Easter and Golden Week

I just wrote an email to one of my favorite professors back home, and realized I should probably tell the rest of you what's going on in my life too! SO here is part of the email, plus some!

For Easter my little tiny church threw a Easter party for kids from the neighborhood, and we had 28 kids come to church for the first time! We had games, prizes and easter egg hunt, and all the goodies! I got to give the message. I dressed up like Mary Magdelene and ran into the room screaming "HE IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN! JESUS IS RISEN!...what? you don't know who Jesus is!!!???" And proceeded to tell the story from my perspective. SO FUN! The kids listened super attentively. But my pronunciation is still a little strange (I have a tendency to skip alveolar stops towards to end of words). So after I finished, all the students left saying "HE IS RISEN!" over and over with my funny pronunciation.

We had a lot of national holidays last week (the Japanese all it "Golden Week"), so I spent three days at the young adults camp at the bigger church in my city. It was super fun! Complete with great messages, scavenger hunts, skits, trips to the onsen, and even the traditional camp "grace" song before each meal. It was super fun to live in that community for three days! :D

I also spent three days in the neighboring prefecture at a rescue center for suicidal people. There are these beautiful cliff overlooking the beach that people like to jump from, and my friend's church has a sign on them that says "give us a call before you jump" (but in a lot nicer way), and they take people in and take care of them until they get healthy. We got two calls while I was there, and took in one lady in her 50s. Super sweet woman with a tragic story. I had a really nice time with my friend and getting to spend time with the 16 people they have living there right now. :) That's what the church should look like in action!!!!

I'm leading a Bible study Tuesday and preaching on Sunday cause my pastor is going to be out of town. I'm having dinner with someone everyother night of the week, and still cramming for my Japanese test I have coming up in July (which I am pretty sure I am going to fail!) Some friends (two from the states and one from Germany) are coming to my neck of the woods in the very near future, so I am getting SUPER excited to see them! YAY~!!!!

The recovery work is still dragging on in Tohoku... so please pray for everyone up there! The situation is super super super awful still. If I can get one of my friend who is there now to write something up on what things look like on the ground, I'll post it for you guys.

That's all for now! WITH LOVE!!!!! ~Michelle