Church

On Sunday morning we had our first experience of a Japanese church meeting. Aside from the obvious linguistic differences it was not dissimilar to what we are used to: we sang songs (written out for ignorant westerners phonetically in romaji, Roman characters),　prayed, heard (or read!) a sermon (which John Taylor gave in Japanese) and shared the Lord`s supper. We also had to introduce ourselves, the three of us non-Japanese speakers being left awkwardly shuffling our feet as James followed our broken, monosyllabic offerings with about five minutes of fluid prose... We also got to hear the church financial report, which we all thoroughly enjoyed. Interestingly, these are no more or less intelligible in Japanese than in English! And afterwards we had coffee and cake, really, really good Elspeth-made cake (I may just abbreviate this in future to RGEMC for ease of repitition), while most of the men went off for a separate study.

Though the church is fairly small, only twenty or so, it has a very warm and welcoming feel. It meets at a private kindergarten centre, so the facilities are very good. A couple of individuals stood out, this one in particular might be encouraging for those in charge of international student work (where`s Woody?!) One lady, an English teacher, who studied English in Essex for a year, had been invited whilst there to a local church Bible Study, and was subsequently put in touch with the Taylors when she returned to Japan. She told us that she was not Christian yet, but intended to be one day!

Anyways, the rest of the day was spent with the Taylors doing orientation stuff and finding out a little more about what we`ll be doing while we`re here, do read the next entry and our prayer request updates for more info...

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