Tomo and I are serving on the Evangelism Committee at church this year, and one of the events that we’re helping out with is a seminar featuring a guest speaker with a very interesting testimony. His name is Hugh Brown, and early on in his life he got involved with a terrorist group in Ireland. He was captured, and while in jail became a Christian. After that he went into the ministry, and eventually came to Japan as a missionary where he has been serving as a pastor of a Japanese church for many years. He’ll be coming to speak at church next Saturday May 31. Tomo and one other lady at church are coordinating the event, so she’s been keeping pretty busy making arrangements. I helped out a little by creating the posters and fliers, which we hung all around the neighborhood and the nearby college. The headline is:
FROM TERRORIST TO PASTOR
Why you Shouldn’t Kill People
The subtitle is actually the title of the book that this man wrote, and a few people at church expressed mild concern that this might be a little too strong, but eventually we came to the conclusion that this would be the most accurate and eye catching title to use. My Japanese teacher mentioned that she had seen people stopping and staring at the posters on the street, and thought that was great. Please pray that many people would be intrigued enough to attend the event to hear about the only God who can effect such radical change in people’s lives. Pray that those who attend would likewise be changed.
The following day, June 1, we’re hosting the Iwate Missionary Fellowship meeting, a monthly meet up of missionaries serving in Iwate. It’s a great opportunity to hear about what God is doing throughout the prefecture, make connections with fellow missionaries and potential future partners, and lift each other up in prayer. The cities in Iwate are very isolated from each other, often it takes at least an hour of driving through rural roads to get to the next closest town. Furthermore many of these towns only have one missionary or couple serving in them, so for these missionaries it can get pretty lonely. This is a great opportunity to support one another, and we’re happy that such a group exists. Iwate, being such a rural area, is not currently the focus of any single large missions agency, thus almost all the missionaries here are from different sending agencies and denominations, and therefore most have little support in Japan from their denominations and sending agencies. But that’s part of the reality of serving in a frontier area for the Gospel. Please be praying for all these fellow workers who are faithfully seeking to bring the gospel to the people of Iwate.