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On Saturday, I had my second Japanese lesson at Kawagoe. This time round, I had a very strict 74-year old teacher who has 40 years of teaching experience (what a difference to the high school student teacher and his primary school student assistant!). She is a former radio announcer and has been trained as a Japanese language scholar. She took a group of 3 students (of whom I was one), and th...
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For the past week, I've been staying in Kawagoe with Ando-san, a very dear brother in Christ indeed. He's Japanese (obviously), but he's originally from Aichi prefecture, which is in central Honshu, I think.
He chose to move to the city of Kawagoe not too long ago, like some of his other church members, in order to reach out to the people of Kawagoe with the Gospel. They have done so, for...
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The prayer walk on Friday (22 August) was special for several reasons. For once, we have as many as 6 people (we usually have 2). We also had a sudden interest in a place with more housing, and so we took a short trip to the nearby city of Fujimino by train, instead of loitering around Kawagoe (though we did pray near some apartment blocks in Kawagoe on the way to the train station).
That...
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On Tuesday (19 August), I went for my second and last English Bible study at Asagao Church with Steve. This was a continuation of the previous lesson, which is on Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11). Pray that both Christians and non-Christians present would learn well and have faith in the fact that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and tha...
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On Monday (18 August), I went for my first Japanese lesson in Kawagoe. It was primarily to get to know more contacts in Kawagoe, though my Japanese needs some polishing up too! The best part is that the lessons are completely free!
There were so many teachers that they were able to conduct the lesson one-to-one or one-to-two. Rather amusingly, my teacher was a high school student (who volu...
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On Saturday (16 August), I went to Ikebukuro house church, and on Sunday, for Matsudo house church, both for the first time!
Ikebukuro house church (picture below) was in a karaoke room (it's very cheap!) and there were about 12 people present (with quite a few visitors, e.g. Natch & Anna joined in too). The venue changes every alternate week, the o...
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On 15 August (Friday), Daniel & I did another prayer walk in Kawagoe, but this time with Natch & Anna. This journey was a stimulation for the senses (I'll explain why), and that influenced our prayers!
We first visited a shrine dedicated to the 7 gods of fortune, where the smell of incense left a deep impression on us. It also reminded us of 2 Co...
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After nearly 3 weeks of working with the KHCN, I still don't think I can answer this question very fully, but I shall attempt to answer it to the best of my knowledge, in case some of you are wondering about this question too, and so that everything that's going on here would make more sense, hopefully.
Here are some advantages of house churches, especially in Japan:
House churches are...
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On 14 August (Thursday), we met a contact from Kawagoe for the first time (as mentioned towards the end of my previous blog entry on Kawagoe). He was introduced to an OMF worker who currently stays in Kawagoe, who in turn introduced him to us, and we thank God for answering our prayers to bring us contacts from this city in which we hope to plant a house church.
He is a businessman from a...
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On Wednesday (13 August), it was a slightly different experience going to the gym and later on, the English Talk with Natch. Natch is from England, but grew up in Japan (Sapporo) for his parents are missionaries here. He's studying in a theological college in London and specialising in world mission. He's on a 2-month trip to Japan with his wife Anna, to ge...
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