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!
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