Over the past month or so, the church members here at Rakuen Christ Church and I have been passing out flyers advertising my English classes to the surrounding neighborhoods. We have pretty much covered Tadaoka and even branched out to a few of the surrounding cities. Today, we tried a new tactic in order to get the word out. We decided, since our main target for the classes is children, that it would be a good idea to pass out flyers to kids as they were leaving their school and walking home. In order to make the classes a bit more appealing, we taped candy to the flyers. Yes, we handed out candy to innocent children just trying to make it home from school.
This was not my idea and when I was being told about it, I'm thinking, "Yeah right, kids are never gunna take candy from complete strangers, especially foreigners." I expressed my concern but was assured that it was perfectly fine. And sure enough, about 85% of the kids took the flyers and were quite grateful for the candy. There I was, smiling broadly as I hand the flyers to these adorable little kids, feeling like such a creep, and wondering why in the world they were so eager to rip the candy off the flyer and devour it. "Didn't your parents ever teach you not to take candy from strangers?" I'm thinking. Apparently not. Just another way that America and Japan are worlds apart.
actually funny you should say this about candy and stranger danger. Our church is opening a new church in Oswego and so we went door to door and sometimes store to store ( until we got kicked out of Starbucks :O) ) passing out fliers. Our Pastor, Bob who will be the lead at this new church plant said he couldn't believe how many kids opened thier front doors and said, " my parents aren't home yet, come back at 6:00pm." Pastor Bob said he was shocked and wanted to tell these kids, "Don't say that!! You don't know who I am!" Cultural differance or is it that people look friendly and therefore kids make up thier own minds on the spot...I wonder. We do live in a broke world but kids, thankfully, are generally innocent and willing to trust until we prove ourselves unworthy. Makes me take a fresh look at my responsibilty with kids. Everything I say, do, etc. will be trusted and believed. What a super blessing to know what I know is trustworthy and true :O)
ReplyDeleteI love you and praying for all of your efforts today. May they be trustworthy and filled with Him. Shalom