Hiro has become a great friend to Brandon and I. They talk via Skype or Google chat often. If he lived in the states (or vice versa), Brandon says they would definitely hang out. He has also been a great source of encouragement to us as a family and to us personally. Read about how Hiro came to the Internet campus....
Hi,
I'm Hiro. I've been a regular at lifechurch.tv for almost 1.5 years now. I currently
reside in Hamamatsu City, Japan.
I don't remember exactly how I found lifechurch.tv, but I think I just stumbled across a
link somewhere. Being a web developer and having no local church at the time I thought it
was a pretty cool concept. Eventually, I met a guy who leads an online lifegroup (while
chatting in the LC chat room on Sunday), and I've been a part of his group since then.
Our lifegroup is very international. Gabe, the leader of the group, is an American from
OK but currently living in Indonesia with his wife and two children. Besides him and
myself, we have one member from UK, another one from Australia, and two people from the
US. Occasionally we've had a soldier in Iraq visiting us as well. All of us are on Skype,
so we often use voice conference call for our meeting. We also have our own Google group
to keep in touch with each other, share pictures and prayer requests. We've been doing
this for quite a while now and it's been amazing how this stuff actually brings us fairly
close.
We do have a lot of challenges, though, because of our international nature. The biggest
one is time zone. It's often very difficult to "meet" at the same time because
all of us are so apart when it comes to time zone. And not to mention various work
commitment during the week... But Google group covers a lot of gap, and we've been quite
active in keeping in touch with each other.
Overall, lifechurch.tv and especially its online lifegroup has been awesome. Try it if
you haven't already. You might be pleasantly surprised..... :)
I have a heart for bringing more North American missionaries to Japan and assisting them in
their ministries. I've already been involved in a couple of American short term mission
teams, but I would like to see more coming. I'm hoping someday lifechurch.tv will open a
branch somewhere in Japan!
Hiro