Japan (Thursday - Day 1): Arrival at Last!

To resolve the cliffhanger ending of the previous post - we are in fact in Japan! Apologies for the late update - over the last few days, things have been hectic - a good kind of hectic, but hectic nonetheless. I'll try to give a quick rundown of what's been happening during our radio silence and hopefully the other Amenables will fill in the details later. I also apologize in advance for the incoherency that is sure to follow - please blame it on jetlag.

On Thursday (Japan time), we arrived at Narita. Already our eyes were filling with bewilderment and confusion as we wandered aimlessly through the airport, but thankfully Roberta was waiting to pick us up.

While on the train to Yokohama, Roberta gave us the condensed version of our 2-day orientation - the state of Christianity in Japan was particularly sobering. At Yokohama station, I was taken aback by the total sensory overload - crowds of people traveling in all different directions, rows of shops selling a vast array of colorful merchandice, flashing signs and radio announcements in a language I could not comprehend. It was exhilierating and disorienting at the same time.

When we arrived at Soshin, the entire Hwang family was waiting outside to greet us enthusiastically. We dropped off our baggage at their house and then walked across the street to the Soshin chapel to set up for tomorrow morning's chapel service. Returned back to the Hwang's for a sushi dinner they had graciously prepared for us and then quickly retired for the evening - exhausted and slightly anxious for what awaited us the next day.

Hollywood

Woke up refreshed and recharged after having slept like a rock. We quickly packed up and headed off for Round 2 at LAX.We made it through the standby checkin without incident and then were promptly stopped at security for a full random search for the second time in two days. Despite our suspicions that the process was something less than random, we politely compliled to avoid an untimely mission trip to Guantanimo Bay.

Arrived at the terminal with two hours to spare. United had given us a generous array of meal vouchers which we squeezed to the last drop by ordering up a grand fiesta from a local Mexican restaurant. As the departure time grew closer, it became apparent that we would not be getting on standby. We stuck around long enough to watch the plane detach from the terminal and proceeded to pick up our bags and retreat back to our hotel.

Despite our disappointment, we remained in high spirits and felt stronger and more connected as a team. For me personally, this experience illustrated the fact that no amount of preparedness can account for all contingencies, even if and when we do finally arrive in Japan. For someone with a mild case of micromanagement, this was a hard but important lesson to learn. If this mission trip ever becomes a movie, it would have the tagline that God works in mysterious ways.

To make the most of the situation, we called up an old elementary school friend of Woun and Sun who kindly obliged to show us around town. We hit a few of the Hollywood tourist traps (Man Theatre, La Capitan, In And Out Burger), gawked at the local superhero and pirate population, took in a few tunes from a live Latin band, and then retired for the evening. At the risk of invoking deja vu - if all goes according to plan, tomorrow's blog should be written from Japan!

Amenables Tested!

This pretty much sums up the whole day...



We got up at 2:30 in the morning to catch the 6:30 AM airplane to LAX, which would have placed us on a connecting flight to Tokyo Narita airport. The mistake we made was that we chose United Airline to get to LA. If you are flying UA, you can be certain to expect somthing to go wrong. We managed to get in the plane but right when we were about to fly the left engine fails on us! Of course the pilot kicked all of us out and made us get in the 2 hour long customer service line. By the time we got to the table we knew there was no way we were gonna make it to our connecting flight to Tokyo. What baffled me was the inefficiency of the airliners to get us to LA after the unfortunate situation. Now that I think about it, of all the times I've flown UA, there was not single flight I didn't have trouble with. They always delayed my flights or didn't give me a boarding pass due to a 45 min cutoff line! Can you believe that nonesense? If you come within 45 min of your boarding time (not your departure time), they won't let you in, even if you clearly have more than enough time to get to the gate. *angry wailing*

Well so we flew down to LA on a different plane and got into LAX. We go to our connecting flight terminal and of course we missed it. Frustration and disapointment soon ensued but there was no time to be brooding over a missed flight because we weren't sure which airliners had our checked bags. Because of the earlier switches in our flights we weren't sure if UA or Korean Air or NorthWest (another potential flight to Japan) had our baggage. Forced to explore perhaps the biggest airport in the world dragging our carry-ons and talking to agents who seemed to have no clue as to the workings of their own company, we finally found our bags at the Korean Air Terminal.

Well as you could imagine, UA did not find us a flight out of the country, and our team is kinda stuck in LAX right now. The earliest flight they could find with open seating was on Wednesday, but we asked to get on the stand by list for tomorrow's flight. Whether we get on tomorrow or not we will be amenable to the will of God.To their credit we got hotel and food vouchers and are comfortably lodging at La Quinta inn. Thanks be to Jesus! Well it's their fault that we missed the connecting flight so we'll splurge on all the vouchers and enjoy our hotel stay in a playful attempt to get back at UA for what they made us go through this day.

I personally believe this unfortunate string of events were good for us. Honestly speaking I don't think I was mentally and emotionally prepared what I face in Japan. I just got done moving out of my apartment and up until the last minute we were leading worship and fundraising in various churches. I feel like my relationship with God was overlooked in many ways because of the hustle and bustle of organizing this trip. This actually is a good chance for me to reflect and meditate on the Spirit of God. For our team really needs to be prayerful if we want to accomplish what we are planning to do in Japan.

Also I believe this was a really great team building experience. There were times when we were angry, hungry, and cranky. But in every irate moments, the Amenables were patient and pleasant. We really lived up to our name today and I'm really proud of myself and the team today. Thank you God, in spite of what happened today, we're truly grateful.

And We're Off

So wow...in just 3 hours we will be heading off to the airport for the flight out to Japan. If all goes according to plan, the next blog will read something like "We're in Japan!!!" and not "How we lost Jeremy at the airport".

A lot has happened in the last 24 hours that it will require a retroactive blog sometime in the future. But for now, it's goodnight.

Amenables: the legend behind its name

I just couldn't go without mentioning how we ended up naming our band "Amenables."

This is the beginning: it was some time around October, 2007 when Woun, Michelle, Sun, Ken, and I were having dinner at Racha Cafe. Our conversation went from one topic to another, finally arriving at my preparation for the graduate school. I brought up numerous GRE words I'd just learned to see if the other members recognized them.

Enter the word, amenable, pronounced as either uh-mee-nuh-buhl or un-meh-nuh-buhl. It is an adjective that means willing to answer or agree. Instantly observable were its religious association(Amen+Able!) and the perfect mathematical balance of two alliterative words with equal number of letters. We amenably agreed to use it for the name of our band. Because the word was an adjective, we began to brainstorm to come up with the best noun to follow. "Amenable Bastards" appeared to prevail over many other mediocre candidates for a while until more elegant, relevant, concordant, and magnificent "Amenable Saints" entered the competition.

Hench, "Amenable Saints(Amenaburu Seinto)" stayed as the unofficial name of our band for about five or six month. It eventually had to face some harsh criticism, primarily dealing with its difficulty, both in its meaning and pronunciation, let alone the fact that the targeted audience would be non-English speakers. Yet, the band mates somehow wanted to preserve the magical word, amenable. Defeated by the strenuous quest for the quintessential noun that would exhaustively encompass all four of our diverse identity as well as our grand mission, the amenables finally attained a sudden epiphany. "Why not just name ourselves 'Amenables??'"

Yes, we are the amenables. No word, other than amenable, can comprehensibly describe the ineffable quality of our mission.

Will we able to stand up for our name against the constant trials and tribulations? Only the history shall prove. May the Lord continue to shine our way, and let us be amenable to the holy tasks given to us from above!

JBC Presentation

As you can see Jeremy and I gave a presentation today and sang a song that we wrote titled, "Savior of my Life". I believe it was a great success in terms of letting everyone know what type of work the team would be doing in Japan. It was doubly special because JBC is the home church for the majority of the teammates and it was wonderful to connect with the people in this way.

The presentation was received very well. People came up to us and gave us many encouragement and support. I just want to say the Amenables are grateful to JBC and all the people who gave us support. The mission and the team is so much better because of you. I love you all and God bless!

Busy Amenables

Ok, I've done enough work this week. I firmly decided that Woundabptist should take a short vacation from life. Today me and Jeremy went to church to record and time all the songs so that Amenables could listen to the songs and practice without being in the same proximity to other members. This was a brainchild of Jeremy, which in retrospect was an ingenious idea. We can actually be in the same page in terms of rythym, pattern, and timing when we're separated by 1000 miles of American soil.

But back to my first point; I need to rest. I've been planning, talking, and emailing people ever since I graduated from Seminary. I thought I was gonna get some break now that I've graduated and finished my school work. Sad to say I was wrong. I just finished my Ordination paper this morning and had to go practice the songs with Jeremy. It was good, but I'm freaking tired! So for two days, I'm gonna go into hiding! I'll completely disappear from your radar: you won't see me again until I'm fully replenished.

Wounthebaptist out!

First Meeting at the Praise Night

Ok, I'm not much of a blogger, but I'll try my best to make this as informative and entertaining as possible. I shall start with the fateful day when all four members of Amenables gathered for the first time.
So it was the evening of Saturday, May 3rd , 2008 at Han Maum Church in Freemont. The church was holding a praise night under the theme of "Light the Fire Again," which was ideal for us to commemorate our first meeting with passionate praise and worship!
I was coming directly from God's Image rehearsal and I decided to call Woundabaptist on my way. He pretended to have forgotten about the praise night and told me he was on his way to dinner with Sun and Jeremy. Having known him for years, I had to submit to his playful trickery yet once again, showing just how gullible I am.
The worship, led by the youth praise team and Ken, our emeritus member, was indeed full of fire and the skit was thought-provoking. The powerful message was delivered by our good friend, Pastor Liz Yoo who later gratefully invited us to practice and lead worship at her church. Four of us stood side by side and gave God the glory.
Following were foods and fellowship. The sparking conversations about our life stories, music, faith, and rehearsal plans created even more expectancy for the mission. Every time the Amenables gathered, I could feel the warmth inside and I knew God had had a great plan for us. The first time all four members got together was full of praise.

World Wide Amenables

For the last few days, we've been busily putting our website together (finally, the disparate worlds of computer science and ministry unite).

Well, after much html tweaking and goofy photo shoots (liberal amounts of photoshop may also been involved), we are live! Check us out at:

http://www.jbcseattle.org/amenables/home.html

(unless of course you found this blog from there, which was probably the case...)


Thanks to Japanese Baptist Church for hosting our site and for Gordon Hwang in uploading it!

New Life Fellowship gives new life to our mission

As a band, we are currently looking for churches to support us. Frantic search for financial support is not always a healthy thing to do. Because of the tremendous amount of stress and anxiety that comes with asking for funds in the light of this economic recession, I have to say, my mood's been possessed by the spirit of crankiness (if that's a word). But God and the holy people always comes through.



Since I got out of Lakeshore the week before, I was free to visit other churches for the first time this year. So out of my whim and overpowering influence, I took the team to New Life Christian Fellowship in San Lorenzo CA. I believe it was a choice pre-ordained by God. The moment we went into the church we were welcomed as if we were family. We were introduced promptly and preacher Sandra Lee(my friend) asked us to talk a little bit about our mission trip. I kinda had a hard time saying everything I needed to then, but we were able to mingle around after church and get to know the people of the church.



As we got to know the congregation we were able to meet the worship director Gina Chin and Julie Chew. They were both very passionate about worship and wanted us to lead worship service at their church. They even offered to have a collection for the mission trip. It is really hard to say what I was feeling at that moment. I didn't feel like I did much to promote our mission trip, but people I never met were excited about it and wanted to help out. At that moment I saw a glimpse of God working in people's lives and moving their hearts to do something for God. They voluntarily partnered with us to make this trip happen. At that point I didn't really care how much money they were offering, I was just happy that so many people were willing to affirm and support us in this mission that I never thought would happened in the first place.

All I got to say is this, there's still hope for Christianity. God existed, God still exists, and God will exist, and there always will be saints working to let people know of this fact.

Playing the Lakeshore Offertory

For the last couple Sundays, I've been worshiping at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, where Woun serves as Youth Facilitator. This church has been blessed with social awareness, a strong sense of community, and a warmth in welcoming newcomers, and I immediately felt right at home. This Sunday, we were invited to provide the music during the offertory, and decided to play our original song, "Savior of My Life". Unfortunately, Lawrence was unable to join us due to his position as worship leader at his church.

We arrived at the church minus a bass strap and hi-hat, forcing Sun, in true MacGyver fashion, to build a strap out of yarn, while I attempted to make hi-hat-esque sounds on other parts of the drum set. I've never been much of a public singer (having restricted most of my singing to the shower or other isolation chambers), which made singing the opening lines super intimidating. Nevertheless, our music offering seemed well received - one woman even approached us afterwards asking for the lyrics, though we certainly missed Lawrence's keyboard lines. Thanks be to God for making the seemingly impossible possible...

Following the service, we attended a fund raising luncheon for the youth group's trip to the National Gathering of American Baptist Youth. Sounds like a really great event. Oh, to be young again...

Divine Graduation

Yay! I, Woundabaptist, graduated from American Baptist Seminary of the West today and got my Master of Divinity degree. I can't believe I finished ABSW, it seems only yesterday I moved down to study. Thanks be the Lord! Check out the pictures I put up in my facebook, if you have facebook that is. Woohoo! Next, Japan Mission Baby!!

Now if I can find a new place to live that would be golden. Any ideas?

Liz church blowout!

Tonight we had a second successful worship at Liz's church. Those of you who are following us pretty closely know that we are using Liz's church space for practice. Not only are we using it for free, they have an awesome sound system. We are eternally grateful to the pastor of Philippine Church and to minister Liz of L4G church. We love you!

But, there's no such things as a free lunch. The deal is we get to use the space/equipment, but in return we have to lead a service and inspire the youth in Liz's church to work even harder to create a worship team. Well, this was a deal I couldn't miss out. Not only do we get to use the buiding we get to have an actual worship experience. So I said yes, we are going to use the building and we are going to inspire the youth in the church. The more we can fulfill our calling the better.

So we had church tonight. With all our teammates passionate about praising and worshiping God, there was no one to stop us. We also got the opportunity to try out our new songs, "broken road" and "Savior of my Life". They were both received very well. In retrospect, the worship service was better than 100 practices combined. We were more sensitive to our music and was able to be more critical to our playing. It also became the place where we started communicating without words. By looking at each other's faces we were able to read what we should do in the next immediate measure. I believe in order to play well together, we have to foster this skill of communication. More we can read each others thoughts, the better the music will flow. Overall I believe the worship service was a success in multiple fronts. Thanks be to God!

Peace,

Awesome night with South

I don't know if you heard of a band name called "South". I never heard of them before, but decided to give them chance since the band needed some inspiration before going into the writing stage. Let me tell you the three of us who went (Sun couldn't go because he had a class that night), were blown away. They are a rock/indie band with an acoustic twist to it. The melodramatic melody and playful bass line will get you hooked. I think this band is going to break out soon. The opening bands were awesome too. Especially the band named Ki:Theory. Omg they played in the dark in the beginning, and everytime they hit the chorus they would flood the stage with lights. It was downright an awesome show, can't believe we only paid $16 for it. If I knew ahead of time what kind of show they were putting out, I wouldn't have minded dropping $30 for this one.

Well another cool thing was we got to meet Lawrence's friend Aida who is a model. She had a fashion show that night so she came late but just in time to catch South. It was a great night, everyone had a good time. We also got to visit Japan town in San Francisco and had dinner. That's the first time I had Katsu Curry since I moved to the Bay Area. Hands down the best Japanese hot dish ever invented.

Peace

First Performance!

Every Monday evening, the American Baptist Seminary of the West (ABSW) hosts a chapel service. During last week's service, Woun delivered a heartfelt and well-received sermon about taking risks in the church. This week, the Amenables were invited to share two praise songs - Come Just As You Are and Unchanging - both of which we look forward to sharing with the people in Japan as well.

I must admit to being more than a little nervous as we took the stage. However, as I looked out into the congregation and saw the smiling faces of the ABSW faculty and students brimming with encouragement, I gradually loosened up. This was, after all, the house of the Lord, and not some concert hall with a super-critical audience (or worse yet, a club filled with jaded hipsters).

All in all, the congregation appeared to be blessed by our music. During Unchanging, several people even stood up to clap. That's not to say that our performance was completely devoid of mishaps. Due to a last minute printing mistake, we ended up singing Come Just As You Are in a different key from the one we practiced. In addition, a malfunctioning cable resulted in Sun's bass cutting out several times during Unchanging. On the bright side, it is fortunate that these mistakes were caught now, rather than in Japan.

In addition to providing us with our first group performance experience, the evening was also a blessing for me in that it revealed a glimpse into the seminary world. Following the chapel service, a dinner was held for the graduating seniors and faculty, while Sun, Lawrence, and I tagged along ("we're with the band" was our official excuse). As I watched the familial interactions between students and faculty and heard the seniors reflect on how attending ABSW strengthened their walk with God, I couldn't help but feel that God was trying to tell me something. For those of you who don't know me, I will be starting graduate school at the University of Toronto in Computer Science. And while I am certainly passionate about this field of research, I have realized that I must consider the possibility that God may have other plans for me.

Earlier in the evening, Dr. Russell (the president of ABSW), affectionately introduced me as a "future seminarian" and half-jokingly asked when they could expect my application. I replied that anything is possible...and indeed it is.