Long time coming...

Hello beautiful people! Can I just say that I am so blessed by each and every one of you? I am realizing more and more that our ministry here in Tokyo is so not limited to the 17 of us, but to all our amazing family, friends, and supporters back home. You all rock my world, and I am so grateful to have you in my life and to have you supporting our team in thought and prayer.

I am so sorry that it has taken me so long to get an update out to you all… there is no excuse for it, and I am going to do my best to do better and be a little more consistent. So, here is the summary of the trip so far (from my perspective, I know that many of you are reading Gen, Chad, Megan, or Sarah’s blogs, and I think that at least Heather if not more of the team have sent out updates that you might also have seen… if this is old news, I am sorry ☺ but here we go!)

We were at briefing in Orange County for an intense, busy and fruitful 2ish days. We had training, team building, worship, and speakers to spur us on, get us excited and prepare us for some of the hardships that we may face. What I liked most about it was getting to know some of my team members and realizing that as much as I want Japanese students to come to Christ this summer, if I can get to the end of project and be able to say, “Lord, in it all and through it all, I was faithful to your direction and your call on me” then it will have been a successful summer. I realized that it was just so improtant for me to be sitting at His feet, trusting Him and learning to lean on Him always. Oh sooo good…! We did have a scare the last night we were there, because it was possible that two of our team members were not going to meet their financial goal, but the Lord is so faithful, and we all got on the plane Friday and arrived safely in Tokyo on Saturday!

The first week of being here was intense and awesome! Our team of 15 students and 2 leaders is spending time on 6 university campuses, which means that we are split up into three mini teams of 5 people which is each responsible for 2 campuses. My team consists of Gen Nakamura, who has an amazing gift of loving people and is my co-leader, Cherie Fontanilla, a beautiful girl from North Carolina (you should hear her accent! Love it!) Kris Fortin, an SC junior who is an amazing artist, and Russle Champoux, a very smart kid from Michigan who loves the Japanese culture. The five of us are so very different, but we seem to work really well. Gen and I were unsure of how life would be on our campuses with our diverse team, but we have found that we really are great together. Besides sharing a huge love to eat and specifically to eat together, we really seem to be blessed. My favorite time together as a team is the first ½ hour that we are on campus every day… Gen and I decided to start each day reading a passage of the Bible and then discussing and praying as a team, and we have been able to be really vulnerable with each other in those times. Praise God for giving us a spirit of unity! We go to Waseda University three days a week and Gakshuin University two days a week, and we have been able to make friends on both campuses with some awesome people.

Spotlight on how cool God is for giving us divine appointments: Cherie and I got to hang out with these two beautiful girls on our first day at Gakshuin who have been so inviting and loving, we met a girl at Waseda who wants to go to USC for grad school and wants Gen to show her around campus in July, and just today I got to talk to a girl who lived in San Jose for a few years! Talk about things happening for a reason and a purpose… and this is all just by waiting on the Lord and asking Him to bring us people to talk to.

When we are not on campus, we are having prayer times, date night’s with Jesus (sooo fun!) girls time and guys time, team worship time that gets the neighbors to call the cops on us because we are a little loud (oops!) going to church, doing fun random things as a family (boat rides, seeing movies, eating sushi, will be going to Tokyo Disney…) and trying to keep in touch with people at home. I am so sorry again that I have been so bad at that… I really do love you all, and I cherish your prayers and support.

I think that this is long enough for now… I don’t want to bore you all, but just know that we are here and we are well, and that we are all learning so much and growing so much, it is intense and beautiful and precious.
I will update often, so check this out and the other guys blogs for new stories of this amazing summer...

Love you all!