Growing up in the midwest, "cruising" had nothing to do with boats, and everything to doing with driving aimlessly around with your friends, preferably at night or the wee hours of the morning.

Well, ya' live long enough and anything can happen. Took my first cruise this past Monday, on the good ship "Bianca," and travelled hither and yon on Lake Biwa -- the largest lake in all Japan!

'Course, I didn't have Aileen with me, so that was a bummer. (She was with our church on its first ever retreat, which I missed.) And I wasn't there to kick up my heels and snooze on a deck chair in the summer sun. The rest of the TV crew and I were there to shoot a concert, interview and evangelistic message. LifeLine is broadcast in the Lake Biwa area, and the cruise was co-sponsored by PBA and the church group in Shiga Prefecture that sponsors the broadcast there.

The four of us got to the dock with two vans full of TV and PA gear at 6:30 in the morning to load into the boat, and at 9:30 p.m., finished packing the gear out of the boat and back into the vans.

And in between was a three ring circus!

The boat had three large meeting/conference rooms, and the churches created a program that used them to the max! We had professional accordion concerts, southern gospel choirs, a classic concert and a gospel singer solo concert. There were 5 or 6 Bible messages, a kids' program and a drama team. The place was hopping. One meeting in the morning, three in the afternoon, and two at night -- in each of the three rooms. So, that's like, what, 18 different events in one day?!

This was another of the LifeLine 20th anniversary "Thanks Giving" events. Down towards the middle of Japan, in an area called Kansai -- and the cultural differences from Tokyo were very evident. Much less uptight, "It'll work out!" "Hey, let's have fun!" -- a little more, well, America-like than I'm used to here in Tokyo. No one got seasick, the footage looks okay (I've been feeding it into the computers for editing this week.) and the audio was fine -- the engines weren't nearly as loud as I feared they might be.

And even amidst the three ring chaos, there were plenty of times to reflect on what God has done through 20 years LifeLine broadcasts. PTL.


The Bianca! (Not exactly the Queen Elizabeth, but, hey, it's a real live cruise ship!



The Skippers. No Gilligans on this crew -- made all ports on time and got back home safe and sound.


Boarding the Bianca. Stairs? No gang plank? I'm terribly disappointed....



The Bianca's rear deck. (Okay, I don't think it's really called a rear deck -- how about one of you nautical types leave a comment to straighten me out!)




Accordion Concert by Manabu Hiyama. Has studied in Italy, won all kinds of awards -- and played 4 concerts in one day on a cruise ship on Lake Biwa, Japan!



This guy was a mixed bag -- I think there were as many wee ones that ran away screaming in terror as there were who hung around to get a balloon!




LifeLine host, Rev. Hirooki Sekine, kicking off a meeting.



Rev. Murakami, PBA board chairman, bringing a message from the Word.


Gospel Choir



Evening Concert

This weekend's LifeLine TV program will be a lecture by English missionary Patrick McElligot (Spelling?? I've never seen his name written out in English, only Japanese!)

This lecture series was taped at a seminar sponsored by Family Forum Japan (FFJ), which is the Japan affiliate of Focus on the Family in the US. I've been on the board of this organization since it started over 10 years ago. We've had tremendous ups and downs, but the Lord has seen fit to keep us going this far. Less than a year ago, it looked like we were going to hit the financial brick wall at the proverbial 100 miles an hour... but God was gracious, and we stopped inches short of disaster, and have been slowly backing away from the wall.

Family issues are huge in Japan, and there are not nearly the resources available here as in the US -- secular, let alone Christian. FFJ has a good ministry -- very popular radio program in two prefectures, lots of resources, both translated from the US and original from Japanese authors, and a heavy schedule of speaking in churches, to school groups and more. But financing the work has been problematic, and our extremely dedicated staff work for embarrassingly low wages. Seems to be a recurring theme to ministry in Japan.

This broadcast of lecture series has been very well received. This will be the fourth program. Common Biblical themes for those of us in the Christian West, but really kind of radical, eye-opening stuff for Japan.

As a P.S. here, we'll be traveling some 10 hours away from Tokyo to tape a LifeLine 20th anniversary event this coming Monday -- a national holiday. The event will be on a cruise boat on Lake Biwa, Japan's biggest lake. Will be my first time on a cruise boat, and the first time (duh) to film on a cruise boat. It's going to be a full slate with gospel and classical concerts, kids' program, various speakers and more. I'm slightly worried about seasickness, but even more worried about recording decent audio -- how loud are the engines on a cruise boat?!

Okay, so Aileen and I had forgotten how wound up 6 year old boys can get! It was like having Nic back in his prime. There were only three of 'em, but, wowee, the energy! And the noise! Running in circles, hollering at the top of their lungs, jumping and laughing. One of the girls kept up with 'em pretty well. The rest of the gang -- younger kindergardeners and one three year old -- looked on enviously, and tried to join in the fun, but were completely outclassed.

Fortunately they were able to rein it in when needed, and the Kids' Fair was a grand success. We had 12 kids; hoping for more but 12 is good. There was singing and stories and English Fun and Other Games. The guitarist in the pics is our pastor, and the story teller is his wife. The story was of the 99 and 1 sheep and the good shepherd.

Aileen did the English Fun time, teaching the kids numbers and fruit names, and then turning it into a big game with picture cards -- "Go find 3 watermelons!" The kids ate it up.

Finished off with other games. Everyone seemed to have lots of fun, and we're hoping it leads to some new kids in Sunday School!

After more than 200 years of self imposed isolation from the rest of the world, American Commodore Matthew Perry's show of force opened the ports of Japan in the mid-1800's. In 1859 the first Protestant missionaries were officially sent to serve in Japan. This past week there was a big 2 day event in Yokohama, celebrating that anniversary.

In addition to the meetings, lots of organizations had PR booths, including PBA, and the Dendankyo I made the videos for.

I attended the meetings; lots of impressions that I will probably write about in the future here. But the day before the events began, I was eating lunch with a couple of other PBA staffers, talking about the anniversary and all. Missionaries are often discouraged by the relatively meager fruit of evangelism here, and relatively slow growth of Christianity in Japan. "150 years -- so long and so little progress made," I mused out loud. The other two, almost in unison, said, "What do you mean, 'so long'? Buddhism has been here for 1, 500 years. We evangelicals are just getting started!" Another cultural eye-opener. For us young Americans, 1859 feels like ancient history. For Japan, well, it was just the day before yesterday! Here's to the Protestant church in Japan -- congratulations on being 150 years young!

Summer vacation for school kids is a lot shorter in Japan than the U.S. Kids are still in school, and will be until the end of the week. Then, finally, summer vacation starts -- the kids get 5 or 6 weeks off.

To help the kids celebrate, and do a little outreach, our church is having a "Kids' Fair" for grade schoolers on Saturday. Bible stories, games, crafts and food. Like a one day VBS. We've done this in the past, attracting 20 or so kids. But we're hoping for a lot more this year. Not only is our Sunday School back up, which should help, but we've conquered a new PR avenue this year.

Japanese neighborhoods are organized around the local Shinto shrine. Every house is registered to a specific shrine, and every community has a Neighborhood Association -- a civic group that, also, is connected to the shrine. The civic groups are very active, organizing neighborhood clean up days, getting public notices out to all the homes, collecting dues, collecting gifts for approved charities, etc., etc. They also have bulletin boards scattered through the community, with official notices for the citizens. All very civic in nature in the minds of most folk, though quite colored by being associated with the Shinto shrine if you look at it objectively.

The bulletin boards would be a great place to advertise the "Kids' Fair" -- except that they are for civic announcements, not religious. We haven't been allowed to use them in the past. Well, our young pastor's wife decided it was time to try again, and went armed with fliers to the local officials. "We want to advertise our Kids' Fair on the community bulletin boards." "You can't, that's a church function -- religious, not civic." "But, the shrine advertises their festivals on the bulletin boards. That's the same, right?" "..." "Right?" "But the shrine priest doesn't like it when other religions advertise." "But these are community bulletin boards, and our church is part of the community." "..." "Right?" "Okay, you can put them up but if anyone complains we'll have to take them down."

A week later, they're still up. Pray the bulletins turn out to be effective advertising and that lots of kids come! Aileen and I will both be involved in the Fair.

This week we have another musician as our guest on LifeLine. Tsutomu Aragaki had a very rough beginning in life. His father was a Mexican-American G.I. stationed in Okinawa after WWII, his mother is Japanese. Shortly after birth, thinking she was applying eye medicine, the midwife put a powerful salve in his eyes that left him blind. His G.I father divorced his mother and returned to the States, his mother re-married and left Tsutomu to be raised by his grandmother. He grew up thinking his grandmother was his mother; his world was rocked when the neighborhood gossip bluntly told him the truth.

Radio was one of his only joys in life, bringing him music and also Christian radio programs. (His passion for radio is still going strong, and when we went to tape him, he knew my voice right away from listening to the shortwave radio programs I did for PBA for many years!)

Radio led to his attending church, where he was encouraged to sing. To make a long story short, he finally studied voice at a prestigious music school and has become a very well known classical tenor in Japan. He also went to seminary and has pastored a church and is still working as an evangelist as well as singing professionally.

We taped him singing, and then taped an interview with him. His testimony was wide ranging, covering from the joy of finding purpose to his life in the Lord, to the struggle and then victory as a believer to forgive his father for leaving them. He says if he ever has a chance to meet his father again, he'd like to sing, "Amazing Grace" for him!

I don't have a video clip from LifeLine (I'm writing at home, not work) but found a short clip of him singing on YouTube: