We are hosting a mission team from Hawaii this week and next week. They are from Waialae Baptist Church and FBC Pearl City. Eight people are coming and seven of them were here two years ago. We are excited to have them back again! They will be serving at local churches and in the disaster area. The following is the prayer calendar that the team has made for this trip. We appreciate your prayers as they minister to so many people! We also want to ask you to pray for extra strength for us and our boys!
May 1: Pray for safe travel to Sendai, second ministry area.
May 2: Pray for missionaries Michael and Yu Towery at Taitomi Church. Pray for the mothers and children as the team interacts with them. Most of them do not come from Christian backgrounds.
May 3 Pray for the Hawaiian Festival community outreach to families around Taitomi Church. Pray for good weather, a great turnout and the opportunity for the team to share the Gospel.
May 4 Pray for the Sunday Worship time at Taitomi Church. Pray for the work that missionaries Tony and Marsha Woods are involved with in Ishinomaki and for the English Bible Study and worship at Sendai Baptist Church. Pray for Lynne as she shares her testimony.
May 5 Pray for those involved with the Nozomi Project. Pray for people still living in temporary housing in Oshika. Pray for Miyuki and her daughter.
May 6: Pray for the people in the temporary housing in Ishinomaki. Pray for the team’s sensitivity to the people as they listen to the residents’ stories and as they minister through music, games, and crafts.
May 7: Pray for the Tokyo Baptist Church ministry in rest home in Ishinomaki with Tony and Marsha Woods. Pray for safe travel back to Sendai.
May 8 Pray for missionaries Tony and Marsha Woods and Michael and Yu Towery and their ongoing work in Japan.
May 9 Pray for the team’s safe return home and the ongoing work in Japan.
Thank you in advance for your prayers! Looking forward to sharing the photos and stories!
Last week we were pleased to meet DeShannon and Rocky Higa. They are a couple who live in Honolulu, Hawaii. They are friends with several of the Hawaii team members who helped last April. When we visited the churches in Honolulu in June, DeShannon and Rocky expressed their desire and God’s call to help us in Japan. We were of course ecstatic of their desire to help. They helped us with our Wednesday night kids English class. They blessed the children through their music. DeShannon played the piano while Rocky sang. They are wonderful musicians and we all enjoyed their music. They also taught the kids a great praise song! Afterward they handed out gift bags for the children. They told us that many friends, family, and church members helped put everything together. Their niece wrote a sweet letter to all the kids.
We are so taken away when people contact us offering to help. They were a huge blessing to the children and we loved hearing their testimonies. They were such a joy to be around and little did we know, DeShannon, is quite the accomplished Jazz musician. They are truly humble and God filled.
DeShannon and Rocky, thank you so much for your willingness to serve. We look forward to serving with you both again very soon. We also pray that more people will hear God’s call to serve with us as the months and years progress. God Bless and the children send their thanks!
Hello! Hope you are all having a wonderful summer. We have been super busy hosting mission teams from America! It has been fun to spend time with them!
While we have a short break, we will try to catch up with our posts! This one is about our time in Hawaii. You may remember that we hosted a wonderful team from Hawaii in April. We really enjoyed getting to know them and kept in touch with them after they went back home. They invited us to visit them but we didn’t think we would be able to go so soon! God provided everything we needed! We were able to stay at the beautiful mission house provided by the Hawaii Pacific Baptist Convention, and our friend who works for Delta let us use the buddy pass which allowed us to fly super cheap! We were there for two weeks and it went by so quickly! We enjoyed EVERY SINGLE DAY! Our friends in Honolulu and Pearl City blessed us so much! They planned a dinner with all the mission team members who had come to Japan and we had so much fun sharing our special memories!
The main purpose to visit Hawaii this time was to speak at several churches about the disaster relief work. Many Hawaiians have already given so much to help the Japanese people in the disaster areas. We wanted to thank them in person and ask for their continued support and prayers. The church members welcomed us warmly and we felt their love!
Here are some photos of our trip:
As soon as we arrived in Hawaii, Yu was asked to be on a radio show to talk about Japan.
Worship service at FBC Pearl City. The lady on the right, Lynne, was one of the mission team members that came to Japan.
Speaking in their Japanese service.
Luke had so much fun at the Children’s Discovery Center.
Of course, he enjoyed playing on the beautiful beach!
Restful time with our little family!
Luke was spoiled the whole time! Mommy and Daddy were happy to have a break from holding our BIG baby!
Grandpa got to come!
We were invited to speak in our friends’ Sunday School class at Waialae Baptist Church.
Speaking at their worship service. It was great to see our friends again! We had a meeting with Pastor Robert and we look forward to partnering with their church!
Reunion with all the mission team members. We had such a special time together.
Michael enjoyed hiking!
We thank God for this wonderful opportunity! A big THANK YOU to all of our Hawaiian friends! Thank you for making our time VERY special. We miss you all!
Hello!!! We are sorry we haven’t been able to update our blog for a while. We just came back from our trip to Hawaii. We visited our friends who were on the mission teams to Sendai and spoke at their churches. We had a wonderful time meeting people and sharing about Japan. We will write more soon! Please pray for us as we get ready to host the mission team from Texas that will arrive tomorrow!
Last December, we stopped in Hawaii on our way from the mainland to speak at the church that sent a mission team to Japan last year. During our stay, we were invited to meet people from another church who were interested in coming to Japan as volunteers. When we met them, we could tell that they all had a huge heart for Japan and Japanese people. We shared about our ministries and needs of people in the disaster areas. We kept in touch, and they decided to come to Japan!
It was such a blessing to serve with them the last two weeks. They did such a great job with the preparations and we were all amazed by all the things they brought for people in this area. More than anything, we were so blessed by their willingness to serve God and His people.
Here are some highlights of our time with them:
Visiting Sendai Kita Baptist Church.
Barbeque Fellowship at Yoshioka Mission Church.
Distributing flyers for our event at one of the temporary housings.
Visiting one of the kindergartens in the disaster area. Out of 220 students, more than 140 of them were affected by the tsunami.
They sang some English, Hawaiian, and Japanese songs.
Giving a gift from Hawaii to all students and teachers. Hawaiians are SO generous!
Luke was a big helper!
They were so happy!
First temporary housing we visited.
Doing craft activities. These girls were precious!
At the second temporary housing we visited in Oshika Peninsula.
They loved spam musubi (Hawaiian food)!
Look at these beautiful leis they made.
We delivered fresh fruit to people in the temporary housings.
We worked with these wonderful missionaries. We have learned so much from them!
The perfect time to see cherry blossoms!
Lynne’s beautiful hula at the third temporary housing we visited.
They enjoyed hula dance.
Guys talking to people outside while ladies led the craft activities.
These ladies seemed to have a great time making all kinds of stuff!
Fellowship with the community choir (non believers) at our church.
The next few photos are from the Hawaiian Festival. We decided to host a fun event for the kids (and their families) in the community. Even though our area did not get much damage from the earthquake, many kids went through a difficult time due to continuous aftershocks and radiation threat. All the kids seemed to have an awesome time!
In the beginning of this event, the kids in our English class did a presentation in front of their parents. They did a great job and we are so proud of them!
Everyone enjoyed their songs!
Hula time!
Frog race!
Fishing game! We were happy that Luke caught some American snacks!
Golf!
All the cool prizes.
Enjoying Hawaiian food such as teri burgers and spam musubi. The Hawaii team brought SO MANY cookies and other homemade desserts. Of course, they were a great hit!
Group photo after the worship service on Sunday.
Church-wide picnic after the morning service. We all enjoyed singing together. We are ready for Luke to learn how to play the Ukulele!!!
Luke had fun playing with all the girls!
Last night in Miyagi. We had a delicious meal and shared about our experiences. We were touched by their stories and desire to continue being involved.
This photo of Masa and Luke makes us smile! We are SO thankful that everyone loved on Luke the entire time. It gave us some break from holding/chasing him! Luke was thrilled that he got lots of attention. He is blessed to have many Hawaiian grandpas and grandmas!
Last group photo. We were so sad to see them leave. We thank God for such a great team!
As you can see, they did SO MUCH! They touched and changed countless lives. We have already heard lots of positive responses from the people they had met. Many of them asked when the Hawaii team would come back! We look forward to hosting more teams. Not only the Hawaii team encouraged many people in the disaster area, but they also blessed us! Hawaii has become a very special place for us. They invited us to their churches in Hawaii and we hope to visit them soon!
A big thank you to all the team members for sharing God’s love in so many amazing ways! We miss you!
As I checked our draft box, I realized that I had not published some of the posts. I know it is late but I wanted to publish before 2012 comes! Here are some updates on our ministry in the fall.
We took our youth group to go bowling. Many of you have been praying for these two sisters on the right. They lost their grandparents in the tsunami and have been having a difficult time. It was great to see their smile again.
We took them to Michael’s favorite restaurant. Even though our group is still small, we always have so much fun together!
When we had a team from Bangkok, we hosted a youth game night. As you can see, they loved it!!!
We also wrote encouraging notes on the heating cans for people in the temporary housing. The Bangkok team delivered them and many people loved it!
This fall, we started teaching English at our church. We have been having 20-30 kids every week!
We always end our time with a short worship service. Lots of the kids are from non-Christian families. Some of them started coming to the Sunday School.
Mr. Tony taught some English praise songs! It reminded me of my childhood since he had taught me the same songs when I was a child!
The youth learned English through games, songs, and chants! It was great to see them interact with these English speakers!
We hosted the first ever fall festival at our church. Both teams from Bangkok and Hawaii helped and our FBCA family helped by sending us American candies and party supplies! Thank you all!
In the beginning, all the kids who had come to the English class performed in front of their parents.
This class learned the colors and animals. They did a great job!
Bean bag toss!
Pumpkin bowling!
Ring toss!
Fishing game!
Face painting!
Everyone enjoyed American taste such as hot dogs, chili, spam musubi (from Hawaii), popcorn, cookies, candies, and cool aids! One girl said who had a cool-aid for the first time said it tasted like “America”!!!
It was great to meet dads of the kids who come to our English class. Michael hopes to get to know them better!
Michael and the boys. We ordered these pumpkins from the northern island of Japan. The kids loved touching them!
We had a great time with everyone. God has opened so many doors for us to meet and minister to the youth and kids in our community. We look forward to building relationships and sharing God’s love with them and their families.
Ever since the massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, so many volunteers have come to Japan to help with disaster relief efforts. We have been blessed to host several teams from all over the world! Not only have they helped so many in needs, but they have also encouraged many believers that are trying to minister to Japanese people. Michael and I often talk about the ways the volunteers have ministered to our family. They have gone to the disaster areas with us (it can be overwhelming when there are only three of us that visit 100+ temporary housing units), taken care of our sweet Luke (it’s nice to have extra arms to hold Luke when his parents are busy running around), worshiped with us (God has touched us and spoken to us through reading the scriptures, singing praise songs, and praying as a group), and encouraged us to keep up the good work (sometimes we need words of affirmation).
We have experienced the importance of working as a team and we pray God will continue to send us those who have a heart for Japan.
Bangkok Team- They are actually from Canada and America but all of them attend the same church in Bangkok, Thailand. We had them for a Taco Dinner (which they LOVED) at our house. They helped with our youth group, kids English classes, and Fall Festival! Since Michael lived in Thailand when he was young, he really enjoyed talking about Thai culture and places! We would love to visit Thailand as a family someday!
Hawaii Team- They are from Olivet Baptist Church in Honolulu, Hawaii. They worked so hard in the disaster areas, and they were so gracious to help clean up at my grandparents’ house. During our time together, I found out that one team member’s daughter had graduated from DBU and we had known each other! What a small world! My dad also told me that my parents had visited this church twice as a young couple! We look forward to visiting the church and seeing everyone again!
Thank you all for coming to Japan and touching so many lives!
