From the Midwest and Around the World

The Saturday of our departure arrived and about mid-morning, it was discovered that our flight had been delayed. So with a bit of scrambling from our group leader and the travel agent, we got a later flight. Instead of flying from Indy --> DC -->  Frankfurt -->  Beirut, we went through Chicago and London instead.  So we boarded the tiny regional jet to Chicago. Once there, we had a long layover before departure for Heathrow, so the small eight-member team enjoyed a short break before the eight-hour flight. I took two laps and took in the many languages at this International Airport.  Finally, the flight was called and we all boarded the plane for the long-haul flight. As I settled in to journal and flip through the 5 movies that were available, I considered the prayer for today in "Seeking God's Face," based on the Heidelberg Catechism: "Captain of my life, help me grasp the cosmic battle that rages in my heart and throughout the world. I'm in a ...

Since my personal Bible is a bit too heavy to carry on the flight, I'm taking "Seeking God's Face," which is a year-long Biblical prayer devotional in the Reformed tradition. I got it when I was a student at Calvin College. To be quite honest, I have not been very diligent with a daily (or at least every other day) prayer and Bible reading time and since journaling is sort of required for this mission trip I decided to integrate it with a short and sweet devotional as well.... Gel Pens, journal, and small (carry-on friendly) Journal! You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light. with your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall. (2 Samuel 22:29-30) The verse above was how the devotional invited me into God's Word. Sometimes you don't realize how thirsty you are for God until he leads you to the Water. This bit of encouragement as well as wisdom caught me off guard. In this world where there is so much suffer...

   Let's talk about fortunes! At Japanese temples and shrines, there are little boxes, like so:     Inside are sticks with numbers written on the end. To get one's fortune, you shake the box and then hold the box until a stick comes out from the hole. You read the number and grab a piece of paper with that number on it (some temples even have vending machines which do this). This whole process and the paper you get are omikuji. On each paper (which is different depending on the number), there is a certain degree of blessing: all the way from amazing blessing to horrible curse. The two times that I've done it, I've never gotten a curse. In Kyoto, I did a koimikuji (love omikuji). I got a "future blessing" for that. I won't tell you the whole thing, but for me, the "key to good luck" is reading...so I think I'm fine for now. The second time I did the omikuji was in Tokyo at that Asakusa Temple. I got "Regular fortune." Luckily th...

     Only two classes on the beautiful Wednesday...Religion and Japanese (both classes taught by representatives of the Asian continent). In Religion (Prophets), I found to my dismay that I had to manually copy perhaps 100+ pages (after the tenth copy, they all blur together) of articles that would be supplementary reading in addition to the text. A bit of my heart died with each fallen tree...and I now have a deeper understanding of "The Giving Tree." Despite this paper-wasting, the professor seems demanding (in a good way), funny (in a healthily irreverent way), and easy to understand (wonderful images and metaphors). Hopefully the rest of the semester will represent what the first day showed.      I am in fourth year college Japanese (at Calvin, it is JAPN-311). In comparison to last year, there is more of an emphasis on individual learning. While we learn grammar and vocab as a class, we also have individual "themes" on which we will work through durin...