Hi friends!

Sorry it's taken me a while to finally update about my trip! Briefing at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa was crazy, and the first week here in Tokyo was just as much a flurry of trying to get a good sleeping pattern, trying to find a way to get a consistent hold of interent, and getting in to a rhythm of what our days will look like in Tokyo. But I finished my first week here and have lots to tell! I have a Pages document that I've been working on that talks about briefing and our travels and will email that out to everyone's email that I have, so if you want one and never gave me your email, send it over to me via facebook, email, or here and I'll be sure to send one your way!

This is my team and our project coaches!

Our coaches: Jeff Wood (staff at UCSB!) and Christina (she spent the past 8 years in Japan working with the Japanese Campus Crusade for Christ)

Our project leaders:

Dean and Jennie

First week in Tokyo

The first week has been fun and I don't think I realized it before, but it was a bit overwhelming too. When I first got here I was jet-lagged out of my mind, getting up at like 3am and not being able to fall back asleep. It was good though because I got to spend a lot of time with Jesus and just be in the word (bible). One of the cool things about jet-lag though is you can totally pick whatever sleeping pattern you desire! I decided I really want to be a morning person, so I've adjusted myself to going to bed around 10-11pm and getting up at 6-7am. Since our team meeting isn't until 10am each morning, I've been taking the train around Tokyo, exploring the different places, and just spending time with Jesus. It's honestly has been really refreshing. I even got to go running yesterday. 40 mins in Mitaka. It was crazy seeing all these Japanese people going to work and school, it was going to class on campus at UCSB at the busiest time of the day only magnified by like 1000 and there are cars thrown in the mix.

Besides those little fun adventures, our team has been spending a good deal of time in Waseda University. My experience at Waseda has been encouraging and discouraging, exciting and scary, but above all else it's been amazing to see how God moves and works. For me, the first few days were hard, trying to meet people, but the last two days (thurs and fri) were much more encouraging.

On Thursday, Christine and I met this girl and guy, Lam and Kao at lunch in the cafeteria. They were just super friendly and nice. Kao, he lived in England for 6 years so he's this Japanese guy with a british accent, cool much? Christine and I also met this girl Ayumi and we practically just hung out with her for a few hours. We talked about Japanese culture, American culture, our lives, and I even got to share how the gospel of Jesus has affected my life which was really awesome. Praise the Lord for sweet conversations. But she also showed us around Waseda the town which was fun. We went to this shinto shrine which was really interesting and pretty, so that was awesome. Cool thing is too, next week we're going hang out with her again meet some of her friends.

On Friday, Dean and I went out around campus and met a couple of guys who were pretty cool and open. We talked about all sorts of things from basketball to what they wanted to do when they graduate to religion. One of the guys we met was actually really interested in Christianity, so hopefully we're going to meet up with him again next Friday and share with the Gospel of Jesus.

One thing I learned about Japanese students at Waseda, was that most people have pretty positive view of Christianity, but are reserved or apathetic towards all religion in general because of all the recent cults in Japan. Also most Japanese grow up with many buddhist and shinto customs and do them just because it's tradition. Yet many do things like pray and burn incents in hopes of changing their lives.

Pray that:

- students and their lives, that God would show up in miraculous ways

- we would continue to build good relationships with students

- continued team unity

- our team individually would be growing closer to and falling more in love with Jesus each day