Hello again everybody! I had a hard experience the other day. I have been meeting with a student on a fairly regular basis, and we went out to lunch last saturday to once again talk about the Gospel . This was probably the 5th or 6th time we had met together. Anyways this was a student that I thought was very close to accepting Christ as his savior, but at the end of the lunch he told me that he did not want to. This was hard for me because I had invested a lot of time into meeting and sharing with him, and we had become friends. He seemed to have a clear understanding of the Gospel but was still able to reject Christ. That was a sad day for me. My hope is that I can continue to share the love of Christ with him and hopefully one day maybe he will make the decision tha will save his life.

Well we are now officially done with our first two weeks on campus, one more to go. These two weeks have been a great experience for me. I realize that this city is an uncomfortable place for me. I don't really like the food, it is very humid here, the train system is very confusing, and I don't speak the language! (hopefully one day I can fix that) But I do love doing ministry here. Japan is so desperately in need of Christ, and that has become more evident to me every day I have been here. There are so many people who need to hear about and see the love of Jesus, and there are so few workers here. I have gained so much respect for those ministering here long term. They have a huge job, and I am very glad to be here helping them. My team and I have been able to share the gospel with somewhere around 50 students who have never heard it before! This past week we have seen two students accept Christ as their lord and savior. Praise the Lord for all he is doing here, and thank you for your continued support.

Tyler and I with two non-Christian students from Dokkyo University at a Campus Crusade meeting in Tokyo. I have been meeting with the student in the middle fairly regularly, and he brought his friend with him.

Hello all! Well we have been out sharing on campuses two days now, and will be heading out again today in a couple of hours. It has been a great experience so far, but it does have its challenges. The students I have talked with so far have all been very nice. We usually have a kind of lunch where students can come and practice their english with us. This is a way for us to begin building relationships with students. The conversations that I have been a part of have lasted for about 1 to 2 hours each. Most of the students really don't know anything about Jesus, and I have been able to share the gospel with 4 students already. Yesterday I talked with one student for about 2 hours and then was able to talk with him about Jesus. He had some questions for me afterwards, and we set up a time to meet up again on friday to hang out and talk about it some more. Please pray for this student specifically that God would speak to his heart and bring him to salvation.
It can be a struggle at times to share the gospel in a way that the students can understand it, due to the language barrier. Sometimes we may have a translator when speaking to the students, and at other times we must simply trust that God will provide the words and the understanding in our conversations. We also must be very careful in how we share the Gospel with students. Though Japan is not a closed country, we can still be kicked off campus if we are sharing our faith too openly. My first day on campus I was with a Japanese staff person, and we were about to approach a student to talk with him and we had to go somewhere else because a guard showed up. Yesterday we had to split up our group when we walked to campus so as not to arouse suspicion.
I heard an encouraging testimony from one of the Japanese staff on the train home yesterday. He said twenty years ago he heard the Gospel for the first time from an American missionary, and rejected it. He said that the missionaries' loving attitude towards him did not change after that, and that that is what ended up drawing him to Christ almost a year and a half after that. God is at work in Japan, and every individual soul is precious to him. We know that it can be difficult here being in a totally different culture, and that we may or may not see fruit right away in our short time here, but there are already a number of students that have been introduced to the Gospel for the first time in the two days we have been out sharing, and we know that God is working in the lives of each of them. Thank you for your much needed prayers, and I look forward to sharing with all of you again some of the amazing things the Lord is doing in Japan

Well I am here! Thank you all so much for making this trip possible for me. I left for briefing last tuesday, and spent a few days at Vanguard University meeting my team, learning a little more about what we will be doing, and spending lots of time in prayer. We got on our plane on June 26th at about 2:45 P.M. and arrived in Tokyo at about 6 P.M. (about 2 A.M. California Time). It was a long day! But praise God it went fairly well. We got our first taste of the trains here and nobody got lost so that was good. The students and staff that are working in Tokyo were waiting for us when we arrived and gave us a warm welcome, though we were all practically zombies after being awake for 24 hours. Anyways today is a recovery/get settled day and tomorrow we start going to work. I've heard already that there is a professor at one of the universities we are going to that wants us to come into his class 2 times a week to speak English and meet students, which sounds like a great way to start relationships with these students right away. Once again thank you for all your support and prayers.

Partner Ministry

Campus Crusade sends students on summer projects to many different places all around the globe, but our ministry at CSU Fullerton has a special partnership with the ministry in Tokyo. We still send students to other places, but we don't have the same relationship with those places. Not only have all four of our current staff members spent a year in Tokyo working to advance the gospel, but now four students, including myself, are going to Tokyo this summer. Our goal is to develop an on-going relationship, where we continue to send students on summer projects and year long STINT trips to Japan. Each ministry will be able to know the other on a personal level, and we will be able to support and encourage each other as we work towards reaching a common goal, to reach the lost students in Tokyo with the gospel. Though we may only be there for a short time this summer, we are a part of a bigger picture, which will continue to grow as more and more students in our ministry at Fullerton are sent to Tokyo.