Phew. Time goes by.

It's been a while since I posted on this blog, and I've intentionally done that so as not to write anything that may or may not offend people left, right and centre, particularly those closest to me. I hope you guys haven't missed this blog (I haven't! hehe... ahh well).

To catch up with the times, I've been to Hong Kong, I've been to Japan, I've had amazing lifechanging experiences and I've seen God working throughout these months. Although it's been a tough time, I find that it's comforting that He's everywhere that you'll ever be, and He's working through people all around the world.

I was recently playing through a Japanese hack and slash game (both hilarious and mindless!) and I'm pretty amazed by what I can learn. Oda Nobunaga, the shogun who unfied Japan in the Sengoku period of Japanese history (the 1500s - 1600s), was a pretty awesome guy who supported the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries when they first had contact with Japan, although he never converted to Christianity.

Succeeding Nobunaga, though, came a guy called Toyotomi Hideyoshi. This guy was banished Christian missionaries from Kyushu during his rule, to seize more power. After that, Hideyoshi didn't like the fact that the Christians were quite influential and that they bickered somewhat (Spanish or Portuguese Christianity?). He was also wary of the fact that a lot of Japanese people were abandoning their cultural beliefs to follow Christianity - so he had 26 Christians crucified publicly, in Nagasaki, as an example of what would happen. Christianity was then banned, and all known followers were executed.

This depressing occurrence drove almost all the Christians in Japan underground. However, in history, Christ's message always survives in the face of persecution. We can see this in the early church, in the church in Asia and Africa. It is a message of hope, of love, and is eternally binding and wonderful.

When Christian missionaries returned to Japan, in the late 1800s, what they found was an amazing community of 'hidden Christians'. It's incredible to see that Christianity was so integral to this group of people that they worked even under severe persecution to spread the message of the Gospel.

I was actually astounded to see churches in Japan dating back to the 1800s, especially as I always thought of Japan as a Buddhist, Shinto or increasingly Secular country. However, it's a magnificent and wonderful thing that it has roots in the country going back so long.

It's also a great reminder that we should never give up on China. We should never give up on Africa. Because the message of the gospel is there, alive and well, and it needs to be shouted from the mountaintops.

The awesome Russian Orthodox church in Hakodate, Japan