Team members' message board - Issue 1 (Part 1)

Here's news from Hutch, Lu, Katie & Pippa! Lloyd and Lawrence have gone to bed, so I shall reserve our entries for tomorrow. Towards the end, is an absolutely random entry by Pippa, who's simply 'rare' (Northern Irish slang for 'weird').

Hi all!

Everything is going really well in Japan! We’ve had a few days of orientation workshops to help us cause minimal damage in a very different culture and are now feeling relatively settled (although I don’t think we will ever get used to jellied seaweed and other such delicacies!)

As a team we’ve all bonded really well and the music is sounding awesome. Between us we managed to represent most of the UK although we’re slightly overloaded on the Irish side of things… Lu and I are definitely in the minority! Next week we start teaching the children up in a church in Yotsakaido and are all very excited about finally getting stuck into the mission!

Thank you for all of your prayers! Please be praying that the rest of our preparation time would go well and that many seeds will be sown next week as we get amongst the children.

Hutch & Lu

Sooooo…

Our time here in Japan has been fun so far; we’ve been eating lots of weird and wonderful foods and enjoying the delights of Japanese public toilets. (They really are something special!) As Hutch said, we’re getting along well as a team I think, although we seem to have more communication issues with each other than with any Japanese people! (Northern Irish, English, Singaporean and Welsh accents do not make for the best combination!) Practicing is good, but looking forward to meeting the kids and starting the programmes now!

I’m seconding the thanks for the prayers. Our wonderful blogger Yao Yu will keep everyone updated.

Thanks

KT

Hi there everybody!

So, it’s been lots of fun so far, lots of work too of course! The songs really are sounding amazing, and we’ve found a few hidden talents along the way!! One of the funniest times we’ve had was the other night when we played this game for nearly an hour where u link words together…don’t really know how to describe it, maybe somebody else from the team can help me out there. It was just so funny ‘cause every time it came to Katie she would repeat the previous word reeeeeaalllllllllyyyyyyyyy slowly while she thought up her own, and also still, the team are having difficulties understanding me…ridiculous! I usually need an interpreter for the rest of the team, never mind into Japanese! We also just had a funny night watching a Japanese film…it was interesting…the Japanese have an interesting sense of humour, let’s just leave it at that!

Ok, so more seriously, thanks to everyone who’s been praying for us, its been a really blessed time for us, going through the songs and getting to know each other. Even when the learning of the songs has at times been frustrating, everyone has been showing incredible patience with each other and God has been with us the whole time. Studying Philippians this week, fantastic study, and we’ve all been reminded to demonstrate Christ-like humility.

So yeah, thanks again for the prayers guys, much appreciated!

Pippa xx

The Parable of the Lost Sock

So I … uh… brought back the wash…whatever, clothes from the drying/washing and I was sorting it out, and lo and behold, there was a sock missing and it was one of my really good socks from the hundred yen store, no, not good, really pretty socks, cos they are, they’re grey and pink…so.

I put my shoes on, no, delete that bit, if you type everything I say itl be really long…

After I thought about it (before I put my shoes on) I thought, the sock must have fallen out at some point between the drier and our room…sooooooo…

I put my shoes on and opened the front door to retrace my steps.

What’s that (to Lawrence)??

And you’ll never believe it, the sock…was outside the front door!

My joy abounded!

So the parable is that…(she thinks…)…is that…if you think something is missing from your life…the answer is not far away from any of us, from everyone. You just need to open the door to Christ, you need to put your shoes of faith on and take a step and open the door to Christ!

(Ta da…that’s my exciting story!)

so I was really happy…cos I found my sock, it smells nice as well…would u like to smell my sock?

This parable was dictated by Katie, it was her lost sock… it was typed by pip.