Ministry of Hope from Japan

 Hey, peeps!

I am an English teacher here in Japan, but that's not where my story will end. I am an illustrator, an aspiring manga artist, too. I will be a manga artist with a family in the future. There's no doubt about it because I trust that this is what God has continued to prepare for me. 

Many of my friends have told me to be a Christian manga artist, to write Christian stories. How many people read Christian comics? How many non-Christians seek them out? I, as a lover of comics, never really wanted to read them because their stories were inorganic. So, I've never wanted to write Christian manga. 

What I want to write are stories of hope and struggle because we all struggle. We struggle with our image. We struggle with our purpose for living. We struggle with hate, beatings, and pain. We struggle to see light at the end of our darkest tunnels. We struggle to live. Christians, non-Christians, everyone struggles to find peace, hope, and joy in our lives. That's why so many passages in the Bible discuss the struggles of life. 

I struggle to see God's fulfillment of this promise: to become a manga artist in Japan with a family. Why'd He give me this promise? I believe so He can shine His Story of Hope onto those who cannot see this light right now. But, first, He must show His Hope throughout my entire life. Every aspect of this life that I live must be filled with His Hope and this hope must only be completed by His Hands. Only He can make this promise complete. So, He has dragged out my dreams to its breaking point and force me to realize that I can do nothing to fulfill this life's dream. 

How do I know this is a promise of the Lord? Because, I feel complete in His Love when I am working on my manga. I struggled a lot in art school. I didn't have the skills to pursue this career nor to be picked out of the crowd. I prayed for God to shut the door on this dream if it was not pleasing to Him. He not only chose to keep this door open, He also encouraged me to keep my eyes on Him as I pursued this dream. He brought me over and over again to Japan and this wonderfully broken country quickly became my home. I anguished when I wasn't in Japan because I was not in the home God had called me to pursue. He challenged me every single time I came by bringing me in a capacity I most feared at that time; first as a missionary, then as a study-abroad student, then as a teacher. 

Each time I went, life grew more difficult despite knowing that I was following God. My faith has been tested immensely since I accepted God's calling in Japan. As a teacher, I have experienced the darkest hours of my life and the longest pain, both physically and spiritually. Only today have I understood in full why that has been...

...To understand hope, you must live a life that challenges that hope. You must see darkness to appreciate the light. 

So, here I am declaring God's Ministry of Hope in my life. It'll still be an upward battle, because Satan wants to break me away from God. He wants to destroy my hope in Christ. But that's just the beginning. A battle of hope for those living without it, that is what I want to fight. God still has work to do in me to prepare me for this battle. There's training to do and studying to complete. When God has decided that I am ready for the spiritual war, He will send me down my next path in life.

Until then, later peeps!