Kanagi and Nakasato

We taught them "Deep and Wide"

They picked up the actions so quickly!

We shook every one of their hands :)

As soon as we left they were all in the windows and we couldn't help but go say goodbye again
(All of the above pictures are from our first pre-school)

We left the Itayanagi train station at around 7:00 in the morning on Wednesday and arrived in Nakasato around two hours later. This train experience was quite a bit different from our initial trip from Tokyo as it was very short and we had minimal luggage. We were able to send most of the music equipment ahead of us by car. We were met by Armin, a missionary out of Kanagi, and Angela, a missionary out of nearby Nakasato. We went with them to one of Nakasato’s pre-schools in the morning and spent about an hour with the kids. In our time there we taught them some interactive Sunday school songs, performed a puppet show about the good Samaritan, played for them our Canada video and just played around with them. I cannot even describe how much joy it brought us to finally be allowed the opportunity to visit a pre-school. Both the teachers and the kids were so excited about us being there, so the combination of our excitement and their excitement made for some very hyper and joy filled children!

We were originally going to go door-to-door to hand out flyers inviting people to our evening concert, but Armin and Angela decided that it would be more effective for us to play worship songs and hand out flyers outside of the local grocery store. Most people were very receptive to at least taking a flyer and many either stopped and tried to speak with us or stopped to listen. We were so thankful that those in authority at the store allowed us to stand there and play for a whole hour.

There were so many blessings in the evening concert. For the concert, we had the same program as the Itayanagi concert except that Armin gave the message instead of Martin. We were running a couple of minutes late setting up our sound equipment and we noticed that at ten after seven there were four elderly women and one younger. We were excited that those few were there, but were still hoping that more than just the one women who had received a flyer would feel inclined to come. About fifteen minutes into the concert, a woman and two men came filing in. A couple of minutes later, seven thirteen and fourteen year old boys came in as well. The boys had stopped to listen to us earlier at the grocery store, but when we gave them the flyers they laughed at us and really seemed like they were uninterested. Apparently, they were standing outside of the small hall where we were playing and were too afraid to come in but the one known of Christian lady in the town went out and convinced them to come in. After the concert, Adam and Nick approached the guys and sat down with them and chatted. There was a point where the conversation turned to Christianity and Adam was able to share his testimony with them. The one Christian woman in the town brought her non-believing daughter and Armin and Angela had the opportunity to get talking with her. There was a mother and her son who came out for the first time because we played with him at his pre-school and he wanted he promised one us, no one really knows who, that he would come. Others who came were some who had some sort of connection with the church, but who have not yet made the commitment to Christ.

On Thursday morning, we visited a pre-school/kindergarten. This time though, the local news station had a reporter there to film and report on the presentation. They did not interview any of us, but they did know that we are a group from a Christian university. We really hope that we will be portrayed as a Christian group rather than it just being some kind of fascinating cultural exchange. Hopefully, we will be able to watch it tonight and see. The eighty kids at this school were very prepared for us. They had all made little Canadian flags and sang a song for us as well. These children were so incredibly loving and we found that in the play time with them after the presentation, they latched onto us and just wanted to be near us. Once again, ourselves and the children fed off of each other’s enthusiasm and we had a great time altogether. After we were finished, the teachers had a small lunch prepared for us and we had the opportunity to chat with them a little bit. This was a great opportunity for Angela and Armin to introduce themselves.