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