Day 4

Hi all, this is Lucy. We had such a blessed day! It started off with splitting us into two teams with one team of five sent to help with VBS and the other team stayed back to take the opportunity to refresh themselves at home to read the Word, worship, do laundry, and help prep for the Wednesday BBQ. I was with the group at home and trust me it was so refreshing to be able to slow down a little, spend some time with the Lord, and fellowship with part of the team. At around noon, we met the other half of the group at the mall for lunch. Yes...the mall! The food court in Japan is nothing like what we're used to in the States. The choices of the eateries are amazing and you almost can't go wrong with anything you pick. The chose the Korean Bibimbap dish for the second day in a row.

We later headed off to the cafe in Ishinomaki to hand out flyers for tonight's live music and Peggy and I   were paired up to hit the train station. Tim taught all of us some mad Japanese skills yesterday and by God's grace we actually retained them and headed out to the streets.  One of the phrases we learned was 'A Toe De Ne', which means 'See you later'. It's funny, however, what the heat and hunger can do to you in about an hour or so outside. I was flyering with Peggy at the convenient store and after a while I noticed that her 'A Toe De Ne' eventually became 'A Ter Dinner'! It was definitely time to call it in :)

The live music outreach was amazing! We wanted to create a causal atmosphere where people could come and hang out, listen to the music, and absorb the lyrics of the music and the company of Christians. We had a mixture of regulars and new folks who came. We even met a couple who happened to have stumbled in as they were passing us by. They saw us through the windows and walked in to see what was going on. We also had middle school students to older men and women. The whole night I chatted with my broken Japanese and my Japanese Translator app from my smartphone :) They were all so gracious to our limited speech and hand gestures and they seemed to really enjoy themselves in our company. As for the live music, we had Pastor Aaron/Lily and headlining was Tim. He performed some Japanese Christian rap from his album which blew us all away! Did I mention he was a Caucasian guy originally from So-Cal? But even more neat is that the Gospel and the goodness of the Lord was being preached through the music.