The highlight of the day by far was visiting Shiogama Bible Baptist Church. It is a good sized church by Japanese standards (which is about 25 people), and everyone was extremely friendly. The service was great and the message was awesome. It was on matthew 16:13-19. Although the entire service was in Japanese, Dave translated the sermon for me and there were several things I learned that I had never thought of. One of the main things was when it talks about the gates of Hades. Ootimo-sensei (the pastor) said that gates are for protection...and hades needs protection from the army of God. He said that we as Christians (the church) need to put on the full armor of God and join together to attack Satan. I had never thought of it that way...I had always thought of Satan attacking us to get Christians to surrender to him, but really it is God's army attacking Satan to get his people to surrender to God.
The rest of the day we spent at the celebration of hope, where I met a lady that graduated from Northwestern...small world! I didn't see the elderly man in the wheelchair today, which made me sad, but from what I could piece together, a lady sitting I few chairs down gave her life to Christ! I looked over and we made unexpected eye contact. I did what any foreigner does in unsure situations, I smiled and bowed. She did the same, and I hope she saw my joy for her.
Tomorrow as I said I go up to Tome to start rebuilding. I am unsure of the Internet situation there, so if I don't blog that's why. If so, the next blog will be Saturday night (wee hours of Saturday morning for you).
Prayer requests:
-safety tomorrow
-Shiogama b.b. church
-elderly guy in wheelchair
Thank you SO much!
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