These last few days have been full of readers continuing to understand more about God. Ayumi has 5 more lessons in the Luke book, covering the death and ressurrection of our Lord. she has been studying for four years and will finally see how the story of Jesus life ends. She was amazed that the priests and teachers of the law are wanting to kill Jesus and I want to jump in and tell her the rest of the story, but I will wait and let her see. She likes to read about it in her Japanese Bible too and she looked up different miracles and wonders of Jesus before she came today.

Jim, (the one who took us to the farm) is a scientist and is having a difficult time believing the stories in Luke. He tries to look for the hidden message in the stories and cannot take them literally. I told him that Jesus is in fact powerful enough to turn stones into bread or jump off the temple and not die, and his eyes got so big. He said well if he had that kind of power, why did he die on the cross. I told him Jesus willingly died for us and he knew in advance what he would have to do. i know this didnt make sense to him now, but i pray that it will. When he took our team to his office the other day, he showed us an old Bible that his friend in the Philipines gave him(you could tell it was very used and special to the owner). His friend wrote in the front something to the effect of This book is my greatest treasure and I pray that you will come to know about the faith that is written in this book the way I have.

Maho came yesterday and we had a good lesson about the early disciples in acts that shared everything they had with one another and God provided everything they needed. we ended early and looked in the back of her old Japanese Bible and she told me she had gone to a Christian school and had Bible class once a week. In the back of her Bible were notes from a class that were over 40 years old and we read them and I found the verse in the Bible, something in John about a seed having to fall to the ground and die before it could produce a harvest. and i explained that Jesus had to die and be raised to life for his life to make a difference. and then we talked about how we also must die to ourselves in this life so that we can have eternal life. I think it made sense to her that we have to choose which life we want to save....the life on this earth or the life we will have with God.

With many readers we have been able to talk about baptism in lesson 5 when Jesus is baptized and receives the Holy Spirit. Many people have misconceptions about what baptism is about and they all they have seen is sprinkling of Catholic babies done by a priest and so they are very surprised when I say you can be baptized in a swimming pool or bathtub.

More updates later. We are visiting Tokyo tomorrow where we will go to the biggest fish market in Japan, the oldest amusement park, stay in a capsule hotel, kinda like a large coffin for each person to sleep. crazy. we will also eat lots of fun food, shop some, and visit the sensoji shrine. first train at 5:45 in the morning! oh yay! pray we don't get lost!