Summer 2004
The summer after my freshman year was, to put it mildly, awesome! God gave me the most amazing summer. Looking back on it I look at it in three sections. In the first section I stayed at home with my parents and two younger brothers (Victor and Ethan). I was able to hang out after school and talk with the students as they left the buildings. I had so many discipleship opportunities in the span of about a month. I already felt like my summer was going really well.
The second section was during the month of June and the beginning of July. I served as a counselor at Joy Bible Camp in the Okutama mountains. It was my 5 year as a counselor and this time I was asked to lead the counselor training as well. Like so many other times God placed me in a situation where I felt unqualified and ill-prepared. It forced me to lean heavily on God for strength, guidance and wisdom. I prayerfully put things together and the training time went very well. That summer's camp went especially well. The unity of the staff was wonderful. We had many trials that came up yet each time we responded with prayer and trust and God answered in wonderful ways. The response of the kids (from 3rd to 8th grade) was good as well. Following Joy Bible Camp I went to help at Hi-B.A. camp in Chiba-ken, near the ocean. I wanted to work as a counselor but God had another idea. He had me serve on the Grounds Crew. This turned out as the best option for me because I had tons of time to pray (for myself and for the campers) and to think. In addition I was still able to spend a lot of time with the campers during their free time. The camp itself was like non-other I have ever experienced but that would take too much to talk about. During this time I faced a very difficult decision. My love and passion for Japan had grown to such a degree and I felt so strongly that God was about to do a might work in Japan, that I did not want to return to the States for college. I remember going out at night and having a long talk with God during which I poured out my thoughts and frustrations and questions to God. I felt like God was asking me to give up Japan to Him after He had placed into in my heart. He had given me a burden for Japan and was now telling me to give it back to Him. I have never given up something that was so hard to give up. Finally I came to the point where I voiced my sacrifice to God. I committed into His hands Japan. he could choose to take it from me or give it back to me, but it was in His hands. If He wanted me to stay or return in a year, or in 5 years or ten or twenty or never, that was His choice, and I submitted myself to His will.
The summer was not yet over however. After this submission, I began asking God to help me serve Him in anyway while still in Japan that summer. He placed an idea on my heart and gave me the strength to pursue it. The third section of my summer was while I was with my family at NLA, in Nojiri, Nagano-ken. It is a missionary vacationing place with cabins and a big beautiful lake located in the mountains. I went full of joy and excitement in serving the Lord and seeing what He had already done so far that summer. The idea that God had given me was to start a prayer meeting at Nojiri. I talked with people, put up a few fliers, and announced it in church on Sunday. We met three times a week and often met for a good two to three hours! It was a wonderful time of prayer and had a whole range of ages came too (9 to 81!). There was rarely more than 10 of us but God blessed us with His presence and answered in some really neat ways. In addition I lead a youth group that had gotten started a few years earlier but had not continued. I found some others to join me and as we served and prayed we saw God bless us amazingly. By the end of August I had seen God answer so many prayers in NLA, seen so many people encouraged and strengthened and was so pumped and excited about what God was doing. All that time I had been praying about whether or not I should go back to college. I came really close to not returning, in fact there were more reasons for me to stay in Japan, but God overruled. One other highlight of the summer was how I had come to Japan with the feeling that God was about to do something big in Japan and that the time of a great turning and revival in Japan was very close. All throughout the summer I kept bumping into other people who also ahd the same feeling. It was so encouraging!
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