Last weekend (Saturday - Monday) I had the greatest privilege of going to the JET Christian Fellowship weekend away, in a beautiful place in Tokyo Prefecture called Okutama, surrounded by beautiful scenery, blessed with beautiful weather, and graced with the presence of beautiful people who have a beautiful heart and passion for a beautiful God in this beautiful country. (Yes I have also noticed the limitations of my vocabulary.....must be being in this country too long!!)
We had some great fellowship, some great worship times, and best of all, being able to pray and sing with a bunch of English-speakers, in English!! It was so refreshing, and so encouraging. At Passion Tokyo, it felt like I jumped back into Jesus' big arms; but this weekend felt like I was now actually walking with Him, hanging out with Him., catching up...just like long lost friends. And seeing some of the fellow JCFer's heart for Japan was greatly inspiring and encouraging.
Tuesday - Wednesday -- the JET ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) Mid-year Conference in Fukushima City, about 2 hours from me. It was a bit of a doss 2 days, although I did take away a couple of good ideas from other JETs. The most interesting thing though, was that the keynote speaker, an old Japanese Waseda Uni professor, turned out to be a Christian, and was quite outspoken about it in his speech...!
Friday -- Onahama 2nd Junior High School's 地域交流 (Local area exchange?) Festival & Bazaar - I had to 'make' a Chocolate Brownie the night before (does it count as make if I sought the assistance of Betty Crocker's Brownie Mix??) to bring to the 'Ethnic foods demonstration'..
THEN, YeeChiang (fellow ALT) and I, sang and guitared, respectively, 2 Japanese songs for the closing ceremony of the festival (this is Japan - everything has an opening and closing ceremony). We only started practicing one of the songs the night before, after being told there'd be a request for encore after the ONLY ONE we prepared for. Nontheless, we pulled it off. The kids went wild. We were heroes.
And thus concluded one of the most exhausting weeks of my Japan adventures so far.
But I still haven't had a chance to play badminton since I got here.....where am I gonna satisfy that itch!?!!?!
