Backseat Boys- I'm Gonna Be

Backseat Boys fever sweeping the nation of Japan....

Aaron Bitzer, Beland Huang, Timothy Jin, Brandon Jones, Shinsuke Hashimoto (in order of appearance)

A Day at Hamadera Bible Church

Today, 4 of the 7 short-term team members shared their testimonies with the Hamadera Bible Church congregation. Here we are: Tricia, Ashley, Brandon, and me.


























The person standing on the right side of us is Daisuke Okada, one of our missionaries in Japan. We call him Okada sensei ("sensei" means "teacher)... sometimes I just call him "the OS." He graduated from the Master's seminary a while back and is one of the assitant pastors at HBC. A faithful man. From his expression in the picture, he's probably enjoying his time translating my testimony into Japan, and he's probably thinking in his head, "Beland, your face is funny looking."
The following is what I shared with the HBC congregation this morning:

"Minnasan ohayoogozaimasu! (good morning everyone)

This is my forth time at HBC, so you probably thought I was going to be able to continue my testimony in Japanese…. Haha, well, no. Here it is in English.
You all know that I’m very happy to be here at HBC again, whether it be for Joy Joy 5 Days ministry or college evangelism. Thank you again for your hospitality, for your patience, and for your example of faithfulness to the work of the Lord. Some people back home ask me, why do you always go back to Japan for your short-term ministries, why don’t you go somewhere else? I tell them, “Well, it’s because I have a group of brothers and sisters in Japan that are very dear to me, and I HAVE to go visit them!” By the time of my fourth short-term trip here to HBC, I’ve already figured out that when I’m here for 2 weeks, no matter how exhausted I feel from doing “ministry,” I’m really not doing too much help….because the rest of the 50 weeks of the year, God is doing great things in His kingdom through your hands. As Okada sensei puts it, us Americans are just “the bait” for your ministry. Bait or not, I’m happy to be here again and see a lot of familiar faces.
It’s been about one year since I last saw you. In other words, I have lived the Christian life for another year since I last stood here sharing my testimony. That’s one more year of knowing the person Jesus Christ; 365 more opportunities to see God’s grace manifested in my everyday life; and a lot time to realize and be convicted of my own sin. This year was full of lessons of turning what I know into what I love. I know it is God’s grace that I was born into a missionaries family, I know I do not deserve to have come to Jesus as my Savior and Lord at a young age, but does seeing the gospel in my life in the past and present translate into a deeper love for Christ? This is a great challenge for me: it’s been a year, do I love God more?....the God that I’ve been getting to know more of. I can tell you all these cool things I’m learning in my New Testament Greek studies; I can tell you how amazing of an experience it is to sit down and try to exegete a passage with group of guys and finally figure out the Word meant after hours of study…but if I can’t burst out and tell you of my genuine love for my Savior, whether in the U.S. or in Japan, my ministry is at best hypocritical.

This year, God showed me a lot of my weaknesses. When I am not growing in my love for God, it’s usually because I am not letting what I do know for sure, that is, the truths of Scripture, to translate into a devotion in my heart. Instead, I found myself anxious over many things I do NOT know for sure: Can I finish my last quarter in college with good grades; will I have enough fun in my last quarter of college; I worry about my relationships with other people, I worry about working full time; I worry about one day supporting my own family; I worry about in what capacity the Lord is going to use me in the future, etc. Even while I am on this trip, I am tempted to worry. A couple of days before I came to Japan, I found out that I have to report to work at 8:45am the day after I get back to America. As you can see in my life and probably your own life, learning to love God through trusting the truths in His word is not as easy as.. say, just memorizing a verse. But thankfully, we have the Holy Spirit who indeed works through our knowledge of the Bible’s truth, and turns it into a love and worship of our God. The Lord dealt with and is still dealing with my weakness in worrying about the future. My prayer is that my anxiety over the unknown will transform into diligence for revealed truth; and that my knowledge of the revealed Written Word would in turn produce a love for the Incarnate Word. It’s been one year since I last told you about my Christian life, and perhaps many more years to come for me to learn this lesson well. In God’s greatest commandment to us, the first part of us that the Lord requires of us to love Him with is our hearts. This is the summary of my testimony of God’s love to me in this past year of my Christian life. While our team is here at HBC, please tell grab one of us and tell us…tell me…about your Christian life in the past year. Really! That’s why we are here! Thank you."

This is the HBC adult choir. Each and everyone of these brothers and sisters have ministered to our Japan STM team and teams past in tremendous ways. Some of them opened up their homes for us to stay in, some of them drove of two a city 2 hours away from HBC and gave us a guided tour, some of them translated our written testimonies into Japanese for everyone to read, some of these ladies cook absolutely the best Japanese food in the world.
This is me and Nathan Okada (Okada Sensei's youngest of 3 sons). The first time I came to HBC 3 years ago, this buddy wasn't even born! As you can see, Nathan is very photogenic. I told him to smile and he did! I do not know the girl on the bottom left of the picture and I don't know why she is so surprised that I'm taking a picture with a cute kid. I think I will go meet her next week.
This is the "elderly men's fellowship" singing a hymn. I sat with a few of these cool Japanese dudes during lunch. Over a bowl of the best-tasting curry in the world, Toda san, the man standing in the middle with the gray jacket told me he had been coming to HBC for about 40 years! These are very precious members of Hamadera Bible Church.
Here is the man himself, Shuji Kondo (left), aka Kondo sensei, the head pastor of Hamadera Bible Church. He faithfully studies and preaches the Word here week in and week out. Expository preaching is not popular in Japan, but the Lord is using Kondo sensei in tremendous ways to impact lives. We call him the "Japanese John MacArthur." If you're interested, please refer to an earlier post I made on this blog titled, "Double honor." Kondo sensei has all of those things I described at the end of the entry. No joke.
Here's Jun (center) and Hideki (right). Two "younger" members of HBC. I snuck up on them to take a candid picture while they were talking because all our clothes were matching. Jun, a fourth year seminary student who lives at the church, is the key Japanese staff to our ministry here and all STM teams in the past. Without him, we would have no direction, no guidance, no liaison, no ride, no food, no answers to "American" questions, no one to go to the onsen with, no in-car entertainment.... no ministry to the students. As you can see, he's very important. He faithfully works in trenches all the time, figuratively. I'm really thankful for him.
Takoyaki (octopus balls) for dinner! Osaka is famous for this unique food... I know what you're thinking, "eww..octopus?" it's good, trust me. From left to right: Tricia (you already know her), Shinsuke (visit www.xanga.com/japanstm2k7 for info), Akiko (she's a cooking teacher), Mochiko, and Leah (Master's College grad teaching English at HBC).
I'm trying to flip this giant seafood pancake thing called Okonomiyaki...with Tim's help, we eventually flipped it and finished cooking it. Then we tried to be little creative with the sauce....

There you have it. A day at Hamadera Bible Church. I posted these pictures for your impression so that you can know who you're praying for.... please pray for the spiritual growth of HBC. Japan is a very dry land.... yet our God reigns sovereignly in Japan. Pray for more workers to be sent into the harvest.