Hosting Summer Teams, Part 2

Another Chi Alpha team from Grambling State University in Ruston, Louisiana went to Hokkaido to conduct gospel workshops and evangelistic meetings. This team has come for the past 3 years to serve the same church. I flew to Asahikawa to meet up with the team on July 15.

Initially, I was to supposed to help the team with communicating with the hosting Japanese pastors.  However, because of the need for translation in some meetings, I translated for the first time.  I now have so much more respect for people who can translate on the spot.  By no means was my Japanese fluent, but somehow I managed to communicate.   

It’s said that for every 2,000 flyers passed out in Japan, one person will attend a Christian event.  We passed out 5,000 flyers downtown near the train station, and many people came. 

A church leader’s sister came to church for the first time.  She cried during the service because she had never experienced anything like the presence of God.  She also came to the Ladies’ Wednesday Bible Study. That day she decided to leave her Buddhist cult group because she learned that only Jesus Christ offers eternal life.  That was a major spiritual victory.  Please pray for her to break those ties so that she can know Jesus Christ personally. 

A man who came to the first gospel workshop on Saturday came the next day for the Sunday morning service. Mr. Sakurai’s hobby is multimedia development, so he brought his cameras and filmed the entire service.  Two days later, he volunteered to go with us for sightseeing.  Again, he filmed us enjoying the beautiful, spacious  landscape of Hokkaido.  By the last weekend, he and Pastor Fukumori were discussing faith in Jesus Christ. Please pray for Mr. Sakurai to trust in Jesus Christ.

 

Hosting Summer Teams, Part 1

This summer has been filled with hosting American university student teams.  The planning and hard work that goes into hosting these teams is worth it all to see the impact on students who have never heard about Jesus Christ. 

The first summer team came from Chi Alpha at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.      

The next team came from Inland Church in Los Angeles, California.  This team has  also come to Japan for the last 3-4 years for summer missions.  This team, being Asian American college students, really understand the Asian mindset and presented the gospel in an relevant way to Japanese students.

The team went with our bilingual church  Gospel Assembly of Praise (GAP) to a weekend camp.  Mura, a student from Waseda University, also went and gave his life to Jesus the very first night.  Mura has been coming to the Chi Alpha at his university for about 2 years, but he finally made a radical decision to follow Jesus Christ this summer.  Pray for his spiritual growth.

 

 

 

Southern Illinois Summer Team

The Chi Alpha team from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale IL was here for about 2 weeks in June. This Chi Alpha has sent teams to Japan for the last 3 years. They were great servants ministering on campuses and in churches. They helped with campus ministry by inviting students to their gospel concerts, performing drama, leading Bible studies, and of course praying and building relationships with students at our various Tokyo universities.
 

May 2005

I pray that this finds you well and prospering in the Lord. Here, the colors of Spring are everywhere--camellias, Japanese cherry blossoms, azaleas--and Summer is just around the corner. Just this week the temperatures in Tokyo went from the mild 60s to the 80s. I believe it's going to be another hot, humid summer.

By now, you've probably heard about the tragic train derailment in Japan. I live about 180 miles north of the scene. About 100 people lost their lives and about 500 were injured. Ironically, the place where this occurred is the same area where a devastating earthquake occurred 10 years ago. Would you pray that where the enemy meant it for harm the Lord would turn this for good?

UPDATE on the CAMPUS MINISTRY TEAM

This year our campus missions team in Tokyo has grown from 3 to 6 members. One missionary, Jackie Brock, returned to England for furlough, but the Lord has raised up national workers who have a passion to reach the next generation with the gospel.

Let me introduce them:
Yuri M. studied in the U.S. for 7 years and graduated from North Central University in Minneapolis, MN last year. She joined us last year as a part-time staff. She oversees 2 campus ministries each week in addition to her English-teaching job and translating messages at her church.

Ayame U. studied at Cambridge University in England and this year completed a Master of Divinity at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. A gifted translator and writer, she is helping with translating books, teaching,and promotional materials. Also, she does campus ministry in Tokyo.

Joyce Kitano and I are U.S. missionaries. Joyce was the pioneer for campus ministry in Tokyo 8-10 years ago. Since then, campus ministry has expanded to 21 campuses throughout Japan. However, there is still a great challenge to reach the +22 million youth ages 5-22. Truly the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Pray the Lord of the harvest to "thrust" out workers. (Matthew 9:38) In particular, pray that God will raise up men for the great task of reaping souls in Japan.

TRAINING SEMINARS

In March we held our annual campus ministry training seminar. As always, we invited Japan Assemblies of God pastors and students. Almost 40 people came for the 2-day seminar. Our guest speakers were 2 Japanese pastors who have been doing campus ministry through their church at Kyoto University, the #2 university in Japan. Pastors Murakami and Nagasawa challenged students and pastors to adopt a campus and trust God to use them to reach young people through teaching English and the Bible. Pastor Murakami did some research and found that the percentage of university-age students is twice the percentage of the national population. In other words, 1.4% of university students are Christians while the national percentage of born-again evangelical Christians is 0.7%. Invariably, that is where the ripest harvest is, and we must reap it while it is day.

This past week Ty and Cina Silva, A/G missionaries who oversee youth ministry in Asia Pacific, came and held a Book of Hope seminar in Tokyo. Three years ago, Book of Hope was published in Japanese for young children and also in a bilingual format (Japanese/English) for junior high school to university students. Because students are very interested in studying English, last year, an English conversation teaching book was introduced to accompany the Japanese/English Book of Hope. Our ministry team has been testing and using these materials in our campus ministries. They are so simple to use that we are training our Christian student leaders to use them in leading Bible study. Pray that these student leaders would grow in confidence and trust in the Holy Spirit to use them. For various reasons, most of their pastors find it difficult to release Christian students to facilitate group Bible studies.

Serving as a missionary in Tokyo, Japan 

April 2005

This month ended my first term with Japanese group lessons. We ended the term with an outing to Kamakura, a very beautiful tourist area outside of Tokyo. Kamakura has many temples, shrines, and churches which I find interesting. We were told that many intellectuals live there, and they tend to be most interested in religions. I've since learned also that is the history of Japan. The intellectuals have always been most open to Christianity.


This week I began my second term of Japanese studies. My classmates are also missionaries. We're learning the nuances of the Japanese language, and they are MANY! What you don't say says a lot.