It's a good thing I like adventures!

So, I suppose it's time to update you on the great adventures of my life in the past few days! As I wrote to some of my supporters, I got sick on last wednesday night and had a fever until saturday and had to stay home from campus by myself at the apartment to get some rest. It was humbling and I'm still determining what it was God is teaching me through that (As written about in my previous blog "he makes me lie down in green pastures"). It's funny, I think a lot of scripture is having some new meaning for me after these past couple of weeks, especially psalm 23 and 1 Peter!

So here is my big adventure! This Monday and Tuesday I went to campus feeling better but totally drained. I loved being at Tsudo girls campus though, and am looking forward to being there every Tuesday! I still had a nasty lingering sinus infection and phlem and in addition to all that I have what is called a pilonidal cyst on my tailbone (basically an infection due to being born with a small opening near the end of the tailbone) which I've had for years and it flared up the day before we got on the plane to Tokyo. Normally it goes away, but after being in Tokyo 10 days or so, it was getting more and more painful and swollen. So, I asked to be able to go to the doctor and stayed home Wednesday tired and frustrated. I checked facebook and unexpectedly got into a spiritual conversation online with one of my nonchristian friends from CMU which I really enjoyed and it made my morning! As that 2 hour long conversation was closing, my project director knocked on the door and told me the Tokyo staff had connections with an English speaking doctor and I had an appointment that afternoon!!!! I wasn't expecting to be able to go that soon, so it was good news! The only thing was, I'd have to navigate the train systems all by myself, traveling for about an hour on 4 different trains. Yikes! I know hardly any Japanese and I am horrible at directions!!! But nevertheless I sent up some quick prayers as I got ready and headed to the train station with some directions of stops and train lines to take to get there. As I went from train to train, I asked help from so many Japanese people who are always polite and friendly even though they are always quietly keeping to themselves! Japanese are so quiet! Anyways, getting onto the last train, I asked 3 conductors which train I needed and they all told me a different one. Confused and in despair at that point, I started praying, and one girl approaches me and sweetly asks, "excuse me, can I help you??" I was like, "yes, please!" She directed me no problem and I got on the right train. But once I got on, all the stops were written in Japanese and I didn't know which one was mine and no one around me knew either, until the train stopped and I asked one of the newly arriving passengers, who conferred with an older man who offered her to let me know when my stop was! What a blessing! So, I got off, met one of the staff guys who led me to the doctor in between a busy day of meetings, another blessing.
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Once at the office, the doctor was very nice and proficient in English! He told me we'd have to drain my cyst and give me some antibiotics. They started looking at it, and he asked, "How did you ever survive?! This is so deep!" I shrugged and said, "God?" haha, and they pricked me with needles to give me some local anesthetic, made a couple of incisions, pushed all the drainage out, prodded a ribbon containing antibiotics into the wound and packed me up with lots and lots of gauze (all of which I still felt to some degree). They sent me home with prescription pain meds, antibiotics, and some gauze and told me they'd see me again tomorrow! Haha, so then began the hour long journey back home, again 4 trains but backwards. I wanted so badly to burst into tears right on the train! I finally got home, starving and beat, waddled to McDonald's and ran into some of my project mates on the way to the apartment. I never was so happy to be there and to see my friends as at that moment! I never did cry that night, only rejoiced! God had done what I'd consider a total miracle, because I have no idea how I made it to the doctor and back and He had provided a way out of the suffering I wasn't able to stand much longer! I went back to the doctor the next day with my friend Emily and had some more adventures finding our way there and enjoying some Japanese cake on the way back! This time they cleaned the wound, and threaded another ribbon into it, yay, haha! And they told me to come back saturday where they did the same thing and told me it was getting much much better and to come back Monday. Pretty much as soon as I got back home at the apartment the first time after the doctor's visit, my vitality was coming back!
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Right now I am feeling very well rested and not hurting really, just a little itchy as my wound is pleasantly healing and should be healed by the end of this upcoming week :) I'm totally grateful! It might seem like awful timing to have this happen here while I have limited time in Japan, and its one of the hardest things I've ever experienced, but I wouldn't trade it for anything! God is good! His timing is perfect, it would have costed a fortune to have that procedure done in the States, where it has costed me $11.00 each follow up doctor visit and $97.00 for the initial visit, procedure, and prescriptions total! That is insanely cheap! Plus, God was doing something big in all of that, and I'm forever grateful!

(I'll write a separate post for the other adventures I had this weekend!)

Well, about project...its going pretty well. I'm learning from being sick and staying home that God doesn't need us, but we sure need him! Even if I haven't been able to experience being on campus much, God still used me in prayer and encouraging my team and in letting me rest and learn to rely totally on Him before I launch myself into the rest of project, not to mention, I'm totally humbled rigtht now. We're also experiencing a lot of spiritual warefare here. As ministry leaders especially, it's one thing or another, the enemy knows which buttons to push. For me it was being sick, for others its temptation of being distracted, another one of us discouragement and other things, but! the enemy wouldn't be worried unless God was doing something big! In Genesis 50:20-22 Joseph's brothers were apologizing for selling him into slavery and such, and Joseph says, you meant it to harm me (so does the enemy), but God meant it for good and the saving of many! And guess what? One Japanese student accepted Jesus on Wednesday!!!!! That is like Whoa! Huge! Even if that's all the fruit we see here the entire time we're here! Progress in Japan is super slow and we've already been kicked off one campus because Japanese are very very fearful of cults and even threatening the students involved with cru at that university to withhold graduation from them. But praise God, because this is making the name of Jesus even more famous! I think I am learning that God works out all things for the good of those who love Him, even in the mundane or painful (Romans 8). God's perspective on suffering is he identifies, sees it a precious offering, and that it is only temporary! God will come as surely as the dawn, so I will press on to know Him more and more! (Hosea 6:3)