Month: January 2012

This is our second weekly prayer update, and if you’re getting this one, then you’re on the list to get them every week. If you’re cutting back on your email and don’t want to receive emails so frequently, that’s totally fine, just let us know, and we’ll take you off. You can still receive our bi-monthly newsletters. For those of you who have committed to praying for us on a weekly basis this year, we can’t thank you enough! We’re so excited to see how God answers your prayers this year, and the things that He will accomplish.

This week Tomo and I talked a lot about our goals for getting to Japan, and things that we need to do to reach those goals. As I mentioned last week, the first thing we felt needed to happen was prayer, which is the reason for this weekly update. But there are other things that we need to do in order to get there, so I’d like to share them with all of you so that you can be praying for them. The basic stages that we’re looking at would be:

1. To reach 50% monthly support by the end of may to attend SEND’s Member orientation

2. To reach 75% at which time I’ll be able to quit my job in order to do full time support raising to raise the remaining support needed

3. Reach 100% by either December 2012 or March 2013 in order to arrive in Japan in time to start language school

The first big goal that we have is to reach 50% of our support by the end of May. This will enable us to go to SEND’s Member Orientation Program, which is mandatory before departing for the field, and only held once a year in the US. We tried to attend last year but were unable to get the required support. This year we’ve actually got a little further to go than we did last year because our budget increased with the birth of Titus, and the dollar hitting record lows against the yen. This means that it is even more expensive to send missionaries from the US to Japan, yet still absolutely necessary for the health of the church and spread of the Gospel in Japan. We’re still trying to prayerfully set a realistic target departure date. It’s tough to gauge how support raising will go this year, but we’re considering shooting for December 2012 (which would be ambitious) or March 2013, so that we could arrive before the start of the Japanese school year and I could start Language School right away.

This week I met with a guy who is interested in supporting us. He is going to come by some evening next week to hear more about what we’re doing. Pray that God will move in His heart to join our support team.

This week I need to make some appointments and follow up with people who have expressed interest in supporting us. We’re trying to get one appointment a week (still easing into things a bit, as life can get a bit unpredictable with a two month old baby).

We’ve got some off the wall ideas for getting up to 50% support by the end of May which I’ll share in next week’s prayer update. We’re working out the details now, but I’m excited and about some of the things that are starting to come together.

We are praying that 2012 will be the year that God finally brings us to Japan, and as we look ahead to this new year, we would like to ask you to join us by praying for us on a weekly basis.

2011 was an exciting and challenging year. We entered the year with both of us working part time, in the most financially stable state we’d been in since we first got married, and able to dedicate a lot of time toward support raising. We were excited and hopeful that we would make some significant progress towards going to Japan. However, God apparently, had some other lessons and blessings (and still has some more) in store for us before bringing us there. We found out Tomo was pregnant in March which meant that not long after she had to quit her job, I had to go back to working full time, and we prepared for the joyous arrival of our son Titus on November 27. The last two months have passed in a blur of sleeplessness and constant smiling over how cute the little guy is. Overall it felt like the entire year happened in the midst of a whirlwind.

Now we’re starting to look towards the new year, again hoping and praying that God will send us to Japan, and planning out how we can be faithful to this calling, a calling that I feel only more strongly about as this support raising time goes by. Many have asked if I have considered that the long and difficult road of support raising may be a sign that God has a different path in store, but I have come to the opposite conclusion. It seems to me that virtually every servant of God in the scriptures was faced with long and difficult challenges. It would seem that most of the time God’s will is to put us through these trials to teach us and to strengthen us. I think that the easy path is rarely the one that God calls us to, but often the one we are tempted to choose for ourselves. So we press on, trusting, learning, wrestling, praying and seeking to serve God as missionaries in Japan, that one day through us, God would glorify Himself by saving the souls of Japanese who have never heard of His love for them.

We’re just starting to get our feet back underneath us, just starting to be able to establish something that resembles a routine since we’ve become new parents. We have basically had to take a few months off from support raising, but we’re now looking to start up again. And we want to start with prayer, and continue in it, which is where you come in, once again. I believe that prayer is absolutely essential to us getting to Japan, and if we are to raise the remainder of our support this year, we’ll need lots of it. The first thing we want to establish this year in our support raising journey is a weekly prayer update. If you are a financial supporter, or a prayer partner, you will automatically begin receiving it, but if you need to cut back on the email you receive, just reply and let us know, and we’ll take you off of the list. If you are not a prayer partner or financial supporter (or don’t know if you are!) and want to pray for us this year, fill in your email address below (and leave a comment!).

Finally, we would love to have more communication with all of you, and would love to be praying for anything that you are going through. Please feel free to respond to any of these prayer updates with prayer and praise requests of your own. If you have something you want everyone to pray for, let us know and we’ll include it in the next prayer update email (but not on this public blog).

Thank you all so much for your prayers!