A Chance to Love

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at a coffee shop here in town. While I was there a middle school boy came up to talk to me. To be honest he was a bit strange in the way he approached me, and I was busy working on something “important” at the time. I wasn’t mean to the kid at all I was just indifferent. I had some polite small talk, but didn’t engage at all on an emotional level.

Here was my inner dialogue. “This kid is kind of strange, and I don’t really need him for anything in my life. He is not someone I can hang out with a lot, and he doesn’t really fit with any of my classes. Also, he is pretty socially awkward and the truth is I have enough of those folks in my life already. What I really need is some high functioning young Japanese men to invest my time and energy in, not some squirrelly 7th grader.

Of course my thoughts were not that blatantly rude or harsh, but that is definitely the reality of what they were based on. Pretty sick stuff huh. I’m thankful that God quickly convicted me of how off I was in that situation. And hopefully I will be able to engage and love this kid well next time I see him. (Minamata is a small town and I will see him again)

I really do need to be less hung up on searching for future leaders of the church here and just be more effective in loving the people that God brings into my life. The problem isn’t that this kid wasn’t cool enough to warrant my time; the truth is that I was to arrogant to give it.

Engaged

Don't worry its not me that's engaged, but I have recently witnessed something very interesting in Japanese culture. I was talking to a friend the other day and I asked her how her boyfriend was doing. She told me they were engaged. I hadn't seen her for a few weeks and I knew it was a serious relationship so I wasn't that surprised. I asked the obvious question, "When did he propose?." She told me, as if it was no big deal, that he had proposed back in May. (It's the end of August and this is a person I see almost every week.) She proceeded to tell me that it still wasn't public knowledge and not to tell anyone.

At first I figured that this was unique to her situation so I asked a few more questions. It turns out that this is very normal in Japanese culture. I laughed knowing my friends back in the states would never be able to keep the fact they were engaged a secret for 3 days, let alone 3 months.