School is in full swing now, with fall break just around the corner. Camille has been busy with volleyball practices and games. Ruby has taken up violin for a kids orchestra at school.
Rob and I have been attending a weekly community Japanese class in addition to our personal studies. That’s been an encouraging way to not only study language, but meet people and build relationships. People come the class from all over the world: Ukraine, Ghana, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, China, and others.
Prayer requests
-It’s the time of year when people start getting sick, which spreads quickly at school. Pray that we can stay healthy.
-Pray that we can retain the Japanese we are studying.
-Pray that our language class will lead to Gospel conversations.
-Pray for rest during the fall break.
-We’ve found some LGBT normalizing books in the library where our kids go to school. We’ve submitted appropriate paperwork for the admin to reconsider making these available. One book’s appeal has been denied; we have several others in the pipeline that are more overt and explicit. Pray for wisdom and grace moving forward as we navigate this new challenge.
From the Mouths of Babes Ruby
I jokingly said to Ruby, “You’re talking nonsense!” She replied, “I love nonsense!”
We were talking about an actor on a show and Ruby said, “He has the pigeon-est name I have ever heard!”
Ruby was talking about a volleyball game in PE. She said, “The girls denominated the boys!” She meant “dominated” but she is in the thick of fractions in math class.
Ministry Update
Higashi Happenings
While we technically live in Tokyo, the town within Tokyo we live in is called Higashi Kurume (hee-gah-shee kuh-ruh-may). We hadn’t found a church within our area, so we started expanding our search radius. We found a church 15 miles from our house in the heart of downtown Tokyo called Mustard Seed Christian Church. It is bilingual, with all three services done in English and Japanese (they offer materials in Korean, Mandarin, and Portuguese as well). Mustard Seed is about an hour away from our house by car or subway (yes, it takes an hour to travel 15 miles!).
Mustard Seed is a network of churches, with 12 different locations in Japan. We value the fidelity to Scripture and the evangelical focus of the community, and became members of the church about a year ago. Since then, we have started to serve the church in different ways. Rob attends the Ideas and Questions Cafe (IQ Cafe) every Thursday to help facilitate discussions about relevant topics from a Christian perspective. People from different walks of life, worldviews, and countries attend these sessions which has led to great conversations. Rob helps with a kid’s Sunday school class occasionally. He also helps with a class called First Steps that is offered after every service to introduce people to Christianity and our core beliefs. Emily helps read Scripture during a service once a month as well as helps with communion and collecting offerings. Camille helps in the preschool class occasionally.
We attend a weekly Bible study on Sundays and have started to explore facilitating one in Higashi Kurume since many from this area travel to Mustard Seed. We are so thankful for a Bible-believing community to encourage and strengthen our faith, while also allowing us to hear Japanese and make connections with others. We are thankful to partner with their ministry of reaching people with the Gospel.
End-of-Year Giving Goal
It’s hard to fathom, but the reality is that since Christianity is such a minority here in Japan, less than 1% in Tokyo itself, the supply chain for basic things like Bibles and tracts isn’t readily available.
Bibles in Japanese, or even English, that do exist aren’t cheap. It’s basic supply and demand. The truth is, the Japanese, the Korean diaspora, and others just don’t realize their true need for the message of Jesus Christ, so the supplies aren’t available in bulk to help keep prices low.
The End-of-Year goal goes towards basic supplies like Bibles (in multiple languages), tracts, rental space for ministry, travel, and hosting those God has placed in our lives who are ready to hear the Gospel.
Help us close the gap and get positioned well for 2027!
If you watched the Ministry Update Video above, this is the one I mentioned in it, discussing why I left my Japanese class with my heart a bit more broken.