Japanese Students Take Abilene!

Students from Japan's Ibaraki Christian High School descended upon the Abilene Christian University campus this last month in order to practice English and learn American culture.

During the day, the 23 students took classes on subjects such as English conversation, American culture and word processing, as well as received conversation tutoring and attended a daily Chapel service. My job was to organize these chapels from 11:30-11:55 each weekday. These 16 and 17 year-old students describe their experiences of chapel at school as, "boring," and "make me sleepy," so I wanted to engineer chapel in a way that would be interesting and relevant to them. We had several engaging speakers who came, and we had some great conversations about the nature of God, Jesus, the Bible, as well as our own identity. Almost every chapel was crafted around a memorable activity.


Their evening and weekend activities included swimming, movies, miniature golf, the Abilene Zoo, and cook-outs at the park.

High school students from Ibaraki Christian High School, located in Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan, have been coming to ACU each July for eight years. This year's batch of students are back in Japan now, but I hope to see them the next time Erica and I make the trek across the sea!