We have a lot of people come to Sendai to help with the ministries throughout the year. It is always a blessing to see the same faces come back year after year. The BGCT (Baptist General Convention of Texas) has allowed that to happen for at least one of our very good friends. Sherwood Moffett is a retired missionary to Japan. He has led many of his students from Texas on teams throughout Japan. Sherwood is a member of Austin Baptist Church. He joined the first BGCT that arrived back in 2012 and he has come back to lead a team ever since. He always has a good group. And those that could not make this trip were spoken of very fondly by the team members. This year we had the pleasure of having a professional singer perform at Taitomi Church. They also helped with the English Bible study and worship on Sunday night. We really enjoyed having them with us. But they had to go so that they could help TBC Ishinomaki Mission for a week. We are thankful for the ways they encouraged us and blessed many lives.
Kids’ English Club has had a wonderful year thus far. We were growing nearly every week with a kid here and there before we broke for the spring break. After our trip to Hawaii we were not sure what the class would be like since our American friend moved back to Florida while we were gone (we miss you guys). It was a blessing to see that most of our students returned and they invited their friends. We are also thankful our pastor’s wife helps every week.
We had several guests and teams and more are coming in the fall. In May, we were so happy to welcome two friends from our home church in Texas. These guys encouraged us in many ways. We also received post cards from our American friend’s (she came to Japan twice already and we can’t wait to have her back here!) kindergarten class and our students wrote them back!
We are now in the middle of summer vacation but we will resume classes in a few weeks.
Please pray that the children will have a save summer break and also that more children will come to our English classes. We are so thankful for each and everyone of the children God has brought to the ministry. We pray He will continue to bring more.
Last year we brainstormed for new events we could have at our home church Taitomi Church. With summer approaching we realized there had never been a VBS (Vacation Bible School) at Taitomi Church. We had a great trio of teachers by profession come from our home church in Texas to help with our first ever VBS (By the way, you ladies are always welcome back)! This year for 2015, we decided to ask the youth and adult team from Hawaii to help. We have been partnering with Waialae Baptist Church for a few years and we were so happy when they said they would be bringing a youth group to Japan!
The youth team taught English to the kids and the adults led the craft activities for the moms. We also taught a Bible lesson at the end of each class. We ended our time together by hosting the Hawaiian Festival. All the kids loved the fun booths and prizes from Hawaii!
Everyone learned something new every day. The Hula dancing was also very popular! We also took this team to the preschool and nursing homes in the community. The fact we got to visit the public preschool was a blessing! The team also wanted to visit the disaster area so we took them to one of the mission churches and also to the temporary housing where our friends live.
Thank you everyone for loving on the kids and sharing God’s love to everyone you met.
We can’t believe July is almost over! We apologize for not updating this blog for a few months. Just like many of you, we have been crazy busy!
Some of you may be wondering why the title of this post is “Spring memories”. This post was supposed to be published long time ago. Thank you for being patient as we publish several new posts this week. This past spring and summer have been one of the busiest times ever! But that means God is doing many things here in Japan and we look forward to sharing many stories with you.
Here is the original post:
Thank you to those who prayed for us as we went to Hawaii to visit friends and their churches. We had a wonderful time sharing about what God is doing in Japan. People in Hawaii were so welcoming and we enjoyed every minute of our time. Of course, our kids loved it as well!
After coming back to Japan, we hosted the youth and young adult retreat at our church. There were several people who came for the first time. We loved listening to their life stories, learning about Jesus, and worshiping together. Please pray for their walk with Christ as some of them are struggling at school/work/home.
This year’s Easter was very special! Two girls were baptized and many of you prayed for them in the past. We are so thankful for our new sisters in Christ. Please pray for both of them, especially for Mina, who moved to another city with her family recently.
Thank you again for your prayers and support! Stay tuned for more posts!
Last week was the fourth year since the 3-11 earthquake. Last July, we made a video for the Japan Baptist Convention. It is an overview of the relief work in Japan. Below is the English Version. Here is a link to the English and Japanese versions. Thank you for your continued prayers and support for those in need.
We hope you all had a wonderful weekend. We left Japan and flew to Hawaii last week. Our goals for this trip are to maintain Yu’s status as a permanent resident, to visit churches to share what God is doing in Japan, to see friends who came to Japan on mission trips, and to recruit prayer and financial partners.
God has already blessed us in many ways. The mission house that our friend’s church has provided for us is perfect (there is a playground that our boys love!) for our family, we already saw several friends that came to Japan last year, we spoke at two churches yesterday and met people who are interested in going to Japan in the future, and several people told us they want to partner with us! God is good!
If you are a new reader of this blog, welcome! We look forward to keeping in touch with you.
Here are some recent photos of our ministries in Japan!
Children’s choir
Kids’ English class
Love these children!
With Pastor Fujii and his family at Sakata Mission Church
English Bible study
Weekly play group at our church
Your prayers and support mean so much to us! Please let us know how we can pray for you!
We hope you had a wonderful Christmas! Our Christmas was filled with joy and we had a wonderful time with family and friends!
As we start our new year, we wanted to reflect on this past year and count all the blessings from God!
Year in Review
January:
We left for America on January 1st. It was not easy to leave our friends in Japan and ask others to be in charge of ministries here. However, God used this opportunity in many ways and our Christian friends have stepped up to help and serve! Being in Texas was wonderful! We were reunited with family and friends once again! It was Logan’s first time to be in America so it was fun to introduce him to everyone. Luke turned three on January 6th and lots of friends came to celebrate with us! We went to Georgia to attend a conference that taught us how to raise support. It was such an encouraging conference and we learned a lot! We had a chance to see many friends which was a huge blessing!
With friends who used to live in Japan.
February:
We were so happy to be a part of our church’s Child Dedication Service. It was an honoring and humbling experience to dedicate both of our boys to the Lord in front of our church family. We are so thankful for our family and friends who help us raise our children. We also went on a camping trip with our close friends. We met these friends in Panorama which taught us and prepared us for future mission work. Most of us were singles or young married couples but the group has grown so much since then! We love these lifelong friends!
Such a fun group!
March:
Main reason we stayed in America for three months was to raise support. We traveled to many places to meet people and talk at churches. Support raising was not an easy task but we learned so much through this process. God taught us over and over that He is faithful. We loved meeting with new and old friends and sharing what God is doing in Japan. Thanks to generous and faithful supporters, we are able to live in Japan to share His love with those who do not know Him. If you are already our supporter, THANK YOU from bottom of our heart. If you are interested in supporting, please contact us or go to the “Partner with us” page on this website. We are so thankful for God’s provision and the ways He has blessed us! It was hard to leave Texas but we were ready to come home!
Sharing about Japan with children at our home church.
April:
We were able to come back to Japan just in time for Luke to start kindergarten. It was another answered prayer. It took Luke a while to get used to the new schedule but he made friends and loved his school. Mommy and Daddy got busy as soon as we got back to prepare for the weekly ministries. It was so good to see our friends and students again! We celebrated Easter at church and some of our friends came to church for the first time!
Sharing the resurrection story with children at church.
May:
Logan turned ONE! He brings so much joy to our lives every day! We celebrated his special day with our friends. We also hosted a mission team from Hawaii. We loved serving with them. These Hawaiians are so good at loving on people and making everyone feel loved! They helped us with the Hawaiian Festival which was an outreach to the community around our church. We also went to the disaster area with them. Since most of the team members had been there before, it was such a great time of reunion! It was good to see everyone’s smile!
Fellowship at the temporary housing.
June:
In June, we said “see you again” to the Qualls family who went back to America for a year. They helped with our weekly English Bible study and worship service. Most people who come to this ministry are non-believers so it provides many opportunities to share our faith with them. Micheal teaches the Bible study every week and preaches once a month. There are several men who are non-believers and Michael has spent one-on-one time with them throughout the year. We are thankful for those who come and look forward to meeting more new people this coming year. At the end of June, we hosted a young lady and her mom from Texas. This young lady stayed for a little over two months to help with the ministries in Sendai and Sakata. We are grateful for the ways she served and helped!
Group that meets every Sunday night.
July:
July was such a busy month filled with lots of fun! Our friend from Canada stayed with us for about two weeks and we loved spending time with her! After she left, we hosted a mission team from our home church in Arlington, Texas. Three ladies that came had been to Japan before and we were so thrilled that they came back! Their heart for Japanese people really encouraged us. We hosted a VBS at our church and also at our mission church in Sakata. So many kids and their moms came every day and they loved it! At the end of July, we hosted another team from Hawaii and served together in the disaster area.
FBCA team with children in Sakata.
August:
We helped with two children’s camps in August. One in Sakata and another one was in Sendai. We love meeting children and loving on them. As you can imagine, they all come from different backgrounds. Most of the kids that came to these camps came from non-Christian homes. It was such a blessing to have an opportunity to tell them how much God loves them and cares for them. We hosted two more teams from Texas and Hawaii (can you tell we love Hawaiians and Texans?) and had special time serving with them. We were sad that Luke’s summer break ended but he was ready to have fun at school!
Summer camp in Sakata.
September:
Our church welcomed a new pastor. We prayed for a new pastor for a while and God blessed us with a wonderful pastor. His wife is pretty special too. We have been learning so much from him and it is great to have a pastor who is mission minded! Many of you already know that one of the ministries we have at our church is a playgroup for moms and kids under three. It’s one of Yu’s favorite times of the week. Yu has become good friends of other moms and spent lots of time with them. She found out many moms are struggling with marriage and parenting. We asked the pastor to share a Bible scripture and talk about it during our snack time. We have heard so many positive comments from moms about how much they needed to hear it!
Our playgroup (the man holding Logan is our new pastor).
October:
There were lots of events at Luke’s school in October. Luke had so much fun at his field day and field trip. At the end of October, we hosted the annual Fall Festival. We had help from mission teams in the past but we had to do it on our own this year. Thanks to lots of chocolates from Hawaii and help from our church members, we were able to host a fun festival for kids in our community. We shared the gospel with everyone who came. One boy told us he wants to have the Light of life (John 8:12). We pray they will always remember Jesus is the light of the world.
Aren’t they cute?
November:
It was a wonderful Thanksgiving month! We spent one week in Tokyo visiting friends from Yu’s high school and college and vacationing with dear friends from Australia. We loved every single minute of our family time! Our church hosted several special events and invited people from the community. We were encouraged to see so many new people coming to church! Our sending church in Texas had missions month and we had a Skype meeting with friends in our Sunday School class. Their love and prayers meant so much to us. We ended this wonderful month by having a Thanksgiving dinner with friends here in Sendai. It was nice to have all the traditional food but more than anything, we thanked God for all the blessings He has given us throughout the year.
Love these friends.
December:
December came and went! Where did the time go? Although it was a busy month, we enjoyed all the festivities! In Japan, people celebrate Christmas but many people do not know (or care about) the meaning of Christmas. So we spent lots of our time sharing why we celebrate Christmas. The kids that come to our weekly English class/worship told us that they would be sharing the true meaning of Christmas with their friends at school! We also went to the temporary housing to deliver flowers and hand made Christmas cards. This Christmas was also meaningful as Luke was really interested in Christmas and Santa and we were able to spend every night talking about Baby Jesus (and Santa, too!) and how He came to the world. One of the greatest gift was one girl in our English class making a decision to be baptized. She was praying about it for a while and told us after the Christmas worship service that she wants to be baptized! What an answer to our prayers! Thank you so much for praying with us for more Japanese people to be saved!
Merry Christmas from children in our English class!
The girl on the right is the one who will be baptized.
We wanted to tell you how thankful we are for you! Thank you so much for your love, prayers, support, and encouragement! We give thanks to God for all His blessings.
This summer we were sad to know that Pastor Noguchi passed away. He was a seasoned leader. Even though he was supposed to be retired we received continuous reports of his steady outreach to the churches in his community. In case you did not know, he was a teen during WWII and was drafted into the army to train as a torpedo sub kamikaze. The war actually ended two weeks before his scheduled mission. He later became a believer and pastor. He will be greatly missed. He was full of wisdom and encouragement. Please remember to pray for his family. We are not able to attend the funeral in west Japan but our hearts were with all those who did. The picture of us with Pastor Noguchi and his wife, (They married September 2013!) was the last time we saw him. Michael gave him a hug and told them both we loved them. We said goodbye knowing that was the last time we would see each other this side of eternity. That was in June. However, we continued to hear many reports of his boldness to preach and share the gospel until he passed away. Such a man is hard to find. We pray the Lord will lift up more just like him. His life story is available on Amazon, Sacrificed: Given to an Empire; Found by God.
This Friday we will be hosting a team from the BGCT (Baptist General Convention of Texas). BGCT has already sent two teams in the past two years and this is their third team. The leader has been on every trip and is a former missionary to Japan. They will help with our kids and youth program Friday night. Then on Saturday, we will load up and go to the tsunami hit area for a time of games, crafts, and fellowship with some people in the temporary houses. And then on Sunday, they will come to our church in the morning and help with our adult ministry in the evening. Please pray for a good turn out and for friendships to form. This team consists of former team members and former missionaries, so we are excited to see how the Lord will use this team. Monday the team will go to Ishnomaki again and stay there for the remainder of the trip helping with another church. Please pray that their time in Ishinomamki is a blessing to them and to everyone they encounter. We look forward to seeing them very soon! We appreciate your prayers.
