18 months ago I took this photo and God had a message in this photo for me today, which until today I had not seen...

As you probably know by now, I hope to do a lot more photography when I'm in Japan and through it support the mission work that we are planning.
As I was showing a couple of friends some of my best Japan photos, I noticed something very interesting while zooming in on this photo of the hippy girl. On her arms she was wearing a number of bands and on one of those bands I could make out the letters “W.J.D” . Immediately I recognised it as part of “W.W.J.D” or What Would Jesus Do!
The story behind this photo was that back in October 2006, Ritsuko and I were with our friend Pastor Jeff MacKay walking around the streets of Shinshibashi in Osaka, when we saw a number of girls in very colourful clothing. Jeff asked me “Do you want to get a photo of one of these girls?” and I said “Yes” so he called over this particular girl and I took this photo, because the beautiful lighting at that time of day it turned out really great.
This photo has since featured on some of our promotional material for our Japan Mission. When Hanako Sakamoto (who we stayed with last year) saw the photo of the girl in one of our fliers she said “I think this girl will receive Christ one day”. I don't know if this girl is a Christian, but I have since found out that unlike here where these “W.W.J.D” bands are only sold in Christian book stores, in Japan these are available in many sports stores (I think it's because a lot of American Christian athletes wear them and Japanese people saw it on the T.V.). Recently it has become trendy for Japanese people to wear crosses (because of a Korean T.V. drama which is popular in Japan where the main star wears a cross). Also I noticed that Japanese radio plays lots of Contemporary Christian Music (in English) which would not get any airplay on our commercial radio here, because they like the tune, but they don't know what the words are about. I think in all of these things God has been showing us that He will take care of the little details and He has gone ahead of us and prepared the way. As Paul did when he went to Athens, we can make known to them the “Unknown God”.

Photo was taken on the 03/10/2006, for this and more Shinsaibashi photos check out:- http://www.pbase.com/jameslclarke/shinsaibashi06
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