One Week Down...

I really can't believe it. We're already more than a week into Project. That's 20%. Ack!

Things seem to be going great though. The members of different teams and people in different apartments seem to be gelling well. Speaking of, let me explain real quick how campus teams are working:

The 15 students on our Project are split into two teams. Team 1, led by Kylan and Jess, goes to Hitotsubashi- a predominantly male campus where, ironically, there is more of a Christian female presence and practically no Christian male presence- on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and Gakugei- another university fairly close-by where there is an established ministry of the "Joyful Cafe" English lunch- on Monday and Friday. Kylan and Jess are joined by Kimiyo, Andrew, Jeremy, Joe, and Josh.

Team 2, led by Matt and Emily, goes to International Christian University (ICU- seriously, they call it ICU). Don't be fooled by the name- even though there is a chapel service (non-mandatory) and an occasional worship event, the vaaaaaaaast majority of students and staff have no Christian affiliation. They're at ICU on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. On Monday and Wednesday, they are at Gaidai (Tokyo University for Foreign Language Studies)- a more sensitive campus where they have to be pretty careful about how much attention they are drawing to themselves. Amy, Traci, Jack, Kyle, Sammy and Tim are also on this team.

Both teams have had some cool things happen in their first week on campus. On Team 1, Jeremy from Montana State, who played Lacrosse for his school, met the Lacrosse team at Hitotsubashi and even got to play with them for a while! What a great "in"! Team 2 got to meet a guy at Gaidai who is not a Christian but Matt got to invite him to Student Impact (JapanCCC's Campus Ministry- our "Cru") on Thursday night, where he got to watch people worship, hear a great talk on Christ's love, and have the Gospel shared with him by Kylan.

Besides these, there have been a lot of little stories about great conversations and fun friendships developing with Japanese students. It's really exciting. It's been fun being on the Director side of things, where though it's a bit of a bummer that I don't necessarily get to experience these stories too much myself, I get to work with Heather to help make this happen for our team, and encourage them as they experience hardcore, full-time ministry for the first time (for many of them).

OH! I wanted to ask you all to pray for a few people:
- JCCC Staff. They are full-time missionaries in a country where next to no one is Christian, so I'm sure it gets insanely lonely. But they are so on fire! I don't know how they do it, especially with practically no support base. They are wonderful people who have a passion for serving the Lord, and they encourage me. Please pray that they would be encouraged by our time here, and that those who are not at full support would reach their goal soon.
- Scott and Jen Thomson. Scott is the STINT (Short Term INTernational- CCC interns/staff who go overseas for a year or two) team leader. He has been the liaison for me/Heather with the JCCC staff and has been enormously helpful. He and Jen have really reached out to me and Heather to encourage us, and it's been such a blessing! Please pray blessings on them, that they would wrap up the year well (they go back to the US in July), and that they would find great fruit when they move on to be Campus Directors at UConn this next year.

K, I think that's it. Sorry there are no pictures on this post. I'll put some up later this week- yesterday was a really fun tourist day when we got to see some cool places and take fun pictures, so I'll be sure to share those with y'all! :)

God is good.