Why Japan?

It's been confirmed that I am going to Japan on outreach and will be based in Tokyo which is super exciting! Very looking forward to sushi! It'll be so weird spending Christmas, New Years, my birthday and Valentines Day in Tokyo though!

Anyway, I just thought I’d share a funny story about how I felt God calling me to Japan out of the choices of places we could have gone.. Before coming to Hawaii, I actually applied to the Japan Focus DTS but it got cancelled last minute so I changed to Asia Pacific, and there just so happened to be a Japan option. Then they were sharing about Japan having less than 1% Christians, which really got my heart burning.

So, when they told us our outreach options, I was praying about where to go and just felt a passion for the Japanese people, but I guess I still wasn’t 100% sure, so Shinae (the girl I came with) and I were praying for confirmation because she thought she had seen a Yen sign in her mind during her prayers. The cool thing is that she didn’t know it was a Yen sign at the time. Anyway, so we were praying for confirmation and she didn’t get anything but I felt like God was asking me why I was asking Him again when He had already told us where to go. And I was sharing that with her, and I randomly said to her, you know, sometimes when I was a teenager, I used to just flick the Bible open at a random place and see where it landed. So I did that without really thinking and scanned the page really quickly. Then my eyes fell on a certain verse:

Amos 4:1
“Listen to me, you fat cows”

HILARIOUS! Hahaha.. ok so my Bible translation is quite “freely” translated, but we just fell about laughing.. maybe God has a really funny sense of humour on the same level of mine! Either way, I thought it was hilarious and so something I would say... anyway, point is, Tokyo here I come! =)

So on a slightly more serious point, I would really appreciate prayer for the Japanese nation – that their hearts will be open to receive because they are quite a lonely and loveless nation full of strange things. So just to pray that God will prepare their hearts and ours for the team that are going! Also please pray for the team as we prepare because it is mostly made up of 18 year olds and I have a feeling God will ask me and a few other slightly older people to step up and take the lead..

Other prayer requests I would really appreciate are just for me to be able to fully focus on Him with no distractions and to really set aside more time to spend with Him everyday because even though I’m in Hawaii, I still find myself busy allll the time!

Thanks so much guys and stay in touch!!! =)