Thursday 17th...

Firstly, apologies for the lack of recent blog posts. It has not been allowing us to update for quite a few days now, so it is not just us being lazy!

Plenty has been happening, we have much to be so grateful for over the last week. Tom and Annie enjoyed wonderful fellowship with their homestay families, as well as being put through the ordeal of traditional Japanese meals! The Friday before (11th), we all attended a Japanese meal organised by Minami Church and the ESS at Tokai, which was great fun – we ate okonomiyaki, which comes highly recommended (unlike natto, which Annie had to face at Sunday breakfast!), and did a little origami. The aim with this meal was to set up the English meal which is happening tomorrow night (18th), where there will be a gospel talk. Please pray that the students who came to the Japanese meal would come back to the English version!

As mentioned in the last blog post, Saturday evening brought the first of three English meal events, tomorrow’s being the third and last. There were about five non-Christian students from Rakuno University at the Oasa-hosted event, which was a wonderful answer to prayer; very few, if any, were expected and Nat’s single-handed catering skills were put to good use. We had some good conversations with students afterwards, and Rob and Nat will have many chances to follow it up with all the contact they have with Rakuno students. Sunday evening was the start of our second day off, we went back to the same onsen as the week before, except this time we bought the all inclusive ticket that let us in the adjacent swimming pools as well. As Mark joked (more than a few times, as you would expect), we were careful not to go through the wrong entrance wearing the wrong outfit!

The second English meal, with Hokudai students, happened at the OMF Hokkaido Centre on Monday night. We are so grateful that almost 30 students came, and many for whom it was their first fmZero event. Annie and Mark did an excellent job in highly pressured circumstances to cook a top-notch stew, and the evening was a great success with just the right buzz. Rob and Nat have been spending a lot of time at Oasa again this week, including a sleepover with the ESS on Monday night! They went to Rakuno chapel this morning, which was run by Campus Crusade for Christ who have been doing a lot of on-campus work throughout Sapporo over the last few days – we met some at Hokudai on Wednesday.

Wednesday Night English Bible Study had a surge of new people from the Hokudai ESS last night, which was again a great answer to prayer. Afterwards, we went to karaoke, which is so much better than it is in England. The Japanese students are all very good at it, so myself (Tom) butchering The Police made a slightly painful contrast. It didn’t kill the mood too much I hope! We also enjoyed the company of Ken at Wednesday Night, a friend of Richard’s from England who is half-Japanese, and was squished on Richard’s floor for a couple of nights, which was great.

This blog post had better draw to a close. The event at Minami on Friday is the biggest thing on the horizon at the moment, and then we will start planning for our last two events. In the meantime, meet ups with our student friends continue as we try to build relationships and invest time in them more. Thanks for your continued interest and prayers, hopefully we will be able to update once or twice more before we return!

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