30 Months in Japan: August 2014

From one of the games we played.

It's hot and sticky outside, and I'm finished grading the 17 book reports and 25 essays I need to do before school starts again, and that means summer adventure time is here! I love my job, my students, and my church, but it's time for a break, I think. There will be long accounts and lots of photos of said adventures in the next couple of months.

One thing that I was working on more or less constantly after classes officially ended in mid-July is Luther's annual English Summer Camp. I was the coordinator this year, a job I was thrilled to take on. For me, summer isn't complete without camp, whether it's in redwood forests of California or in the mountains of Aso. This year was, of course, the latter.

Preparing for bottle rocket launch.

We were blessed this year with three wonderful native English counselors: Brent and two former J-3s that have lived in Kumamoto for years, a married couple. Together, along with two Japanese English teachers, we took 35 Japanese tenth-graders (and their longsuffering, non-English-speaking) homeroom teacher to SPACE!, where we guided each other through asteroid fields (blindfolded, and in English), built bottle rockets (according to English directions), and, of course, roasted marshmallows over a campfire to make s'mores (in... space?). The kids got to flex their English muscles, eat enough chocolate to give themselves stomachaches, and learn how to shout, "3! 2! 1! BLASTOFF!"; and the counselors got to watch them play Twister and teach them how to sing the Luther High School version of "Country Roads" ("Almost heaven / Kumamoto / Aso Mountain / Shirakawa River"). Good times all around.

'Cause he's the beeest! (Whoo!) J-E-S-U-S!

I've been here for over a year-and-a-half now, but I feel like every day I learn something new about the perception of Christianity in Japan. As Luther High School first-years, these students go to chapel every morning and have a mandatory Bible class, but when it was time to teach them the blues call-and-response "Jesus Loves Me," I found out they'd never even heard the original--even the Japanese original (Shu wa-re wo a-i-su). The concept of a god unconditionally loving you is pretty far removed from Japanese religious thought, which nowadays manifests itself largely in ceremony, tradition, and superstition, if at all. Most of my students express an interest in Christianity for what the Bible has to say about life, for the importance of prayer, and for the hope of living better and more generously; not so much about the Son of God who lived, died and rose again to reconcile us with the Father. To be fair, the magnitude surprises me sometimes. It almost felt futile, teaching them to sing "Jesus loves me" and racking my brain for a way to tangibly explain it to them. How can these kids know the love of Jesus if they never feel it for themselves?

If anything, this job has taught me just how useless I really am, which seems ironic, considering that officially I'm a missionary. I was so thankful to have the counselors that we did. The married couple has a love for Jesus and each other that shines through everything they do, and they were a constant inspiration to me. They helped remind me that God works in ways we can't even see. So often I feel like a failure as a missionary, but it's times like that when I need to remember that I'm only here because God's letting me tag along. I always have been, always am, and always will be dependent on His grace, whether I have a religious job title or not. My love is fickle--a rumbling stomach or a late night at work can make it all but disappear. Jesus' love? Now that's forever.

Please keep these wonderful kids in your prayers!