HIIII!
We are back in the States, however, we still have a few days worth of updates on our trip to Japan!
Picking up where we last left off, we had dinner with Tami-chan and Higuchi-kun's friends. The next day Eric planned for us, the team, Tami-chan, Kat and Ash, to have a group exercise before we were going to have dinner with Kenta, Takashi's friend.
We started out in separate groups. Our challenge was to collaborate to form a short Gospel explanation that would be understood by a young child using only illustrations and allegories. We couldn't use standard Christian terms. It was a challenge for sure! A few minutes into the exercise, Eric had us all join together to construct a cooperative compilation of the Gospel.
The exercise became more difficult than we had anticipated. Only a few people were participating, and they were deciding amongst themselves which aspect of the Gospel to emphasize using which story. Then, Eric ensured fuller participation by asking the people participating to sit down and the people not participating to stand. Although separately groups were able to form in a few minutes a Gospel presentation, it took an extra hour or so for us as one whole group to form a Gospel presentation.
Upon reflection, we realized that there was a lot of miscommunication on who the audience specifically was, on whether there should be a leader of the discussion, and on who would be the leader. We were trying to decide which story to stick with, but metaphors and examples of the Gospel are innately imperfect and could not extend to explain the full Gospel. Some were discouraged when their idea was determined unnecessary, while others pushed for their idea to make it onto the board. The exercise was meant to test our ability to work together to share the Gospel, which had been our entire purpose for the trip, and we as a team needed a progress report. We worked united as a team, but we could still excel more. We realized that we needed to communicate more thoroughly, be supportive of each other, find ways to be helpful if that meant during our evangelism sharing the burden of conversation, or praying for the conversation to go well.
We are back in the States, however, we still have a few days worth of updates on our trip to Japan!
Picking up where we last left off, we had dinner with Tami-chan and Higuchi-kun's friends. The next day Eric planned for us, the team, Tami-chan, Kat and Ash, to have a group exercise before we were going to have dinner with Kenta, Takashi's friend.
We started out in separate groups. Our challenge was to collaborate to form a short Gospel explanation that would be understood by a young child using only illustrations and allegories. We couldn't use standard Christian terms. It was a challenge for sure! A few minutes into the exercise, Eric had us all join together to construct a cooperative compilation of the Gospel.
The exercise became more difficult than we had anticipated. Only a few people were participating, and they were deciding amongst themselves which aspect of the Gospel to emphasize using which story. Then, Eric ensured fuller participation by asking the people participating to sit down and the people not participating to stand. Although separately groups were able to form in a few minutes a Gospel presentation, it took an extra hour or so for us as one whole group to form a Gospel presentation.
Upon reflection, we realized that there was a lot of miscommunication on who the audience specifically was, on whether there should be a leader of the discussion, and on who would be the leader. We were trying to decide which story to stick with, but metaphors and examples of the Gospel are innately imperfect and could not extend to explain the full Gospel. Some were discouraged when their idea was determined unnecessary, while others pushed for their idea to make it onto the board. The exercise was meant to test our ability to work together to share the Gospel, which had been our entire purpose for the trip, and we as a team needed a progress report. We worked united as a team, but we could still excel more. We realized that we needed to communicate more thoroughly, be supportive of each other, find ways to be helpful if that meant during our evangelism sharing the burden of conversation, or praying for the conversation to go well.
Dinner with Kenta was our first application of what we learned through the exercise. He had already heard the Gospel from previous time spent with STM teams. The previous teams had not seen him recently since he was studying English abroad. We were able to talk with him about his travels and his job searching. The conversation transitioned to the Gospel through the question, "what do you think of Shinto-ism and Buddhism?" Even though Kenta was the sole receiver of attention he was kind and gracious to seriously think about his answers to the questions. When asked what the source of the world's problems, he answered man is self-centered. With that foundation the Gospel was made clear, which is definitely a praise and an answer to prayer. We finished with a fun game we recycled from our time spent with OPU students. We all had fun with that and too soon it was time to say goodbye and goodnight.
Please be praying for Kenta and for Takashi to find opportunities to follow-up with Kenta about the Gospel and his salvation.