Writings

Well, I've already stated that I'm not the best at writing in my blog frequently but one thing I have grown to love writing while being here is songs.
It all started this past summer. I wrote my first song EVER! called "I'll Go". The lyrics say:

Lord, I'll Go. Send me where you want me to be. Send me where you need me to be. O Lord, Yes I'll go.
To the ends of the earth, Lord, there is no where I won't go. To the lost and the weary, Lord, tell me where they are. Send me there. Lord, send me there. Lord, send me where they are.
I was lost, Lord, and you found me. You took me as I was. You paid the price for me. Lived and died for me. Thanks is not enough.

It took me almost 3 months to really show that song to anyone. And it wasn't until the beginning of this year that any large amount of people heard it. (I played it at a prayer meeting one day in February.)
I wrote 4 more songs last fall. Two of which have music to go with them and two of which do not. Although, the two that have music no one's really heard, mainly just cause I still want to tweak, them a bit.
In January I was faced with a semi-serious decision about what I would do with the rest of my time in Japan and the day I made the decision about what I was going to do I wrote one of my favorite songs called "Serve". It's lyrics say:

I will serve you, O Lord, for you alone are God. I will love you until the end of time.
For You are my Rock and Redeemer. For You are my Maker and Creator. For You alone are God.
For You set me free from darkness. You wrapped me in Your arms. You loved me and cared for me and told me I am Yours.

Then this past week I wrote two more songs. One of which doesn't have music to it, but the other does and it's become one of my favorites as well. This one is called "Your Fire" and it says:

Your fire burns deep inside. A passion that can't be tamed. Nothing and no one can ever take it away.
Your passion fills me, gives em strength to live every day. Your desires become mine, to do what you have for me, do what you will for me.
Your fire burns deep, kindling my heart every day. Your fire burns bold, giving me passion, giving me joy.
Your fire burns deep inside. Your fire it fills me up.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this as a blog this time, because for quite awhile I've been pretty nervous about showing people my songs. But I came the conclusion while writing my last song that God gave me these songs not just for me to sing them by myself but so that others can hear them. I want others to be able to sing these songs and have the words become the passions, promises, and desires of their hearts as they are mine.

Oh Brother!

So obviously I have seriously fallen behind in writing a blog every day. Well, let me fill everyone in on what all has been happening around here the past couple weeks.
The beginning of March we had a surprise birthday party for Mark. It turned out great! In New Zealand it's a big event for your 30th birthday, and since Mark couldn't be with his family this for his birthday this year we decided to throw him a huge party. His birthday isn't actually until March 18th, but we had the party on March 6th because we wanted to celebrate it with Joe G. here still.
We had it planned for after the Fuse. During Super Small Group time Debbie and I went in the back and frosted one of the cakes we had for him and then right when he thought we had to all start cleaning up we shut off the lights and came in with candles lit on the cake singing Happy Birthday! It was so much fun! He was totally surprised!!!!
The rest of the party included dinner at the LiveZone, games, a couple videos that Joe and I worked on, presents, and a great speech from Mark at the end of the evening. Joe and I created a video from people from the Fuse all wishing him a Happy Birthday and we received a couple videos from his family in NZ and Joe edited them into a shorter video so we could show that as well. It was the best surprise party ever!!!
The next week, on the 11th, Joe left for the States. That was a sad day for everyone. He is seriously missed here in Japan. On the 12th, Jeff and Becky Hrubik (Debbie's parents) came for a couple weeks. They came for the inauguration of the Noborito church which was on the 14th. On the 15th, Joey and Kirk Yamaguchi left, they were also here for the inauguration. They came from Grand Junction, CO, and stayed about two weeks.
Our newest missionary arrived on the 17th. Her name is Janine and she's planning on staying at least 3-5 years. We're so glad she got here safely. She'll be taking over a lot of the administrative jobs that I do for the Fuse. Such as the team online schedule, planning meetings, taking notes during meetings, things like that.
On the 24th, Joe Motter (Mochi) is heading to the States for 2 weeks and the next day (the 25th) Kengo is also going to the States for two weeks. He's going to see a friend's wedding and to spend some time with Joe G. So for the next two weeks we are down one guitar player and one drummer.
This week for Fuse it'll be more of an acoustic feel and next week we have a special group coming in to sing so the entire band will have a week off. It'll be nice.
Amy and I bought our tickets home. We will arrive back in the States on May 4th. We land in Chicago at 4pm and then my parents are driving me home (Amy's are driving her I'm assuming). I'm starting to get excited about coming home, but at the same time I'm not. I love Japan! In a way I can't hardly remember what it's like to live in the States anymore. It'll be so weird to drive places again and not have to ride my bike, walk, or take the train. It'll be weird living in a house with more than one other person. (I have grown to love the quiet and peacefulness....well when my bird isn't being a chatter box) It'll be weird being in rooms that are as big as my entire house. It'll be weird to not have my own house anymore. It'll be weird to understand everything everyone is saying.
But I'm excited about seeing my parents again, about seeing my brothers and sisters and all my friends. I'm excited to play on the worship team again. I'm excited to go to church where there is no need for a translation. I'm excited to be able to walk 10 minutes from my house and be in the woods.
There are so many things I'm excited for that sometimes I can't decide whether I want to stay here or go home. But the most exciting thing for me is to see where God is going to use me next. I have grown to have a deep love and passion for planting churches and helping churches raise up new leaders in the church. To see people grow in their walks with God and to see how God works.

Passover in February

Well, I'm already a day behind in my blogs, but I'll try to write one this morning and one tonight.
I'm pretty sure I've talked about Joe G. a couple times on here, and if not on here then I know I have in my newsletter a couple times. Joe is from Grand Junction, Colorado. He's 27, an amazing musician, and totally called by God to be in full time ministry when he gets home. Although, right now he's not sure where he's supposed to go for ministry. So anyone reading this, if you have any opening at your church or maybe know of a friend who does, please tell my parents and they'll let me know. Joe works the best with older high school to college age kids. But enough of advertising for Joe.
Joe also has another special thing about him, he's Jewish. He's also leaving in two weeks. ;(So since he is leaving so soon, Tim and Christine thought it would be fun to have a Passover meal all together. And that's just what we did last night. It was so cool!! It took about three and a half hours from beginning to end, but that also included dinner and a worship time afterwards.
We ate unlevened bread, bitter herbs (which was wasabi root), and many other things that I don't know how to spell because Joe said all the names in Hebrew.
So that was basically my day yesterday. In the morning I also had Japanese class. We were studying about a suffix that they put on the end of words "te". "Te" can mean many many things, but in the two examples we learned yesterday, it means to either tell some one else to do something (EX - Sit down.) or it acts like the English suffix "ing" (EX -walking). Unfortunately that's the very simplified version. There were lots of other things that went along with those two examples that just made it all confusing, but it'll just take some studying and hopefully I'll understand it.
Then in the afternoon Amy and I just hung out at Joe's place helping him get ready for the dinner that night. We also all found out that Friday is Debbie's roommate's birthday, so we planned we were going to do for her today. (It's already Friday here)
Well that about sums it all up. Hope everyone has a great night and sleeps well. God bless you all!

Pictures of Enoshima Beach from Kendra's Visit

A Beautiful Day and a Visit w/ a Friend

Today was I think one of the firs real days of spring! It was beautiful out! We were all able to walk around in tshirts all day and throughout the evening. And the best part is this weather is supposed to just continue to get better the rest of the week. Unfortunately though, there is a 95% chance of rain on Saturday, which means it'll not be so much fun walking around Machida. But that's ok, we'll still have a good time and I know God will do something great like always.
This morning I received a call from Ben Repke, a friend from Peoria. He's currently in Japan. Actuallly by the time I'm writing this he's on his way back to the States. But he was only going to be here until 4pm today, so Amy and I hurried and got ready to go meet him for lunch and to hang out.
Well, long story short (12 trains, and 3 wrong stations), it took us 3 hours to finally all meet up in the right spot. We spent the next couple hours all talking and just kinda catching up. It was good to see Ben, because he's been gone with the Navy for the past year and a half and I haven't seen him in probably a good two years.
So my current goal is to try to write a short blog each day until I leave. I'm not sure how good I'll be at it, but like I said it's my goal.
Hope everyone in the States has a great day! Miss you all and love you all too!

My Last 10 Weeks!

A lot has happened since my last blog post. I'm sorry everyone who reads this, I haven't done a great job at keeping up with writing in here on a regular basis.
If you've read my newsletter in December, you'll know that we saw 3 of our friends here in Japan become Christians. Two of them are now translators for the Fuse, and the other is one of our guitarists. We also all went snowboarding just before New Years, had an International Food Party, and a great Christmas Gospel Party.
In the January newsletter, I wrote about the Hawaiian Night and I gave a little background on the different missionaries that are on the leadership team for the Fuse. I work with an amazing group of people here.
It's currently the end of February and the Fuse has continued to grow and change. This past week we had 31 people come and 8 of those people we first timers. PRAISE GOD!!! Nearly every week we see new people coming to the Fuse and some of them are staying around and really getting involved with helping out with the Fuse.
Two specific examples of that are two girls named Midoriko and Hitomi. These girls are two girls I am now meeting with every couple weeks and hopefully soon, Hitomi will become one of our translators and Midoriko will be able to help out in another way. Both are incredibly open to the gospel.
My friend, Kendra, was also just here for the past two weeks. We had a lot of fun visiting different places around Tokyo area and just hanging out and catching up. We visited Shinjuku, Shibuya, Asakusa, Enoshima, and the old houses I took my dad to. It was great to have her here. And it was sad to see her leave.
Well, as I'm writing this I'm sadly realizing I only have about 10 weeks left here in Japan. Then I will go back to the States, back to work, back to school, etc. But I know that when I go back I don't want to settle into the "norm" and get bored. I have done/seen some amazing things while I've been here. God has blessed this ministry and our team here in more ways than I'll ever be able to say. But even though I have such a short amount of time left I don't want to waste the time I have. I want to take advantage of it and use this time to the best of my ability to praise God and to continue pressing on to see what else God has in store for the Fuse and for me. I know God has some amazing things planned and I can't wait to find out what!

Pictures from Dad's visit