2 People Accepted Christ at Toyo

So I realize this post is late, but oh well. Friday 2 weeks ago Bo Cox and I saw two people come to Christ at Toyo.

Just for a little background, 2 weeks ago was our heavy push week of trying to share the gospel as much as possible to anyone who was interested in hearing it. We were going to our campuses an hour earlier than we have been for the rest of the trip, and we were making a conscious effort to bring every conversation we had at least to the topic of religion and asking if they would like to hear about Jesus. We had to deal with a lot of rejection during that week, and even more painful was the abundant amounts of people who were very close to accepting Jesus but decided to wait and think about it. So many people were so close... if only they would just have believed!! Anyways, the futures of those people are in God's hands now, and it's not my place to worry about what they think of the gospels. Back on topic, our specific team of 5 had seen no one come to Christ that week until Friday, and it was beginning to get to us a bit, as much as we tried to not let it. The other two teams were seeing amazing amounts of people (I think 18 in that week alone) come to Christ, and God was just blessing our entire team of 17 with fruit for our labors. And don't get me wrong, our smaller team of 5 was unbelievably excited for the other teams who were seeing people come to Christ, it was just disappointing that after so much was happening at the other schools, nothing was happening at ours. So anyways, that's how we were feeling going into Friday.

So at Toyo, we sat down to eat lunch at our English lunch times, but the Japanese student turn out was lower than normal, so Yusuke told Bo to go ask a couple guys standing nearby if they wanted to practice their English while they ate lunch. So Bo did, and a couple guys came over and talked to Bo and I for a while. After about half an hour they all left, and we hadn't had a chance to share the gospel with any of them by then, so we asked them to come back sometime. We originally didn't think they were too interested, so we didn't really dwell on whether or not they would come back and just went on with the day.

About half an hour after the guys had all left, one of the guys comes back and brings a random girl with him to meet us. So we end up talking, and after circling the topic for a while Bo or I (I forget which one) asked them what they thought about God/religion. That cascaded into an awesome spiritual conversation that included us sharing the gospel with them. Side note: We normally use little booklets called Knowing God Personally (KGPs) to share the gospel with, but a couple of us were beginning to feel like that commercialized the gospel too much and made it impersonal. So Bo wrote down in his own handwriting in his journal a presentation of the gospel with the appropriate verses to site in the Bible earlier that week. Bo used that to share the gospel with them for the most part and I thought it made things a lot more smooth and personal. Back on topic: Bo got to the end of sharing the gospel and asked them if they would like to be Christian. To our surprise (I know I know, we had little faith in God working through the conversation) they said yes. Bo and I had both heard yes before when they didn't really mean it though, so that is when I took out the KGPs. We flipped to the page that showed a good example of the prayer they would have to pray to accept Jesus and asked if that prayer was what they were feeling in their hearts. This is usually the point that Japanese students say they aren't quite ready, because they will say yes if they are only 60% sure they want to do it, but when they read the prayer they realize they want their doubts answered first. But amazingly, at this point the girl excitedly said yes, and the guy slightly more hesitantly said yes. Bo and I got really excited at that point, and then lead them through the prayer. They prayed both in English and in Japanese, and then Bo and I prayed for them. It was the most amazing experience to see them praying the prayer while looking at us to make sure they were doing the right thing, and watch them make the best decision of their lives.

After we prayed for them, Bo and I took them through a couple verses and information that we thought would confirm to them what they just prayed for, and then they had to leave for class. We invited them to everything we could to get them involved with some Christian people to help strengthen their faith, but they were busy every night that something was going on. So we ended up just getting their e-mails and hoping we would see them again. It was really hard to accept that we might not see them again to help them through being a Christian because of how busy they were, but we just have to trust that God will work in their lives and confirm for them everything they prayed to accept. So in my opinion, the most important thing you could pray for if you read my blog is that those two new believers would come into contact with Christians again sometime soon and be able to grow in their faith.

And that's the story of what happened the first time I ever saw someone come to Christ. I had never even shared the gospel before coming to Japan, and God somehow saw fit to allow me to see 2 people come to Christ just 3 weeks after the first time I shared the gospel with anyone at all.