June 17

Today was a good day, actually great! It was also sad because it was the last day with our yellow trek team, I very thankful for this team because they were just amazing. They were always wanting to work and do ministry and always had positive attitudes and were not distracted by shopping or just being in tokyo in general. We started the day with a future intern breakfast here at the cleft, it was for those who were interested in doing the internship next summer. So after the breakfast Buddy (our M) asked kelley and I if we could take the teams back to their stations and wait for everyone else to show up because we had to call an audible because the breakfast didnt last as long as we thought it would. So we have like 6 partial teams with us and are heading to their stations. We had dropped about 3 groups off already and were switching trains and then another audible was called. Kelley didnt make it on the train.....it was the funniest thing because i was just relaxing listening to music and one of the kids comes up and taps me and says "umm the other intern didnt make, she looked so sad," good thing 1 of the 3 teams i had was my own, so i dropped them at our station and kelley met them there. After that i had to call one more audible, the teams and leaders for the last two teams were running late because we werent expected to be there as early as we were so we just stopped at the next stop which was actually one of the teams and waited for them. After about an hour one of the interns showed up to take his team, and well back aboard the train to the last station. When we arrived i had to wait about another 30 mins for their leader, but it wasnt bad at all. I enjoyed the kids, good kids. This whole process took about 3 hours when it shouldve took one haha, i knew it would definitely be a long day, especially since i was only running on 4 hours of sleep. When i arrived with my team, we started prayer walking for what we were going to do that day and then i let them do whatever kind of ministry that they wanted to do, some did arcade or coffee shop and some just continued to prayer walk. At about 4 we started 5ME or 5 minute english, as soon as they were ready to start kelley and i prayer walked for about half an hour, and when we returned 4 out of the 6 people were engaged in conversation with someone. It was an awesome sight, we continued to prayer walk and then when we got back again one of our kids brought a girl up to us and......(building suspense)...SHE ACCEPTED CHRIST! She works in the bakery right in front of where we have been doing it and has been wondering for weeks why we do it and finally came out to talk. It was amazing to see God work through our students who would most like only be sowing and planting seeds, but they got to see the harvest! When 5ME was over we met some japanese friends for a friendship party that night and just hung out with them until about 8. We then went our separate ways an took the team home and said our goodbyes. It was a sad day, but we gave their leader japanese postcards from us with thank you's in them that they can read on the plane. That is the end of my day. Good night and god bless 

June 16

Hey everyone, today was a good day. Kelley was with the our trek at TIH for orientation in the morning so i had the morning off. James and i went to walk around and just kind of chill and talk,which was so good. At about 11 James, Teron and I left to meet our trek teams. So when we met my team, i layed down the law of the next two teams which was "whatever you guys want to do is our gameplan for the next couple days" i just wanted to lead by serving them because that is how we our supposed to. So today all i did was watch from a far and gave them the chance to lead my team around by what they wanted to do. So they wanted to go to a bakery and have a little bit of a relaxing time before our day of campus ministry decided by them. I showed them this amazing bakery and they loved it and complained that i didnt show them sooner.ha. It was good. After the bakery I had them split up into teams of two to prayer walk on the way to campus as Kelley, Teron and I made our own team and stepped back and prayer walked on our own for them. It was awesome to see who would step up out of the group and lead by serving the rest. Amazing...When we arrived at campus i just let them free to meet people and they met alot, Kelley and I just sat down and wrote them notes of encouragement for their trip home because Teron had to meet with a contact so hes doing the cards now. After that Kelley and I had to meet someone for bible study which was amazing because this girl was so intrigued by the bible and had so many questions and wanted to be follow her decision in baptism ASAP! i was pumped up right then and there, but sadly we have to wait and clear it with the M's but its still no big deal. After bible study we met Teron and our trek group for dinner and at three separate times some japanese people we knew came up to us and started talking, it was awesome. We werent paying much attention or looking for anyone but god showed us today that they excited by our presence and just want to be around. It was just an uplifting night, then on top of that while I was getting ice cream at mcdonalds, my team was with kelley and teron waiting and they just told us how amazing it was to be a part of our team and how awesome it was to see gods love in us. when i heard this i was so grateful for this wonderful team. Like im not on a pedastool or anything but its always nice to hear words of encouragement everynow and then. And on top of that Teron bout made me cry by a note he had wrote me, it was so uplifting. I have felt  inadequate in my leadership but he doesnt think so. which was nice. It was a good day under god, im excited for tomorrow, my last day with the yellow trek group. peace.

LIVIN LOUD

Kyle 

Hey guys, Sorry again for the delay of blogs. We have been busy with the iwitness tea, from KS/NE the whole week, its been crazy. Things are great here, God is still doing amazing things day by day. Since i have been here, there have been 19 japanese people who have come to know christ, which is totally amazing. Im ecstatic for those new brothers and sisters.  Today was park ministry day and we had about three different teams we have been working with show up to worship with us and do some ministry. This morning after ministry we ate lunch as a group and then split up amongst the park to spread the word. Of course i went looking for someone to play soccer with, thats all i have done every sunday. Today i saw four japanese men kicking a soccer ball around so i went and joined them, but i felt like god was telling me to hold off on the gospel, like he assured me of another time to, so i did. As some teammates and KS/NE teams saw me playing they joined and our little circle increased substantially. After a while we ended up starting a game with these men and my team won, soon after i asked them to join me next week to play more and maybe that will be when i share the gospel. After that as i was walking back to our little area where alot of us were hanging out i saw Adam, one of the interns talking to a japanese man so i prayed for that appointment on the spot. Not too long later, Adam brings the man up and introduces him, then the man told me......I BELIEVE IN JESUS! it was amazing.. so we all rejoiced in that. Then soon after i got a text from my good friend Brian, he was meeting with a man that has been studying the bible that we met about two weeks ago to discuss the bible, i went last week but didnt go this week because i felt god tell me that he had something else in store for me that night. Brian asked me to pray for that meeting, i felt led to gather everyone who was in the area who believed and we prayed over this immediately,Korean style. I felt Gods presence as soon as the first person started, it was so powerful and sure enough God called this man and took control of his life.AMAZING!! It was so uplifting, two salvations in one day, mind boggling. Then on the way home, three of the trek groups were all going to eat in Shibuya so we were just hanging out on the train when i noticed that a young japanese man was laughing at my friends so i immediately initiated conversation with him and someone else invited him to dinner and he came. Birmy and I sat down with Kono and just talked about the basics and then we turned the convo to God, turns out Kono had read the bible and believes it is true, but has not accepted christ yet but is a man of peace. He was very kind and very interested so I am supposed to meet with him sometime soon. PLEASE EVERYONE PRAY FOR KONO. God's timing is perfect and i dont doubt that soon enough, god will tug at his heart. When I left Kono, we exchanged info and gave him the gospel of john and some other things i had. It was just an amazing day under god today. I thank all of you for your support.

jun 10

Today i didnt really do much, i had the opportunity to sleep in because i had to pick up one of our iwitness teams rom kansas/nebraska team from the airport. we left the cleft where we live in the right amount of time to be early to the airport, but circumstances changed and we missed a train...oops... so we were about an hour late but the team was busy anyhow with checkins and were only waiting about 20 mins so it was all peachy. The train ride there was about 3 hours and was not amazing one bit.lol. After we picked them up we got on the express train to the hostel got them settled in and took them to dinner. after that the team of six i was with went home. Thursday was my day off so nothing happend.

jun 9

My apologies for those who are following my blog and have not seen any new news recently. I have been quite busy lately, but not much has happened except for the fact that we added about 5 or so people to the kingdom of god...well we didnt add but god did through our team, including one today when god blessed teron with the opportunity to share his word and kent accepted the message from god. today my day was long, another missionary in japan asked for mine and another interns help escorting a team from Narita airport to their hostel where they will be staying for the next 12 days.  But before that story let me rewind back, i felt my leadership has lacked among my team because i guess i didnt want to take responsibility. So today i met with my team in the morning before we started ministry to give my apology. we then had our team meeting and prayed over the day as a whole. We then walked to our school and prayed for the encounters we might have during the day. I was only able to be at asia for about an hour and then had to leave my team and head to the airport. Everything went smoothly picking up the team and my intern and i just encouraged them in what they are about to encounter and gave them a few tips bout japan that i have figured out over the last two weeks. After we got them settled at their hostel we split up into groups to go eat and just fellowished with them at dinner and then said our goodbyes and good lucks and headed home. We would not be working with this group but it was nice to invest in them anyhow.

week two- day one

Today was an amazing fun filled and tiring day at the same time. my team, i like to call it the a-team, theres really no meaning behind the a, well maybe our university is called asia so we can say thats what the a is for...anyway enough of chasing that rabbit....We left the cave (which is our apt complex) at about 9 in order to get to asia at ten so we could prayer walk it before we headed into the darkness of the campus. When we walked into my favorite place to meet new people which was the cafe, my friend shota chased us down and actually wanted to join us in there to talk. While we were waiting for him to get back from ordering a drink (well he actually bought us all drinks, iced coffee which was gross but i didnt want to be rude so i downed it anyhow over the duration of our conversation) a group of girls were waving at us, so i sent kelley to go find common ground with them...she ended up talking to them for about three hours which was amazing.. then i also felt like god was leading me to tell teron to go to a table of guys playing a card game...so i told him and they accepted him...they taught him games and then he spent up till about 230 with two of them and before we left them i gave them two manga bibles which are annime bibles. i spent till 230 talking to shota and he seems super interested in the gospel, so i will be meeting with him during the week to start a bible study with him and hope the spirit moves in him. I have a heart for this new friend. After campus ministry we left about 2:30 to go to do free five minute english at are focus train station. Teron set up shop on the north side and kelley and i set up on the south side. Within 30 minutes we had a few people come up but not much went on till about 3:30, when kelley was talking to a man a girl sat down next to me, i had been praying for god to work in an amazing way and sure enough he did... I was not supposed to talk to the girl next to me, i knew it was not my time so i waited to see what she would do, and sure enough as soon as kelley was done talking to the man she popped right up and went to kelley.. Kelley then lead her to christ, she accepted right there on the spot which is rare for 5 minute english so it was AMAZING!!! kelley then introduced me to the girl and i welcomed her gladly into the kingdom of god and kelley will be discipling her until we leave for america. it was a marvelous day under god, just glorifying him and enjoying the ministry opportunity.

may 31-day five

Today was the first day we had not had training, in fact orientation  and training may be over besides our monday meetings each week. So since it was sunday that means it was time for church, we had church in one of the main parks in west tokyo. We worshiped and then had a small sermon and split up and did a bible study. after the morning service all the people split up amongst the park to try and do ministry. My friend thomas and i were looking for a soccer game that we could join, while we were looking it not only began to rain, but it poured so hard. so we were stuck under a tree with about four other of our teammates, it wasnt bad for a while and then the water began to rise around us so we figured it was time to move to higher and dryer ground so we ran to a gazebo. we had not had any divine appointments while we were there. AFter about twenty minutes we had attempted to talk to people but they weren't interested so we decided to venture into the storm. We had ended up at the back of the park before the storm so we had a long way to go, it was a long wet walk especially since i didnt bring my umbrella today so i embraced the rain and actually played some soccer with a friend who also embraced it with me. after we left the park we were supposed to meet at our focus train stations to pray over the people and discuss any situations. When we finished praying we got back on the train and left. After we got off the train at the shibuya station, one of my teammates (Teron) needed to stop at a place called donkyote which is basically like a japanese walmart. As he was inside Kelley(the third and final member of our team) and i were talking about how we were bummed because today was not what we expected and how we were talking about how sometimes maybe all we could do was pray....and as we were discussing this a japanese man walked up and awkwardly stood next to us for about five minutes in silence. Then after the silence he turned to kelley and i and read her shirt (her shirt was one that was handed out to all the interns, it was an IMB tokyo shirt and on the front it says Jesus Loves You in japanese.) He was so excited to read this, and we reassured him that jesus did love him. So we gave him the gospel of john, and then i started to use a pamphlet about christ and once i opened and had him read the first page and then took it from me because he was so intrigued which was amazing. its awesome how god reassures you his work will be done, but only in his timing.

may 30-day four

Today was a more laid back day, we still had training in the morning until noon or so. After training was over we were assigned our groups we would be our groups for the duration of the summer. my group has a good feel for each other and our strengths, i was assigned leader of the group by the "M" or missionary for you that dont understand my terminology. which i was praying that i would be coordinating the campus outreach but new in my heart that god was about to put me in a leadership role. after training the iwitness group had the opportunity to spend time with eachother for the first time as a whole since we arrived, we ate together at a place called pepper lunch and then went out on the town and did a little site seeing and shopping and random places. while about 5 of us were out looking for a certain store, we saw two homeless people on the sidewalk, this was definately a divine appointment because of one girl felt like we should attempt to show gods love and compassion to these men. So since we went the wrong way we had to double back and walk past them again, and instead of neglecting them as we did the first time her compassion rippled through our group and we collected all the change or smaller yen that we had in our pockets which ended up to be a couple thousand yen or around 20 american dollars or more. we then split the money and presented it to them as a gift along with the the gospel john tract that i had in my bag and told him that god loved them both and when we walked away we prayed for them korean style for them (korean style is where you pray simultaneously and wait until all are finished). it was a humbling moment for me and my friends i'm sure. After this we met back with our teams to go set up karaoke parties in our focus area, we attempted to get in touch with the contacts we had already made but god had different plans that we wouldnt realize until it happened. All of our contacts were busy with work tonight and were not able to meet us, so we were outside our focus station and trying to come up with a gameplan for the night. While we were waiting, a japanese man came up and started talking to a friend of mine, so i was evesdropping on this of course. the conversation lead to brian asking the man if he knew anything about christ and i thought id join just in case brian needed backup, but only if he was stumped. Turns out that this man was meeting with a possible japanese christian, he didnt give us very much information about this man and called him "MR. X" and was very persistent on keeping his identity secret so he would not get into any trouble. We had about an hour long conversation with this man, well brian did anyhow. it was so humbling again, even though we did not meet our contacts because of god's plan we might have an opportunity to meet "MR.X" and see if he would be interested in partnering with us and mentoring young japanese christians when we leave. please pray for us and gods cause. i miss you guys and thank all of you for your support and prayers. god has done so much more than i expected already!! 

may 29-day three

Same routine this morning With the orientation and training. then about one we went out with a different group, a smaller trek group of 3 that would most likely end up being our group for the summer. WE ate lunch together at a place called pepper lunch, which was so good. then about 3 we got on the train to head to our focus site. when we arrived at musashi sakai we headed straight to asia university again to just prayer walk which again turned into us going to common areas. i went to the same place as yesterday, while one leader and another member went to the gym and the other leader and the last member went to the caf. the thing about asia is there is alot of spiritual warfare on this campus, there is a buddhist temple on campus i believe. i walked into the coffee place and recognized someone i met yesterday, his name was Shuto, so i went and plopped down right beside him and just started talking to him and his friends. one in particular was very interested in me, my backround such as hobbies, family, interests, college etc. this guy's name was Ciggy, well ciggy was short for his real name which was hard to pronounce..maybe someday ill get the hang of it.. so i talked to ciggy for about an hour and then had him walk me to the gym because i had no clue where to go, during the walk i was able to ask his beliefs and tell him basics about my way of life, christianity and my heavenly father. after our conversation he and shuto wanted to hang out more, i informed them that i would be on campus a couple days each week all summer and they said they would like to hang out more. they offered to show me tokyo in  a way that a tourist cannot see. i was also invited to meet them for soccer sometime when i am available, by the way they dont play soccer on the ground or some field. they play on rooftops that are turf and made for this. they play on roofs because tokyo is so crammed and crowded that they do not have anywhere else to play. God gave me divine appointments today. he has blessed me so much so far and i hope there is more to come. i hope i am able to invest in the men i have met and plant the seed of life or lead them to a purpose driven life full of gods love if that is gods will. thats it for tonight so MATANE!! (which means goodbye)

may 28- day two

Today was our first day out on the city of Tokyo, we were focused and on a mission. The first half of the day was filled with training and orientation and at lunch we headed out. My trek group consisted of 11 people that i did not really know all too well. From the time we left the apartment i knew it would be an adventure that day, i could not speak a word of japanese, i was unfamiliar with the trains an everything basically which is normal of course. God had refocused me the night before and when it was time to go to the ministry site that i would be at i knew i was ready or at least hoped anyhow. As a group we ate lunch at a food court at our final stop, musashi sakai. musashi sakai would be one of the main spots for ministry, this is where we would do our five minute english lessons and try to establish some contacts with people in the area. we then went to the university that we would be working at, asia university is mine. when we arrived at the university 3 people of our trek group prayer walked around the campus asking for divine appointments while the rest of us split up among the common hangout places of the campus. at first it was a little intimidating for me because of how many were in the coffe shop area that i went to. my group of 3 talked to a girl named yan and it was a little intimidating for us and her, so from then we split up and decided to approach groups that way. after that i met about 12 different guys there, most of which were studying english which took the language barrier down for the most part. God has given me a heart for this college and the people in it. we actually werent supposed to go inside the college but our leader felt lead to do so and god had divine appointments set for us. i became close to guys named hiro, shingo, and yofi so i invited them and their friends to meet me for dinner that night at the food court so we could hang out more and even though they said they had to do homework (which they really did) they made time to come and eat with me, about all twelve showed up for dinner with my team and another ten or more people also came. one of my teammates got a chance to witness to one of them and HE ACCEPTED CHRIST!! After dinner we all said our goodbyes and exchanged numbers and parted ways. it was such an amazing day, i loved it. we then came back and shared gods work with the rest of our team, and just calmed down for the night.

May 27-day one

Base camp is over and we arrived in tokyo today at about 1 pm. The flight was 12 hours and felt so long, i only slept about 3 hours of the flight so i had plenty of time to kill. When we arrived at Narita Airport outside tokyo, we changed our currency to japanese yen then loaded up on the bus to head to kamiyama plaza where we would be staying the duration of the trip. The first day i had not yet grasped the fact that i was in tokyo, i was questioning myself and my calling and was not fully focused but then was reassured that night by something that was said. The next morning about 2 am after i had awaken from a dream about america, i had finally grasped that i was here! i was so excited!