Pictorial characters normally can be a challenge, but if you really want to test your skills, try doing it while whizzing down the highway at 55 MPH. Here in Japan, the local roads (i.e. state routes) and national roads (i.e. US routes) have numbers like their North American counterparts. However, the interstates are named, and – instead of using the north, south, east, and west – are designated as ascending (going toward Tokyo) or descending (going away from Tokyo). This past week, Colby and I, and another Christar worker, took a 12-hour drive toward Tokyo, as we headed to Shizuoka Prefecture for the Church Planting Institute conference.

We left at 9:30 PM on Tuesday night, drove through the night, and arrived at the conference center at 8:30 AM Wednesday morning. The reason for this overnight trip was not what you might guess. Normally, travel on the expressways is quite expensive here in Japan. The journey to Shizuoka would normally cost around $150 one-way. Like many states in the US, Japan has an automated toll collection system (like EZ Pass) and one of the things they have done for economic stimulus is to lower the fee on national holidays and weekends to just $10 no matter how far you travel. To get that rate, you simply have to enter or exit the expressway system on a weekend or holiday. Tuesday was a holiday, and so because we started our journey before midnight, we saved a lot of money.

Colby & I with Mt. Fuji in the background.

The Church Planting Institute (CPI) conference is held every two years and pastors and cross-cultural workers from all over Japan come for networking and to hear and present new ideas on church planting. The conference center is nestled in the mountains, in close proximity to Mt. Fuji, and so it is also a time to relax and take in some beautiful scenery.

It was a blessing to be able to be with so many people who have the same heart for reaching the Japanese with the message of the gospel.  It also was so neat to hear about the new exciting ways God is at work throughout Japan, especially when many of them are the same ways Colby and I feel God is leading us to use as we support church planting in the future. I think both of us came back home with renewed energy to continue with our Japanese study, both so we can quickly get to the place where we are able to begin working in earnest on a church plant, but also so we can have the best possible base of language in order to be as effective as possible.

We head back into our normal routine this week, with language study and English classes.  It was nice to have a change of pace from Japanese study, but we realized that we need to get back to study so we don’t start to forget all the things we are working so hard to learn!

Please pray for wisdom to know how God would have us apply all that we have learned at this conference.  Pray for wisdom as we continue to look for people to help us practice conversing in Japanese and seek to work with them as effectively as possible.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 10:01 am and is filed under Life in Cross-Cultural Ministry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.