I have been Catholic my whole life, and as long as I can remember I have gone to church every Sunday. I love being Catholic it is a major source of my strength and joy in life. Also one of the most interesting things for me about being Catholic is that Sunday mass is worldwide. I know when I go to church in Kentucky; someone in Germany will experience the same mass that day. So when I got to Japan finding a Catholic church was a big priority for me. I found addresses for churches right away. But I couldn’t read the maps I had of my local cities because they are in Kanji (I found some maps with Roman letters later).
Yumi helped me to find the general area of Gifu City where the church was located, but it took me about 3 Sundays of walking around that area before I actually found the church. Adjusting to Japan and missing my loved ones was hard as enough, I had never missed a month of masses before. The reason I couldn’t find the church is it doesn’t really look like a church from Western standards. It looks closer to a house than a church. So I every Sunday for 3 Sundays I would take 2 different buses (about 45 min) to this area of town, only to leave after hours of walking and searching feeling defeated. I can only imagine how much I must have confused the people who live there (laugh).
But the 4th Sunday I was about to give up again when I heard singing! As a matter of fact I was hearing the Ave Maria in Japanese – pretty amazing! When I finally found the church it was the end of mass, but I didn’t care. Finding a church was like going home. I totally started crying, and must have seemed like a crazy person. But again I didn’t care; I could now go to the same masses I knew my family at home were going to. I knew that for 1 hr a week I was directly connected to my loved ones. It was as if my heart was home. I sat in the church for a long time thinking and praying in total gratitude.
I have met some wonderful parishioners since then. I met one woman for example who paints water color, and her son is a sculptor. She said she learned English from listening to an English radio station for 20 years. I couldn’t believe it. She always wears really bright colors of green. I look forward to seeing her every Sunday. She said she would show me around Gifu city some time after mass.
This parish also has an Australian priest who I was able to ask if the parish had adoration or not. Before that I had been drawing pictures of a monstrance trying to ask people if the parish had adoration. They don’t have adoration at my church, but the priest did say that the church was open ANY time and I was welcome to sit with the tabernacle and pray. I thought that was nice.
My church is very reverent. It’s almost like a Pre-Vatican II mass. The women still wear veils, and you sing to just organ music. Here is an interesting tid bit – at the sing of peace everyone bows to each other and not shake hands. I found that fascinating.
At my first mass in this church I witnessed some women who threw themselves on the floor in front of the tabernacle, and a statue of Mary. They were praying, crying and kissing the statue. I thought maybe they were going through a dark struggle in their lives, but I really admired their bravery to express so openly in prayer what they were going through.
Over all it is a really quaint and welcoming church. Many people introduce themselves to me despite the obvious fact that I do not have a very good command of their language.
Here are some images of the church. I hope to eventually have some pictures of the church with some of the parishioners.
This is the chapel where the tabernacle is.
This is the church where the parishioners sit.
And this is the alter.
Lastly I want to tell a story about the title of this post that isn’t really related to the topic 
The story just makes me smile and think of my Grandpa Bill.
During the summer of 2007 most of my mom’s side of the family went to Florida to go to our cousins wedding. But first you need to know that anytime I travel ANYwhere with my dad we have to do two things. After we have unpacked and we are settled first we have to locate the nearest Catholic church so that we know how to get there on time for Sunday mass, then we locate the nearest Starbucks for a morning coffee, muffin for shay, and a New York Times. I love this about my dad I find it adorable. But so the Sunday before my cousin got married we had a really lovely breakfast as a family at the hotel my cousin was staying at. My mom wasn’t feeling good so my dad had to drive back to our hotel (which was about 30 min away) to get my mom. So it was decided I would ride with my grandparents to church because I already knew how to get there since my dad and I had found it a few days prior. On our way to church my grandma had asked me where the location of my cousins wedding was and I told her I would show her. So we were driving towards the church (I was navigating) and I saw the place where my cousin was to get married and I said, “there it is grandma,” since I had told her I would show her. This confused my grandpa since he was trying to find the church, and he thought I was saying there the church is. So he stopped the car in the middle of the highway and started to turn towards this restaurant and reception hall on the beach. I said, “no grandpa this isn’t where the church is, this is where Robin and Ben are getting married.” He turned around and looked at me and said, “Lindsey I don’t care where they are getting married, just get me to the church on time.” I laughed so hard it totally caught me off guard.
