The rainy season is just about over, schools are out for Summer vacation, and a lot of exciting things are happening at church. The most joyful news is that two college students will be baptized shortly, one this coming Sunday and the other in the fall. Both of them come from non Christian homes, and both had strong opposition from their parents when they became Christians. They are both from neighboring prefectures, and came to our city for to go to college. One of them was told by his father before he left “Don’t join a religion, or the Yakuza!” Yakuza is essentially the Japanese mafia. However after seeing his life change and hearing his testimony his parents relented and gave their blessing for him to be baptized as a Christian. Please keep both these students in prayer as they grow in their new faith.

Summer Ministries

During the Summer while kids are on vacation our church takes the opportunity to reach out to the community. This year we hosted our seconds annual Natsu Matsuri. Matsuri means festival in Japanese, and they have many Matsuri’s throughout the year. Most of them are hosted by Shinto shrines. The picture at the top of this email is of a local highschool practicing for our city’s biggest Matsuri of the year, the Sansa Oodori, which is celebrated with a huge parade of Taiko drummers and dancers. Many children from the local elementary school who don’t normally come to church, attended our little Matsuri. We’re starting to see some of the same kids coming back to different events (two families at the Matsuri also came to an English Cafe in May). Please be praying that God will lead these kids and their families closer to Him, through the little snippets of the gospel that are shared at these events, and through a deepening relationship with our church.

We’re now in the process of preparing for kids Summer camp, which starts this Sunday after church. It’s common for many Japanese to start their day with a light aerobic style exercise, and while this is slightly out of my comfort zone, I was asked to be the morning exercise leader at the camp. Still working out my program (if anyone out there has any tips, I’m all ears.)

Preaching and Speaking

It’s been a real blessing not only serving at our home church but serving in a church with a good relationship with other churches in the area. There are so few churches, and many of the churches are very small, so having the support and cooperation of other similarly minded churches is an incredible blessing. I’ve been attending a monthly pastors meeting this year and been really encouraged by the other pastors serving throughout the prefecture. This past Monday I had the opportunity to share a short message and lead a discussion time about church ministry. Given that this was all in Japanese it was very difficult, yet it went really well, and led to some really good times of sharing and focus. Thank you to all who prayed for this meeting.

I am also scheduled to preach three more times over the next three months at three different churches. In August I will preach at a sister church in Kitakami, in September I’ll preach at our home church in Morioka and in October I’ll preach at an independent church. In the midst of all these opportunities I feel like we’re getting a better grasp of the issues facing the churches here in Japan, and how we can encourage them towards a greater involvement in spreading the Gospel throughout Japan. As we look out at the daunting task of reaching the other 99.8% of the population with good news of Salvation, I can’t help but feel that the Japanese church, small in numbers as it may be, will play a huge role in God’s plan for this country. It’s a privilege to serve alongside these Japanese believers and churches, partnering together with them in our common hope to see the gospel spread, and believers grow in Christian maturity.

Recently it feels a little hard to process all that’s going on around us. We’ve been blessed with an abundance of opportunities to serve our church, community and prefecture. At the same time we’ve felt the burden of church ministry as our church has wrestled through difficult situations requiring more wisdom and discernment than we possess. Through it all we rely on God’s direction, confident not in our own decisions, but always confident in His power to lead. Thank you for supporting us and the ministry here through your prayers and financial partnership. Below are some of the things that happened in March!

5 Year Anniversary of the 3/11 Earthquake and Tsunami

It’s been five years since the Tsunami devastated nearly all the coastal towns in three of Japan’s prefectures. Most of these cities still have a long way to go before their recovery is complete. If you drive a long the coast line here you will see construction happening everywhere. There are still tens of thousands of people living in “temporary” residences waiting for the chance to move into a real home.

In the midst of all this Christians continue to minister to the residents of these towns through temporary housing visits, after school programs for children, and hosting community events. Teams from Singapore, Germany, the US and Japan are a constant presence in this prefecture that previously did not have a single missionary serving within it’s borders. We continue to prepare for long term service in coastal areas, and as such I’ve been slowly increasing my trips down to the coast, while at the same time continuing my training through interning at Morioka Bible Baptist Church.

Tomo’s Many Ministries

Tomo is a lot more useful than I am right now. As I struggle to simply comprehend the language and what is going on around me, she not only speaks Japanese but is gifted in many other areas as well. This has not gone unnoticed at church – they’ve been putting her to work!

Currently Tomo is leading a monthly pound cake making ministry, a bi-weekly young mothers outreach, and on occasion plays piano. This year she was also asked to chair the evangelism committee and quickly came up with an ambitious plan to shift the focus from hosting two or three big events a year, to encouraging and equipping everyone in the church to engage in personal, relational evangelism to their friends and family.

We’ve been especially encouraged at what God is doing through the young mother’s group. What started as an informal get together with a few of the stay at home mom’s from the church has grown to include a number non-christian friends of these mothers, who are now gathering at the church on a regular basis for fellowship.

Dave Prepping for his First Japanese Sermon

I’ll be preaching for the first time in Japanese this coming Sunday, May 1st. However I’ve been preparing for this sermon for the last 4 months. It’s been a painstakingly slow process compared to how much easier it is prepare for a sermon in English. For my first time I’ll be relying heavily on notes, which requires that I write the sermon out in Japanese in advance. In March I finished the translation. I’ll be preaching on the parable of the Unmerciful Servant. I want to highlight how God’s great forgiveness to us both frees us and compels us to forgive those who have wronged us.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please keep us, our church and our prefecture in prayer, as we commit to building God’s Kingdom.

In contrast to the  hectic December holiday season, we had a much slower pace of ministry in January. While we enjoyed the opportunity to catch our breath a bit, the month turned out to be a challenging one on multiple fronts. Despite this we are seeing God working, and learning valuable lessons about life and ministry which we trust will prove useful as God continues to prepare us for long term ministry in Japan.

As a church we have been wrestling with a difficult issue. It’s been a privilege to observe and pray along side the leadership of our church as they seek God’s wisdom and work for reconciliation to take place. This has also been a valuable lesson, as in Japan family issues are rarely talked about, and often it is not until significant problems arise that they come to light. As a church we are beginning to look to the future to see how we can better encourage and help strengthen families before such problems occur. We hope to put a greater focus on discerning the unspoken needs of church members, and helping to meet them as we move forward.

We’ve also seen God give us further direction for our future, in regards to where we will serve after my internship here in Morioka is completed. Sadly through more difficulty we’ve seen God apparently close one door of future ministry partnership while at the same time advancing and paving the way for what looks like a very promising opportunity for the gospel to be proclaimed and the church to be built up in another area we were considering. Right now there seems to be a lot in motion, much of which we’re not at liberty to share openly quite yet, so we ask that you continue to pray for God’s direction and wisdom as we begin to look more closely at this particular opportunity and speak with those involved.

I was also asked to begin preparing my first sermon in Japanese. Our pastor will be out of town one Sunday in May, so I will be filling in for him. This is a big step for me, and I’m grateful for having much advance notice to begin preparing. I have already begun writing the sermon in English, and once finished will be working with Tomo and my Japanese teacher to translate it into Japanese. After the translation is done I’ll spend a lot of time practicing it to make sure that I can deliver it in a clear and understandable way. Likely (hopefully!) this will be the most difficult sermon I will ever give. Please pray that I can prepare well and clearly explain and teach from God’s word the message that He wants the congregation to hear. As many of you know there are a shortage of preachers in Japan, and I’ve already been asked to give the sermon a second time at a different church, and will likely have opportunities to give it in other churches as well.

It’s a few months since the start of my internship at Morioka Bible Baptist Church, and it’s quickly become apparent that ministry in Japan is fast paced, exciting and quite a bit different from being a full time language student, or working 9 – 5 as an IT professional (my previous day job). We’re still in the process of adjusting to this new pace, learning to take time to breathe when things are a little slower so that we can dive right into the long days, late nights and long hours on the road that characterize ministry in Morioka and throughout rural Iwate.

It’s been both a challenge and a blessing to be able to experience many different aspects of ministry in December. As seems to be the case in most places, Christmas is one of the busiest times at our Church.

At the beginning of the month we hosted a team of four gentlemen from Texas. For me it was my first chance being on the receiving end of a short term missions trip. With the help of the team we were able to host an English Cafe at the local community center. We also spent a day down on the coast working with Tomo’s dad to minister to survivors still living in temporary housing, as well as help with an afternoon children’s program for kids living in temporary housing. We had a wonderful time and are looking forward to hosting more teams from their church in the future. For me in particular it was a lot of fun being able to hang out with a group of guys who understood (and were quite proficient) in American sarcasm, which rarely translates well into Japanese.

As we said goodbye to our new friends from Texas, a large team from Singapore arrived the same day and helped to host another English Cafe at the church before we sent them off to various locations on the coast to help with Christmas outreaches.

Tomo and I were put in charge of our church’s Christmas Service this year, where we came up with a program to explain who Christ is, by using Japanese calligraphy. I produced a series of videos of Church members writing about Jesus, while Tomo coordinated and enlisted nearly every member of the church to help with various aspects of the service, from reading scripture, to singing in the choir, to making snacks and cleaning the church. It was an exhausting ordeal but in the end everything came together, and we were encouraged to see a number of new people attend, as well as some friends and family of church members.

The Japanese calligraphy created by church members. Watch video.
The next day our family drove 2 hours down to Ofunato to spend Christmas Eve with Ofunato Church, where we celebrated Christ’s coming with one of the only two members of the church. We were pleasently surprised to see one new beleiver and two non Christians who had been ministered to by 3.11 staff members also attend the service.

Throughout December God gave us many opportunities to share about the coming of His Son, and through all these experiences we’re begining to get a better understanding of the needs here, and how God can use us to meet those needs as we look towards many years of future ministry here in Iwate. We still have much to learn, but God is faithfully teaching and preparing us to serve Him here.