Pray for Okinawa Trip

I'll be off line for about a week. The wife and I leave early in the morning for a preaching trip to Okinawa. I'll preach five times, we'll do some sightseeing and fellowshipping with our BWM missionary family down there, and we men will go on a deep sea fishing trip.

Please pray for safety on the trip, and that I'll catch fish--both the human and wet kinds! :wavey:

 

We're back!

Hi, all. :wavey:

Thanks for praying. We had a wonderful week in Okinawa of serving God and fellowshipping with our fellow missionaries.

I preached 5 times at 3 different churches, and every service was blessed with decisions, though we were disappointed that no one was saved. The main theme of my preaching at Gushikawa BC was revival, and many made decisions to pray more, walk with God, witness to loved ones, etc. I preached on the "4 Signs of a Disciple" at another Japanese church, and that message was blessed too.

Finally, on Sunday evening I preached on God's will at the famous Maranatha BC, a church for the US military which has produced 1300 full time Christian workers over the years. God blessed the message, and about 10 came forward to kneel and pray about God's will. And by the way, I was pleased to finally meet in person MRCoon, a BB member who is leaving the military to be an assistant. Have a wonderful ministry in the States, Bro. Coon!

For fellowship, we got to eat at A&W's and a Mexican restaurant, special treats to us. Our missionary host also took us to a wonderful aquarium with the Guiness-record largest tank in the world, and the only baby shark born in captivity.

On Monday the church kindly paid my way on an all Christian deep sea fishing trip. There were four missionaries, two military guys and three kids. Matt with our board caught the biggest fish, a 25 lb. mahi (delicious!), J. D. had the most "one that got away" stories, but I was happy to have caught 3 tuna and a rainbow runner, all in the 4-6 lb. range. Hopefully I'll put some photos up on our website in the near future.

Our ship captain was "Cap'n Billy," who is a tent-making missionary (his boat is the tent) who has founded a church in Okinawa, and is a fellow Christian martial artist. Check out his site at: http://www.saltwater-fishing-okinawa.com/

 

Yes, I preach in Japanese from a Japanese outline. I thank God for that ability, along with two years full time at the prestigious Tokyo School of the Japanese Language. And of course I still study this confounded language.

A hapless missionary once wrote a poem about it:

Nihongo (Japanese)

By T. M. Paulson

​

If you would learn Nihongo, begin when you're a lad;
Pray for Methuselah's life span and the wisdom that Solomon had.
You'll need a head of hardwood and the patience of a Job;
The mighty power of Samson to carry the heavy load.
If you don't have a will of iron, and Peter's grit and go;
The zeal and fire of Paul--boy, this language will lay you low!!

 

I often thank God for the privilege of being a missionary here. :saint:

 

Su Wei, you are kidding--how could you have trouble with such a simple language as Chinese! Just learn about six thousand of those squiggly characters and you have it made! :laugh: :laugh:

Japanese is great. I only had to learn a couple thousand Chinese characters. The only problem is that in Japanese they pronouce them so many different ways--up to 20 pronunciations for the simple character "up."

I'm still scared myself after all these years, so why shouldn't they be??:tongue3:

 

As you guessed, it's not tones, as in Chinese. It is completely different pronunciations. For the character up," for example, it is: ue (up), ageru (verb for to give to someone more important), agaru (go up), joh (above, in compound), etc. This is what makes Japanese so fun to learn! Some have said that it is the hardest written language in the world. I dunno, Chinese has so many more characters.

Actually, Japanese normally has three tones: straight, rising and falling. However, unlike Chinese, missing the tones doesn't usually change the meaning of the word in Japanese, it just means you mispronounced the word! :smilewinkgrin:

 

Ha! So you remember my most infamous language blunder! :BangHead: :BangHead: