Week 65 - Associating With Christians is Okay

This week was SO fun! But it seems like you already know all about it from Facebook...that`s weird. I don`t even Facebook out here and I feel like there are more posts of me up there than when I was home.

We had a killer Halloween party with Michael Jackson`s Thriller and everything. Over 100 people showed up. Our church can hardly even hold 40 let alone 100!

A few of the cute kids all dressed up for our Halloween party

It was so cool to have so many Japanese people finally get over their fear of Christian churches and come to ours. It made a better image for our church as they came and were able to laugh and play games and eat delicious food with our members. We are planning a music fireside next Sunday so we invited everyone at the Halloween party to come, so please pray that they all show up for the fireside as well! I ended up winning the costume contest...woohoo!

Sister Elmo won the costume contest!

But the prize was a huge thing of chocolate -- and I don`t eat chocolate anymore -- so I handed that out to a bunch of little children.

We also volunteer at an English classroom every other Thursday and this week they all did a huge tour of one of the mansions of old Japan. It was way cool to see their Japanese culture mixed with various western elements like glass windows in their sliding doors, western toilets by their tatami mat rooms, it was just way cool.

Old Japanese mansion -- each of these glass windows in the sliding door cost about $800

 

Japanese gardens are the most beautiful in the world

This little angel was touring the mansion, too. I am in love with Japanese children!

But even with all the fun things that happened, my favorite part was when our friends (not quite investigators yet) started introducing us to their coworkers and friends. When Japanese people see that their friends are associating with Christians it makes them want to associate with Christians, too. Japanese culture is very society based. Everything they do is for the society as a whole, not as individuals. You could say they kind of give into peer pressure in the sense that if their friends are associating with Christians then they think, as a whole, associating with Christians is okay.

Crofts shimai, yours truly, Crapo choro and Harris choro at the mansion

That`s been a huge blessing I`ve seen this week. Even though a lot of people didn`t become new investigators, at least we`re spreading a good image for our church.

Shimai in Niihama District. DL photobombing in the back. They gave us all mustaches in district meeting. It was so fun!

We always sing a hymn in English at the end of our English class, so we sang I am a Child of God at the end of lunch. I was surprised to see how many of them were crying and so happy to hear us sing about our simple message of God`s love. First of all, because it was in English. And second of all, because they are all Buddhist and if we were housing I know we never would`ve gotten that kind of reaction. The Lord is preparing the way. He`s preparing His children. The Lord works in mysterious ways and one of those ways is through English class here in Japan.

We`ve got another super busy week planned so please pray that we can get everything done that needs to be done so that those who are ready to hear the gospel now will be found! I pray for you all and I hope you have a fabulous week!

Love you,

Sister Heimuli

Lucky me! I got to go on exchanges with my beloved Stevenson shimai!