Chris & Abbie

Well, I know it's almost the end of the week, but it's been a busy week and I wanted to tell you all about Sunday.

This past Sunday we were invited to go to a Japanese church about an hour away. There are two American missionaries that teach in the town, and they come to our bible study on Sunday nights. They go to this church and the people at the church offered to come and pick us up, once a month on Sundays.

So this past Sunday we went. They have a translator who sits in a booth and translates the entire service for us, while we wear ear pieces to hear the translation. Kind of like the people at the UN wear - very cool. (Gladdy should look into getting these - he'd love them!)

Anyways, even though we had to go an hour away, the people at the church were so nice and welcoming. Our Japanese is very minimal, but we can communicate a little, and people like to try out their English on us. So we already made a few friends, one who has already emailed us and wants to get together sometime. After church they host a lunch each week, so we had Japanese meatloaf, which is way different than American meatloaf, but pretty ok tasting.

The most encouraging part was seeing so many Japanese Christians together in one place. Japan is only 2% Christians, so it is a very lost country. It is not a part of their culture, so people grow up and many haven't even heard of Jesus. I had been wrestling with all of this lately - how can people never hear? It's just so foreign to me. So, seeing over 100 Japanese Christians gathered together, in rural Japan, was so encouraging!

We're going to go back in a few weeks, so I'll try to take pictures next time.

As a side note, most Sundays we go to a Japanese church in our town. We love it there, the people are very kind and wonderful to us - it's just nice to get a sermon in English occasionally, that's not a podcast.