Hi, all! Sorry for the long absence. I've been really busy getting things ready for my move out to NJ in about a week.

I have good news, though...and presents. :-)

I've been working to try to get Bilingual Bibles that (1) are a modern translation in both English and Japanese, (2) offer furigana over the Japanese kanji, (3) that are both OT and NT. I've found a Bible that fits all these requirements. You can check it out on Amazon here.

Now, it's fairly expensive, so I've been trying to raise the money through my home church and the two churches I've been preaching for over the past year. I've so far managed to raise enough money for 3 of these Bibles. I figure I should only need 5--one for each apartment--so it's a good start.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to contact Dean to see the best way to get the Bibles over to you all. Hopefully I'll hear from him soon, but in case I don't, I would still like to get these Bibles out to you all as soon as possible. The first Bible will be going to my old apartment, next to Eiko Church in Akita. That leaves 2 Bibles that are up for grabs. So, if you think you would really like to have one of these Bibles to use, leave a comment here, and contact me with your mailing address and I'll see what I can do.

A few Monday's have come and gone without a Sensei-Link Monday post. Sorry about that. I'm currently busy transitioning into a move back to the east coast for another year of school (a ThM at Princeton Seminary). Hopefully things won't be totally quiet here during my packing up/saying goodbye time (and super kudos to Heather for her game!), but I know that pretty much everyone here understands how busy things can get when you're making a big move. :-)

So, in summary, I'll do my best to offer some more content...just don't expect regular updates until mid-September, when classes are in full swing, and my schedule is solidified.

I guess I should post the sermon for everyone, huh? Well, I won't post it here, but I'll leave a link to where you can find it: http://bdwhite.com/sermons

The one you're looking for is "A Missionary Encounter with the Gospel (or Three Missions Stories)". You can read it online or download the PDF. This sermon is kind of the culmination of some of my thoughts on missions since returning from Japan. My thoughts are still not complete by any means, but it's good to have opportunities like this to write things down and see how the Spirit has been working on you.

Here's a blurb I wrote for the church website about the sermon I will be giving next Sunday. I thought I would post it here, because it is a story from my time in Japan. There are some related posts over at my blog (http://felixruina.com/daily):

Sometimes the practice of being a missionary is different from the image that we've built up in our minds.

Early on during my time in Japan, I was invited by one of the members of the church to take a driving tour through some of the nearby mountain trails. Sato-san, the man who invited me, spoke basically no English, and my Japanese was...minimal at best at that time. So, I wasn't too surprised when Sato-san picked me up with another young man in the car. The young man (probably in his mid-30s) spoke a little English—broken and staggering, but between my broken and staggering Japanese and his broken and staggering English, we were able to understand each other.

As the tour started, the young man mostly served as a translator between Sato-san and me. “He say this mountain...biggest mountain in Tohoku.” “Ah, I see. Very interesting,” I would respond, and he would dutifully translate back to Sato-san, “ああ、おもしろいです。”

Pretty soon, though, Sato-san began saying things that my translator companion had difficulty interpreting. Clearly Sato-san was using words that were not generally taught in high school English class. After some stumbling and jumbling, I figured out that Sato-san was trying to tell me the story of his faith journey—about how he became a Christian. It was interesting to hear, but I wondered a bit why he was telling this story to me...especially since I had already heard his story at the church. Read more »

I've been doing some adjustments to the site today...moving it from http://sensei-link.org/ohayo/ to just plain, easy-to-remember http://sensei-link.org. Unfortunately, these types of changes can mess up the internal lengths of the site. I've done my best to check through things to make sure all the files have been re-linked properly, but I could have missed some. So, as you're using the site, if you happen to notice any broken links or pages that don't seem to load properly, help me out by sending me an email via the "Contact Us" tab up at the top. Thanks!

I've justed added a live-chat feature to the site, called "Tribune". It pretty much works just like any other chatroom-type program. You can see the whole chatroom by clicking on the "Tribune" link up at the top. Or, you can see the latest posts in the little block on the bottom-left of the home page.

I don't know how useful this will really be (for contacting people, it is probably still best to use the "Contact" tab in a person's profile (Select "User list" from the menu, choose the person you want to send an email to, select the "Contact" tab, and type in your message). But, I thought that in the times when it would be nicer to be able to chat in a more interactive way with someone (say, if you were needing to collaborate on a project, or something), then the Tribune will be a nice way of doing that.

Go ahead and test it out, and let me know if you have any difficulties!

EDIT: Please not that you need to be logged-in in order to use (or even see) the Tribune chat. This is for security purposes...anonymous internet users don't need to be viewing our chats.