Nearly 3 semesters later, I've finally found the time to write another update on this blog. Actually, there are many reasons why it's been difficult to write, but God told me this morning, "it's time." Those of you following my email updates, this will serve as the first one since Christmas.
All that aside, hafa adai! from Guam!
I'm excited to share some of the amazing things going on right now, but first I want to share some of the difficulties I've encountered. As you know from my last email update, the Christmas mission to Saipan was a spiritual mountain for me. Since that time until recently, I've been very much in the valley.
The start of it came with an exciting blessing that I thought God was giving me. My hope was that a relationship that was pleasing to him finally came my way. I prayed continually that everything would go according to his plan and that I would represent him in it. My quiet times were long and intimate, and every challenge fueled my understanding of his grace. However, some time later it was clear that God's will was different from what I expected and a very, very difficult reality set in.
By the start of the Spring semester, I was sharing God's faithfulness with my brothers. I was an RA in the dorm and a Bible study leader. I was on Student Council. I was a 4.0 student. I was a worship leader.
By the middle of the semester I had given up my RA status, quit student council, stopped playing on the worship team, and missed a few classes. I had many fallouts with my brothers, and even switched dorms to be away from them. I had become the opposite of the faithfulness I had proclaimed at the start of the year.
I was bitter and lonely, and hopeless until God reached out his hand again. I had a few close friends who would offer to pray with me many times, and one in particular who would graciously let me dump my frustrations on him night after night. With the help of these friends, student life staff, a counselor, and a lot of work by the Holy Spirit, I started a slow ascent out of the valley.
By the end of the semester, I had restored some of the fallouts with my brothers. I was invited back on the worship team. I started a couple of ministries at church. I finished the semester with a 3.9 GPA. Actually, since then, there have been more blessings than I can count. I'll talk more about those below. Though the semester was full of trials and heartbreak and failures, I came away with some important lessons.
1) The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. In both Job's case and mine (trivial by comparison), the Lord then restores far more than he gave at first or took away.
2) A relationship with a person doesn't satisfy like a relationship with Jesus. All of the things I learned about grace will make me a better husband someday, but they more importantly make me a better child of God.
3) When loosing something good, jealousy and anger creep in, making footholds for Satan to overwhelm you.
4) No matter the circumstance, God is always reaching for you, through Christian brothers, through mentors, through your heart, even directly. I was a mess, but all I had to do was open my eyes and my heart to see how much he was fighting for me.
These lessons are precious to me now, and I see how when my faithfulness fails, God's still prevails. There have been even more blessings than these. The old '89 Buick was giving me lot's of problems and mechanic experience, so my friend said, "let's pray for a more reliable car." We did, and the next day my boss at the Japanese school sold me her '98 Tercel ridiculously cheap.
Another blessing came at church one evening. I was joking with a Japanese woman named Naoko on the praise team that she would teach me Japanese and I would do her English homework. A few days later she surprised me told me that she was moved by my will to do missions in Japan and offered my private Japanese lessons for free. I've been taking Japanese lessons every Monday night since, and it makes me even more confident of God's will for me in Japan. Her and her husband Curtis are good friends of mine now and I'm incredibly blessed by them.
I didn't think the Japanese School would be calling me back since I was merely a sub for a pregnant teacher. However, some time in March I was interviewed by them again and offered a position as an English teacher for a whole year! Many of my former students shouted for joy when they got me as a teacher again, which made me feel like a proud role model to them. I'm hoping that my time there will point some of the students and their parents and the other teachers to Jesus.
I've got two semesters at PIU down, and possibly still a year and a half to go. I'm halfway through my TESL minor, but I've got a lot of classes left for my Biblical Studies major. Our graduation ceremony was a few weeks ago. There were about 20 graduates. You can see the details on the PIU blog.
I'm currently on board the youth ministry team at the Lutheran Church of Guam. I haven't been to an actual meeting yet, but my 'initiation' comes this summer. From June 18 until July 4, I'll be in the Philippines with them. The first week will be spent volunteering at an orphanage in Manila, and the second week will be just me and a Filipino family traveling and seeing both the beauty of the countryside and the poverty of the slums. The church has payed most of my way to go. I'm very excited to be involved with the youth, and to be a part of the team this summer. I'm hoping that my experience in the Philippines will be humbling.
Lastly, I got an email from John Van Farrowe. You all know he's pretty much the reason I'm in Guam right now. He's coming to Guam sometime in November and this will be the first time actually meeting him face to face. We'll be talking about some future missions options for me and possible correspondence between PIU and his ministry in Japan. If everything goes smoothly, it could be the start of a very good relationship between a great ministry in Japan and the only accredited Christian college in the Pacific Islands.
Thank you so much for all of the support and prayers. Please continue to pray. It's going to be a long ride, but the result will hopefully be a small ministry among the largest unreached people group in the world. Japan needs Jesus.
Blessings, grace, and peace to my family in Christ,
Kevin Patrick Graham
Of Man
