Friday, May 24, 2013

JAPAN COUNTDOWN: 23 DAYS. Continued preparation!


Our plane tickets have been booked for Japan!  Our team is planning to fly out on June 17 from the Gold Coast, Australia straight into Tokyo.  We’re continuing to pray, plan, visualize, prepare and grow together in unity as a team.  
Some of the things that we’ve been preparing for lately are: sermons to preach at local churches to encourage them; a prophetic video on Identity, which we will show in Japan; skits and dances for evangelism. 
What will be doing over the course of 7 weeks?  We will be working at local orphanages with kids; teaching English to students; street evangelism; church/youth ministry; filming a documentary of how God is working in Japan; and over all staying open to the Holy Spirit, to go where he leads us and work his will in the supernatural.  Each of us has been assigned a different job during outreach, so I personally will be in charge of food.  So excited to make my team all healthy and eat their greens, and learn how to cook Japanese cuisine! ;)
The staff here at YWAM Brisbane put together a mission simulation for all of the outreach teams last Sunday-Monday.  They acted as Japanese people and put us into possible scenarios that would happen, such as how we should eat at a host’s house, we did “street evangelism”, preached at a Japanese church, put on English classes where they pretended not to know the language, bought foreign food at a “market, took bucket showers (not that we’ll need to do that in Japan…) etc.  My luggage was also “lost” in the plane, so I had to share with my teammates as we camped out in some of the staff’s backyard on the coldest night of the year.  As a team, we learned SO much about each other and how we handle situations under stress!  We all feel so much closer, even more unified, and all the more prepared for what God’s got in store for our trip.
We’ve seen God be so faithful in our preparation.  He’s been putting people in our path before even GETTING to Japan who will happen to be there at the exact same time as we will be, who will be partnering with us!  We had the privilege of meeting a professional chef who was visiting a friend here at the YWAM base for a couple weeks.  He will be moving to Osaka in June, and wants to join us in our ministry while we are there!  We’ve also met a woman here in Brisbane at church who is moving back to Tokyo soon.  The pastor of the church was Busking in Brisbane when she approached him.  As they were talking, he prayed for her back because it was bothering her, and God healed her! We’re hoping to be able to speak life and encourage her to find a church and stay strong in Jesus while we are in Tokyo as well.  We’re still trying to find a place to stay for the first three or so weeks, most likely in Tokyo, hopefully at the YWAM base there.  We will be staying at the base in Osaka for the last 3 weeks.
            We are currently looking for 200 people to partner with us prayerfully during the trip.  Please email me at lillyofozland@gmail.com if you’d like to be a prayer warrior!  We believe that having people intercede and fight with us from our hometowns is one of the most powerful, necessary spiritual battle weapons that we can have.  You will receive weekly email updates from us in Japan, and will get to freely view our finished documentary.  Not only are you assisting us in missions, but also providing a means for others world wide to see how God is working in Japan!  Visit http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/holy-spirit-waves-to-japan for more details.
            The final budget of the trip is going to be a bit over $3000 per person.  If you feel led to help me financially, (I’ve got about $2500 to go) please get a hold of me and I’ll let you know how you can go about that!  There is also a donate button on the right side of this blog to donate via paypal if you feel led!

Current prayer points:
1.     God will be preparing the hearts of those we will reach in Japan, for openness to hear His word spoken through us.
2.     That we will soon find out where we’ll be staying in Tokyo.
3.     Continued unity, good communication, and confidence as we each discover our separate roles in our team.  They’ll know we are Christians by our love for one another - this is SO key!

GOD BLESS YOU! May you find peace in life today!


Heidi Lillian Osborne


Pictured below: Team Japan!

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