Planning Time

Shinagawa!  The gateway to Edo, or as we know it now. Tokyo.   We met as a team, prayed over the map and studied it to see what we could learn about this section of Tokyo.   I am pleased to let you know that there are more churches in Shinagawa than there are Embassies, Universities or even Starbucks Coffee shops.

We located four parks that were close to the furthest North, South, East and West points of  Shinagawa and then decided a good time to go there to  pray for the gateway to Tokyo from these four vantage points.

The Fire and Fragrance team from Kona in Hawaii will join us when we go to pray in these parks.  Who knows -  maybe after we have finished praying we will go to one of the Starbucks coffee shops as they are offering 50 yen per cup off for this month!!!!

Psalm for Tokyo

My soul cries out to you, O God.

From the depths of my heart

I want to walk with you every day

to see your love riding the Yamanote line

your peace filling the emptiness

I feel in the eyes of those who do not know you.

My soul cries out to you O God

From the depths of my heart

I want to touch you every day

I see your grace, beauty and creativity

flowing from the culture in Japan

Let it flow back to you in never ending praise

My soul cries out to you O God

From the depths of my heart

Beauty

Japan is well known all over the world for their love of beauty and their attention to detail.  We have lived here for over twenty years now and every year we are treated to a blazing display of awesome cherry blossoms.  Streets lined with trees.  parks filled with celebrating people who come out just to sit under the trees and drink of their God given  beauty.  Almost every school has a cherry tree in its grounds.

Here you see one lone tree in a street near our centre in Tokyo.  One year they had a special on TV where they netted off one large tree and collected every single petal, mounted them on boards just to see how many petals one tree would produce.  Food is also an art form in Japan.  I was attending a wedding of a fellow Englishman to a Japanese lady and at the reception I just had to photograph the dishes we were served.  Most of them looked too beautiful to eat but somehow I overcame my awe and consumed everything except the plate in good old western tradition.

Japanese meals consist of several small plates and dishes. Each work of art is laid out exquisitely before your eyes so you enjoy the  detail and excellence of the display which enhances the joy of  the taste amd makes the meal very memorable.

As you can see I very much enjoy the creativity of the Japanese and their God given ability to  put so much effort and time  into the details that surround their daily life.    I often reflect and give thanks to God who surounds us with so much beauty  and detail in the world around us.  Every sunset is a masterpiece painted on the canvas of the sky for us to enjoy and then the next day another one comes to prove again that the heavens do show us the glory of God. The earth does show us His love of beauty and attention to details.  The Japanese people also show these same traits of their Creator.

Aogigahara

Last Monday I went on a prayer journey to a forest at the base of Mount Fuji with Mike – American – from Lion Tribe Ministries and Il-Han -Korean- from our YWAM Tokyo Team.  I will leave you to guess which one is which.

The forest has become a popular spot for Japanese people to come to commit suicide.  It is currently ranked as the second in the world next to San Francisco Bay Bridge as a place for this purpose.  Apparently the locals feel that this forest became popular as a place to commit suicide after Seicho Matsumoto wrote a novel called Kuroi Jukai – Sea of Black Trees – in which a pair of lovers kill themselves in this forest.  There were 48 bodies found there in 2000.

I am not too sure how well this picture shows it but the trees are growing out of vocanic rock.  There seems to be little or no soil for them to get their roots into so the roots tend to break up the rocks.  This makes walking off of the paths a little tricky and a bit dangerous.  However the paths are wide, clear and very well kept and we did meet a group of older people hiking on one of the trails through the forest that could be seen on the map above.

During our time in the forest we were never aware of the darkness or oppression that the rumours carry about this place.  To us it was a tremendous testimony of what the Bible calls “The earth shows us His wonders”.  On the edge of the forest is one of the five lakes around Mount Fuji.  This area had a different flavour to the hilly part we had hiked through earlier, but only added to our awe and wonder at the splendour and majesty of our God.

We did pray out the scriptures that we had received before coming to the forest.  We earnestly asked God to change the belief in the nation of Japan that says suicide is a good or honourable thing to do, to seeing that life is a gift from God,  give it back  to Him and never take it away.

A very big thank you for all of you who prayed for us as we took this journey through Aokigahara and proclaimed the faithfulness of God in the midst of His creation.

301

What is 301?  Well,  it has nothing to do with the three people in this picture but they do have something to do with 301.  Let me explain. Several many years ago we decided to make Tokyo Baptist Church (TBC) our home church for our family.  As you can see from the picture TBC is an international church.  On the right is Pastor Akira from Japan, in the middle is Tinashe from Zimbabwe,  on the left is Rhonda from Canada, and, hiding behind the camera, as usual, is John from England.

When we first joined TBC they had two Sunday services for about 300 people.  Since then they have grown to have one Saturday service and four Sunday services for over 1,000 people.  I would like to be able to say that this growth was primarily due to our attending and joining the church.  However, the growth is actually due to the Church pursuing the Purpose Driven model from Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in California.

In this model all the Church members go through basic classes called 101, 201, 301, and 401.  Rhonda & I are involved in the 301 class which focuses on the  ministry of the Church and helps members discover how they can serve in the ministry of the Church.  Akira is the pastor responsible for the ministry purpose at TBC and Rhonda & I are the lay purpose leaders with the responsibility of teaching the 301 class.

Just to prove I am here this picture shows us at lunch on our way to a training seminar I taught for the 301 team near to Mount Fuji.  Imro whom you did not see in the last photo is in charge of the welcome table at TBC which also comes under Pastor Akira and the ministry team.  We had a couple of days at the Fuji Yoshida Baptist Church and even had a fun time getting into the snow on Mount Fuji.  Well, Tinashe did at least.

Tinashe comes to TBC from the Tokyo Christian University.  We always have interns from there serving in the church.  Tinashe has since been assigned to a Japanese Church but we were blessed to get to know him during his time at TBC.  We will be having another 301 class next week right after I get back from our YWAM national leadership meetings in Osaka.

Graduation

Graduation is an exciting time.  No, our girls have not graduated from high school just yet but it was an immense effort to complete all the assignments of their correspondence courses in time before they expired.  So we decided to all go out together for a meal at our local Coco’s restaurant.

It is always good to celebrate your successes and rejoice together over minor accomplishments as well as the major ones.

Tokyo’s Twin Towers

Here is a picture of Tokyo’s twin towers.  There is a lift – (Elevator) in each tower to whisk you up to the observation tower from where you can get a commanding view of the city below.  The best part is that it is free.  Yaaaaaaaaaaaah!! way cooler than Tokyo Tower.  I visited this place last month with Louis from the TBC high school boys small group.

On the right is a view from one of the towers.  It was not the clearest of days but it does give you a feel of looking down on Tokyo.  There are buildings as far as the eye can see in every direction.