New house!

日本語版はこちらです。
PDF version

New house!

Well, the big news is that I am now writing from my new house in Nagahama. This is where I'll be based for at least the next six months, working with Pastor Takahashi at the Nagahama Church. Nagahama is the largest church we have in our group of churches, with around fifty people at the main Sunday service; it also runs services in English, and in Spanish for the large resident Latin American population, house groups, prayer meetings and even a weekly calligraphy class. I'm going to be involved in all of these things!

My house is near the center of town, seven minutes walk from the train station from where I can get to my language school in Kyoto. I have a spare room, so if anyone wants to visit you are welcome - indeed, my first visitors have just spent the weekend here! It's quite a big house, and quite a change from the field leaders' house where I spent the past month.

The hall, the guest bedroom, the living room and the garden

"Orientation"

Since I'm relatively used to living in Japan, and knew a fair bit about the mission and what I was going to be doing here, my orientation was always going to be a bit different. I stayed with Martin and Julie, our field leaders, and spent rather a lot of time on computer work for them and for WEC, including putting together a new web site for the mission.

See it here!

My second week in Japan coincided with the annual field conference, which was an opportunity to meet with the rest of the team, and to think through some of the issues involved with church planting in Japan; we had a couple of speakers from the Church Planting Institute to talk about the forms of church in Japan, and our WEC Regional Director visited to encourage us and keep us going. It was a great way into the mission.

And after that, the work started.

So what do missionaries do all day?

One of the reasons why I came to Japan as a short term missionary was to understand what missionaries actually do on a day to day basis. I'm still not sure I know the answer to that, but at least now I know what my schedule looks like!

Mondays and Thursdays are my days at language school. I'm going to Kawara Juku, a private language school in the center of Kyoto. Kyoto's about an hour and a half away by train, and vies with nearby Osaka for the title of Japan's second city. (Kyoto is Manchester to Osaka's Birmingham.) I have a very interesting language teacher, who tries hard to get me not only to speak Japanese well, but to express myself in a Japanese way. He makes me think a lot while doing so, and it's certainly stretching me!

Tuesdays I often have business meetings - whether it's the prayer meeting with the three other WEC churches in the "north block", the pastors' meeting for all WEC churches, or the ecumenical Shiga county pastors' meeting, there's usually something going on.

Wednesdays are often taken up with house groups. House groups in Japan are very different from those in the UK - for a start, they're lead by the pastor! They're basically a midweek service in someone's house. Maybe another time, we'll consider why this is!

Fridays are another study day, but of a very different kind. Takahashi-sensei and I meet to read together and discuss mission in Japan, the Japanese church, Japanese society, and anything else I might need to know to be a more effective missionary here. It's very much a discipling experience for me, and an opportunity for him to get to know me and how I think, which is essential as we work together. In the afternoons, we have a Bible calligraphy class in the church, which is part of a wider attempt to create a Christian culture in Japan - it's also good for my Japanese writing ability.

Saturdays are my day off, and Sundays I preach: once a month at the English service, once a month at the Japanese service, and once a month at the Spanish service.

Preaching at Nagahama

The English service happens on the first and third Sundays. It's a bit of a mixed bag, since it serves the English-speaking community but also acts an outreach to Japanese people who want to practice their English a bit. Two weeks ago I started writing a sermon and it just didn't feel right. It's a sermon for another day, but not that occasion. Instead I felt I ought to preach this sermon which I wrote as part of a module at Bible school. It's about finding God in the midst of suffering.

I didn't actually notice the young Japanese man while I was preaching. There's only about ten or fifteen people at the service, but I didn't get a chance to speak to all of them. But apparently he's been coming along for a while because his girlfriend is a Christian and he wants to know more about what she believes. In the discussion afterwards, it turns out that he was actually going through a time of great suffering; a close family member was very seriously ill and the family was falling into chaos. He heard my sermon about finding God in the midst of suffering - and he went back to his girlfriend and said "can you teach me how to pray?" For the first time, they prayed together.

Community Policing

Obviously lots of "very Japanese" things have happened while I've been here, and I'll try to include one or two of them each newsletter.

When I moved into my new house, I joined the local community group; it's a good way to get to know the neighbours and be involved in what's going on in the local area. As a community group we have various duties to do, like making sure the garbage is separated properly, cleaning the local river, and also patrolling the community at night.

So last Wednesday night saw me out walking around the streets, banging two wooden sticks together, and shouting out "Hi no youjin" - "be careful with fires"! It's a hot June evening, and very few people are likely to have their fires lit, but it's the tradition that's important!