Signing

I am so proud of Simon my boyfriend. He went to his first sign language class on Monday night! I can picture him with a big grin on his face, throwing his hands around, picking it up like nobody's business.

Am I dreaming?

I got woken up by my housemate last night. Because I was singing. "Henrietta, are you alright?" she asked as he knocked on the door. I woke up. "Yes" I replied. "Were you asleep?" "No, I wasn't asleep." I replied. "Ok", she said and returned to her room. Actually I was asleep I thought. My last thought had been 'lalalala' in my dream. I fell asleep again. I had a bizarre recollection this morning of this funny conversation with her. So I tentatively knocked on her door asked her, was it a dream? No, she said, at 3am it was real :-)

House Church impetus

I just got back from Japan's first-ever house-church-conference.

It was anti house church style (!), in the sense that it had a central meeting point for around 100 people, and we even had a speaker up the front (a guy of Chinese ethnicity, from the Philippines). But the focus was definitely in using house church style and replication.

The focus of house churches is on evangelism, preferably to friends, who then share with friends, who then share with friends, who then share with friends....to produce lots of little churches. What the 'churches' do together when they meet is ask God to speak to them through the Bible, and share life together. In fact, life is more important than meetings. And a top-down learning approach is certainly not advocated, not practiced. (And yet of course the great leaders of any movement, including the ones - or I could even reduce that to one - of the house church movement in Japan, are hard to miss!)

I have lots of questions and a few contact cards from people there too. Next Saturday, as a spin off, I will attend a deaf church in Kyoto. Then, another girl asked me to start a house church with her...what to do what to do....and another lovely girl and I swapped contact details and could maybe keep in touch socially and to hear about her life and church experience. Her (house) church in Osaka is called 'Joy Church' and they do met centrally twice a month with about 5 other house churches, in a group called 'B1', (or BeOne - not sure which spelling is used!). She was encouraged by the conference, as despite being the only Christian in her family, her workplace and her group of friends, she now has decided not to be lonely in that but to use it as an opportunity!

It was pretty unexpected and amazing to find myself at such a strategic conference and with such a fresh feel to it. I guess that's how all organisations and initiatives start out! I felt very much like I was in the house church movement in China..except I was still in Japan, just 45 minutes from 'home'! It was also cool to share a Youth Hostel room with four other Japanese ladies (from the conference), go to the bath with them and eat meals together, and to find myself completely confident in that environment. I loved it.