Church Day

Today was an exciting day! I decided to try out the little church down the street I had found. I woke up early and did stretches this morning (which is probably good since I might not have time to do them again tonight... too much homework!), and then picked out what to wear. I love going to church because it gives me an excuse to dress up! I got out all my cute skirt and blouse combinations and laid them out on my bed. I know that I tend to buy things in pale yellow and green lately, but I didn't realize how much yellow, green, and pink made up my spring wardrobe!
I decided on a flowery pink skirt, a white three-quarter length top, a pink sweater jacket, and some white leggings for warmth since it was rainy today. I wore my strappy white sandals, although I wasn't sure about whether I'd need to take them off when I went in the church or not... I took my new green flowered umbrella and felt very flowery and girly and wonderful =) ( although I realized later today that I only put one of my earrings in before I left..haha!)

When I got to the church, they were already singing some, which was nice to walk up to! Luckily, I didn't have to take my shoes off when I went in, so that means it's gonna be Cute Shoe Sunday, every sunday from here on out! XD There were ladies in the front hallway to welcome me, and they gave me a hymnal and asked if it was my first time there and I told them I was a study abroad student here for four months. They had me write down my name and go on in. Unfortunately, I failed to get a Japanese bible before I went today, and the lady and in the front hall decided it would be better for me to read my English one instead of borrowing a Japanese one since I'd be able to understand it. What I didn't understand was the name of the book that the pastor announced in the sermon, haha.. The books of the Bible will be my own personal vocabulary list to learn for next week I suppose =)

The church was very very small, probably only somewhere between 50-100 people (on the lower side I would guess), but it was packed pretty full for such a small sanctuary. I found a seat between two girls and joined in the next hymn. For some reason, I wasn't expecting the hymns to be in Japanese! I had a lot of fun singing them though, and a few of them were set to familiar hymns I already knew. I think doing that every week will definitely improve my reading skills. At some point during the service, one of the ladies from the front desk came up to me with a note asking me which country I was from, with a few potential countries written down, so I pointed to アメリカ。 =) Another lady also brought up a cough drop for a boy who had been coughing some! How nice ^^

As I've told a few people already, the rest of the service was pretty typical, and if it hadn't been all in Japanese, you wouldn't have been able to tell it was a church outside of America. I'm not sure about the denomination, since it just says Christ Church on the sign, but it seemed to be pretty basic and traditional. We sang some hymns and prayed in between, then about a 10-person choir did a song. I couldn't understand any of the sermon except the name "Paulo" (the Apostle Paul), but as I was sitting there, I had already decided that even if I couldn't understand a word of anything being said there, I was really glad to have found such a nice and warm-hearted church to go to. Everyone seems so nice and genuine there, and to know I was in a country where Christians make up less than 1% of the population, and to be lucky enough to be sitting in a room full of Christians, I felt very blessed.

After the sermon was the offering, a few more hymns, and announcements (where two high school-age looking boys said some apparently funny things). Then came a surprising moment, the pastor introduced me to the congregation! Hehe, as soon as I heard him saying "study abroad student" and "for four months" and "from America" I was thinking, "uh-oh..." and then he said "Natalie Wilson." Hehehe, I think I was supposed to stand up, but instead I just kind of awkwardly raised my hand and waved a little, and he said something else, and everyone applauded =) Then he asked me, in English, where I was from in America! So I told him Illinois, and he repeated it, and there was much head-nodding. Afterwards I felt a little embarrassed, but it was a really nice gesture and a nice feeling to know that everyone there now knew a little bit about me if they wanted to come talk to me or anything, and it made me feel very very welcome there. He introduced a few more new visitors after me (who properly stood up), and a couple groups that I think might have been new members.

After that was a closing hymn and prayer and church was over. It was a nice average length of a service I felt. Afterwards, the pastor came up and greeted me and asked me a few more questions in English, and then ran off to find so-and-so-san who could speak English (I don't think he ever found them..) while another lady came up and talked to me, and then introduced me to a woman who had graduated from Sophia University in 1987 in philosophy. We talked for a while about how if you don't use a language, it's easy to loose it, because she had studied linguistics in America for a year, and worked at an American bank in Japan for a while, but now she doesn't remember very much English. We both could agree on the feeling of being able to read and listen to that language pretty well, but not being able to speak it after not practicing for a while.

I thought I was about to leave, when another lady approached me and introduced herself and asked if I'd like to visit a small after-church class called the "family class." I'm pretty awful at declining invitations for anything, and since I didn't really have anything else to do, I went along! It was in a separate building from the church, and I did have to take my shoes off this time, aw man. The group was very small, about 13 people or so, all sitting around a table in a small room. The lady had said it was people of all ages, and I suppose that was true, but I was the youngest there by a long shot. The structure of the class seemed to be that one person in the group perhaps came up with a study topic for the day, and then the class leader lead the discussion after the topic and Bible verses were introduced.

Today's topic was "What does church mean to you?" A lot of the introduction was hard to understand, but the lady who had brought me to the class helped me find the right verses (Ephesians, the end of chapter 1), and did a lot of interpreting for me throughout the class. The discussions were a little easier to understand, but I still didn't catch a lot of it. The leader asked around to each person what church meant to them, or their history with church, and it was soo interesting to hear the responses. One girl there is an architect, and this was her first time going to church (she later asked about if the church groups do any group meals or lunches afterwards, and seemed excited to hear that they do), another girl seemed very shy and nervous at first, but then started talking about how she has recently come to understand what church means to her, and something about how people can go there and feel the awesome power of God. A younger man talked about being invited to a wedding at a fake church. I've heard about these before... it's basically a building/event location built to look like a church, and wedding couples can get married there and have a traditional Western Christian ceremony with a preist and everything (though I'm not sure he's a real preist) because they like the look and romanticism of that kind of ceremony. He described it as "a church, but not a church," and that he was surprised. It was interesting to hear about that first-hand from a Japanese person. The pastor's wife was also in the class, and she talked about having to always be at church because of her husband, and that she was surprised the first time she went, because it was a place were people were talking and laughing together, and sometimes eating together, and it was a fun place, unlike what she had imagined. She also mentioned something that I had noticed today, that when people first come to church, they're not really sure what to do, and especially with Japanese people, they're not sure how to find the right chapters and verses in the Bible or hymnal, so it can be kind of a stressful place instead of a fun place because they're worrying about what to do next or where they're supposed to be in the readings.

The very most interesting story I heard today was from a much older man. I couldn't understand anything that he said, but my interpreter just told me this: "He says he went to a church school when he was younger, but then he was in the World War, and he was not allowed to believe in another country's religion." She also said that he had just started coming back to church this year and was going to be baptized soon. I thought that was the most moving story, and I don't think I could've heard that kind of story in any other setting than the one I happened to be in today. Thinking back on it now, it gives me such a feeling of hope, that no matter what age a person might be, or what kind of things they've been through in their life or how hardened their heart might have become, God can still work in their heart and life. It was interesting thinking about how Christianity is so scarce in Japan, and that most of the people in that church probably found Jesus on their own, as opposed to being raised in church like me and so many other Christians in America, so everyone has such a unique story to tell.

I inevitably got called on to share my meaning of church with the class, so I gave the answer I had sort of been preparing in my mind. Unfortunately it didn't come out very well ^^; I think I said something like.... "In the week..not the weekend.. your heart..becomes bad...you forget about God...but on Sunday, go to church...heart becomes more good" hahaha... what an awful response. I swear I know better Japanese than that, but I wanted to express the sort of refreshing, recharging feeling I personally gain from going to church. I got a lot of encouraging head nods though, and at the end, I think to help me out, they all said a word I don't remember that must have been describing what I had just tried to express I suppose. Oh well, hehe, they all heard me tell the pastor my Japanese was so-so =)

After the class was over, the lady asked me if I wanted to join them for the lunch they have afterwards every day. I might have eaten some interesting food and heard more stories, but I decided to decline for today and see if I could meet up with any DK House friends for lunch since nobody was really around yesterday. She asked if I lived in the big building by the grade school, which I do, and she said she lived really close to there, so she gave me her home phone number, cell phone number, and name so I could contact her in case I'm ever in trouble or anything. So nice!!

The walk home was waaay colder for some reason, even though it had stopped raining. Jeannette and I decided to go to Yaoko for lunch and grocery shopping (yes, the same Yaoko I went shopping at LAST NIGHT... but all the pastries had been bought already, I needed those right?). I ended up buying a lot of instant stuff to have around for nights like last night when there was nobody to go out with so I'm not out alone at night. I already ate one, instant delicious curry and instant rice, tonight since it was too cold to go out. I also got some more chocolate snacks since Mom seemed to condone my addiction on the phone this morning...

The rest of the night I've been slowly but surely finishing my Japanese homework. I've still got a little bit left to do, a little more practicing of my readings, and maybe some studying vocab, but I figure Jen and I can maybe quiz each other on the train. I probably didn't really have time to blog this much tonight, but I had to talk about how awesome that church was! Mia invited me to the Japanese/Korean/English church she went to today, so I'll probably try that out the week after next (so my new church doesn't think I ran off!) Hopefully there will be more young people than there are in my church... why am I always drawn to churches that end up having older congregations? Haha.

Here's to 6:45 wakeup tomorrow!


P.S. Nick informed me that, as of my last post, I had written a total of 42.5 pages, single spaced, on this blog. Now accepting publishers. I keep the movie rights.