Maybe, Good News!

It may be a good news to English speaking friends of Jodo Shu in the world.

I am now making a series of lecture video on "Ichimai Kishomon" or "One Sheet Document" written by Honen Shonin in 1212 and I hope I can upload "Part I" by the end of today.    This could be very interesting because I'm not talking about someones' commentaries books.  This  is "MY" understanding of Ichimai Kishomon, which I repeated again and again for almost 40 years.

As compared to the numbers of videos I uploaded, I don't have many subscribers and viewers, however , there was a memorable event happened at New Year's Service on January 5th this year.

Just before starting the service, I saw a stranger couple came to the temple.  I was very curious if they were residents of Kauai or not and whether they knew this service or not. 

So I asked them, "Did you know this service?"

Surprisingly they said "Yes."  They knew this service through my website and kindly told me they enjoyed my youtube video.

I want to thank Carol and Riz from Illinois for coming to the service and sharing a very good comment to me.   They made me happy and gave me courage/motivation to continue to make the video.

Since I was assigned to Koloa in December 1999, I received so many inquires about Sunday Service.   Many  people told me, "I'll be there", but actually most people never showed up.   Seriously, I had thought many American were liars. 

But, I want to believe  some people did come here, but they didn't show up, maybe because they saw few cars parking  on the temple ground.  Maybe they expected many people to see at the service.  Or maybe, the expression of "I'll be there" means "I'm not sure."  But one thing for sure is that people need great courage to attend the service at the place they don't know well.  

In the past, I experienced disappointments many times to see few members here at the service.  But I feel a little by little, the numbers of visitors both at Koloa Jodo Mission and at my website are increasing.   So I would never give up making efforts.