Well our 4:20 outreach was amazing. Janine Jones & our wonderful little church did an outstanding job visionearing, packing, & passing out 1,000 bags filled with water, chocolate, candy, & a note saying, “Jesus thinks you’re awesome & so do we;” & “Come to our free BBQ Wed. night.

So we get to our UCSC on campus housing drop off place. It takes us about 15min to unload our stuff, & set up our table & tent right next to the main trail heading to the field where 2,500 students are going to get high at 4:20. Well, no more than 5min goes by & a police officer approaches us & says, “Do you have a permit to hand these out?” We don’t so we say, “No.” He then lets us know, “If we see anyone handing these out on campus without a permit we will give them a ticket.” What?!!? Uh…officer, there are 2,500 students 100 yards away from you who are about to smoke an illegal substance!! Anyways, we figured we would get the officer back & do the worst thing possible to him: We didn’t give him a bag or tell him about Jesus!! (Just joking). So, we pack all our stuff & head off campus before they close the campus to all traffic (this is literally a huge deal in SC—I met people from Davis, Fresno, Stockton, etc…). We then set up stations along the sidewalks heading up to UCSC & were able to pass out all 1,000 bags within an hour & a half. Wow. Everyone’s response to our gifts was amazing (as usual—Linda & I used to hand out Hot Chocolate at Shasta College 10yrs ago & we’ve yet to have a bad experience). There were actually people who took our bags & then started shouting to everyone else around us that we were giving away free water & candy (remember it was really hot, so water was a huge deal). We had a great time & what was most amazing to me was the group who helped pass out the water with us from our church. Not everyone who passed stuff out with us is totally convinced Jesus thinks they’re awesome. This was so cool to me. When we gathered at the end for prayer I was amazed to see who joined us & I could tell they had all just experienced God; you could see it on their faces.

There will be more, but I wanted to write something. Please pray for our BBQ tomorrow night. We have no idea how many people are going to show up. Obviously by putting “Jesus” on our invitations not everyone will show up to hang out with His people, but we believe many desire to come & see what it’s all about. Please pray.

Lastly, we weren’t the only Christians out there. This is an incredible photo. If you look hard enough you can see a student blowing smoke into this dude's face! Now if stoners go to Hell this guy might be hosed 'cuz you know he's gonna' get high!!



_____________________________________________________________________________________
(Add on) Laben had a classmate say something to him. "Thanks for the free stuff yesterday. What you guys were doing was totally awesome, thank you so much for the munchies." Where this goes somebody knows.
______________________________________________________________________________________
For more, check this out: http://cruzjones.blogspot.com/

It's been a while; sorry. There has been a lot going on lately, all good stuff, but it seems as if not working has made me busier! Just joking; although one of my dysfunctions is busyness.

Things are going well & our Easter was funny. The first words out of my mouth at our service were: "I think we're the only church in town who lost more people on Easter Sunday than we gained!" It was a funny moment. We even set out another row of chairs, but this only served to give our back row dwellers more space between them & I. All in all we had a good new group of visitors & all but 1 didn't believe in Jesus! This is great: The church is supposed to be a place where believers worship alongside the non-believers they brought. We had a BBQ after our service & I must say, our BBQ's are filled with the Spirit of Christ. We have genuine fellowship: Period. If we knock the ball out of the field in one area for sure, it is genuine relationships. This is great because, in the NT a new community was one of the biggest proofs of the validity of Jesus. We are an inclusive group of friends who follow God; we are not a group of Christians who worship together, but have no real desire to know or be known. This is a chapter to a book of it's own & a major reason why the church is shrinking; say no to nepotism; say yes to genuine friendship with as many people as possible.

As of right now I am desperately trying to address two areas in the life of our church: What is Discipleship? What are LifeGroups & how do we train people to lead them? Basically, without proper direction & structure you'll get other people's ideas lived out in key areas within your church. Now, with when a person is mature in Christ, you want this. However, when you're worshiping with a bunch of new believers or people who have never done this before you can easily end up in a ditch. So, say hello to my new friend, "Let's do this together." We're not doing bad, but we're not doing great in these two areas & these are KEY areas within our church. For example: Hae-Jung (A Ph.D student we baptized last year) is leading one of our LifeGroups. He's gonna' leave in 2yrs & when he does we think it is crucial that when he leaves he can answer these two questions: What is Discipleship? What is a LifeGroup & how do we train someone to lead it? Why? Because that's how churches are started!

Our 4:20 outreach is this Monday. 1000 confused kids will be confused even more by a bunch of Jesus people handing them bags with water, candy, & a card that says, "Jesus thinks you're awesome & so do we." & an invitation to a free BBQ that next Wed. Uh...please ask God how he's gonna' pay for this one!!

This is pretty cool.

Dear Sean.

I’m Thomas Araki, The pastor of VCF Tokorozawa, I got e-mail from Karl.

I can reach those Japanese students in Saitama.

Please introduce them to us.

Saitama is a large prefecture, so that they may not be able to commute to our church.

But Tokorozawa is a one of big city in Saitama, there are big universities in Tokorozawa.



And please introduce yourself to me, Sean.



I expect your touch.



Blessing.



Thomas Araki 　荒木稔久