Japan Short-Term Ministry 2007 Picture Update #1

Hello everyone, here are some pictures from my first 2 days in Osaka. enjoy!














Here is the team sitting inside LAX. From left to right: Timothy Jin (team leader), Tricia Lam, Deborah Wong, Ashley Louie, Priscilla Chang, Brandon Jones, and Beland Huang (that's me).

there's a secret to this picture... can you see it?

Yes. I am actually not sitting on the chair!!

Long story short. We were supposed to take a flight from LAX to SFO to catch a 12:33pm flight to Osaka. However, due to a "disappeared" flight and a delay, we arrived in SFO at 12:45pm, just in time to sprint across the airport terminal to see our plane glide away from gate 96. (the name of the airline company shall remain unrevealed......)
Yeap, there goes our ride our Osaka mission trip.... what are we gonna do now???



This is me praising God with my passport and boarding pass in hand. After standing in front of the United Airlines (oops, did i say that??) counter for 2.5 hours begging the service rep for any possible way to get to Asia, the supervisor finally showed up and decided to give us seats on the 8 o'clock flight to Shanghai. From there we would be able to catch a connection flight to Osaka. The problem is, the Chinese government doesn't like people who don't have a visa to stay around too long, so we weren't sure if we were going to get into any trouble. But as you can see, I was pretty ecstatic nontheless.





















We arrived in Shanghai safely and we did not get in trouble with the Chinese government... our flight to Osaka was set to leave 8 hours after our arrival, so we all got free hotel rooms to rest in for about 4 hours.


I told everyone to look Chinese in this picture....then I realized there was only one person who wasn't Chinese.... the rest of the team seemed to not have too much trouble figuring out what I meant by "acting Chinese."



Yes, we arrived in Shanghai safely, but I was still pretty confused as to why I was there.... there I am again, holding my passport and scratching my head.

As little as I saw, Shanghai was a pretty cool city. It was like Taipei (the city I grew up in) except everything was written in simplified Chinese and people spoke in slightly different accents. This was my first time stepping on mainland China soil.









Jesus said that if we drink from the Living Water, we will never thirst again. But I guess they have Saving Water in Shanghai.















A bird's eye view of the beautiful western Japan.

It looks like I'm riding in a World War II Japanese fighter jet, but it's not... It's just a Boeing 767-300 of Japan Airlines, a MUCH better airline company than the aforementioned.


Two hours after our arrival in Osaka, we've already met our first group of unbelieving college students, here are two of them.

Left to right: Ashley, Kazuma, Hiroshi, Deborah

Kazuma and Hiroshi are both engineering students (shout out to Steve Tu) at Osaka Prefecture University, which we will be visiting on Tuesdays and Thursdays whil we're here.
















Being a Christian in Japan often comes with a social stigma: you subtly become a "westernized social outcast." It's pretty big step for these college students to even come inside a church to attend an event..... such as our food-tasting game.

we had a very fun afternoon playing games and getting to know the students.

my "mystery food" was a mix of ketchup, kimchi, chocolate, and taco-flavored Doritos. (sounds like things my roommates like to eat)

This is the Sunday morning worship service of Hamadera Bible Church. Pastor Kondo is the Senior pastor and missionary at HBC. He's really cool. They call him the "Japanese John MacArthur."














During lunch, each of our team members were able to have some fellowship with HBC members.

here's Tim talking to two very sweet elderly ladies.





here are the team girls hanging out with the church's girls.... most of them are in jr. high or high school.










after 2 days without her luggage (because United left her bag in SF), Priscilla is pretty happy she can now wear her own clothes :)


























Me, Brandon (the non-Asian dude) and some of the church's young guys. It's always a highlight for me to see them in the summer.
On Sunday night, the team guys and the church's guys had a guys' night out at the bowling alley while the girls stayed at church for a cooking competition. It was a very fun night and it helped build our relationship with the church's believers, who will be the people continuing the ministry with unbelieving college students long after our team is gone.

This is the special Mario Kart arcade game at the bowling alley. It takes a picture of you and puts your face in place of the characters'. Yoshi and I won first place in this race!



Who else besides Japanese people would think of wearing bowling pin suits while you bowl???


I think Tim and I look pretty cool in them.














Tonight, I set my personal record of 170 points.... must be the suit... it gives you powers to get turkeys.






















suddenly, I became very afraid of bowling balls... must be the suit...



For dinner, 16 guys went to Rotating Sushi... you can imagine the amount of raw fish being consumed.


In this picture, I am eating a piece of horse sashimi... i.e. raw horse. yes, the kind of horse you ride on. (it didn't taste that great)

Momo(right), the sound guy at HBC, is unimpressed by horse sashimi... he's probably thinking, "i eat it all the time!"















Me and one of the missionary kids, Hikari Mortimer. His name means "light" in Japanese, and he has 4 other brothers with the names, Truth, Faith, Hope, and Word. pretty awesome huh?

That's me updating you in our Japanese-style missionary room. Stay tuned for more updates this week of our ministry time on college/high school campuses!!

Thanks for your prayers, keep em going!