Jump on 3. 1... 2..

I am less than a week away from leaving my family and my home in Tennessee to begin the first leg of my trip to Tokyo.  It is normally my habit to spend a lot of time thinking about the things I'm going to write before I post them here, but I don't feel like I can do that this time.  I've been struggling to update because for the last month I've been trying to avoid the thoughts necessary to produce something that even passes as coherent work.

I've been bungee jumping once in my life.  I love the memory and I loved the reasons I had to do it (it's a fun story and I can tell anyone who wants to know about it), but actually doing the thing is a different beast entirely.  It was one of those crane style bungee jumps, so I had to climb a ton of stairs to get to the top, and I remember nearly running up the first 4 or 5 flights because I was so excited to jump, but as I started getting higher, closer to the end of the stairs, I started feeling a little more heavy, a little less anxious to get to the top and a little more to get back to the bottom.  At the first step of the last flight of stairs the real doubts started coming; I kept seeing images of cords splitting, of knots slipping, I couldn't help but imagine the ground rushing towards me and not being able to stop.  At a certain point I had to pretty much turn my brain off and use my eyes as cameras, nothing more than tools to record a memory that I could hold onto later, because if I tried to interpret what I was seeing myself do I wouldn't have been able to do it.

Obviously, bungee jumping is not something that is directly correspondent to moving to Japan, while I have similar feelings and I'm coping with fear in a similar way, they are very different things and the fears I have about moving to Japan are very different from the ones I had about free falling from the top of a metal crane.  There are a lot of things to be afraid of, from a more outside perspective:

I've never truly lived alone before, and in Japan I will very much be alone.  The house I'm renting a room in has space for other tenants, but there's no telling when people will live with me or for how long.  What kind of dangers are there in living independently?

I don't know Japanese.  I've been learning, but I'm pretty sure my eighteen month old nephew speaks better than I can in Japanese (and he's just now saying "bye-bye" consistently).  Languages are hard to learn, especially if they are as different as Japanese from English.

I don't know what my diet will look like.  I don't know what kinds of foods will be available or how expensive food is.  I mean, I have an idea, but it's hard to realize this sort of thing until it's happening or has happened.

I've never taught English before.  What if I can't hack it? What if I'm a bad teacher?

Even if I recognize these things as real, though, they don't really scare me.  What really scares me is the ever present, most daunting fear of all:

What if I'm not good enough for this?

What I mean is, what if I'm not right for this?  What if I'm not supposed to do this?  What if I'm wrong about all of this?  What if I'm a disappointment?  What if God doesn't want to use me the way I want him to?

These fears are the hardest to combat, these can't be settled with planning, with reasoning or through any other natural mental or emotional process.  These are the sort of spiritual questions that have to be dealt with in an unnatural manner.  I've never really understood why Jacob had to wrestle an Angel at Peniel, but I've also never really had to question it.  Please understand here that I believe that God is searchable and that discernment is important in faith.  I don't mean that I've never questioned why Jacob had to wrestle an angel, I mean that I've never questioned it's necessity.  I know that may seem like a strange and somewhat paradoxical thought process, that is, to be clueless and understanding simultaneously, but that is, I think, the only possible state when it comes to most things, but especially when it comes to theology.  It's finding the right balance of the two sides that becomes the biggest struggle, though, and right now I'm on the more helpless side of that stick.

I'm at the last flight of stairs now.  I've had enough reason, enough confirmation, encouragement, reassurances to make it this far.  I'm to the point where all I can see is the cord breaking, no matter how irrational the thought is.  I know it won't, but.  But what if it does?

I used to have this sort of mantra when I was younger and cared much less about rationale.  I used to say it to myself for practice, just to remember it, whether I needed to hear it or not:  "If you're afraid to do a thing; eff it.  Do it anyway."  Later, to sort of hone in on what I was really getting at with that mantra I started reciting 2 Timothy 1:7.  Power/Strength, Love and Sound Mind/Self Control are the ingredients for courage, the thing I fear I lack the most, and so wrestle for the most ardently.

Right now I'm running on the fumes from all of the events of the past year that have led up to what's happening in the next week combined with a steady stream of reminding myself of the spirit God has given me.  I know it's enough to get to the top of the stairs, and enough that I'll be able to jump off, eyes open, watching the pavement rush to meet me only to gently bounce back up and safely disengage, fear subsided.

I just wish that I could close my eyes and imagine that cord without it snapping under pressure.  So pray for me!

A (Not so) Brief Update

It's been a while since I've updated.  I've been meaning to, seeing as though there have been several reasons for updating both in regards to my upcoming journey and in regards to my continuing journey (that's a euphemism for life(or maybe a dysphemism, depending on how you look at journeys.))  In any case, I'll start with how things are going with Japan, and in order to get the story straight I'll start at the beginning:

About a year ago I contacted an organization that goes by the name of ITPS about travelling to Japan with their help.  My understanding at the time was that they would be in communication with schools, churches and the immigration bureau, working in my favor so that when the time came for me to leave I would have a job, a ministry and a visa.  I must give pause here because I don't want anyone reading to think that I am displeased with ITPS, on the contrary, I am more disappointed in myself.  It seems that I had fallen prey to the zeitgeist of my generation, something that I've talked to my older friends about on several occasions, and something I've done my best to fight, which is an enormous sense of entitlement.  I felt as though the steps to leaving the country should all have been taken for me, while I just waited for it to happen.  In the last six months, though, I realized that ITPS wasn't an organization that would take all the steps for me, but one that would walk alongside me as I took those steps myself.  They have been diligently praying for me, helping me gather and keep support and have supplied me with resources to learn about Japan, Japanese culture, missions and christian discipline and spirituality.  While I haven't used these resources to the extent of their full potential still, I have appreciated very much their accessibility.

In lieu of the staff at ITPS finding me a job in Japan I began to look for one for myself.  I searched for two or three months, and applied to fifteen or twenty different positions all over the country before I finally heard back from one company, the Gaba Corporation.  After extensive research into the company, the locations of their learning studios, and the nature of their employment (as well as much prayer into the situation) I decided to take a job with them.  The job I took is in northern Tokyo, though there is still the option to transfer to Osaka after a few months.  Since taking a job with Gaba, I have been contacting churches and ministries in the area near to where I'll most probably be living.  This has been the most blessed, or blessing part of the whole endeavor.  I have been finding contacts in the most unlikely places.  It seems that all of my friends have friends with friends or family who are working in a ministry or who have worked in a ministry in Japan, and they all have information and encouraging words for me.  I've met people at weddings, in restaurants and churches, and there's people I've never met at all, but have been in contact with via facebook or skype.

Right now I'm about two months out from leaving for Japan.  I visited the Japanese Consulate here in Nashville in order to receive my entrance visa, meaning that I have 90 days from today to get myself out of the US and into Japan.  My job as an English instructor starts on January 6, and I've been in communication with an apartment building to reserve a (super-cheap) dormitory-style apartment for a year.  My contract with Gaba is for one year and so is my visa, however I'm open to where God will lead me after this first year.

I appreciate all of the support that everyone has given me, both monetarily and through prayer and encouragement.  This period of waiting and wondering has been trying, but I can already see, even in the midst of it, how necessary this time was.  In the last few months I have wrestled with things that I should have been dealing with for a long time.  I have prayed in earnest, and while I am still struggling, I can see so much clearer God's plans for me and my life.  I have, for the first time in a long time, a sense of clarity and throughout the last few months (especially the last few weeks) I have had to come to a realization of my worth in Christ.  I've had to think of myself (and the people around me) in terms of ontology instead of in terms of function (thank you Dr. Thoennes!)  These are things I wouldn't have been ready to deal with outside of this special, trying time of waiting.  Thank you again, for everyone who has prayed for me.  I have been humbled by your love.

This post is already waxing prolix, so I'll end it there.  Thank you for travelling with me, and as always thank you for praying for me.

I'm going to Japan.

I don't have much time to write this, but I just wanted to update anyone keeping up with my plans for Japan.

The other day I received an email from the Gaba corporation (the one I was interviewing with) offering me a job in the Kanto region of Japan.  Kanto is where Tokyo is located.  I was hoping to go to Osaka because I have contacts with a church there, and Tokyo is a very long way from Osaka.  But, I have several friends and acquaintances that have lived and worked in this area, many of whom I trust would send me good information as to where to go to church, or the people to meet in order to be involved with several different ministry opportunities.  So after a lot of prayer and serious consideration I decided to take the job.

I'm going to Japan.

In the next few months I'm responsible to get a visa, find housing, and set my life up so that I can live on literally the other side of the world.

So pray for me!

Pottery 101

I arrived in Nashville, Tennessee earlier this evening.  No, I'm not in Japan yet.  I'm still waiting on a work visa.  Well, I'm still waiting on a job, then, once I have one of those I'll be waiting about 3 months for a visa.  In the meantime, though, I'm going to look for work while I spend time with my family in good ole TN.

I will miss my home in southern California (homes, really, as I've been wandering from house to house the last two or three months).  I'll miss my friends, as well.  I've had the privilege of getting to know many wonderful, godly people over the last five years in CA.  I've been blessed by friends pouring into my life, teaching me how to love God and walk with Christ.  In recent months these friends have been a great source of support.  One of my friends acknowledged, through that spirit of support, this sentiment:

"Oh my gosh, Robert, this truly is a trying time in your life."

My friend is right.  This is a trying time.  I think, though, with everything happening in rapid succession like it is, that I'm beyond the point of feeling tried.  For a while I felt stretched, I felt nervous to the point of exhaustion.  I was really starting to feel attacked.  Now, though, it's a little different.

I want to begin this next part by saying that I love Tennessee.  I love my families (biological and church) and my friends very much.  That's why it was so difficult to think about coming back here a month ago.  I am no closer now to getting to Japan now than I was last time I was here and asked for support.  I have nothing to show to the people who have been praying for me.  I have no progress to report.  I don't have a job still and I'm starting to lose heart for the job I interviewed for last week.  I care very much about the people here, and I don't want to be a source of disappointment for them.  It is very difficult to see coming home to Fairview as anything other than a failure at this time in my life.

Like I said earlier though, things are not as dark as they may seem.  I have what looks like naive hope or foolish optimism for the future.  I always have.  I blame my parents for teaching me that no matter what happens God will be there with me.  I've never really been afraid for the future.  For me it's always been the present, the here and now, where cowardice has shown its ugly head most frequently.  Normally I get so caught up with how crummy my current circumstances look that I forget to look at it from the bigger perspective.

I flew through a storm cloud today in the plane ride.  The thing about flying through clouds that I've always found interesting is that from the ground, and even from the air above them, or flying by next to one, clouds look so beautiful and peaceful.  When you're inside a cloud, though, your visibility is almost nothing, I could barely see the tip of the wing of our plane; all I could see was a shroud of semi-transparent gray.  It was not the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, nor was it the most peaceful, it was a storm cloud so we hit a lot of turbulence.  I sleep a lot on planes, but for some reason I was awake from before we entered the storm until after we left the clouds on the other side.  The point I'm trying to make by using the illustration of the clouds is this:  Sometimes we enter periods of time in life that look like they're going to be breezy, peaceful, even, but once we get into the thick of it we realize that maybe things aren't quite as soft and fluffy as they looked earlier.  What I realized, passing through that cloud, was that for me, it is easy to think about the other side.  You know, the return of the fluffy perspective, when you can see the sun shining on the back of the cloud you just came through.  In retrospect the gray of the inner cloud looks white, the turbulence makes shapes like faces and elephants.  It's hard to see those things from the middle, though.

This is what I started thinking about today on the plane:  How can I appreciate what God is doing with me while I pass through storm clouds?  My working theory, birthed from being stretched to a point beyond any reasonable amount of elasticity for a human, is something I'm calling the clay theory.  This is an old analogy, as old as the old testament (which is pretty stinking old).  The idea is that I can be clay.  Clay doesn't have a definitive shape.  I've been thinking of being stretched, to this point, as akin to the way a rubber band is stretched.  You pull on it, and you can make neat shapes like the Eiffel Tower, or mini slingshots, but when you quit stretching a rubber band, unless you've stretched itself too far and snap the thing, it returns to its original shape.  That's the way I've been thinking about being stretched as a person, or more specifically as a follower of Christ, but I realized that maybe I'm not being stretched and pulled just to snap back to an older form.  That's why clay is the proper analogy, or more specifically, since I've done very little work with clay, play dough.  When you stretch out play dough, or change it's shape, it doesn't snap back.  It continues to be what it is.  It doesn't snap if you change it's shape too much, it just sort of retains a new shape.

If my spiritual life and my understanding of Christ were elastic, like a rubber band, I think I would have snapped in twain by now.  I guess it is a good thing that we were already told to be like clay.  I guess now it's just a matter of letting the potter do his thing.

So Pray for me.

Interview number 2!

I'm about 15 minutes away from my second interview with the Gaba Corporation in Nagoya, Japan.  I am so nervous that I really may puke.  After this interview there is a short deliberation process and then, hopefully within the week, I'll know whether they want to hire me or not.

This job is not exactly what I was looking for to make it to Japan, it is in Nagoya, which is a one-hour, 100$ trip, each way, from Osaka, which is where the church I have previously been connected with is located.  However, they are offering to sponsor my work visa which means in just over three months I could be in the country, and the relative area of where I feel God sending me.  Not only that, but the corporation has told me that after three or four months I may transfer to one of their studios in Osaka Japan.

The other concern I have with this job is that my classes are not guaranteed.  I send the company times when I can work and they send me back a list of clients that can meet me during those times.  I am responsible to work for approx. 23 hrs/wk like this.  I'm a bit worried that I may not be able to find enough work at first, but  throughout this process, God has been teaching me the importance of trust - repeatedly showing me sparrows.  Why should I doubt his power in this?

All in all, this isn't exactly the way I thought I would be going to Japan, but then again, this journey has been nothing but outside of what I expected.  If it wasn't, how would God get all of the glory?

So Pray for me!

Will work for Christ.

Man, it has been way too long since I posted an update.  It hasn't been for lack of things going on, oh, on the contrary, there has been goings on, and it hasn't really been for lack of time (I've had plenty).  So, no excuses, I must apologize for my truancy from blogging, but I commit to post more frequently.

I just finished filling out another application for another job.  I think I've filled out more than twenty of these things in the last few days.  It is difficult to find places that will sponsor an American to come teach so late in the year, though, because the visa application process is much more arduous for US citizens than people from other English speaking nations.  I have found a few that are willing to sponsor, but I figure it's probably not a bad idea to put applications into the companies that aren't, you know, just in case.  Plus it feels like I'm doing something, which brings me to the point of the post:

God gives us work to bless us.

Ask my parents, ask my friends, I guarantee the shock of my recent revelation is jaw-dropping.  If there is one person that complains about working more than I do, I have not met them.  However, due to my current state of unemployment I have started thinking about the concept of work and productivity.  God doesn't need me to work.  He doesn't need me to do anything.  If he did then he wouldn't be self-sufficient and wouldn't be a God worthy of worship or devotion.  However, God created man to work.  I mean, look at Adam.  First thing God does after his creation is put him in the garden to work (ESV Gen. 2:15).  So I have to conclude that God gave us work as a blessing.

Now I'm just praying that God will bless me.  So Pray for me!

Lazaro, el soñador

There are two things that never cease to amaze me.  Thing number one:  How good and loving God is.  Thing number two: how shortsighted and foolish I am.

Last week I spent a few days at the house of my friends, David and John.  I always enjoy spending time over there because their father, a Cuban expat, always talks to me.  If you know me, and many of you reading do (and that is, in fact, the reason you read) you know that I love to talk.  I love ideas and I love free exchange of those ideas.  So I love being at their house.  Also, I love being around Cubans.  Always have.

During my last conversation with Mr. Gonzalez I learned about his new job (or maybe he said it was a hobby), which is to write devotions for The Gideons.  He told me about one of the devotions he had just written on Lazarus (here's the good part), paying special attention to focus on the fact that Jesus didn't come when he was called to heal Lazarus.  He didn't even make it back in time for the dead body to be prepared.  He finally came in after Lazarus died.  I saw the immediate connection between that passage of scripture and my life.  I could easily see, that day, how my situation in waiting, in a sense, for God was nothing like Lazarus's.  Even though things sometimes look dim, I thought, I'm not about to die, and even if I were, what of it.  Jesus showed up right when he was supposed to, four days "late".  I get it man, Jesus shows up when he's supposed to so that we may believe.  I know, I know.

I forgot.

I spent the majority of the day receiving bad news.  Getting a work visa to Japan is not the easiest thing to do, especially for US citizens.  I don't suggest trying it unless you absolutely have to.  It's disheartening work, too; calling every company I can find just to have them tell me systematically that they don't sponsor workers but will hire anyone who already has a visa (you have to have a company or relative sponsor you in order to get a work visa to Japan).  The three or four companies that were willing to give me sponsorship all told me that if I had called a month ago or two months ago I would be a very good candidate because they would have had time to secure a work visa before the school year starts.  A month or two ago I was still under the impression that work was going to be found for me.  It all felt so unproductive and discouraging.  I spent most of the day near-wallowing in self-pity.

But just now I remembered Lazarus.  If I die before I wake, Jesus will be glorified, and that's really the whole point of it all anyway, right?  Thinking about Lazarus makes the whole situation seem just a little less terrible.

God's timing is so much better than mine.  I don't always remember it though.

So Pray for me.

Graciously, not Gracefully.

Sometimes following God is painful.  Sometimes He makes us watch as everything we’ve known is dissembled and cast to the wind.  The Israelites knew about it.  They watched as Jerusalem was “the cauldron” and their families “the meat for the stew”.  Hosea knew about it.  All of the disciples, including Paul knew about it.  Sometimes following God hurts.  Sometimes a lot.  Sometimes almost more than we can bear.

I don’t think that it is a coincidence that so many people, friends, family, even people I’ve never met before, have been sending encouragement my way right now.  God knows what is happening and what will happen, and I believe that he has influenced the people within (and without) my life to help me through a very difficult time.

So thank you.  Thank you to Hannah, John, Justin, Patrick, Angela, my parents, the entirety of the cowboy church congregation, Maegan, Jason, James, Megumi, Tom, Dakota, Elizabeth, Sarah, Rebecca, Savannah, Kyle and everyone who has sent me encouragement.  Thank you so much.  You all are impacting my life right now more than I could possibly express through words.  Thank you very much.  I feel God’s hand and I know it is from your supplication.  Thank you all so much.

Please, continue to pray for me.

Chests and doors.

The other day I wrote about how I've been feeling discouraged.  Things aren't working the way I had hoped they would up to this point in my endeavors to serve God and the people of Japan.  My mom asked me a really insightful question the other day, that I kind of put off thinking about until (of course) I read something in Proverbs during a quiet time that brought the question back to my mind.

What she asked me was, "At what point are these things that are going wrong demonic interference, and at what point are they God closing doors?"

Initially, I pushed off the question.  Not that I didn't have an answer.  I did: God has put a passion for the people of Japan in my heart for a reason and every time I pray or read scripture I feel a level of reassurance.  I believe that these are good reasons, but maybe I'm putting too much stock into how I feel about everything.

I've been giving some thought recently to the balance of living somewhere between how I feel and what I know.  While I was thinking about it I remembered reading "Men without Chests" the first chapter from C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man.  I packed all of my books up and sent them home when I moved out of my house in Southern California a few weeks ago, but luckily someone posted the whole book online, so I was able to read through what C.S. Lewis had to say.

I hope anyone reading this has had a chance to read that book.  If you haven't, it is short, it took me less than an hour to reread the first chapter and there are only four chapters total to the entire book.  The link provided has all four chapters, please, if you have time, read or reread the book, it is worth it.  Here's a small piece from the end of "Men Without Chests" that struck me more severely:

"The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal."

Throughout the chapter C.S.Lewis refers to two grammarians who wrote a book on preparatory English for children in elementary school.  The problem Lewis has with the Grammarians is that they suggest that man would be better off ignoring sentiment altogether, rather than finding what emotions are just for which responses.

I wonder if I pay more attention to my appetite than I do my intellect.  I wonder if perhaps I let my stomach supersede my head, bypassing my chest.  Whether my head look larger, or my stomach, the result is the same, my chest is atrophied.  Maybe I should think more about what my mother told me.  Maybe these things happening aren't just interference designed to get my discouraged.  Maybe they are doors closing.

In any case it's worth thinking about, which I guess is what I need to do more of so that I don't look like the troll from the first Harry Potter movie, with a tiny head and chest and a great big belly.

So pray for me!

Hopefully the first of many

I'm currently in Seattle, Washington, watching Expedition Impossible.

I've been pretty discouraged recently about my upcoming expedition to Japan, and it's starting to look like maybe that should have been the subject for this show because it's looking more and more impossible to me each day.  From the departure date being postponed from the first week of July to the first week of August and then to MAYBE the third week of August, to trying to search for jobs on this side of the Pacific resulting in systematic interview invitations to be held "Once I arrive in Osaka."

Maybe I should backtrack here.

I'm going to Japan.

I graduated from Biola University last December.  On of the great things about going to a school dedicated to the understanding and application of God's Word is that every spring semester Biola has something called a missions conference, where, for three days, all of the students go to mandatory seminars and lectures.  Also present at missions conference every year is a three day fair for missionary organizations to come and sort of recruit students from Biola.  This is how I met Francis Wang from ITPS and started working with him and the other members of his nonprofit, volunteer-worker based, company.

Honestly, I've never felt called to be a missionary.  I don't know if I am the missionary type, if there is such a thing.  I do know, however that I am being called to Japan.  I feel as though God has been preparing me for most of my life to live and work there.  It's weird, because I've never been, and everything I hear and see is so foreign and strange, and I'm no good at picking up the language, but I feel so strongly for the people, for the culture as I've seen it so far, and for God to do so much work in the country.  History has shown that Japan is not a good place for missionaries.  I think that's okay because I'm not really going as a missionary, in a sense, but more as a follower of Christ.  I want people to see, in a sense, not to hear.

In any case, I met with the staff of ITPS, we prayed, and it was decided that they would help me get to Japan.

After a few months I found out that ITPS was working on securing a place for me to live in a church in the heart of Osaka, one of Japan's largest cities.  I would live in and serve a church called J-House (use your google translator).  I think I first heard about J-House in March.  It is now mid-July and I still don't know if I'll be living there or not.  ITPS is still working with them to figure out if I'll live there or not, and they have told me to plan like that's where I'm going.  I've been doing that and faithfully trusting that they will work everything out by the time I'm supposed to leave, but I'm starting to get anxious.  Like stomach hurt, heartburn every day kind of anxious.  It's a terrible feeling.

I won't technically be able to work in Japan for at least two months time, because of my visa status, so in the meantime I have to have some sort of funds in order to live and work at the church (an unpaid position).  ITPS suggested that since I will be working for the church during this time that I should send out support letters in order to raise the financial backing that I'll need to stay in Japan for at least three months and in order to buy a plane ticket.  They suggested at least $8,000.

So I sent out support letters, which to me was a very difficult thing to do for several reasons.  One, I have no idea where anyone lives so mailing letters is nearly impossible. Two, it is very difficult for me to ask someone to give me money, even for something like this.  Three, I just didn't know who I should send letters.

After several months of fundraising I still have less than $2000.  I have enough for a plane ticket, and that's about all.

I don't know where the rest of the money is going to come from, or if it will come at all, which adds to the whole, nausea, heartburn thing.

All I know is that every time I turn with this to God.  Every time I pray or open my Bible, or do one of my daily Bible readings on my phone everything tells me that I'm supposed to be in Japan serving God.  For example:  Yesterday I was so anxious, so sick to my stomach about what I'm going to do about money in Japan, or even what I'm going to do about money before I get there.  I prayed a short prayer and went to a daily reading program I do called "Unquestionable character".  The reading for the day was Psalm 49: 1- 20, the opening lines of the lesson involved read, "How should we feel when we experience a lack of resources?" The lesson went on, "Wisdom teaches that our financial circumstances are never an appropriate cause of fear."  I know, out of the situation it doesn't sound like as much, but yesterday, getting sick about this issue, it was extremely convicting.

All this to say:
I don't know how, but I know God will use me, and I'm dearly convinced that it will be in Japan.

So pray for me!