Preparation Day

Today was a day of preparation for this upcoming week.

After morning walks, runs, and devotionals, we all had breakfast as a team. We had multiple meetings throughout the day to discuss event plans and divide up into 7 teams in charge of different things: kitchen, trash and laundry, PR, worship/prayer room, tidying crew, seiko prayer/planning team, and other event activities.

For lunch, some went to a soba restaurant, some went to a ramen restaurant at the train station, and another group went to a traditional restaurant with a variety of options. Lots of pointing and google translate had to make up for our lack of Japanese. :) Everyone here has been super kind and gracious to us.

In the afternoon, Cindy taught us “the conversation stack” to aid in our ability to get to know others. It’s a way to remember multiple different topics from which you can derive questions, progressively getting deeper. It was fun getting to know each other better and practicing for tomorrow. I’m sure this will help us in all of life as we build relationships and hold conversations, but especially as we head into the schools this week!

We had our first community dinner tonight! Our group plus a couple students, some church members, and a couple other ladies (who taught our meal prep group how to prepare everything) all ate temaki-zushi (hand-rolled sushi) together. It was delicious! The evening was filled with people bustling around and talking and then all sitting together and enjoying each other’s company.

One main theme right now is focusing on the Life that exists in the Kingdom of God. Life given by Him and lived for Him is truly life to the full!

Another main theme right now is prayer. It’s an essential part of the Christian life in general, and we are really trying to press into that better. We know and believe that prayer is important and powerful, so we wanna live in light of that truth. For example, we each have designated students to be praying for.

Please join us in prayer!

- Pray for our conversations with students at Seiko High School - that God will give us words to point them to Christ.

- Our devotional today was about being selfless. Pray that we will have servants hearts.

- Pray for God to bring people to the community dinners we will have the next two days as well as other events throughout the week.

Tara Billharz & Taylor Cummings