TUESDAY: ABC CLUB

ABC CLUB soo awesome! It was a pretty packed hour full of games, an Australian animals quiz, songs, craft, cooking, snacks, presents – everything. About 40 kids came and some came with their parents. Please pray for follow up with these kids and their parents, that many will come to the Christmas event and for more Christians from the Hiraoka church to commit time and energy to serving in this ministry (who really needs more hands and hearts and prayers) and to youth and uni ministry :)

IT’S SO SAD TO HEAR THAT…

Something that really saddens me is that at Hiraoka church, which is considered quite a balanced church has quite a few old people, less than 10 young workers, 2 high school students, about 15 primary school students and no university students. L

University students have so much time on our hands and quite a lot of income to give as we don’t always have families to support, and we have a big giving and encouraging capacity. At Gracepoint there’s about 70 people in our university bible study group… and I can’t imagine not knowing God through the stressful times where getting good marks and not failing really struggled to dominate my waking and sleeping hours, and where sometimes I felt so different and so alone… how much more would the university students here feel that, when a lot of them have to move away from home to go to university?

There’s an agricultural university here near Oomagari where there is no evangelical connection at all – no KGK (AFES equivalent)… no nothing. There aren’t many youth groups or events around.. or even at all, and in fact many people just hang around at Starbucks.

I’ve been thinking and praying about what God might want me to do in the long term and in the future, and after hearing about there being not enough people from the church to help out with reaching out to the youth and university students it really saddened me and it really fuelled my desire to pray for God to raise up workers from within Japan. Extreme (our youth group back in Sydney) has challenged me and nurtured my faith and encouraged me to grow in my relationship with God, and it was during then that I became a Christian. Without the teaching and bible studies at FCG (our uni bible study group) and at Credo (the AFES Christian group at UTS) I probably wouldn’t be challenged to even come to mission as a short termer.

Susan, another long term missionary from Sydney (you guys may know her – she comes from Grace church at Hurstville :D) also has a burden for the youth here and was thinking of starting a homework group or something but people at Hiraoka church just don’t have enough time to help out for outreach – so please pray that God will be able to change hearts and raise up leaders to reach out to neglected groups here like youth and the elderly.

We learnt from the regional director for OMF Hokkaido that OMF’s strategy isn’t to send missionaries to start new churches but to support Japanese churches when they decide to plant churches, to send missionaries to support them.  

I don’t really know what it looks like to be called to long term mission overseas... but it’s been good to just see how the long term missionaries live here. Having asked them how they knew that God called them to long term mission overseas, some responses so far have been that:

·      Examining one’s own desire – whether you want to go (subjective test I guess :P) and then asking Christians you trust about whether they think you’re suited to it (the objective test)

·      God has spoken to their hearts while on short term mission that it’s what He wants them to do, and doors closed and opened but eventually applying for Japan was quite smooth

·      God revealed over time that overseas was something God wanted them to do – first while on short term but then they realised that God wanted their whole lives and not just their holidays

One of the missionaries reminded me that not everyone is called to long term mission and that if I wasn’t sure, to work in a secular for a few years first because ultimately we’re all in a secular world and those experiences will help me empathise with the people I might meet while on mission in the future (if God does bring me to) – which I thought was reasonable.

I was really challenged me to pray for different countries and to try doing something cross cultural back at home in Sydney; reaching people that I’m not similar to culturally because it’s not natural to reach someone who is different to you. Tracy encouraged me to not do something safe or something I’m used to. It’s easy to give yourself to God when you have nothing (no qualifications or money or whatever) but it becomes harder when you have stuff you don’t want to let get of, like a job or after you earn a degree but God will hold you to your promise and He will ask you to give it up because He wants us to serve Him with everything that we have because He wants to be our supreme treasure above all.

Some things that God has been challenging me with is if this is what He wants me to do, will I be able to entrust the rest of my life to Him? What would it be like trusting totally in Him in terms of being financially dependant on the generosity of others’ giving to the work of the gospel? Would I be humble enough to do so? Would I be willing to leave everything I have to go to somewhere new where I couldn’t build on anything I had before? What would my parents say? What about desires to get married and have children? (A reliable source told me that for 380 single missionaries there were less than 100 single men, hmm.)

…to be honest though, those are issues that I’ve thought quite a while before I to come with :) Praise God for the peace He’s given me because in my heart He’s reassured me that no matter where He takes me and when that will be, that He’s got my whole life planned out and in control, and that I can only find satisfaction in Him :)