100%!!!

Thank you to everyone, I am now 100% covered!!! :)

Not Sayonara, but Mata

Right now we are in the midst of leaving all of the wonderful people we have left this summer, and it is incredibly difficult. Please pray for us as we grieve and then re-adjust to American culture (I think for me this is going to be very, very difficult). Also, please pray for our team unity, and that we can all leave with love in our hearts and not bitterness or pain. Please pray that we will be a blessing to the staff here.

I will put pictures on here later and I will post more, but right now it's a little difficult...

Clown train?

Well, I don't have much time or energy to write a whole lot, but I just wanted to give a quick update. Sorry I won't have more pictures...

Recently, I have done a lot! It's hard to sum up everything, so starting with the weekend, we went to hanabi again, but this time in Tachikawa without the yukatas, and it was only me, Sae, Ashley, Liz and Nanako. Japanese fireworks are seriously amazing.

Tuesday was our last bible study on 1 Peter, which was really awesome. I really enjoyed sharing everything I learned from the Bible study. I want to do my best to apply what I've learned and remember it... After Bible study, I spent time with Miki for a while. We went to look at the ADORABLE puppies in the pet store nearby, and then to look for things for Oshima... Afterward was our last sports night. Because it was soccer, there weren't many girls, only Nanako and Yuki, but we had a lot of fun (and there was a huge storm nearby! As you can imagine, I watched the storm more than the soccer ball...oops...).

On Wednesday I saw Kae for the first time since March when she was at ASU to study English for 3 weeks, and we had a lot of fun! We went to Shinjuku and Ikebukuro, and got to spend a lot of time just hanging out. :) We took some purikura, as well...I thought I might share with all of you some of the pictures...:





When I went to meet Kae at the Shinjuku station, I got on one of the express trains, which turned out to be my first sandwich experience with the trains. Just when you think you can't physically fit more people on the train, the train stops at another station, and everyone waiting on the platform gets on the train, regardless of how crowded it is! I'm glad this is something I could experience in Japan...

Tomorrow morning we leave for Oshima! For this time, PLEASE pray for energy! I have gotten only a little sleep lately, and I know I also won't get very much sleep there. Please pray that our friendships will grow and deepen, and that we will all not only learn more about each other, but ourselves. Please pray for me also that I can be myself in a way that is both loving and authentic.

Coming to Him with nothing

Thank you for your prayers for strength! Miraculously, I am still able to walk after climbing to the top of Mount Fuji...haha. The soreness has worn down.

Hanabi was also wonderful. Wearing yukatas was a lot of fun, and Sae came over early to help us put ours on in good time. It was really nice to spend time with everyone, and Japanese fireworks are really cool... :)

Yesterday we had a team goodbye get-together for David since he's leaving tomorrow (Wednesday). This is I think going to be quite hard on us. David is a natural leader and incredibly essential to our team. Please pray for a safe trip home and good transition into America for him, and also for our remaining team members to each share a part of the leadership responsibility and continued unity and loving each other well. Please pray that we would also be serving each other well and perceptive to each others' needs. Please pray that God would use each of us as a provision to each other.

As for me (I just left you all on a down note with nothing else!), I'm starting to feel more comfortable with myself. Part of me still grieves over not being exactly who everyone needs me to be, but I think I'm finally starting to accept who I am in a way that I never could in America...I can accept myself in a way that God made me to be a blessing to other people and Himself rather than wanting to simply drain things out of other people for myself. If God made my personality, then He wants to develop it into His image, but still in this particular personality that He chose. I'm a little bit surprised by this revelation, because I always have tended toward simply trying to change and improve myself by becoming more extraverted or warm or smart or nerdy or not nerdy or feminine or...whatever so that I could figure out who I am and ultimately why I am here. However, I am finding it more to be the case that who I am right now is okay first, and that who I am now is who God wants to develop. Now, these are definitely not crystallized thoughts...they haven't completely sunk in yet...but maybe I've figured it out. I hope I can continue to remember this.

I read in yesterday's My Utmost For His Highest perhaps something that God really used to continue this thought process. The verse he uses as a starting point is Matthew 5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit...". Part of me doesn't really think I am poor in spirit. But, continuing to read, the first part says "Beware of thinking of our Lord as only a teacher. If Jesus Christ is only a teacher, then all He can do is frustrate me by setting a standard before me I cannot attain." After reading that, I started to realize that I tend to look to Jesus as only my teacher, asking Him to teach me and realizing that indeed, I fall chasms short of what He teaches. Sometimes I read passages in the gospels with absolute despair and frustration, thinking 'Do you really want me, Lord? I don't know if I can do this! Would you still want me if I can't do this?' What a works-based way to look at God!
Later, Chambers says "I must KNOW Jesus Christ as my Savior before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of a lofty ideal which only leads to despair. But when I am born again by the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come only to teach - He came to make me what He teaches I should be."
I can't even commentary on that...I can only let it sink in...
This is why we come to Him with nothing but our bare, poor in spirit, proud, poverty-stricken, despairing, despised, stumbling, broken, desperate, doubting, pretending selves, and give them to Him. He does not only teach us. He makes us into what He teaches.

So...here are some pictures, by the way...:
So, Ai came to visit! I was SO encouraged by her visit to hang out with me and I am so blessed by her friendship! I'm a little sad because I looked at my photos and realized we didn't have a picture together! Ack! (Ai, this is something we should do in Arizona!), but I do have a picture of her with an old Japanese house that we visited in Tama park!:


And here are pictures from Mount Fuji:
(Kevin and me)


(Aiko, Yaya and me)


(funny picture!)


(Everyone at our starting point)


(Kevin and me at the top of Mount Fuji!)


(Everyone who made it to the top!)


Hanabi!
(me, Nanako, Yuki and Sae)


(Setter girls!)


(Saaya and me)


(Nanako and me)


(Sae and me)


(Tomohito and me...inside joke)


Thank you for reading my blog!

A few prayer requests

I promise someday before the end of July I will send another email (There, I said it, now you must hold me accountable to that!)

BUT

Right now I have some prayer requests and an outline of my schedule for the weekend/next week:

Friday: English lunch table at Chuo, teaching English to the Rood's neighbors, Shaberanaito
Saturday: Drive to Mount Fuji. Climb Mount Fuji (that will take 5 hours to climb and maybe 2 or 3 to descend?). Onsen.
Sunday: Hanabi (Fireworks festival) in Yokohama (I have received word that we may be stuffed - literally - into the trains for this event. Also, we will wear yukata.)

Monday: We're having a team day of hanging out, spending time together, etc. before David leaves on Wednesday.

And then we're back to the normal schedule.

I am going to be SO. TIRED.

Please pray for energy and strength!!!

The past week

Thank you to everyone for your prayers and encouraging messages :) I don't have too much to say this week except that I am incredibly grateful for all of your support!

Here are some fun pictures from the week...:

David and Walter with XTREME Harry Potter at the train station after soccer:


Then we went to the zoo with Jun:

(back: Walter, Kev, Ashley, me front: Liz, Ross)


Kevin just loves Water Buffalo...(we name this one Boris...he controls the weather)


And of course, what would the zoo be without giant insects?
(Walter)


(me, Liz, Ashley)


(Ross, Kev, Walter, and Jun)


Also, Saaya has been helping teach me Japanese! Thus, I gave her a study break since right now finals are starting for all of the students and she had been studying for 7 hours...so we went to take some purikura..



(Saaya wrote that, not me! haha)

(oh, and the next one is kind of a long story...)


Tanoshikatta!

Anyway, please pray for the students in BEST club as these next 2 (or 3) weeks they have their finals, and they won't be as available and definitely really stressed out! Also, we are going to the fireworks festival (hanabi) next Sunday in Yokohama, and maybe the Saturday after that, too in Tachikawa. Please pray that not too many and not too few students will come to the festivals, and also that none of us will get lost!!! (ack!)

Thank you so much for your support!

Also, as I said I would be giving funding updates over the summer, I still have around $1,900 to raise, so if you would like to give, please pray about doing so!

Thank you for reading my blog!!!

This one's kind of a downer...ごめん。。。

These days life has become increasingly testing on me. At first I was able to bear it with the strength of wanting to be what others want me to be. However, as the days have worn on, my strength to be such a person has been waning as I continuously wonder why God put me here in Japan, and how in the world I could possibly deserve such an experience. I am frustrated, because I never feel like enough. I am not fun. I am not outgoing. When I am outgoing, I usually offend someone, so I'm trying to avoid that at all costs... It really sucks to be shy. I feel as though I am often hiding the real me from people, or even assuming myself that the real me is different than I perceive me to be. I need a lot of prayer for my attitude and for loving people since I've hit this slump, and it's been difficult to not allow my internal processes and feelings to affect other people.

Well, that was the downer, now here are some pictures after our trip to stay up overnight in a family restaurant in Tsukiji and then go out to buy the freshest sushi ever...:

Tokyo Tower at night


me, Nanako & Ashley at the restaurant:


me, Nanako, Ashley, Yuki, Miku, Walter & Ross at the restaurant....with coffee (and Mark sleeping in the background):


Here's how we stayed awake....Ross and Kev drank far too much coffee for their own health:


And Walter sang some crazy bunny song (I'm not sure if he knew I was recording this...muahaha):


And here's Kev and Tomohito with a live crab...:


And on Sunday, I spent the day with Miki, who is a really cool girl! We had so much fun...we ate Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (that's Miki's hometown!) and Osaka-style okonomiyaki and we were SO full....but what's okonomiyaki without the ice cream, right? So I got some melon flavored ice cream and she got green tea ice cream...mmm... :) So, then we went to purikura (sorry, I don't have any pictures of that online...only in sticker form...), which was lots of fun! And then we did some window shopping and sat in this Japanese-Italian restaurant called Saizeriya for the drink bar, and we drank some delicious tea and melon soda...mmm... :)

Here's a picture of Miki and me! (courtesy of Liz's pictures on Facebook...this is from Karaoke):


Also, this part of the post is from later today, after I wrote the first part, but I was listening to some mewithoutYou (as always...), and my iPod started to play the song "Yellow Spider", some lyrics stuck out to me that I wanted to share (I will also share the video from YouTube)

"Builder with the broken bricks
Mother to the baby chicks
You made this world to look so nice
I wonder what the next one's like...."

Recent pictures

Here are some pictures from the past week!!!

First, here's me and Ayumi at Shaberanaito:


On Saturday Liz, Ashley, Kaoru, Ikumi, Nanako, Yuki and me went to Harajuku and the Meiji temple! Here's Kaoru, me & Ikumi:


close-up!


Nanako and Yuki:


And on Tuesday night, we went to a Tokyo Giants baseball game!!! Crazy!!!
Here's all of us!:


Tomato and me!:


And some pretty flowers from my walk home from Chuo... :)



:) Thanks for looking at my pictures...

And please continue to pray for our team...we're all very tired and hitting low spots, for sure....please for more energy and continued harmony and unity!

Tsukareta....

So...I am always tired, it seems (as my title says), but! I wanted to share a little bit with all of you because I can see that so many people read my blog, so I want to keep you up to date with prayers, thus....

If you do not know if you are on my email list, please send me your email either as a comment on this blog, or email me at SuzEQ1717@yahoo.com with your email...because I would really like to send out an email update soon (I have had just such a difficult time gathering my thoughts and trying to plan out what to say!)

Well, we are continuing to bond with students through various activities....on Tuesday Kev and me found an interesting sight...."American coffee" in a vending machine along our walk....:


And we went to dinner and karaoke with Tomoko, Sae, and Miki...
(the dinner pictures didn't work out well.....so here are the karaoke pictures!)
Here's Tomoko! She is so cute and so much fun!


And here's Sae, Miki and me! They are so much fun! I really loved spending time with these girls!


A few quick prayer requests:
*Please pray that Shaberanaito tonight would be a great time of bonding with each other, and also that our discussions would just be planting seeds and stirring deep thinking...
*Please pray that I will have energy!!!!!
*I am going with a bunch of girls to Harajuku and Shibuya this Saturday, so please pray that that will be a good time of growing friendships!

Thank you so much for all of your prayers!!!

That's all I have for today....so send me your emails if I don't already have it :)

Back from Kyoto!

So, this past weekend we took an overnight 6 hour car ride to Kyoto and stayed there for the weekend sight-seeing as a big BEST club event. Thank you so much for your prayers -- I really started feeling better AND it was an amazing bonding time! The trip was a lot easier for me, because it felt like a lot of the pressure to make friends and connections and whatnot was off, and we could have fun together viewing ancient Japan. (I have an insane amount of pictures, by the way...I'm going to narrow it down the best I can...)

First, we walked through the bamboo forest...and got some great ice cream beforehand...

(Walter, Kevin, Saaya, Ashley, Liz and me at the ice cream place...)


(Ayumi and me in the bamboo forest!)


(Kev and me...same place)


(Daijo, Tomo, Ross, David & Chris play a bamboo game...)


(Chisato, me and Ikumi)


(Nanako and me)


Then we walked by a river that runs through Kyoto...
(Ken, Masashi, Ty, Mikkun, and Yasushi)


(me and Saaya)


(Kev, Ross, Tatsuya, Ashley, me and Saaya)


Then I went with the group going to Kinkakuji (It's the golden temple you see in postcards)...


(Kev and me)


(Kyle and Jennifer plus...Witthoft number 3! ^^)


(me, Saaya and Aiko)


And then we went to what I'm pretty sure was called Ryoanji (a famous temple with a rock garden)

(Saaya with the rock garden)


(the guys being weird....)


And on Sunday we went to more famous places...I'm getting tired since it takes forever to upload these pictures, so pictures are going to be more limited...
(Chisato and me)


(some of the guys)




(Aiko and me with some pretty flowers...)


So...picture time is over...and I actually have things to do, so I can't write too much...but maybe tomorrow :)

またね！