Breaking Point

well it finally happened. after 2 months of attempting to do solo campus ministry, 2 months of no direction and very little contact from any of my directors or staff from PSW, Japan Campus Crusade for Christ (JCCC) or even my team leaders, i broke down.

i think the for the past two months i've just been dealing with being alone, i've been holding on to the idea of "maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow" - in fact, i think everyone's been thinking that. my team, my leaders, all of us have just been waiting and hoping that my team would receive their CoEs in a day or two and then they'd be on a plane here. but it kept not happening. every day i was thinking "ok if we receive their CoEs today then they can get them this day and get their visas this day and fly out this day" and every day, it didn't happen. and it got draining. fridays became my most dreaded day, because it was the end of another week that my team's paperwork still had not arrived. i realized that while maybe my leaders had not been giving me direction because they thought since i was a 2nd year STINTer i'd be ok on my own, i really wasn't ok. i was not only alone, but i was starting to become lonely. my roommate Christina has been a huge blessing, but she is on Staff and therefore currently doing Japanese language school, so her focus and responsibilities are completely different. every day she is in language school, and in the evenings she is either spending time with her classmates or studying. the JCCC staff have their own campuses and focuses, and therefore i do not do campus ministry with them. i asked Cam, the staff who is kind of in charge of the STINTers, to let the staff know that i'd be interested in working with them since i'm the only STINTer, but no one really got back to me. so i've just been going to Waseda University by myself every day, with one day week working at ICU High School with 1 or 2 of the staff. and meeting with students solo for 2 months, and also being a member of 3 different clubs and pretty much having every night filled with club activities, you get pretty drained. i've been trying to plan things but i can't because i never know when the team's coming, so i have to always make last minute plans with students, which is a bit stressful. i also realized i'd been subconsciously overcompensating for the fact that i'm the only STINTer and i've been trying to do more and work harder to overcompensate for my team- not good or healthy. and i realized that basically everything i do is ministry- even church is ministry because there are non-christian students who come, so i have no place or people to just hang out and relax and take a break from ministry.

all of that, on top of feeling, to be honest, pretty abandoned by all of Cru, was just too much to handle. as i was writing an email to 2 of my directors in the States expressing my need for some sort of direction or contact, i just broke down sobbing for almost an hour. i finally composed myself enough to finish the email, but as i was talking to a friend from USC, i lost it again and cried to him for almost another hour. i felt pretty bad because the reason i'd called him was to ask about his birthday and i just broke down crying to him...after that i emailed my team and stressed the need for all of us to be in constant communication with each other- even if we're separated by distance, we're still a team, and they're still on STINT even if they're not in Japan. the next day we were able to have a team skype, which was helpful, but hopefully we'll be able to talk much more frequently, not just for me, but for all of us to have that fellowship and community of our team.

please continue to pray for my team, not only for their CoEs to come quickly, but that they would have discipline in the States, that God would show them His plans, and that we'd be able to have many times to talk with each other despite all the time differences.