Friday April 29, 2011 Praise and Pizza

Rode the train with Brent and Sandy to Okayama for an area-wide praise service. Rare treat since Christians are so few and far between. Groups from several churches shared praise songs in a variety of styles in a very nice community center/theater. The entire sloping array of stairs and 500 seats was built to retract against the wall. I wonder what my son Daniel (box office manager) would think about that. I kept asking if I could push the button. After a break we had congregational praise time, with songs all in Japanese of course. Some I’d heard in English such as “Your Love Makes Me Sing,” and “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us.”

But one song, about the woman at the well, which Brent translated a bit of for me, was especially moving. “I was tired of life, but you waited for me as long as it took for me to find you,” or something like that.

Then the speaker was a minister, but was nationally known as the developer of a suicide helpline network, where they would actually go to be with people considering suicide. It was a challenge to hear that if you’re waiting for a way to serve, there are people all around you in despair that you may be put there to help.

Dinner with Scott and Maki Morishita-Chadwick in Kurashiki with American-style pizza and soggy fries and tiny brownies the size of your thumb joint

(but all very moishi—yummy). Their home was next to the recreation trail lined with Sakura (cherry blossoms) that had bloomed two weeks ago here even though they are just now blooming in the north.

Read Jennifer Huddleston’s news about the Be One Team. They had helped a 76-year-old woman who had been trying to clean out her house my herself and then they prayed with her. I really missed being there.

Did I mention that there are no stalled cars on the highways here (extensive and expensive bi-annual inspections)?

Did I mention that I never saw an accident on the highways (except for possibly one single car accident—it's very difficult to get a driver’s liscense)?

Almost no private airplanes at all.

Read a blog thread I found on my son-in-law Joel’s buzz. It was all from 2 days after the quake and the responses carried a variety of strong viewpoints, but two things stood out:
1) The arguments mostly missed the real-life stories of needs and workers on the ground, and
2) Some people have way too much time on their hands.