ベサニー・キリスト教会

Yesterday was a red letter day for Mr. K and I as we both were presented with medals for climbing Mt. Kongo-Mr. K has climbed 100 times and I have climbed 1500 times. We both started climbing after serious health problems and are so thankful that God has kept us alive and in good health. We were accompanied on our climb yesterday by 8 people from Bethany Church plus Mr. and Mrs. T's dog named Joshua. That is the biggest turn out yet for our Bethany Climbing Club and we all had a really great time.

The actual climbing was very smooth with our biggest problem of the day being to find parking for our three cars! Nearly 3,000 box lunches were served at the top of the mountain yesterday and so I would guess that close to 8,000 people were climbing at that time-maybe even more! Needless to say, Mt. Kongo is the most popular mountain in Osaka.

As a Christian, there is a double blessing in spending time in the outdoors. First, of course there is the beauty of nature itself. But that leads very naturally to thinking about the Creator of all that beauty. I always come away from a time in the mountians with my faith in God stengthened! PTL!

For those of you who live in the area and who have time on Mondays, please join us. Every second Monday of the month the Bethany Climbing Club meets at the church at 10am and we then spend the day climbing a local mountain. Join us! You are welcome!

５月３日は、登山クラブでした。笠脇兄が１００回登頂を達成されました！おめでとうございます！これからも楽しい登山クラブでありますように。皆さんもぜひ参加して下さいね。いつもは第２月曜日に登っています。今月も登ります！新しくチャレンジしたい方、お声かけてください☆

今週の木曜日午前10時からアッパールームがあります。アッパールームでは、ディボーションで学んだ事や考えた事を分かち合っています。ガイド「幸いな人」を中心に行なっていますが、どなたでも参加できます。☆最近、聖書からも遠ざかっている人、何となく神様から離れていると感じる人もぜひ参加して下さい！(アッパールーム：十字架に架かられる前に、イエス様が弟子達と食事をした二階の広間の事です。)

The guitarist I am now spending a lot of time listening to is Jack Rose. I first heard his music on a couple CDs that I have which feature a number of like minded guitarists. I was very impressed by his playing and recently bought a CD called, " Raag Manifestos". This was so good that I have ordered another one of his CDs to add to my collection. The term, "American Primitive Guitar" and his name often come up together and he certainly seems to be a good representative of the genre. I do not know many details about him or his life-just that he is an awful good guitar player. If you have not listened to his music, give him a try sometime.

Our next English Service here at Bethany will be on the 13th at 4pm. Every second Sunday at that time we try to hold a simple worship service in English. If you do not understand Japanese or if you want to practice your English please feel free to join us. You are very welcome.

ベタニア会(婦人聖書勉強会)では、今週火曜日、教会近くにある堺自然ふれあいの森へハイキングに行きます！ぜひ、参加してください！当日午前10時半に、お弁当持参で集合して下さい☆美しい若葉の散策を楽しみましょう！レイ子

For many years now Reiko and I have had the privilege of holding house meetings at the home of Mr. H in Najio which in near Takarazuka in Hyogo Prefecture. The people who attend are all in their 70s or 80s and most of them come from multi-generational Christian homes. Through talking with these people I have learned what it was like to be a Christian here in Japan during the war years and what it was like to live in a Christian home at a time and in an area where such things just did not exist. I have come to have a great respect for the men and women who came to know Jesus over 100 years ago and who then passed on their faith to their children in the midst of great tribulation.

For example, I learned that there was nowhere in Kansai for Christians to be buried as all the graveyards were run by Buddhist temples. Finally, the city of Kyoto took pity on the Christians and provided a graveyard high up on a mountain there. I visited that graveyard and saw the tombs of many missionaries and Christans of 100 years ago. Even Niijima Jo, who founded Doushisha University, had to be buried there! Later, when the lady who first asked us to hold house meetings in Najio died, I held a burial service for her there at her Christian family tomb.

Today, Reiko and I again visited Najio and had a wonderful time of fellowship,singing hymns, prayer and reading the Bible together. The main verses we looked at today were Hebrews 11:23 and Hebrews 11:27. We were challenged not only by the faith of Moses but also by the faith of his parents. May we also hold that kind of faith today!

Spring has come and it is time to do some rock climbing! Early this morning, instead of heading to Mt. Kongo I headed to Mt. Makio to do some rock climbing on the Kura Iwa Lower Slab. During the winter months it is too dark to do any climbing early in the morning and the Kura Iwa can be icy and sometimes even covered with snow. However, now even early in the morning the rock is nice and dry and just waiting to be climbed.

I had a very enjoyable climb up the Slab and then checked out the climbing possibilities at the Inner Wall. I see that on the Inner Wall just rock climbing shoes are not enough-I will need to use a harness and a safety rope. However, there is plenty of time. This spring and summer I hope to spend quite a bit of time working on my rock climbing skills till fall and winter drive me back to Mt. Kongo.

I am so thankful that I live within easy driving distance of not only a good hiking mountian like Mt. Kongo but also a great rock climbing venue such as Mt. Makio.

I am continuing to try and get caught up on the books by Schaeffer that I for one reason or another have not yet read. My latest read is "A Christian Manifesto" published in 1981. What continues to amaze me is how current he always is. During the last month or so I have read quite a number of books published in the late 90s and these books basically say the same thing that Schaeffer is saying. The actual titles are "The New Absolutes" by William Watkins, "Legislatiing Morality" by Dr. Norman Geisler and Frank Turk, and "The Death of Truth" edited by Dennis McCallum. In a nutshell the theme is postmodernism-the need to understand it and how to react to it as a Christian.

I have lived in Japan now for over 50 years and it seems that the basic tenets of postmodernism have always been more or less accepted though that term was of course not around 50 years ago. I remember feeling that way when I first read "The God Who Is There"-all the things that Schaeffer warned about were already a part of the culture here.

From the standpoint of being an American citizen, reading these books has given me a new understanding of the importance of state rights vs. control by the centra government and also the fact that the American Supreme Court has in the past 40 years or so slowly but surely worked itself into a place of power that it was never supposed to have.

I again would challenge those of you who have not yet discovered Francis Scheffer to give him a read-basically all of his books are really good. Those who have read him in Japanese claim that his books are more difficult in Japanese than in English. English or Japanese, do try reading his books.

５月２7日の日曜日は、ペンテコステ礼拝です！洗礼式と昼食会があります。ぜひ、ご出席ください。(ペンテコステ礼拝：イースターから五十日後、使徒達の上に、イエス様の約束通り、聖霊が 下りました。その日を記念して礼拝する日です)皆さんの来会をお待ちしています！

Every year around the middle of May there is a mass exodus of climbers from Mt. Kongo to Mt. Yamato Katsuragi, The reason for that is the mountain azalea. A major part of the main peak is covered by wild azaleas. I don't have official figures but I would guess at least in the thousands and maybe even more than ten thousand wild azalea plants cover the peak and actually turn it red. And so every year, in May, the regular Mt. Kongo climbers take a break and climb Mt. Yamato Katsuragi.

This year I climbed with Mr. K who had not climbed this mountain before. The wating time for the ropeway was one and a half hours as we left the crowd behind and started up the main path to the peak. Halfway up we ran into Mr. KN-a regular Mt. Kongo climber. He told us he had decided to climb BOTH mountains and so at 7:30 in the morning he had climbed Mt. Kongo and then followed the Diamond Trail down to Mizukoshi Pass and then on up to the peak of Mt. Yamato Katsuragi. Mr. K and I did not have that kind of energy and contented ourself with just the one mountain that day.

The azaleas were jstill at their peak and the weather was perfect-not a cloud in the sky. We enjoyed our lunch surrounded by the red flowers and the sounds of hundreds of people talking and taking pictures. After taking a short hike through the middle of the azaleas we headed back down the main trail. The people taking the ropeway down had a 40 minute wait so we were glad to be walking rather than taking the ropeway.

No doubt I will not climb this mountain for another year. However, when the middle of next May comes around I plan to again head this way. Every mountian has its special points-Mt. Kongo with its snow and frozen trees, Mt. Makio with its rock faces, and Mt. Yamato Katsuragi with its azaleas.

I am reminded of 1 Corinthians 12:7 "For the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all." We are each given different gifts and are each special in God's sight. PTL

Today was a special day on two counts at our church. One, it was Pentecost Sunday and two, we had a baptism. It seems to me that for a church the critical event-the event that must be happening if it is a healthy church-is baptism. Jesus' last command was to go out into all the world and make disciples and baptize them. It was not enough just to make disciples-the disciples had to carry through on their decision to become disciples of Jesus by being baptized. Today, at our church in Sakai, we were able to enjoy such a baptism.

One of the best decisions we ever made as a church was the decision to dig and build our own baptism pool. (see a picture of that event on my wife's blog in this same homepage) Mr. KA took charge of the digging and would not let us stop till we had dug a really deep hole. Then we poured the cement ourselves only to have to get help from a pro later. We then painted it and were ready for business. Kathy from America was the first person to be baptized here. After our first baptism we realized we had not thought about how to get the water out! However, a person in church had come to church in a truck with a pump in the back and he emptied our pool after our first baptism.

Now, more than 50 baptisms later, there is still a special atmosphere at church when someone gets baptized that we just don't have at any other time. One reason of course is that we all get to hear a good testimony of how the person came to believe in Jesus and was led to be baptized. Today we were all blessed by Mrs. A's testimony.

And now I am praying for the next person to be baptized-for the next critical event to happen in our church. PTL

昨日のペンテコステ礼拝は、神様の恵みいっぱいの礼拝となりました。洗礼を受けられた悦子さんは、その前日まで戦いがありましたが、無事、ご家族全員の出席者の中、受洗されました！感謝☆これからのクリスチャン人生が祝福に満ちたものでありますように。又昨日久しぶりに来られた兄姉、よくいらしてくださいました！ゆっくり話し出来なかったですが、ぜひ続けて、一緒に主を礼拝出来ますように。新しく来られた兄姉の出逢いも感謝します♪今日もお一人一人の上に神様の守りがありますように。

Yesterday morning when I was rock climbing I heard a loud hissing. I looked around and saw nothing and tried to continue only to hear it again even louder. When I looked closely I was about to step on a mother nighthawk who was guarding her eggs with her life. No matter how close I came she refused to budge-the eggs or chicks she was guarding were more important to her than her own life.
I at once thought of Jesus dying on the cross and giving up His own life that we might live. I also thought of the present culture we are living in where every day there seems to be news about some mother deserting her child so that she can do whatever selfish thing it is that she wants to do.
I also thought of the importance of knowing our priorities-what is really important and what is not. This little grey bird in front of me did not have any problem with that-she knew her priority was to guard her eggs no matter what.
With lots of things to think about I left the mother nighthawk to her task of guarding her eggs and continued on with my climb. I had come just to get some physical exercise but ended up learning a whole lot of other things. PTL!