. Several parents had come to pick up their kids when we were finishing up snack time and it was so much fun to see them just as excited as the kids. Another highlight of the night was playing sardines (a hide and go seek game in the dark where one person hides and everyone else has to find that person and hide with them until everyone has found the hiding spot). I don’t know who had more fun, the kids or us! This week, we helped the group learn how to play “God of Wonders”. They are sounding so great and are gaining so much more confidence on their instruments.

Some of the Young Life gearing up for a game

Nick teaching guitar

On Saturday afternoon, Itayanagi Chapel hosted a Young Life special event. We had distributed the flyers directly to the students on Friday morning as they entered their public schools. Here in Itayanagi, most children are free to do whatever they would like on Saturday’s while their parents are at work so it is the best time to have special events at the chapel. We were so excited to see that thirty-three children came out. A few parents also came and participated in some of the activities. This was a great turn out for a children’s event and there were many new faces. They appeared to have a lot of fun and were very enthusiastic about all of the games and songs. About half of the kids actually stayed an extra half an hour after the event was over just so that they could play more games. There were four other little girls who stayed for an extra two hours at the end of the event. Please pray for these little girls as some of them come from broken homes and use events such as this one as a safe refuge from their difficult home lives.

Even the parents got really into the actions for "Deep and Wide"

One other exciting happening here is that we are working on recording a Japanese worship cd to leave with the congregation. This cd will hopefully not only be an encouragement to the Christians and seekers here, but also be helpful to the Young Life group in continuing to learn new songs when we leave.



I would just like to share some exciting testimonies that Colin brought to light on Sunday. Last year, the Tyndale team purchased a djembi drum and they left it as a gift for the Tsugaru Church (Itayanagi Chapel, Harvest Chapel, Kanagi Chapel and Grace Fellowship). They had brought it around to all of the many preschools they went to and let the kids play with it. This year, we brought it with us to play along with the kids songs and yet again the kids and the teachers were drawn in to playing. Colin estimates that about 2,000 people in the Tsugaru have played that drum. On Thursday when we went to Harvest, we brought the djembi in so that we could play a couple of songs for the two moms and their daughters that were there for parenting class. When we brought in the drum, the one mother’s face lit up. She told us that she had played the djembi for years but since she had her daughter two years ago that she has not had a single opportunity to play. She did not ask us to play, but when we offered the drum to her she excitedly took it from us. We played the worship song “Everyone” and she drummed along. She is quite talented, but it brought us more joy just to see how joyous she was about having the opportunity to play. When she was finished playing, she asked us what the song we were singing was about and said that she would like to come to Harvest Chapel for a Sunday service so that she can drum along with the worship music. This woman has been coming out to parenting classes for a while now, but has not expressed an interest in coming out to a service. This was a very exciting breakthrough for the Ghents. There is another neat testimony about how God has used the drum. At the Kanagi concert on Sunday, the team had the opportunity to meet a man who was baptized into the church last year and is a member of the Kanagi Chapel. He used to be an avid drummer and played guitar as well. A certain illness struck him and he lost his short term memory. Since that time, he has been unable to play. During the concert, he was trying to tap along with the beat and so afterwards Adam brought the drum over to him. It was the first time he had played in years and it was apparently quite a sight. He was so joyous and excited about playing again. This piece of wood and raw hide helped usher him into worshiping the Lord through music. Both of these testimonies are such a great reminder that God will use whatever is available and whatever He knows will touch a person’s heart. Music is God’s creation and He uses it in ways that we cannot fathom or anticipate.

Prayer Requests for Week 4

1. We are going to another pre-school in Itayanagi this Thursday. Please pray that the teachers will and students will be impacted and become curious about the Jesus.

2. We are hoping to have a Canada themed barbeque and concert event this Saturday outside of the church's coffee shop. Please pray that the planning and implementation of this event will go smoothly and that new people will have the boldness to stop in.

3. We have another outreach concert on Sunday night in Kanagi. Please pray that people wil be curious and will stop in and that the missionaries in that town will be able to establish relationships with those in attendance.