Category — Prayer Requests

Dear friends and supporters,

Thank you for being patient and allowing me to have enough time to recover from my major accident. I was planning on releasing our “end-of-the-year” report much sooner, but many unpredictable things took place which prevented me from releasing it on time.

However, here we are, and now is the time to look back and report everything that took place in the past 9 months or so. But before I write about personal details, I would like to give a bullet-point report just to give you an idea of what God has allowed us to accomplish as a body of believers here in Tokyo.

- Since we moved here to Tokyo to begin our work the average attendance in our church community has doubled.
- We have grown enough that we have elected 4 deacons. Until now, the community had no established leadership aside from me as the pastor.
- There are several people who have come to know Christ through our community that are being discipled.
- We are already planning on doubling the number of our services, and also talking about starting a new community in the next few years.
- We strategically reduced the number of our church programs, and people in our church are spending more time with each other as result.
- We are starting five community gatherings in Tokyo and Kanagawa prefectures, which allows us to influence believers throughout the week who live up to two hours away.
- In the past six months, about 10% of our church members have strategically moved much closer to the church and our community so that they can be more effective in their service to one another.
- We are starting a new ministry for young mothers, equipping them to be able to intentionally minister to others from their homes.
- We had two funerals and one wedding in the past 12 months.
- We had two interns from the US during the summer, and, Lord willing, they will be married and back with us in the near future.
- After the earthquake last year, we have led a movement of love inspired by Christ, which distributed over 210 tons worth of relief and food items.
We have partnered with over 17 churches, medical organizations, local businesses, and the U.S. Navy to provide those goods to those who were affected by the earthquakes and the tsunamis. Our community served as the headquarters in Tokyo to accomplish this.
- Through our combined effort to give sacrificially and expediently right after the disasters struck Northern Japan, we were used instrumentally to save over 70 human lives. In one situation, when our food truck arrived, one facility which hosted about 45 bedridden elderly patients only had 10 cartons of milk left in the kitchen for everyone.
- We have rented 17 large trucks to distribute items to those who could not receive care from the government programs in the affected area.
- Some of the churches that we have helped in the tsunami affected areas have doubled in size since our partnership.
- We have purchased and donated a fork-lift to a reliable Christian ministry serving the city which experienced the disaster most severely.

Well, we could keep writing, but the majority of what we feel like we are accomplishing cannot be measured with numbers and units. While we are glad to see that God has been blessing our effort in measurable ways, the majority of what we are witnessing is intangible, such as God’s people making Christ-oriented choices, loving God’s family sacrificially and selflessly, trusting in God through some of the most difficult circumstances, and genuinely repenting from their self-centered lifestyle, just to mention a few. There are more than a handful of people who are passing up job promotions because they want to spend more time with God’s family. This means forfeiting financial security as they spend less hours working, and more hours investing in their church community. We are seeing willful sinners repenting and asking the church to accept them again. We are seeing people who are giving sacrificially when they are barely making it according to the city’s living standard. We are also seeing people who are willing to pay more rent and live further away from their workplace so that they can live closer to other believers in our church.

It brings unspeakable joy to witness these things happen before our eyes, because these things are results of God’s Spirit moving freely among our church people. I am astonished at the faith and the love that they have for our God and for one another. We are simply excited to be surrounded by people who are making these decisions of faith based on their understanding of what it means to be united with Christ, redeemed by grace, and loved by our God who is for us.

The very first wedding I officiated in Tokyo!

Now, let me spend some time reporting what we have been doing since the earthquake last year. While we used to update our ministry site more regularly, we had to switch to doing most of our ministry related correspondences through Facebook and personal emails. So, for some, you have not heard from us in a while, for which we apologize.

Back in June, I was hit by a speeding 500cc motorcycle that evidently did not check both ways when making a turn. It destroyed my fairly new road bicycle, along with the right half of my body. My shin was split vertically, sustaining multiple fractures, my pelvis shattered, my thigh bone disfigured, and my right hand unusable for months. As result, I was hospitalized for nearly five months, and went through multiple surgeries performed by some of the best doctors in the city. Thankfully, I did not sustain any brain or internal organ damage. I still have many titanium bolts, plates, and artificial bones inside of my body as I type this letter.

While my body was useless for many weeks after the first surgery, the demand for our ministry did not slow down. I preached sermons from my hospital bed, wrote new church resources with my left hand on my smartphone, and met with the summer interns almost daily during the visiting hours next to my bed. It wasn’t easy not being able to move or walk for weeks, but thankfully my mind was clear and did not question God’s goodness or his intentions throughout the entire duration of my ordeal. While the accident definitely slowed me down and also took away my freedom to serve as I would have liked, just like Apostle Paul during his house arrest, it did not affect our vision for the Gospel or our commitment to serve God and his family to the best of our abilities.

Amy was especially helpful and patient during this time, taking care of the interns, visiting me almost daily, and taking care of the house by herself. I contribute all of these “victories” to God who is unquestionably good at all times, and to the prayers that were offered to God on behalf of our ministry and us. God’s life giving and renewing power, which was demonstrated when he resurrected his Son from the dead, was at work in us and it made us more committed to his cause of building a new community of people who are united with Christ and live to fulfill his purpose and plan.

Amy as a bride's maid!

Although I still cannot serve as actively or as energetically as I used to, by God’s grace our ministry is picking up more momentum than ever before. In order to compensate for my lack of ability to run things as I used to, I am focusing on encouraging and training leaders who can replace me more than before. I am preaching the importance of being united as God’s family in order to fulfill God’s plan that He has for us.

Younger people at our church. Many of them are new people since we began our work in Tokyo.

As a result, more people are involved in personal ministries and interested in taking more responsibilities in our community. For at least the past two months, we have new visitors attending our services regularly. We are thankful that our growth comes from those who are still new to Christianity and not people from other churches.

Once I have more energy, I hope to share our renewed perspective on our community that we are committed to building and multiplying here in Tokyo. Meanwhile, I want to encourage you to pray for us and continue to support us, because we are finally starting to reap the first batch of fruits from the seeds that we have been sowing for the past two years.

Here are some of the things which you can pray about for us and our ministry:

While God’s grace is strong, my physical and mental strengths are significantly weaker since the accident. Because of stress and trauma from the accident, combined with months of physical inactivity and running from one responsibility to the next without a break after being released from the hospital, my body has not been functioning properly. According to my doctor, my body has been pushed beyond its limits, resulting in numerous hormones inside of my body being out of whack (of course he used more medically eloquent expressions to explain my condition). Consequently, I suffer from mild depression, lack of energy, decreased ability to handle stress, muscular weakness, increased allergies, frequent sighing, and other undesirable symptoms. Many days, I feel like I am swimming through a pool of mud.

While I am trying to reduce my stress level by delegating more responsibilities to others, there is a limit on how much you can entrust spiritually important things to people who are still in the process of being trained and taught before it becomes a circus. In order to maintain our current growth and momentum I regularly spend 8 hours a day planning, training, preparing, and pastoring the various aspects of the church. And when I am done, I have no energy left to be proactive or creative (which contributes to not being able to update our ministry site for such a long time). As regrettable as it may be, once I take care of the high-importance, high-urgency needs, I just don’t have anything left in me to take care of other high-importance, moderately urgent needs.

I am content with my weakness as I serve in my capacity, but our ministry suffers from my new condition. I need more energy to handle my previous work load in order to be responsible. We also need other workers who can lead the community with more vigor if we want to maintain our growth. So, please pray that God will provide or continue to grow new leaders who are mature both in their thinking and living for the sake of community’s direction and its spiritual health.

Please pray for our brand new board members (deacons) who are given the responsibility to serve our community. I might be one of the few blessed pastors who cannot wait to be at our board meeting. We normally spend about three hours each time, repenting, praying, and planning for our future. I am so excited to be part of it, because everyone on the team deeply understands the purpose of our calling in Christ. So, every time we meet, we are discussing how we can transmit the passion we have to see the purpose of our salvation being materialized throughout our community. Please pray for wisdom and understanding so that God’s intention for the church can be more visible in Tokyo through our leadership team.

Also, please pray for Amy as she continues her language school. It is very difficult for her to balance fulltime language training and other responsibilities at home.

Also, I lost my mother and my grandmother during the past 12 months. Amy also lost her grandmother, an uncle, and an aunt during the same time frame. All these deaths, as glorious as they may be in Christ, combined with my accident and huge natural disasters that struck Japan can add a lot of emotional and mental stress. We are always comforted in Christ, but it takes a long time for finite humans to process some of these events and their implications. I personally did not have any time to process my mother’s death and to mourn for her properly. Please pray for the right time to slow down so that our souls can catch up to our busy activity-driven lives.

Lastly, please pray for newer sources of income. Currently, the Japanese Yen is very strong against the US dollar. As a result, the value of the support we get from the US is significantly less than what it used to be. We are making all kinds of sacrifices, just as many of you are doing in the US, but in order to have a vibrant ministry we have to focus beyond our daily needs. Our church community is giving beyond their ability, but it will decrease the stress level if people who have been blessed financially during these difficult times can chip in to balance the current disparity. If you have been thinking about supporting us or have committed to support us in the past and never took the step to actually doing it, this would be an opportune time to partner with us. We are not asking for additional funds to be comfortable, but rather so that together we can sow more seeds of the Gospel in a land that has been spiritually infertile for many, many centuries. Click here to find out how you can give generously and wisely to truly make a difference in Japan.

Well, thanks for reading this rather lengthy update. I hope you have been informed and blessed. I will try to do a better job updating more frequently as my health and energy levels return to me. However, if you want the latest update, please send us personal emails or get hold of us via Facebook. Thank you so much for your prayers and support.

Meiji Shrine, Tokyo Japan with the Newbys

Hello, this is Amy and Kazu!

During the third week of November, we celebrated our first year since we have begun our new ministry in Tokyo. It is hard to believe that it has been this long since we began our work here but we can definitely look back and see many wonderful things He has done through our effort to share the hope of the Gospel and to train the next generation of leaders to reach one of the least evangelized people groups with the Gospel.

A few weeks ago, we finished our Christmas related services and outreach and we were able to take a few days off for the first time in months. Perhaps some of you already know that my mother has been fighting cancer for a while. Back in September, she was hospitalized due to a fractured femur bone. The cancer in her leg made her bone so brittle, it broke into pieces. During this period, we took turns taking care of her. During the same time, my father was hospitalized in the same hospital from having acute gastrospasm, which resulted from stress and exhaustion. As a result, we had to spend about 25 hours a week to take care of them, on top of the 45 hours which we were already pouring into maintaining our ministry. By God’s grace, we were sustained physically during that time period, and a month later she was released to return to home.

But by this time, her cancer advanced so aggressively, we were doubling the amount of her morphine every week for about a month in order to control her pain. What started out as breast cancer, is now in her neck, lungs, spine, humerus, thighs, and her tail bone. Her arm bone was fractured during this time for the same reason above, which did not make the situation any more desirable. For that reason, the month of October was a very emotionally and physically draining month.

During the month of November, my aunt came to take care of her so that we could slow down a little and focus on our work, which was a huge blessing. But by this time, she was in so much pain, she was not able to eat or sleep which caused her to get even weaker day by day. It was during this time when my sister and her husband flew back from the States to see her for the last time. Also, Pastor Paul Barreca from Faith Bible Church (Vineland, NJ) visited us and was able to pray with her. He also brought many letters from the church members there which encouraged her significantly.

The month of December came and she started to sleep through most of her day. The throbbing and burning pain suddenly disappeared to the point that we were no longer using additional liquid morphine to control her pain. According to the doctor, the cancer in her neck most likely damaged her nerves so she is no longer feeling the pain as much as she used to. But now she is completely unmovable because her cervical spine is also being made brittle from her cancer and there is a high possibility of her getting paralyzed if it continues in the wrong way.

Obviously, taking care of a family member who is dying and keeping your ministry vibrant simultaneously is very difficult and physically draining to say the least. But now that her pain is lessened and she sleeps a lot throughout the day, so we have been able to plan for next year and see how God continues to move forward His vision for Tokyo through our intentional ministry.

Before we give a brief update on what we have been doing and how God has been using us to change the city, I want to thank God for all of you for praying for us, because if it wasn’t for your involvement and encouragements, it would’ve been so much easier to focus on the immediate issues instead of focusing on God’s grace and His bigger plan for us. So far, we are marching forward with our faith strengthened in His promises and our hope fixed on Christ. Also by observing the simple, but unshakable, faith of my mother during these months has taught me more about faith than my previous years combined together.

Since September, we have been working very hard with our church community to lay the foundation for our next step of growth as we move forward to having a membership program. We spent the entire month preaching and teaching the importance of loving one another as Christ has loved us, and learning to admonish and rebuke those who may have fallen away from loving God. We naturally talked about the biblical importance of church discipline and what it means for us to be serious about being holy in order to fulfill the purpose of the church. Every week, someone during the service publicly prays to God that He would grant us His grace so that we may “be” the church, and not simply be a group of people who “do” church. Being the church, and doing church are two different things, and we taught that it is impossible to “be” the church, if we don’t love God and one another enough to be willing to confront those who are being misled by their sinfulness and allow others to confront us when we have become blinded by our spiritual short-sightedness. During this series, we had many first time visitors, and a few of them committed to join our community based on our commitment to love one another enough to confront each other. It was during this time that several non-official small groups started based on the desires of our members to invest in the lives of others.

When we discussed the issue of church discipline, the example of my mother’s cancer was used to communicate its necessity. Most doctors agree that cancer can be prevented if we are more careful with our lifestyle. Don’t smoke, reduce the intake of junk food, eat more vegetables, work out more routinely, and the list goes on. Many people try to maintain a healthy and disciplined lifestyle because they value their health and they don’t want to get crippled by cancer or other forms of diseases. Churches also must maintain a certain lifestyle in order to maintain their spiritual health. We call the spiritual health of Christ’s body, holiness, and we need to cherish it more than we cherish our physical health. If we don’t want our community to get crippled by a cancerous evil called sin, we need to do our best to prevent it as much as possible. For us, we can prevent cancerous sin from hurting the body by “encouraging one another.” The author of Hebrews has many things to say about maintaining our holiness by encouraging one another. He says, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (3:12-13). Later on, he revisits the same topic, and says, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (10:24-25). According to God’s Word, we can prevent sin from wreaking havoc within the Body by simply maintaining a biblical lifestyle of encouraging one another to keep our eyes on the things above.

Yet, sometimes, even if we invest many hours and dollars on prevention, by God’s plan, people get cancer. However, if we discover it in its earlier stage, we can isolate it from the rest of the body and treat it separately. When doctors find cancers in their earlier stage, they don’t jump to performing a surgery. That is the last resort. They try to kill with radiation and other methods that are painful but not fatal. Spiritually speaking, we call this process “rebuking.” If prevention did not work entirely, we need to treat it separately, hoping to save the rest of the body from its negative influence (1Tim 5:20). Rebuking someone is not delightful, just as chemotherapy is not delightful. But we know that it is necessary in order to regain one’s health and protect the body from a greater pain.

However, sometimes, cancers cannot be stopped by treatment, either. When all attempts fail, we only have the option of removing the organs (or a large part of it) to save the life of the patient. This is not done lightly because even in the hands of the best doctors, the scars will remain and the recovery will be long. Spiritually speaking, we call the same process of removing an unrepentant sinner from the body of Christ, church discipline, hoping to save the holiness of the community (1Cor 5:2,12-13).

Physically speaking, why do we go through these stages when we know that they are inconvenient and often times extremely painful? The answer is simple: We value health because it keeps us alive. We go through these steps because we want to live and not die. Similarly, we are committed to make “encouraging”, “rebuking”, and “disciplining” willful-sinners part of our community lifestyle because we value holiness and we want to be made alive and be used by God for His glory.

Soon after a month long series, we had an opportunity to practice it lovingly, which sobered up many people within our community, but by seeing the love behind our action, many believers grew spiritually through its difficulties. We are sent here to build authentic Christ centered communities, and we would not be able to do that if we ignored willful disobedience through intentional unbelief in God’s word and His design.

Also another thing we did was we rented a government facility to have a Christmas concert to attract people to our church activities. We are committed to generate a movement of the Gospel that spreads throughout Tokyo, not only through our growing community. In order to work toward that goal, we partnered with six other churches in the area to co-sponsor a concert and let people know how the Gospel can change our lives. While we were able to attract more than 350 people, we want to do it better next time so that we can create a bigger impact in Tokyo through the unity of Christian churches in the city. Working with other churches also made our community members see how different and special (in a good way) we are compared to other churches, which stirred up a new sense of commitment to embrace our values and our vision for the city. We also had Christmas services, a service partners (volunteers) appreciation party, and other end of the year events that kept us very busy until now.

Our community continues to grow both spiritually and numerically but we are nowhere close to being satisfied. We believe that the Gospel must continue to reach more people in Tokyo and God’s grace must claim more lives in this city. For that reason, we want you to continue to partner with us by spiritual and physical contribution to continue the work which He has started through us. We are certain that if we continue to stick to our values and vision, God can use our community to do things unheard of in the history of Japan for His glory.

Let me list some praises and prayer requests for our friends.

First, we have been praying for additional helpers who are culturally and biblically competent to assist us in our ministry. While we are still looking for those people, God may have given us new people to our community who are committed Japanese believers who have been trained in the US and are eager to get involved in our community. These people came to our church during our church discipline series, and they were astonished at how we were willing to demonstrate our love for God by taking sin seriously. One thing led to another and they have indicated that they are willing to commit to our community while they continue to get to know us. One of the two, Kei Kubota, has a firm background in theology and he loves to teach the Bible. I would like to observe how well he can teach and see if this will lead to extending our ministry influence by having other teachers. Please continue to pray for Kei, and his friend Tomoko, as God works in their lives, so that they may be able to find ways to serve Christ most effectively through our community.

Also, our church community website was launched last month. We are thrilled to see what God is going to do through it because it not only introduces our church to others, it provides many valuable resources in Japanese to those who want to grow as believers in Christ. While what we provide currently is somewhat limited compared to what we are planning on having, we provide access and subscription to daily devotionals for city people in Japanese, a brief intro to the Christian worldview, digital viewing of all of our Sunday services, handouts, etc. Please visit it and tell us what you think.

Also pray for our financial needs. If you have been thinking about supporting our ministry, or contributing to any ministry that is committed to reaching the unreached effectively with the Gospel of Christ, this is the time to do it. Starting next month, our rent is going to be raised by an additional $1,000. I know that sounds like a lot but God is still providing us with an excellent deal to continue our ministry. I can honestly say that what is being asked for is reasonably less than its value and we are grateful for God’s provision. We are committing to our current location for at least another 18 months and we would appreciate your contribution to help our work move forward.

Also, we witnessed a handful of people come to know Christ directly or indirectly this year, but we want to train more people to be able to share the Gospel to their network of people so that we can see more people being attracted to the life which only God can provide. Please continue to pray for God grace to transform the minds of our community members so that they will delight in sharing the Gospel boldly to their family and co-workers and fellow classmates in 2011.

And, finally, we want to start three new ministry endeavors next year. First, we want to introduce a membership program to our community so that we can function more effectively as a body. Second, we want to start small groups. We have been growing but now we are at a point where we cannot meet with everyone and take care of their spiritual needs. We need to train more leaders so that they can pastor more people on behalf of us. We need to be very careful and wise in how we establish this ministry so your prayers, advice and resources are appreciated. Third, we want to begin our Christian-Worldview/Bible Training Program next year which we were planning on starting this year. While it was our original plan to begin it three months ago, due to my mother’s situation which I had to tend to, we had to push it back. We are definitely ready to start it when things line up for us. Please pray that we will be able to establish these three important projects in 2011, which in my mind are totally necessary for our future growth.

Well, that is what we have been doing during the past months and what we are planning on doing next year. Feel free to contact us via Facebook or our website to get a personal update or give us an encouragement.

Also, we have a small request to any person who might be able to help us out. One thing, among many other things that we need (or want strongly), is Amazon’s Kindle 3G . I have left many, many boxes of books back in the States and all I have with me here are Hebrew and Greek Bibles, a handful of general resources, and some Bible related software. I have done the math and I have found out that re-purchasing most of those books via Kindle would be much cheaper than having all of the boxes shipped over here. Furthermore, I am realizing that I don’t have space to keep all of those books in Japan. So, if you have an extra Kindle laying around, or are willing to invest in purchasing one for our ministry, we would appreciate it. The spiritual benefit of having a device like that cannot be measured. If you are willing and able, please contact me before you send it to us. Thank you.

Please don’t forget to visit our website , and consider supporting us if you have not committed to it, yet. Thank you so much again for reading our update. I hope you are excited about what God is doing through our ministry as much as we are. God bless.

–UPDATE–

One of our faithful supporters have offered to purchase a Kindle device for us. It has been ordered and it is being shipped to us as we speak. We truly thank God for His gracious provision through His servants.

If you were planning on blessing us with buying or sending us the device, you still can help us by purchasing Amazon Kindle Store Gift Cards. Purchasing those cards for us will allow us to purchase e-books and other resources that we need. It is tax free and it will directly help us prepare new resources and aids to train Japanese people with God’s Word. Please continue to partner with us through your generous giving. Thank you in advance.

Hello,

This is Amy and Kazu. This is our mega update for our summer. Wow, we can’t believe our summer is already coming to an end. Time does really fly by quickly when you try to take advantage of every opportunity God brings you to share the hope of the Gospel to those who are totally unaware of it or to those who need to be reminded of it! We take this opportunity to thank you who have prayed for our ministry and our life, and made it what it is today with His grace. Your support and encouragements are greatly appreciated.

As we toil to spread the living hope of the Gospel in one of the most affluent cities in the world, we are reminded that God has called us to preach the Gospel to one of the toughest people groups in the world, namely the rich.

Jesus once said, “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matt 19:24).

Yet, by His grace, God is doing the impossible through us once again. We boldly proclaim the complete picture of the Gospel to our community whenever God gathers us together. Many believers are slowly, but clearly, starting to realize that they have been called to a higher life in Christ. As a result, they are starting to live out that calling by sacrificing their money and their time to love one another as they were called to. Also a number of non-believers are being attracted to the Gospel lifestyle that we preach and demonstrate through our community. About 10% of those who attended our service last week were non-believers who came because they were attracted to their friends’ lifestyle. Instead of being ashamed of the Gospel, we boldly and uncompromisingly proclaim how it changes who we are so we can belong to a body united by love, which God uses to reconcile all things back to Himself.

While God is using our community positively in many ways, not everything is sanitized and shimmering. For every demonstration of God’s grace we witness in our community, we deal with numerous acts of sin, and their devastating consequences, behind the scenes. This summer, we have been serving partially as spiritual fire fighters, running around to extinguish destructive flames people are starting as we get serious about our commitment to share our lives with one another. Unresolved conflicts, jealousy, pride, selfishness, bitterness, apathy; you name it, we are dealing with it. Our community is finally growing enough that we are starting to look like one of the churches that the apostle Paul was dealing with during his time. There are other issues that we face that are giving me more white hair than I care to have, but I will mention them in our next update since it is going to take many paragraphs to explain.

Let me also take a moment and mention some of the programs we started this summer. As one way to reach out to those outside of our community, we started a small outreach/discipleship ministry, called, “Choi Maji,” which simply means a place where we talk about something a little (choi) serious (maji). We encouraged our church members to invite their high school and college friends to talk about issues they see in the world or problems they see in Christianity or in other religions. Then, I used those topics to share what the Bible has to say about them, and, ultimately, to share that the biblical worldview is the only adequate system that provides a realistic solution to what they are frustrated with. However, I do not share the Gospel in these meetings for two reasons. First, I want people to come back monthly to discuss new issues without saying we are trying to brainwash them to join our “religion,” and, second, we use it to disciple our own young believers so that they can personally share the Gospel to them using the topics we discussed. This ministry has a great deal of potential, and we are having a special cookout with the regular attendees tomorrow (Aug 19th). You can pray for us as I will be sharing something from the Bible to these students.

We also had an internship program this summer that kept us incredibly busy. We had two interns, Adam Yoder, and Paul Mackey, both from the U.S., who came to observe our ministry. They lived with us for two months, and intimately experienced what missions work really looks like in Tokyo. We took them to different districts of Tokyo, and made them think about how to effectively share the Gospel with various kinds of Japanese people. We made them observe the differences between the community we are building and the churches they see in the U.S. We sent them to an English Bible school for Japanese people in Karuizawa, Nagano for 10 days so they could teach and encourage those students studying there. We also planned an English outreach in Tokyo to see what we might be able to do in the future as we expand the regular programs that we do. With the internship now over, we believe that they will be able to use this opportunity to aid them in making wise decisions as they continue to seek their future direction in life and the possibility of working alongside of us in the future.

One thing that running all of the programs we are currently running taught us is how we need other full-time and part-time partners to increase our influence in the city. It is almost impossible for us to oversee our worship services, publication ministry, leadership training, counseling, outreaches, and the few other critical things we do every week. Please pray that God would give us teammates who are passionate about working with Japanese people who are socially and professionally competent. We specifically need people who can oversee our worship and community growth.

Please pray for my mother also, who is fighting the last stage of her cancer. She will start taking morphine this week as she has been battling with unbearable pain for months. She still remains one of our biggest supporters and she still gives me ministry advice while she lies on her bed. Please pray that we will be able to be a blessing to her during her last days, and that we can continue to encourage her with the living hope we have in Christ.

Let me close this update by sharing some of the thoughts we have been reciting as we continue to move forward with the message of the Gospel in Tokyo.

One of the many lessons our community is learning is the necessity to be united as the body of Christ.

We live in a world where people are rewarded for being competitive, independent, and self-assured. We love and adore people who are successful, beautiful, and talented. While these people make great CEOs and Hollywood stars, they make poor members of the Body of Christ.

Maintaining true unity within the Body of Christ looks much easier on paper than in an actual community of sinners where most of us thoughtlessly submit to consumerism, individualism, materialism, existentialism, and countless other -isms taught by the world. One thing that unites all of these -isms is that they propagate us to live with our eyes fixed on this fallen world as though there is nothing more to our existence after this life.

As long as we let the world teach us (wrong) theology, and we thoughtlessly submit to it, it is impossible for us to achieve the level of unity which Christ desires to see in His body, because a life that is worthy of our calling is not one of personal success/happiness and self-expression, but of “humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

If you take a moment and think about these descriptions of what a worthy life looks like in Christ, you will realize that all of these virtues are relational in nature, presupposing that we are already sharing our lives intimately with other believers, which is an assumption Paul would not have made, in all likelihood, if he foresaw today’s Western Christian culture. We as Christians cannot demonstrate humility, gentleness, or patience without allowing others to be close enough to offend us with their sinfulness, or to keep from also offending them with our own sinfulness. True Christianity is not pretty, and it was never meant to be. Christ didn’t die so we could live a sanitized and fashionable religious life that accommodates our own individualistic lifestyle. He died for our sins, so that, with all of our differences and personal baggage, we can be made into one holy people, who share the same life in order to teach the world that Christ was sent by the Father.

This truth is most vividly expressed in Christ’s prayer before He died on the cross. Prior to entering the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed for those who would eventually believe in the Gospel, “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:21).

The new life to which Christ has made us alive demands that we not be overly impressed by a sense of our own self-importance. Its basic demand is totally the opposite of what our modern culture encourages us to do and to be. Yet, it is for this unity Christ gave His life, so that we may die to ourselves and live for God and others who share the same life in Christ.

This reminder is more important to the church today, because it reminds us of the reason for our salvation. It makes us re-realize that it is not about us after all, but that it is about God’s glory and redemptive plan moving forward through our unity. In the end, everything we do as the body of Christ must push us in the direction of allowing the Gospel message to become the reality of the lives of those who believe and of those who are exposed to its grace. If we are united, we are being the church. If we are divided, we are playing the church.

Paul teaches the Colossians a perspective they must obtain in order to live as this Christ-honoring community. “And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.” The peace which is spoken of here does not refer to an emotional sense of serenity or calmness. Instead it refers to the harmony or unity which Christ brought to the members of the Body through His blood. Also, the word translated “rule” does not mean to prevail over, but to be the judge or the decisive factor in how we conduct ourselves before others. We must allow the harmony of believers to be the most important, decisive factor in the way we shape our community, for it was, in fact, as one body, that we were called to this peace. The second part of this passage emphasizes the manner in which the believers were called, rather than the goal of their calling, and it focuses upon their unity.

As long as we remain earthly-minded, then talking about living worthily of the calling with which we have been called is nothing more than a utopian ideal. We must repent and allow the Gospel to renew our thinking and worldview. We must get down on our knees and pray for God’s grace to transform our values and desires. We need to be in the Word to be reminded of our Savior and His vision for His children.

God tells us that we have died to this world and that our life is now hidden with Christ in God who is in heaven (Col 3:3). This world and everything in it are destined to be destroyed in due time. God tells us that this world is sinking and we need to abandon ship. Heaven is where our true hope is. It is where our Judge is waiting to evaluate our lives according to our labor of faith and love. It is where our Redeemer is waiting for those who have fought the good fight. It is where our heart and life belong.

Thank you for your continual support. We are glad that we get to make a difference in the lives of those living in Tokyo together.

Kazu & Amy Kato

Friends and supporters,

Next Sunday (April 18th) is a big Sunday for us. We are taking some major steps in our strategic community development. Here are some of the changes we are making next week.

1) We are increasing the number of our service from one to two.

We have two reasons for making this change. One thing that we have decided some months ago was our need to become more family friendly as a church. One of our strengths we possess is the number of younger people we have. Even today, 75% of our members are 35 and younger. However, that also became our disadvantage as most attendees do not have kids. So, until we took over the ministry, we did not have intentional programs to attract regular families since we did not provide programs for kids during the regular service. Now, things are changing. We are intentionally changing our culture in order to accommodate families with children so that parents and kids can grow together in our grace-driven community. In order to make this happen, we had to recruit a number of people (about 7% of our members) who are excellent with kids. However, pulling that many members from our regular service on a regular basis proposed new challenges. So, we decided to have a shorter, but equally intimate and meaningful service for the workers before the regular service.

Another reason has to do with our building capacity. Since we have began our ministry, 90% of our seats have been occupied with worshippers. While we are rejoicing that people are joining us weekly, we are struggling with having more space for new people. So, by adding another service, we can make more room for new guests in the future. We are still looking for a new gathering place but we are going to move forward with our temporal solution for now.

2) We are changing our worship philosophy and programs.

When we decided to make our church more family friendly, we also decided to evaluate our philosophy and practice of worship. When I say we evaluated our worship philosophy, I don’t mean, traditional music vs. contemporary music, modern vs. emerging, or any other kind of western philosophical/stylistic conflict.

The aim of our evaluation was rather simple and practical. We discussed what the Bible had to say about worship and we evaluated how we can practice it most authentically and naturally as a metropolitan community in Tokyo. Our discussion involved critical topics like the history of Japanese church culture, current Christian cultural issues, Christian aesthetics, biblical theology of worship, and assessment of spiritually mature people within our own congregation.

Please continue to pray that God will provide the right people to lead and revolutionize how we worship God in Tokyo so true worshippers can worship the Father in spirit and truth.

3) We are officially starting a nursery.

Well, as we are becoming more family-friendly, this was a given. We just had three couples giving birth within the last few months, and we need to prepare for the changes that are already happening within our community. We welcome any donation of childcare items (diaper station, books, toys, equipments, etc) or financial gift at this time.

4) We are starting our brand new Sunday school program for all members.

Finally we are starting our Christian education program for the church which we have planned over the years. Every member of our church would go through this program which will last for 7 years and 6 months. It covers most of the basic things that believers must understand in order to be well equipped for every good work. Please pray as this much needed project adds us another weekly responsibility for much of the next decade.

5) We are starting a new leadership training program for core-members of our church.

We will start a new program to help people become mentors to others. For the next six months, we will be teaching our core-members what it means to be a Christ-centered community and how to be used by God to build up His church. Relationships can be messy. Especially most city people spend many hours and many Yen/dollars to learn how to avoid relationships that are difficult. But as a Christ-centered community, we are convinced that it is worth investing in people’s lives and the results of going through the messiness of relationships can be far greater than people being isolated from one another in the Body of Christ

We truly desire you to partner with us in prayer because as we make these constructive moves, Satan is also at work to discourage and distract us from our effort.

As we planned to move forward with our new worship program, we lost two thirds of our initial musicians at once for different personal reasons. And the last person who played a key role in our music ministry hurt her hand severely. However, God is greater than our adversary. As we went through a program crisis, God added two new members to our community who have led worship at other churches before. Furthermore, as I shared some of the difficulties with our current situation, many younger people showed great enthusiasm to participate and help us make our worship and praise more glorious before God. We cannot stop thanking God for being faithful and providing every need we have in order to serve Him.

Finally, we are still raising money for our website project. Now that your taxes are done and some of you might receive something back from the government, please prayerfully partner with us financially so that God’s amazing work through us can grow in its effectiveness and reach more people with the transforming Gospel of God’s grace.  Here is a link to our donation page.

We are thankful to God that you are showing interest in what God is doing through us in Tokyo and have been praying for us regularly and providing monetary gifts to help us with our work. Thanks for reading once again.

Kazu and Amy

Thanks for the long wait. This is our first major update since we have arrived in Tokyo. We are excited to share how our first month went since we left the States.

First of all, we finally moved into our new residence two weeks ago. It is nice to finally have privacy and a “routine,” which we have not experienced in the past six months. We are starting to discover all the different parts of our new neighborhood, such as learning where to buy groceries. One advantage of living in Tokyo is that you can go shopping after midnight — most of the stores are still open. One disadvantage is that everything is very expensive (for example, 0.4 lbs of whole bean coffee is $9). However, we definitely feel called to be in this city, to bring the transformational message of God’s grace to our lost neighbors and friends. The small discomforts are nothing compared to the joy of being able to share the Gospel with the people of Tokyo.

When it comes to ministry, God has already accomplished so much through us already in just 4 weeks. We have:

1. Changed our church polity from a board-driven to an elder-driven system.
2. Added a new meeting on Sunday, which we call “Family Time,” before the main service. The purpose of this new meeting is to inform and educate people about what we will attempt to do and why we want to do these things in the next 10 years. In other words, we are vision-casting in order to unify our goals and priorities. This meeting will continue for another three months until we begin our biblical training school in April.
3. Added a new time for believers and first-time visitors to fellowship. We provide beverages and snacks to cater to these city people.
4. Met with all the key leaders in the church to assess our tangible and intangible assets (people, money, property, connections, etc.) so we can maximize our effectiveness.
5. Started a church-wide prayer meeting before the main service to pray for one another.
6. Met with key volunteers/servants and talked with them about the changes we will go through over the next months.
7. Been recruiting people we want to commit to disciple/mentor for the next two terms of our ministry.
8. Led two pre-marital counseling sessions per week.
9. Held baptism class for those who want to get baptized.
10. Wrote devotional material in Japanese.
11. Started our church Web site construction process.
12. Started to look for a new building to meet in.
13. Discussed the strategy for our ministry for the next 12 months.
14. Worked on new church publications.

A few other notable things have happened, but we will write about them in another post. As a whole, the church is excited about our presence and the new direction that we are proposing (which is a very good thing). We are also grateful to God that, since we have arrived, our church members are bringing new people to our services. Before our arrival, the average attendance was somewhere around 40 (which is still above average in Tokyo). Now we are enjoying somewhere around 60 people weekly since our arrival. We thank God for stirring the hearts of the members and motivating them to bring those who never heard or experienced the Gospel to our grace-driven community.

Please continue to be involved with our ministry. Here are some of the major projects we want to complete within the next three months. If you or your church can to increase the effectiveness of Gospel’s work in Tokyo by financially contributing, we would appreciate it, as our small community is already giving as much as it can at this time.

I will list our projects according to the priority/urgency:

1.       Church Web Site Construction. Cost:  $6,500

This is a two-month project. We are convinced that in order to reach the people in the city, we need to use the tool of technology in a way that it has not been used before in Tokyo. Our Web site will have two versions: a home PC version and mobile device version. It will provide info about our church and also distribute first–rate, original Christian resources in Japanese to those who may not live close to Tokyo. It will also be used as an evangelistic tool to introduce Christianity, Christ, Church, and the Gospel to non-believers in an attractive manner. Christians can also use the site to connect to others living in the city, enabling them to be held accountable and pray for one another. We really need to start this project as soon as possible, but we need the funds to hire someone full-time to make the project all it needs to be.

2.       Christian Resources from the US. Cost:  $4,500

We want to import books and media resources to increase the quality of training in our community. We are currently negotiating with New Growth Press to see if we can get discounted pricing on its resources. We want to make sure we are continually equipping our believers in order to help them to trust in God’s grace in a city where it is difficult to sense God’s presence.

3.       A new sign to promote our church in our neighborhood. Cost:  $600

Our church is currently not well-advertised. We had two new families over the last 4 weeks that almost missed the service because they could not locate our church. Now that we are officially moving forward as a growing community, we would like to be more visible.

4.       Simultaneous Translation Kit (Transmitter x1/Receivers x40) Cost: $4,500

We have been having multiple guests from the US who want to become members at our church. However, the current simultaneous translation kit we have are dated and are not functioning properly. Obviously, having a loud continuous hissing noise and poor reception bring great frustration to our first time visitors. As God is blessing us to become an inner city church that Tokyo needs, we must be able to accommodate believers who are not fluent in Japanese. If you know how to get professional translation kit at an affordable price or could donate used but still decent ones, that would be another way to help us out.

5.       New foldable tables for our fellowship meetings. Cost:  $1,500

We need 10 compact tables that can be easily stored, but these are not cheaply made. Each table costs $120 plus shipping. Acquiring these tables will not only increase the quality of believers’ fellowship, but they will also be used for welcoming new visitors and equipping believers during training classes.

Please also pray that God will provide competent co-workers with similar values and vision. We need people who understand city culture and love Japanese people the way Christ loves them.

Pray for Amy as she makes her adjustments. It can be lonely when she cannot share her thoughts clearly with others who may not understand English well. Pray that God will provide her with a close female friend who will serve the Lord with her. Also, her first Japanese conversational class begins on January 7. Pray that God will use her there to share the Gospel through her testimony.

Pray that God will continue to use His people to support our effort in Tokyo. Since we left the U.S., the value of the dollar hit 14-year low against Japanese Yen. That means the value of our support went down significantly since our arrival. That is very discouraging when you live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Please pray that we will continue to rely on God’s provision and His grace and not lose our focus as we serve Him.

Thanks for your continuous prayer and support. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Serving the Lord together by His grace,

Kazu & Amy Kato

Hello from the world of tomorrow (We are 14 hours ahead of EST)!

We made it! We made it TOGETHER! We are finally in Tokyo and we are ready to begin our ministry. Last week we spent most of our time taking care of government papers for Amy and finding affordable furniture. We are SO excited to finally be in the city which we love and which we want to see God transform with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What we are trying to accomplish here in Tokyo requires spiritual empowerment and God’s grace. When we reflect on the immediate spiritual needs of the people and the need for the culture to be transformed by the Gospel, it can become quite overwhelming. But we are very confident of the fact that the God who provided our needs and who has called us to this place according to His will is going to meet our daily needs continually so that more people in Tokyo can turn to Christ. Please keep us in your prayers as we expect the next three months to pass us by very quickly.

Here are some prayer requests.

• Pray that God will provide new workers who can work along side of us.
• Pray that God will protect us from Satan’s attempt to discourage us and prevent us from reaching our target group.
• Pray that we will be consumed with God’s holy passion to see the lost people in Tokyo be added to His body so that we don’t lose our perspective.
• Pray that God’s grace would transform our community so that we would be able to be different in our city.
• Pray that God would allow us to demonstrate wisdom as we seek elect and disciple future leaders of our community.
• Pray that we will be able to raise more special project funds in order to expand our ministry influence.

We are grateful to God for you as He has chosen you to be our co-laborers. Please continue to visit our site to be informed of what we are doing and how we are doing. God bless!!

Kazu & Amy

Yes, we know. We have not updated our site in a while. But I can assure you that it is not due to negligence or busyness. We have had a lot of uncertain circumstances that have prevented us from making certain information public. But now the timing is right, and we can let you know what God has been doing in our lives.

Since I returned from Japan in mid-August, we have visited 14 churches. We traveled across 11 states and tasted pizza and fast food from every town we’ve visited. Needless to say, traveling from one place to another constantly was physically and mentally taxing, not to mention the unpleasantness of a lifestyle of eating and sitting in the car all day long. However, making new friends in Christ and being able to share our passion and vision to a different audience every time we moved has certainly made our tour worthwhile.

As most of you know, last month we needed close to an additional $3,900/month support in order for us to be in Tokyo by November 12th. It looked very unrealistic and discouraging at the time. But God has once again proved Himself to be faithful by bringing the right people in our lives at the right moments.

Let me give you an example of how God has been confirming our ministry by meeting our needs. During the first week of this month, we visited a church in New York City led by Pastor Tim Keller. We both acknowledge that no one can impact the city alone, and therefore a need for partnership with other like-minded people who are Gospel-driven is needed. This church has been very effective in reaching the young professionals in Manhattan, more than any other church that I know today (about 4,000 members and attendees). Since they were interested in reaching Tokyo with a strategically sound ministry, we agreed to meet with one another and share our thoughts. After a few meetings with the leaders of their church-plant team, we recognized that we shared much in common (e.g., the strategic focus on the city, the need to “do church” differently from traditional methods so that the Gospel is communicated not only faithfully but also relevantly into the Japanese urban context and culture, etc). While our new partnership with them is immensely valuable, the best blessing came from God allowing us to meet a family that we’ve never met before.

During the week of our visit in NYC, we had an opportunity to share our ministry at one of the small group meetings sponsored by the aforementioned church. After our presentation, we started to talk to the hosts of the small group. Providentially, the husband, David, is married to a wife, Asako, from Japan. His wife was from Tokyo, and they both understood the challenges we were up against. They were sincere and were able to add insights to our discussion that can only come from those who knew what it is like to live in Tokyo as Christians. While meeting a mature Christian from Tokyo was surprising enough, the greatest surprise came after the meeting, when they offered to allow us to live in their house in Tokyo, which is not being occupied by anyone at this time. The house is located about 30 minutes away from our church by bicycle and is far bigger in size than what we could have afforded. Also, the house is fully furnished, which will help us to postpone our spending until we need to move to a new location. The obvious benefit of this is that it helps us to keep out outgoing expense under control. It is so encouraging to see God affirming our ministry by providing our needs so extraordinarily.

Over the last two months, we experienced God’s work in our lives again and again. We continuously experienced Him taking away our confidence in our own ability yet providing sufficiently in order to remind us that our true source of security and success is solely Him. By God’s goodness, now we can joyously announce that our monthly need is down to $889. That means just 36 friends and family committing to partner with us by pledging $25/month will get us to our goal! We still hope to leave on November 12 (less than three weeks from now), and we are confident that God is going to bring in the rest of our support before we leave to Japan.

It is our aim to be financially independent by 2017. Will you support us in the meantime to make this essential ministry in Tokyo possible? If you are willing and capable to become our partners, please let us know by e-mail.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support. We are so excited to see what God is going to accomplish through our service in the near future in Tokyo. Please continue to keep us in your prayers and keep in touch with us.

Kazu & Amy

Why did God save us by grace through faith? Is it so that we can go to heaven when we die? Is it so that we can have a relationship with our Maker without works? That was the main topic of my sermon on Sunday. We explored the context of Ephesians chapter 2 more broadly in order to understand the answer to the initial question.

While those suggested answers mentioned above are not necessarily false, they are only a small part of the bigger picture. God did not merely save us from sin so that so that we can independently experience forgiveness and renewal; God did not save us so that we can live victorious Christian lives on our own without other believers; rather He made us alive with Christ so that we as a community of believers can collectively, and not independently, become more like Christ as we are transformed by His grace.

The community emphasis is rather obvious when we pay attention to the immediate context. Paul writes, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (v. 10). Paul tells us that “we” (plural) are His workmanship (singular). When we who were once disjointed and alienated from God and one another are saved by grace, we become part of God’s temple collectively which is His workmanship.  According to the context, God made us alive in Christ so that we would grow together as one community where God’s presence is witnessed by others. “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.” (vv. 19-22).

As far as I can tell, Paul does not teach the mindset of “me and my salvation” in these verses. Rather, he focuses on “God and God’s purposes”, which are much wider than just my salvation. I used these verses to encourage our people in Tokyo to recognize God’s purpose for saving us. After our salvation, our next step is not simply going to heaven. It is being made into a one-of-a-kind community on earth that incarnationally demonstrates His existence and grace to those around us in Tokyo. If we understand God and His purposes for believers’ lives according to these verses, we have no choice but to commit ourselves to live by grace and be built up as God’s temple together in love. We need to invest our money, time, and ability to create more locations throughout Tokyo where these values are communally embraced, encouraged, and practiced by authentic believers.

However, the more we minister to people, the more we realize how inadequate we are to fulfill the vision that God has given us in Tokyo on our own. Yet, simultaneously, God’s Spirit through His Word gently reminds us that God is not limited by our evident lack of ability or resources (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:9). If He desires to use us to change the city of Tokyo for His glory, all He has to do is say so. Our adequacy is found in God’s willingness and His divine power with which He strengthens us. We need to clearly recognize our entrusted task and define our expectations accordingly. We are not called to Tokyo to change people. We are simply called to proclaim the One who is capable and willing to change people in the city. We are nothing more than His ambassadors trying to effectively and attractively communicate His message of hope to those who are blinded by the world, the flesh, and the devil (cf. 2 Corinthians 3). Please pray that we will continue to serve Him one day at a time by proclaiming the Gospel of Christ and the difference it makes to those we encounter in deed and truth. We appreciate all of you for partnering with us through prayer.

I have been in Tokyo for almost one week. I flew into Tokyo-Narita International Airport on Saturday night, and I was already speaking at a meeting on Sunday by 10 the next morning.

I spoke about the urgent need for us as a church to reconsider our current state and be willing to change in order to fulfill the function of the church more effectively in the city. I spent a decent amount of time emphasizing the differences between “doing” the church and “being” the church in our city. In other words, when a church simply “does” the church, it is more interested in maintaining the forms it came to love, although those forms may no longer fulfill the functions of the church in today’s culture. I emphasized that if we are married to traditional forms that no longer fulfill the true functions of the church in our surrounding community, all of our effort is wasted.

Jesus emphasized this same mindset when He spoke against the Pharisees, saying, “And by this you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN’” (Matt 15:6-9). The Pharisees thought they were worshipping God and doing Him a favor, but since they were more interested in maintaining the cherished traditions, they were no longer fulfilling the function of true worship.

On the other hand, “being” the church has to do with understanding and living out the values that God demands within the Body of Christ so that His grace can be manifested through it to the unreached. It is this cause that Amy and I are unwaveringly committed to in Tokyo. Thankfully, many older believers responded positively and many younger people showed interest in changing.

This month, one of my main purposes is to work with different people who are influencers in our church and persuade them that we need to be more value-driven, and not form-driven. While this sounds reasonable, and even biblical, many churches sadly fail to make it their core value.

This week I have already met with two potential future part-time helpers, spent some time reassessing the current church condition, enduring – regrettably – hours of sharp and unwarranted criticisms and discouragements from those within the church who are not interested in my leadership. Currently, I’m writing an article for the church publication, trying to recover as much data as possible from my crashed hard-drive, and attending our church board meeting on Saturday (7/18).

Next week, I am going to try to get connected with those who stopped attending our church while we have been gone and encourage them not to give up on what God’s doing and going to do in our church. I am also solidifying our relationships with other capable believers outside of our church who were previously interested in assisting our endeavors. My goal is to hear them reaffirm their commitment to work with us in the near future. This week we also began our plan to develop our church website, which we hope will become one of the most comprehensive and useful Christian resources online in Japanese.

More I commit to developing an authentic community of believers in Tokyo, more I realize how much more financial resources and full time workers we need to do our job with excellence. While we are grateful for all the part-time lay people who are willing to help, we need other committed believers who are willing to work with us and contribute their creativity and expertise to reach souls for Christ in the city.

It is very easy to feel satisfied for the progress God is making through us, and yet be discouraged by various expected, yet still undesirable, challenges the next minute. We definitely need your vocal support through prayer and encouragement as we face realistic challenges of being in ministry overseas.

Please don’t stop praying for us. This month, pray that God will allow me to continually demonstrate His love and patience to everyone as well as show wisdom and humility beyond my age and experience, and unquenchable passion to glorify Him through my service. I also desire to demonstrate a teachable heart that is quick to hear and slow to speak as I deal with many people with distinct opinions. Please pray for Amy also as she is down in Alabama with her family. I will ask her to write an article so that you can also find out what God is doing in her life.

Friends and family, this is our ministry in action – what we need to be doing every week to make a lasting change in Tokyo. However, as you know, we cannot be in Tokyo without your generous help. We have been listing the need for regular giving, but we still need people who love God and us to put their faith into action by partnering with us. Please take some time today and fill out the form to partner with us financially so that we can continue to effectively build up the body of Christ in Tokyo.

We are finally back in New York after a month of intensive traveling throughout the state of Maine. After visiting seven churches and more small groups, we are filled with gratitude as God continually demonstrated His faithfulness throughout the time we were there.

Let me pick up where we left off since the last update. Originally, after the final meeting we had in June, we were planning on returning to New York. However, some of the locals convinced us that we needed to stay for their July 4th celebration. They mentioned that there would be a lot of food and the world’s fastest lobster fishing boat race, and, shameless to say, we were sold.

On June 28th, we visited the Head of the River Baptist Church in Cutler, Maine. It was our joy to share our passion with the people who were attending this small church. Among the attendees was Dr. Greg Beale from Wheaton Graduate School, who used to be the president of the Evangelical Theological Society a few years ago. It was refreshing to talk to him since I miss being around people who are active in the field of theological education. Amy and I enjoyed getting to know Head of the River’s Pastor Scott and his family. We would love to continue to keep in touch with their church.

That evening, we visited Beals Christian Advent Church on Beals Island, Maine. We spoke to the congregation there, and some of them made pledges to support us through regular giving. It was our joy to get to know their pastor, Josh, and his family, who were very excited about our ministry. We will be praying for their ministry as well.

After that Sunday, we were done with our planned meetings but wanted to meet more people and inform them of the spiritual need in Tokyo. On Thursday, I arranged a meeting with one of the members of Maine Coast Baptist Church, Dr. Allen Gregory, who has started his own unique ministry with a local investor to specifically aim to reach the lost in his local community with the Gospel. Over an outstanding lobster lunch, we discussed how Amy and I can increase our ministry effectiveness. Right before I left, he suggested that I should call Pastor Jerry Mick, senior pastor of Bangor Baptist Church, in Bangor, Maine.

Although I didn’t know anything about this church prior to our meeting, right after I left Dr. Gregory’s office I quickly prayed and called Pastor Jerry’s number, not knowing what to expect. We only had two days left in Maine, and once we left the state we knew that we could not return for a long time due to its distance from where we would be.

After talking to Pastor Jerry on the phone for three minutes or so, he invited me to share our ministry to him on Friday morning. I was so grateful to the Lord, as I was not expecting to be able to meet him in person. In spite of his church office being closed that day due to the weekend and, as I later found out, being the pastor of one of the biggest churches in Maine, he was willing to meet with me.

When I arrived at the church, I did not know what to expect since our conversation was somewhat brief the day before. I was anticipating anything from a 15-minute meeting where he would just tell me to leave our information with him, to a meaningful 45-minute meeting where I could share who we are more in-depth. After we started to share, our meeting ended up being close to two hours, where I was able to share about our ministry and our strategy pretty thoroughly.

To make the long story short, he invited us back to his church for their month-long missions conference, with all of our traveling expense being covered by the church. Again, this would not have happened if we did not decide to stay one week longer and actively pursue new and exciting places to share our commitment to serve the Lord in Tokyo.

We thank God once again for orchestrating these events to allow us to experience something far greater than what we could have hoped for. Praise the Lord for going before us to pave the way so that His truth can triumph in Tokyo through our ministry.

We miss everyone back in Maine, and we would stay there longer if we could. But we want to continue to move forward with our calling so that their prayers and support can bear fruits in Tokyo, where we need to be for the sake of the Gospel.

We stayed in Maine until July 5th. Due to bad weather, the lobster boat race which was our original reason to stay was canceled. But it didn’t matter because we were able to meet new people that we would not have been able to if we didn’t stay longer, and we got to spend the weekend with our friends that we came to love.

Please continue to pray for us, that God will continue to stir the hearts of those who were exposed to the spiritual needs of those who live in Tokyo, and that they will do something about it through us.

Also pray for us during the next forty days as Amy and I will be separated for that duration to accomplish the different aspects of our ministry. I am flying back to Japan today (7/10) to “admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone” (1 Thess. 5:14) in our church community in Tokyo. It will be challenging as I would be laying down the foundation for the changes that we will bring about in the near future. It is human nature to react in one way or another whenever new and sizable changes are introduced. It is a process that requires utmost carefulness, wisdom, and moreover, unwavering God-given conviction to do what is right in His sight with excellence. I will be speaking over ten times during this time. We also covet your prayers for Amy as she drives down to Alabama to be with her family for the duration. She will update our sending church with our progress. Anyway, it is a very long time for us to be apart, and we would appreciate your encouragement during this time.

We will continue to update you with what we will be doing during this period so that you can pray for us effectively. Please continue to pray for us but also consider financially partnering with us as God leads through regular giving. We cannot leave the country until God raises enough people to pledge 100% of our support. We still need $4,000 monthly pledges. Every dollar counts. Please ask God to make you into one of those men or women who will give generously so that through your giving more Japanese souls will be saved.

Again, it is not too late to bless us with financial assistance as I fly to Tokyo by clicking the “donate” button to the left. A roundtrip flight to Japan costs somewhere around $1,000. You giving can make a big difference.

One final thing. I have noticed that many of you have visited this site but have not subscribed to it. Please take a minute to subscribe to our site today because it is free and it will notify you whenever we update our blog so you don’t miss a thing!

Thanks so much for visiting our website again. We cannot wait to tell you what God is doing in our next update.