G.R.I.T.

Greetings and salutations (from Misti Nichols)!!

I decided to not start off with ohayo-gozaimas, konnichiwa, or
konbanwa cause I figure others will! So, greetings and salutations it is!
I am currently at Bill and Becky Petite`s home in Aira. My flight
from Chicago left at 8:15 Thurs. morning; I flew to Dallas, in Dallas
met Joel and flew to Osaka. After a little more than thirteen hours of
smooth flying we reached the Osaka-Kansai Airport. I thought the flight
seemed really short. Joel thought it was really long...interesting,
huh. Anyway, we called our contacts in Osaka (Paul and Melissa Ewing)
and then boarded a bus for the forty-five minute ride to where we were
being picked up. We spent the night with the Ewing family. They have
three beautiful boys!! It was so much fun playing with them and asking
Paul and Melissa lots of questions!Yakisoba was dinnner. Oishii
oishii. We played the game Aggravation and I started falling asleep.
It was 9:00 pm. Yay jet lag. The next morning I woke up at 1:30, 2:30,
and 4 (when I stayed awake). Paul took us to the bus and we bid him
(and he us) a fare adieu. Our flight to Kagoshima went well. I slept
for most of it! When we got to Kagoshima I wasn`t sure if Bill and
Becky would remember to pick us up, so I was so incredibly thankful when
I looked out the glass sliding doors separating the luggage claim from
the world and saw two tall white women (aka Becky and Danielle Petite).
They (and Bill) remembered us!! They took us to lunch at a popular
sushi restaurant. Oh man! I don`t even know what kind of sushi I had,
but it was good. I also tried fried squid legs, yummy!!
After we ate we went to their home and began to get ready for the
evening. They had Voice of Hope practice that night and time of
fellowship, so us girls made potato salad and cookies and the guys went
to the church and moved a container of wood! It was a lot of fun trying
to communicate with the women at the church using what very very little
Japanese I know and what little English they know. It was a learning
experience!
Sunday, Joel and I went to English class with Becky and practiced
conversations with the students. In church we sat with her in the office
while she translated the sermon. After church was a potluck. Wow. I
had some salad that was amazing! Since I don't know Japanese I played a
lot of games with the kids and teens. A bunch of us went outside and
started playing volleyball and then soccer. It is hard to trap and/or
kick a ball in a skirt. Anyway, later that night Bill and Becky had a
staff meeting so Danielle, Miyuki, Takuyo, Musafami, Joel and I went to
the onsen. Folks, I have had my first experience with a public bath and
let me tell you, it is wonderful. It really is quite relaxing.
Today was the Petite's day off so they took us to a variety of
places. We spent a far amount of time in the car and during that time I
was able to ask a lot of questions. We rode bikes, visited Bonotsu,
then went for a drive down a rode the Petite's had never been on before
and ended up finding a Phillipino memorial for Japanese soldiers. The
memorial was extremely interesting. We then went to a doctor's office.
Joel got sick. :( It was quite sad.
So it is Monday night. It seems like I have been in Japan for a
really long time but it has only been a couple of days. I've learned a
lot even in the short time I've been here-about Japan, her culture and
people, myself, and others...and I have so much more to learn.
Yesterday Becky and I were talking about some of the reasons the church
attendance has declined and she cited sports or school activities as one
of them because parents allow their children to be involved in them on
Sundays instead of going to church. Later that night I was reading in
Proverbs and saw this verse: "The way of the wicked is like darkness;
they do not know over what they stumble." Prov. 4:19 NAS I started
thinking that sports and the school activities become stumbling blocks
in people's lives blinding them to what they should be doing or how they
should be living. It goes beyond sports and stuff like that though, we
all have areas in our lives that we are stumbling over blindly. For
Japanese a big one is ancestor worship. It is so engrained into their
culture that when they become Christians they almost give up their
Japanese-ness(?). Becky told us a story about a girl. When she told
her mom she was a Christian and wanted to be baptized her mom asked,
"who will worship me?" How sad! Culture blinds them to the truth! It
makes me wonder what is blinding me to what God wants for my life.
Anyway, thanks for reading this and have a wonderful day living in
the love of our Lord!
Misti

posted by Norman @ 10:10 PM