After our first day of meeting with the students, we had a few breaks to rest and get oriented to the time because it was a weekend. We are over our jetlag pretty much and are getting ready for our relationship building opportunities coming up. Mike has spent the last two days with us at the Rood's house, but he is set to stay over with 3 of the Japanese students over the the next two weeks. This will be a wonderful opportunity for him to build relationships, practice his Japanese, and get to know the Japanese culture first hand. This is an incrediable opportunity because these students hardly ever invite foreigners to stay in their homes.
On Sunday we spent a few hours worshipping in the Rood's home with them and the other two staff members on their team. We had a great time of singing, sharing and praying, while the kids almost destroys the upstairs. :p Upcoming 2 weeks has been somewhat planned out. Some of the things we'll be doing is fixing laptop problems for all the staff, some manual labor, a day of prayer, lunch gatherings at 2 different universities (where everyone has to speak English over lunch), bible study with the students and cooking/game leading/english lesson leading for the next Friday gathering.
Mark Rood has also taken us through several orientations of Japanese culture and shared with us their objectives and strategies for reaching the Japanese students. One thing that sticks out for me is that in Japan peace and harmony is highly prized and strictly regulated. Everyone has 2 "selfs". Their outer self and their inner self. And everyone is taught from birth that your other self has to be a predetermined way so as to stay in harmony with everyone else. Your inner self however can be completely different than your outer self and you just don't share your inner feelings with anyone else. On the outside it creates an very harmonous society, but this is a place that people are very emotionally starving. Although they have wealth, high tech, peace and a comfortable life, they really can't be who they really are. This is one of the most difficult obstable for Japanese people to accept Jesus. Because on the outside they are not allowed to be different than anyone else in society, and on the inside they are craving for someone to understand them, but no one dares to share what's really inside.
