Howdy partner, I've got a snake in my boots...

Well, for some reason, the boys like to teach Japanese people to say that. It's strange. Annnyway, this has been an EXTREMELY exciting week/end!!! Thursday night was BEST Club. It was the first week Meg could sit through it, praise the Lord for healing her stomach, just in time! E very week we have "Bible discussion, English practice"and this weekend we did "Sports, Travel" (BEST, get it?). During the Bible discussion time, Jun wanted me to share my testimony. For the second week in a row, he forgot. This week, we started talking about struggles we go through and what we turn to during those times. My story fit in perfectly, so I finally got to share it! As many of you know, I'm a bit of an independent girl; I have to question things and come to my own conclusions. If someone tells me something, I have to research it for myself. All throughout my life, I would do things to be good or right. My group of friends was the good kids, I didn't really date boys because it always caused trouble, my biggest rebellion was moving to CO for school just to prove I could do just fine away from my family. My freshman year at college, I had a lot of questions I had never really thought about before. I always thought I would grow up and be a physical therapist, get married, have kids, and live happily ever after. But my freshman year, I started doubting if that was the plan-- if that was it. My Bible study leader, Joy Teten (now Maschhoff), showed me how to live for Christ, and how you will be rewarded if you do. Later that year, I learned how to read the Bible for myself, and that started my personal relationship with God. I learned how to look in the Bible for the answers-- how to find TRUTH, facts that are absolutely, unconditionally true, especially when everyone else is giving mixed advice, selfish advice, or just stuff that isn't for me. Now I can know test and approve God's perfect will for my life; I can find the answers to my many questions, answers that will be true long after I'm gone. Pretty cool, aye? Kazu, one of the guys we met through our friend Ami, started coming to BEST Club last week and heard about the Bible for the first time. He says he still doesn't really know what it is, but the few things we've talked to him about seem true to him. After sharing my testimony, he asked if he could take the same class I took to learn that stuff. How exciting!! I had to tell him that it wasn't a class, but that I know of a few guys who would love to start checking out what the Bible says with him.

On another note... this weekend we headed off to Saga Prefecture (about 2 hrs by car) for BEST Camp. We stayed at a beautiful little center on the coast. We had a REALLY cool bbq, Japanese style (pictures to come), great many hours of different sports in their gym, and great discussions about the Bible and life and other things. Before the trip, Naoko had me help her translate "You are Special" by Max Lucado. It's a children's book, but I highly recommend it for any young person especially. That brought on some great discussion time, and we even had some one-on-one time to talk with a Japanese person. I got to talk with Shin-Young; I'm actually staying in her old room this summer (she moved out 3 days after I got here, and all her stuff is still in here), and she's crazy. I love it. She likes to pick fights and tease even though we can't understand each other. The first day when I was leaving the apartment for school, she said, "Nakanie-de", which means "don't cry". Since then we've been best buds ;) Anyway, it's so cool to see God using me. She doesn't really talk about Christ or her childhood or life to anyone here because she does a lot of things that are not accepted by CHristians (smoking, drinking, dancing, etc). It was really cool that even though Naoko, our very conservative roomie, was translating, she still opened up a ton and shared quite a bit during the "one-to-one" discussion time. By the end of the weekend, we had great fun, great bonding time, and great laughs. I made it through the whole weekend being able to run up and down the courts, jump and play games, which is quite a feat to those of you who know about my bad knees. About 45 minutes before we were supposed to be leaving, we were playing soccer and I went up against Meg, we landed, and I fell. I did something to it, and am writing this now from my bed with it propped up. Our nurse friend Megumi looked at it and put a magical cool patch on it. I guess we'll check the swelling tomorrow evening to see what to do. Praise the Lord for keeping my knees safe though! Haha don't worry, family and Michael and everyone else, God is sovereign and I'm still alive :) Really. Anyway, I'll probably wait a few days to post again because the last few have been so long. Until then, Ja Ne!