The Mercer Family

My Story (How I Became a Christ-follower)

admin — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 06:30:42 +0000

At the age of 17 I found myself in the Bethel Church parking lot in Redding, California pondering the amazing series of circumstances that had brought me to this point in my life. I had been through a lot for one so young and my outlook on life was already more jaded that many men over twice my age. In the past year I had, in rapid succession, been arrested because of my hoodlum associations and illegal activities, dropped out of a prestigious charter high school that I qualified to enter only a year earlier, and then gone through two expensive drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs; a 40-day in-patient hospital program in San Pedro and a 30-day stay at a treatment center in Idyllwild. The results were the same after each; the head of the program pronounced me incurable and recommended that I be institutionalized.

I had avoided church for years and scoffed at anyone who tried to share the Gospel with me. I felt that I was certainly brighter than any of those weak-minded people who fell for the Bible and I enjoyed arguing with (or just telling off) anyone brave enough to broach the subject of God with me. But eventually my extremely self-centered, passive-aggressive, rebellious lifestyle caught up with me and with all other doors shut, I finally went to my praying mother’s house asking for help. She showed so much undeserved forgiveness that even I could not refuse her appeal to go to church with her “just once.”

And so here I was, alone in the parking lot, and wondering what it was that had just happened. I had finally gone to church with my mom but as the preacher began to speak I had felt the whole room begin to close in on me. It was as if every word was directed at me. Suddenly I realized that there might actually be a Creator God and even further, that he might care about me personally, right here and right now. I left the church building in the middle of the meeting suddenly before the preaching was finished, even though it felt that all eyes were on me, because I just had to escape. Now outside, finally alone and able to think, I found myself praying to God and asking Him directly, “If you are real then please show me.”

As I prayed that simple prayer it was as if I had opened my heart just a crack, and it seems that this is all He was waiting for. I felt a peace that was greater than anything I had ever experienced before. I suddenly knew beyond a doubt that God was there and that He would take control of everything. In a flash I knew that, yes, I had really made a mess of my life but that Jesus was giving me a second chance and that He could and would do a lot better than I had. Suddenly my countenance changed. I felt intense joy because I knew that I was doing the right thing. I could not stop smiling. I think I smiled for a week straight from the sheer happiness that was now in my heart.

Later, a pastor read the book of Romans with me and explained the meaning of life from God’s perspective. As we read together about all men being hopeless sinners and about God sending Jesus to help those who would accept Him I experienced physical sensations which were not pleasant. I realized later that I was actually being healed of my drug and alcohol addiction. When we read about Jesus paying for my sins, I was more than willing to admit that I needed to humbly ask God for help. By the time we had finished reading and the pastor had prayed with me, I felt totally clean and spiritually alive for the first time. Amazingly, since that day I haven’t been addicted to alcohol or drugs even though I was diagnosed by several different respected professionals in more than one hospital as an incurable alcoholic/drug addict just less than a year prior. I am really amazed and thankful for this miracle in my life and I don’t know why God chose to give it to me – I just know He did.

Since that time, the Lord has led me on an amazing journey of faith. I have a new friend who guides and encourages me daily. Before I became a Christ-follower I never imagined that one could have an actual relationship with the Creator of the Universe. And I never imagined what an amazing future He had in store for me. I have never regretted the decision I made that day to turn the control of my life over to the Holy Spirit. I can say with certainty that if it weren’t for God’s amazing love for me and awesome restoring power I would have been lost long ago. But now I have a beautiful family, a wonderful church and my life belongs to an awesome God who really deserves all the honor for any good things that come from my life. I also discovered something else – a purpose for my life. I now know there is actually a loving Creator who is watching over us and all of human history. He has a plan and I’m privileged to be a tiny part of making it happen. I live in Japan now where people didn’t grow up in a culture that is based on Christianity and 99 out of 100 people don’t even know much about it. I have Christian friends from all over who have partnered with me and my family to help us reach Japan by telling people here about Jesus, and planting churches.

If you are a Christ-follower and you want to help, let’s talk. Or if you have not yet made a personal connection with this Jesus that I have been talking about then I’d love to hear from you too. It would be my privilege to introduce Him to you! You can reach me at the email here on this site.

February Update

admin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:59:34 +0000

What is going on?

It has been almost a year since the Great Earthquake hit Japan on March 11th. The church has grown and matured and we have really begun to understand that we are called to be a socially responsible church. Through the outreach we did last year in Sendai we now have a contact at the Kanagawa Newspaper and at the local FM radio station. A friend of mine introduced Satomi to a member of parliment in Uganda who is a Christian and I recently met the Ambassador of Rwanda here in Japan who is also a Christian. As I watch all these connections happen,

I see that Satomi’s burden to bring the African Children’s Choir to Japan will not just be about raising funds to help the orphans in Japan. The children themselves will be ambassadors from God to Japan. Wouldn’t it be just like God to use the faith of poor orphan children to reach the hearts and minds of rich Japanese in Tokyo and across Japan. Thank you for helping to make this possible.

Coming Events

Feb 29 – March 4
James in Sendai
March 1-14
Satomi in Africa
March 20
All-Japan Conference
March 25
Yokosuka Youth Service

March Prayer Requests

James has decided that he wants to finish his Bachelor’s Degree in the United States. He has applied at a number of universities for the Fall, 2012 semester as a transfer student from Sophia University. Please pray for favor and finances for him to finish college. By making this change he will be able to major in something to do with music and ministry

He will be leaving tomorrow to work five days at the Tohoku Celebration of Hope event in Sendai. He is the translator between the technical team for Franklin Graham and the Japanese company running sound, light, etc. It is wonderful that he can earn some money for college while doing ministry in Sendai. This will be his fifth ministry trip to the disaster zone. He is also excited to be seeing and working with Kirk Franklin and all the other artists.

Satomi will leave this Thursday for two weeks in Africa. She is going to visit the African Children’s Choir (Music for Life) schools in Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda and also take a trip to Johannesburg, South Africa to see the new center they are building there. Her desire is to bring the African Children’s Choir to Japan for the first time and she will also help them with their next Asian tour. I have been amazed to see her burden for this become a reality. God has provided all the money she needs and she already has contacts around Africa who are expecting her. Of course she also wants to visit with our old friends and teachers, the Wagars, who are pastoring a great church in Kampala. We have already seen your prayers make a huge difference. Please continue to pray for her especially during the next two weeks of her first trip to Africa!

How to give:

http://admin.everynation.org/giving?P=010229

Aloha Team 3

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:50:48 +0000


Doing hula with the children in Fukushima. View at Picasa Doing hula with the children in Fukushima.27-Jan-2012 16:28, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D70, 3.5, 28.0mm, 0.067 sec	Most of the team trying to stay warm with a kerosene heater and swedish fish. View at Picasa Most of the team trying to stay warm with a kerosene heater and swedish fish.27-Jan-2012 18:53, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D70, 3.3, 28.0mm, 0.02 sec	Hirofumi and Masahiro at our host church in Kurihara. View at Picasa Hirofumi and Masahiro at our host church in Kurihara.28-Jan-2012 07:35, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D70, 9.0, 28.0mm, 0.002 sec
Doing the "Hukilau" in a Tohoku old-folks home. View at Picasa Doing the "Hukilau" in a Tohoku old-folks home.28-Jan-2012 10:30, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D70, 4.5, 28.0mm, 0.033 sec	First service in Ishinomaki. Pastor Kishinami is sharing. View at Picasa First service in Ishinomaki. Pastor Kishinami is sharing.29-Jan-2012 10:57, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D70, 3.3, 28.0mm, 0.04 sec	Hiro-san passing out some of the hand-knitted items to a grateful lady in Tohoku. View at Picasa Hiro-san passing out some of the hand-knitted items to a grateful lady in Tohoku.29-Jan-2012 11:18, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D70, 3.3, 28.0mm, 0.02 sec

For intellectuals only – resources for answering arguments

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:00:13 +0000

Great site inspired by a master of apologetics, C.S. Lewis:
http://www.apologetics.org/

Ravi Zacharius answers “How can God be good if…?”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=902520087497301262

I love Ravi’s podcasts – check his website:
http://www.rzim.org/

Moshe Averick answers Dawkins
http://www.aish.com/sp/ph/The_Design_Argument_Answers_to_Atheists_Objections.html

X06HT Desire (HTC Bravo) from Softbank Japan – One year later…

admin — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:42:45 +0000

When iOS and Android started making waves a couple years ago, it took a while for a decent Android smartphone to come out in Japan. I waited patiently, for quite a while, until I saw what I liked. I do think I made a good choice with the HTC Desire. I bought the Desire from Softbank in April, 2010 and, because of production shortages of the AMOLED screen, finally got my hands on it over a month later in June. Having used this phone for well over a year now I am still quite satisfied with the specs. It has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a decent 5MB camera and good 720p quality video. The only negative I have found with this phone is that the internal memory seems to fill up quickly when installing apps.

After the Froyo (Android 2.2) update came out from HTC and Softbank I expected this issue to disappear because moving apps to the SD card was finally officially supported. While there seemed to be improvement in battery life and new camera features after the update, I still got memory warnings even when I moved all the apps I could to external SD storage and had to finess the phone in various ways when I wanted to install new apps. Later on I learned that this is because a part of the OS called the Dalvik-cache is located in a smallish partition which, in hindsite, HTC maybe should have made a little larger.

During the past year I have applied all the over the air updates from Softbank and, as mentioned above, enjoyed some good OS improvements when Froyo (Android 2.2) came out. I kept everything stock because I hoped that Softbank would continue to support this model. I was hoping for tethering support, skype support, Google Voice support, etc. Softbank delivered on the Froyo, but recently I heard that they will not do an OTA (over the air) update to Android 2.3. You can get it on the HTC Dev Center but when I looked closely I saw this,

The following regional variants are not-compatible with this upgrade: Germany (Deutsch Telekom), North America, South America, South Korea, Japan, Turkey, and Arabic language speaking countries in the Middle East.

Hmmm. I guess it works somewhere, but not in Japan or these other small countries listed?

Rays Login Widget (version 0.2)

admin — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 13:20:48 +0000

Since I want to learn more about WordPress I am working on a plugin that handles various login related tasks. Version 2 adds the ability to customize the login picture on the wp-admin.php login page. I found a plugin called “Login Logo” by Mark Jaquith which does exactly what I wanted to do and merged that code into my Login Widget (see this post for more info on the first Login Widget).

Now if you upload a graphic named login-logo.png to your wp-content directory the plugin will use it as the logo instead of this one:

I’m not really writing this plugin to share – simply for my own benefit in learning and in customizing my sites. But if it is useful you are welcome to it:
Ray’s Login Widget (version 0.2 .zip archive)

EN Team #6 (April 2nd-4th, 2011)

admin — Sat, 28 May 2011 09:43:31 +0000

Ray’s Login Widget

admin — Thu, 12 May 2011 13:11:42 +0000

Just a small widget to replace the default “meta” widget in WordPress 3.x Shows (localized) login link when user is not logged in or shows logout and server admin links when user is logged in. Does NOT show the feed and WordPress.org links.

I want to learn to write widgets and this was a good place to start. I might add some more functionality later but for now you are free to use this if you want to add a login link to your sidebar but DON’T want the default feed and WordPress.org links…

Install:
rays-login-widget.php (this file is archived in .zip format for security reasons)
Unzip the file above to wp-content/plugins dir on your webserver. Activate “Ray’s Login Widget” in the admin console plugins page. Navigate to Appearance|Widgets in the admin console and drag the “Ray’s Login Widget” to a sidebar. Enter a title for the login link. Done.

P.S. I learned from Justin Tadlock’s post here and from the default-widgets.php file in the WordPress 3.2.1 install (wp-includes/default-widgets.php).

Using Inkscape with Illustrator files

admin — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 15:06:30 +0000

I was recently asked to do a quick localization project for a certain non-profit where I received a business card template in Adobe Illustrator format and had to create a Japanese version of the card for their local representative here. I don’t own a personal copy of Adobe Illustrator (CS5 list price in Japan 84,000 yen or about US$1000.00) so I faced a decision. I could do one of four things:

1. Download the trial version, use it for this short project then uninstall
2. Pay about $500 for the academic version (but would probably end up with Japanese software)
3. Download a pirate version from a torrent site (OK, this is not the right option for a Christ-follower)
4. Turn to open source alternatives

Option #1 looked good but it only works once per PC and also leaves registry bloat behind after the uninstall. Because I like open source software (always free) and because I happened to know about a great alternative to Illustrator, I decided to go with option #4.

Tools required:

Inkscape

homepage: http://inkscape.org/
download: http://inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

UniConvertor

homepage: http://sk1project.org/
download: http://sk1project.org/modules.php?name=Products&product=uniconvertor&op=download

How I did it

After installing the lastest Inkscape (currently at version 48.1) I found that Inkscape imports ai files natively pretty well. I was able to import the Illustrator CS4 file containing the business card template with no problems. I did have to specify the size, so I used a standard Japanese business card size. The file opened up in Inkscape and I was able to edit text and vector graphics. However I noticed that there was no export to Adobe Illustrator .ai format built in. I was surprised because I thought I had used Inkscape to export .ai files in the past. After a quick web search I learned that the .ai export feature was removed in Inkscape version .47. This is because Adobe Illustrator now (since version 10) supports importing .svg files, which are Inkscape’s native file format. This is good news but in my experience some Mac-based graphics designers aren’t too great with handling different file formats. So I was pleased to find that a separate open-source project exists who’s whole mission is to provide a convertor between the various vector-based graphic formats in existence. Not only that, but this project includes a patch script to run on Inkscape 47.x or 48.x which adds the specific functionality I was looking for. The project is called sk1project and the software is called uniconvertor.

When the Earth shakes (original)

admin — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 14:41:54 +0000

(new video version – April 1st)

Click here to view the embedded video.

(new audio version – March 31st)

In times like this I’m reminded

That my life belongs to you

In times like this I will not fear

Everything is in your hands

When the Earth shakes

I’ll be ready for Your call

For I know You will guide me through

When the Earth shakes

I will serve You all the more

For I know in You I stand secure

When I’m alone I’m not alone

You are always there for me

When I’m confused You give me peace

You give me strength so I can lead