愛する家族、
Dear Family,
Another week come and gone.
We have spent a lot of time looking for new people to teach. It is grueling work. (I like to steal the words of my dear brother. In some few ways our missionary experience is exactly the same...in most ways it is completely different!)
Besides one lesson we had on Monday night, our week was spent all outside in search for the prepared children! Because I had the opportunity to talk to A LOT of people this week, my eyes were quite opened. I already knew this about Japan, but it was made so much more clear to me what role religion plays in the lives of the people here. The answer is none.
We spent a large portion of our week walking by the colleges talking to people. Most people got pretty excited to talk to us, especially because one of the colleges is a foreign studies college, and so foreigners are good people to talk to. Everybody we met from that college was either studying Italian, Spanish, or English, so I was able to have a polylingual conversation with them all! People are really interested in talking to us until the moment they find out we are volunteers for a church. Then they are all of a sudden busy or late or something. A few people were willing to talk to us a little bit about God. Although we tried many different approaches, the majority of the responses we got to our questions was that some people think God might exist, but most people have not thought about it. A lot of people have not even thought about their purpose in life or wondered where they come from or where they go (at least that is what they say.) If they have heard about Jesus Christ, it is usually a negative thing. In fact we are trying to really advertise our Eikaiwa program in order to simply get people into the church building, so we found high schools and as the students were getting out, we would go up to the crowds and hand out our Eikaiwa flyers. They all seemed pretty interested in learning English for free. However, in one group, once somebody recognized our nametags and said Jesus Christ out loud, everybody started to just walk around us and say they were not interested. Also after going to another group of high school students and handing out the flyers, a woman came behind us and took all the flyers away from them! So that was frustrating.
BUT despite all of that, there are still people here who the Lord is definitely preparing for the gospel. We taught Misato chan again on Monday and she prayed for her first time! She said she had never even thought about talking to God (but she prayed to her ancestors for New Year...that is what they all do.) Our purpose in teaching her how to pray is to help her learn how to receive answers from God, so at the end of the lesson when we all knelt down together, we asked her to pray and ask if God loves her so she could feel His existence. She said she did not need to ask that because she already could feel His love and she knew He loved her. Three days before that she had never even thought about God before!! It is amazing how tangible Gods presence can be.
We met one lady this week, and I have just been in awe since meeting her. She passed us on her bike going down a steep hill, and she had a seat in the front with a 4 year old girl, a seat in the back with a 6 year old boy, a 5 month old baby strapped to her belly, and a backpack on. When she passed us she looked back and smiled so big and waved. At the bottom of the hill, she stopped at a bank so we were able to talk to her. She is from Egypt, and she does not speak Japanese at all. They are here in Japan for her husband to study. She said she was on her way to go grocery shopping. I was very impressed with her. First of all, I had just gone up that hill on my bike a few minutes before, and it about killed me. But she did it with three kids and groceries every week! Also, she did not speak a lick of Japanese, which means she did not have friends I am assuming. And she said she was looking for a school for her son to learn English, but she could not afford any, so I am also assuming she does not have a lot of money. BUT she was so HAPPY! She was smiling the whole time we were talking to her and she had the most honest eyes. I felt so good after talking to her.
Well family, this work really is marvelous. I feel God guiding me every day and I know this is His work. The gospel of Jesus Christ brings us more happiness than anything else. We are so blessed to have it in our lives! I love you all so much!
Love,
Crofts shimai
愛しています！
クロフス姉妹
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