Half a Million in Gold for Church-Planting

Church-planting resources are hard to come by in Japan. Most churches can barely afford to provide for their pastor and a building, let alone additional staff or other expenses, such as big outreach programs. Consequently, many Japanese pastors in our denomination have not been involved in church-planting before, and the majority of new churches have been started by American and Korean missionaries. That fact alone makes the following story shared by our MTW country leader all the more exciting in the development of Japanese church leadership.

An elderly Christian Japanese lady in the prefecture just to the west of ours recently informed her church that she wants to leave her entire estate, valued at over $5 million dollars, to Yokkaichi Church, a sister church of ours on the other side of the bay and the biggest in our presbytery. But Yokkaichi Church has decided not to take one yen of her money. Instead, with her blessing, they plan to use it all for church-planting! Initially, the project was planned for sometime in the future, as the money wouldn’t be available until after the donor’s death. But when Pastor Otake from Yokkaichi Church went to the donor’s home to help her go through her things and prepare her estate, they found gold bars valued at almost $550,000! The elderly Christian lady has decided she will give this gold right away to begin the church-planting process. What a surprise and gift from the Lord through this dedicated sister!

Yokkaichi Church’s vision along with the donor is to plant three churches in the southern area of Mie Prefecture, which has been very resistant to the Gospel over the years. Ise in particular, the donor’s own hometown and the site of one of the proposed church-plants, is particularly a difficult city for the Gospel to grow in, as it is home to one of Japan’s most famous Shinto shrines and a kind of Mecca for Shintoism. A church-plant in Ise is much-needed, but it will come with many challenges, as there is great spiritual resistance to the Gospel there. Please pray for our Chubu Presbytery as we plan and prepare for these new churches in the years ahead.

While gold bars, a $5 million estate, and three new church-plants are incredibly exciting for the work in Japan, perhaps the most encouraging aspect of this entire story is that our Japanese sister church is spear-heading a church-planting initiative apart from missionaries. As a result of Yokkaichi Church taking the lead on new church-plants, our local presbytery for the first time has started a committee dedicated to church-planting. That’s a huge step and one that has encouraged us all! Our goal as missionaries is to support and help the Japanese churches we work with catch a vision for outreach, take ownership of ministries, and lead the way in ongoing church-planting in Japan. Please pray for Yokkaichi Church and Chubu Presbytery as we begin this big endeavor of planting three new churches in a largely unreached area of southern Mie Prefecture.

Pandemic, Protests, and Patience...

As the delta variant cases surge around the world and Japan continues to lag in vaccination rates, the prospect of Japan immediately issuing new visas and opening their border looks bleak. The hope before the Olympics began was that they would step up their vaccination rates significantly and cases would be going down by now, and while they are making progress in inoculating their population, covid cases continue to rise, and Tokyo is currently under its 4th "state of emergency" since the beginning of the pandemic. Allowing international athletes, some who have tested positive for covid upon their arrival in Japan, into the country for the current Olympic games has only added to the general population's fear of outsiders bringing more coronavirus to their communities. Polls show that 87% of Japanese have at least some concern over their country hosting the Olympics this summer. Perhaps you've seen the news showing protests in Tokyo against the games (photo above). This really is a time of uncertainty for Japan with rising covid cases and slow inoculation numbers while being thrust into the spotlight of the world stage with the Olympics and all the controversy they bring during a pandemic.

For our family waiting for visa paperwork to be approved so that we can return to Japan, we continue on indefinitely here in limbo. It's a very uncomfortable place to be, living in limbo for so long, but a place we believe God has called us to for this time. In our last newsletter, we mentioned that Ben was considering returning to Japan alone to renew his visa before it expired this summer, but in further discussions with our teammates, they discouraged this trip because visa renewals are taking up to a couple months now and Ben could become "stuck" in Japan while the rest of the family is "stuck" in America indefinitely. The official word from the Japanese embacy is "we have NO information about when visas will be granted," but speculation by expat groups online is that Japan will not change anything about their tightly-controlled border until at least October if not January. Furthermore, everyone seems to think that once new visas are granted again, priority will be given to businessmen and students, with other visas (such as religious activities like ours) following sometime after. We can only say with confidence that God alone knows when we will be allowed back into our host country.

Although our desire and ongoing prayer is to be settled back into life and ministry in Nagoya, we trust that God is in complete control regarding our future in Japan, and we continue to be busy about His work here and even there, via zoom. With so many things being done online now, Ben is still able to lead Bible studies for the young adults at Nisshin Church and serve on four missionary committees handling finances, leadership structure, administration, etc. While committee work is not everyone's favorite job on the mission field (and most of these meetings are at odd times for us like 10 pm or 6 am because of the time difference), there is a lot of work that must be done "behind the scenes" to keep missionaries on the field, to use resources responsibly, and to plan ways to best partner with and serve our national workers, so these committee meetings are vital to providing good leadership and structure going forward.

Ben is also preaching at churches in the Kansas City area, and last week, we enjoyed teaching the Bible time at our home church's VBS (photos below).

What else have we been doing while we wait?

Visiting our new teammates, Oscar and Nancy in Texas! We were blessed to see them in person and hear more about their call to Japan as they move forward with MTW training in the fall and later support-raising. They hope to join us in Nagoya in 2022.

Moving again! Yes, it's our 6th move in two years, and we are beyond tired of this transient lifestyle, but no one could have predicted when we left Japan for HMA that we would be SO delayed in getting back to the field, and we've been moving in and out of temporary housing for quite some time now while we wait for the pandemic and border situation to improve. The family renting our house in Kansas while we were in Japan moved out in June, and we were able to move back into our old place for the time being. Friends and family donated mattresses, bedding, dishes, and some furniture for us to use during our temporary stay here. While we are very grateful for Julie's parents hosting us in their home for the past 6 months, it is good for our busy family with three young boys to have our own space. We hope not to move again until we are leaving for Japan!

Attending General Assembly for the Presbyterian Church of America in St. Louis last month. Ben was able to vote on important issues facing our denomination, as well as to connect with various church leaders and missionaries there. The family enjoyed seeing the Arch together after GA ended (above). And then we reconnected with leaders from Veritas, the college ministry at The Crossings Church in Columbia, MO that sends teams of students to help us at Nisshin Church in the summers (below).

Continuing with work and ministry in Japan as much as possible. We are grateful for the technology that allows us to video call with students (photo below) and host Bible studies online. Though it's not like being there in person, we can keep relationships going, engage students in the Bible, mentor the intern we hired at Nisshin Church, and meet with teammates weekly for prayer.

Praises and Prayer Requests

Praise the Lord for:

1.     Yokkaichi Church and the Japanese donor from Ise who desire to lead the way in 3 new church-plants in southern Mie Prefecture

2.     Kids Gospel – Last summer, Nisshin Church was not able to host their yearly outreach to local families called Kids Gospel (similar to VBS) because of the pandemic. But this summer, our co-workers at Nisshin Church were able to offer the kids camp again, just on a smaller scale (photo below). Praise the Lord for the opportunities the camp provided for the Gospel to be preached! 

 3.     Christian wedding – Our team leaders, Wayne and Amy, were blessed to attend the wedding of one of the former students of Nisshin Church’s college ministry (photo below). About 10 years ago, Izumi was a student at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies right down the street from Nisshin Church and she began attending Hospi, the college student ministry there. She was drawn to the warmth of the church and began doing Bible studies with our co-workers, Kaji and Ayumi. God opened her heart to the Gospel, she believed and was baptized. Over the years, Izumi has served as an intern at Nisshin Church and more recently, worked at Christ Bible Institute, the seminary led by MTW missionaries in downtown Nagoya. It was there she met and fell in love with Atsushi, a Japanese seminary student. Following their wedding this summer, they have moved to Tokyo to serve on staff at a church. What a “fairytale story” for one of the college students saved at Nisshin Church! Izumi’s gift of faith from God and call to serve in Christian ministry is the vision of our work with college students and one we pray for many more young people that walk through our doors at Nisshin.

Please pray for:

1.     Visas – It seems that God has chosen to answer our prayer for Baby Axel’s visa with “wait” at this time, as all of our attempts to apply for it and our co-worker's request on our behalf have been denied. Furthermore, Ben’s visa that was valid up until mid-July has now expired, and my (Julie) and Soren’s visas will expire at the end of August and Jutland’s in September. While this is discouraging on one hand (if it wasn’t for the pandemic, we would have all been back in Japan months ago and could have applied for visa renewals in person in plenty of time), it is now likely that our whole family will be able to apply for new visas together when the border re-opens, which could end up being a more streamlined process in the long run. And though we continue to ask God to grant us the necessary paperwork from the Japanese government to allow our family to return, we acknowledge that He is in control and will wait patiently for His timing.

2.     Preaching at Nisshin Church – Ben is busily working on a sermon that he and his translator will give at Nisshin Church via video in a few weeks. Please pray for him as he prepares and delivers the message and for our congregation in Japan to be encouraged and strengthened through the Word. (Photo below: Ben and our intern sharing about college ministry via video with our Nisshin Church congregation last month.)

3.     Missionaries on medical leave – Our dear teammates, Tom and Teresa Wilson and their children, just returned to the US because one of their children is experiencing a serious medical concern. They have been seen at a local children’s hospital already and hope to meet with specialists next with a possible visit to the Mayo Clinic in the works. Please pray for their family as they face this concern together, for the doctors to have wisdom as they diagnose and recommend treatment, and for healing for their child.

4.     Missionary mobilization and the Japanese church – Some MTW missionaries, including Ben, are hosting online prayer meetings this month of the Olympics to pray especially for Japan while Tokyo is at the forefront of the world stage as they host the games. While people around the globe are thinking about Japan right now, we are praying that more missionaries would be raised up to join us in the work there. And we are praying for the Japanese church to be strengthened and encouraged, especially in these difficult days. All across Japan, attendance and giving are significantly down because of the pandemic, so please pray for more Japanese Christians to be able to attend services in person soon and to continue to give to their local churches.