Halloween, 1st edition

Let me preface this by saying I've never really been super into Halloween. I like carving pumpkins and eating candy, but am too cheap to get into costumes, too lazy to trick or treat, and too jumpy to enjoy scary stuff. So basically I don't celebrate Halloween. That all changed this year! Following is some photographic evidence of this transformation.

First up, our Let's Talk high school overnight costume party! Costume for the night, gangsta' (aka pretty much all of Jacob's wardrobe)

Omar and Gangsta' Quinn

From the MW, Midwest

Toilet paper relays

ICUHS alum now at Waseda!

Jacob's Life story

Playing Golf

The whole gang

Picnic family and Ryuuki

ICUHS staff and students

Omar^2

Costume exchanging

Future architect

I ended up only getting four hours of sleep, but the sacrifice was definitely worth it. The students seemed to have a lot of fun and were really engaged in the things we had planned. About half a dozen spent the night at the student center so we got to invest a lot of time in those relationships. It's amazing how much bonding can happen at 3 in the morning! God definitely showed up and filled in where we lacked.

Jacob shared his 3 minute life story that we all have been working on, and we had discussion time afterwards. I went with all the high school girls who came and, though the discussion was mostly in Japanese, from what I was able to follow they took the questions very seriously and all opened up at least a little bit. What an honor to be part of that feeling of safety and openness! Please pray that the Holy Spirit would continue to be at work in these students' hearts and minds as well as provide my team and I more opportunities to be a safe place for them to turn.

All photo cred goes to Christine, again you can check out her blog of our time here at http://christineharada.tumblr.com/!