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Hey everyone, it’s been a little while since my last post, good thing Tomo’s been picking up the slack for me. For today’s post, enjoy a series of brief, unrelated updates from our life.

Tomo’s immigration to the US is still coming along smoothly. Today we went to Santa Anna so the USCIS could take Tomo’s fingerprints, which is part of the green card process. Also, Tomo has succesfully gotten a Social Security card, which means she can be added to my bank account. She got her own ATM card in the mail today, and was very excited about it. Next we’re going to be working on a drivers license. I’m a little nervous about her being able to drive wherever she wants and buy things whenever she wants, but I hear that marriage requires lots of trust.

We had a talk with our support coach this week, first time since we got married, and discussed our plans for the next five months, until Tomo joins SEND in January. At SEND’s suggestion we’re going to continue raising support, albeit it at a slower pace in order to give both of us a little time to adjust to married life, and Tomo a chance to get used to living in the US, and then jump back into more active support raising once Tomo is officially appointed. Our goal remains to have all our support raised by the end of 2010.

Lately God’s been reminding me of the importance of spending time in the Word and in prayer, so I’ve decided to start getting up earlier each morning to do that. Tomo is also joining me, and although we’re still getting into the habbit, so far I’m really enjoying it. I also want to spend more time reading good Christian books, so I picked up John Piper’s Let the Nations be Glad. I think I’m the only person I know that hasn’t read it yet.

I’ve been reading Jeremiah in my devotions recently, and have been struck by Jeremiah’s love for Israel, and sorrow at seeing them turn their back on God. Despite their wickedness he, like God, had a great desire to see them repent, though tragically God fortold they would not. Sometimes I think I am lacking in my own love for the world around me, and all the Americans that have also turned their backs on God. Too often I think of them as enemies when I should view them as kinsmen, and long to see them repent.

Though it’s still not official, it looks as though Jesus Film will keep me on part time. I’m planning on starting a little computer repair business in hopes that God will provide enough work to pay the bills, and perhaps even enough to pay off some school loans too. Please be praying for wisdom, and God’s provision in this area. And if any of you need some computer repair work done, check out my website and give me a call!

www.davesupport.com

Hi friends,

Another late blog update… (supposed to be every Monday). Sorry about that. We’ve been kind of busy having fun with our little Japanese friend who’s visiting. Thanks Jon for great ideas! We did go to the beach… and got sunburn. Pretty bad too. I was a little worried that my little Japanese friend would be deadly scared of getting tan like a lot of Japanese girls are, but this one turned out to be a rebellious one. She said getting tan was what she was here for, (well, and shopping). She is studying piano at a music college in Tokyo where it is a norm for girls to wear fancy dresses to school and use an umbrella to keep their skin nice and fair. Apparently she is not afraid of being different from everybody else. That’s the spirit we need as Japanese Christians, not afriad of being different from everybody else, so I guess it’s good that my Japanese friend is getting tan over here in California. But sunburn is not.

Anyways, we did go to Ross as Jon suggested. It’s a clothes store. She couldn’t believe how cheap things were. Also, we went to one of the art fairs in Laguna Beach, the mall, Hollywood, UCLA, Santa Monica, Orange County fair, etc. She enjoyed shopping at American clothes stores like Old Navy and American Eagle. She’s had some Del Taco and McDonalds, and been to Walmart. Still gotta take her to In-N-Out. We’ve been doing a lot of High School Musical watching too. We have all three movies right now thanks to JoAnna and Netflix. Today we’re going to hit the beach again. A little sunburn will not stop her from going back. She has another week in California.

Please continue praying for our job situations. We still don’t know if Jesus Film will keep David for 20 hours/week or let him go after August. Tomo is still waiting for her work permit to come in mail. Praise God for being good and faithful!

A friend of mine (Tomo’s) came from Japan to visit!! She arrived on Tuesday and will be here for 2 weeks. She goes to my home church in Tokyo. It’s really nice to see her again and to hang out with her. And it’s also very nice to be able to speak Japanese again…. very very nice. We went shopping yesterday to Old Navy and got the same dress. We’re about the same size so we look like twins 🙂 Now David gets to drive around two little Japanese girls instead of just one! How fun, right?

Any ideas for things to do??

OK I think it’s Tuesday already. It was my turn to write something yesterday… Oh well. Here goes a day late update!

Saturday we had our US reception! David’s mom, Kathy, handled everything to put it all together, and all David and I had to do was to show up on time! (and bring a slide show of the wedding in Japan, which we forgot…) It was at David’s aunt’s church in Huntington Beach, and so many people helped with decorations and food and everything, it was just amazing. I loved the pink and brown and Origami flowers and cherry blossoms. David’s brother Daniel was the MC and DJ, and we had food, music, cake, bouquet and boutnier toss, dance.. all sorts of wedding fun 🙂 I enjoyed watching people dance. I also got to meet a lot of David’s friends and family that I had never met before.

I like how everything is not so formal in America and how it’s primarily about having a good time and not so much about what we’re supposed to do. I mean, I like the Japanese way too, it can be kind of fun sometimes trying to figure out all the invisible rules and “read the air”. I enjoy observing the differences between the two cultures.

Now, weekend’s over and we’re back to business. Today we have college and career Bible study. We are finishing up Ecclesiastes today. It’s a very interesting book. And tomorrow I’ll go get another shot, which will complete my whole immigration package…. finally. But this is not quite the end. I’ll have to wait for months for my conditional green card to come, and then in two years I’m supposed to go through a lot of paperwork again to lift the condition and get a regular green card, which is good for 10 years. This is because there have been so many abuses of the spouse status and now the immigration people are very suspicious of newly-wed, foreign wives asking for a green card. So my immigration saga must go on…

Anyways, I read this this morning. 

“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 4:20-21

Amen!

Well, it’s again Monday night, and my turn to write the weekly blog entries. The last week has been pretty busy with two things in particular: job hunting and immigation.

Due to the way the economy is going the place I’m working had to cut back my hours, and may have to let me go entirely in in August, so I’m looking to see what God’s doing in this, and where He’s going to be leading me next, it’s an interesting time to be looking or a job. I’m not in a position to start a career, because as you all know, I’ve already chosen one; Lord willing I’ll be shipping off to Japan as a missionary by the end of 2010. To further complicate things, Tomo and I are hoping to go on partial support with SEND in January, where we’d have to devote 20 hours a week to support raising. This means that for the next six months I’ll need to be working full time to pay the bills, and then be able to drop down to working just 20 hours a week so we can dedicate more time to support raising, and get over to Japan. I’m very curious as to how God’s going to sort this all out, so please be praying with me for God’s provision. He has never left me hanging before, and I don’t anticipate He will this time, still this is yet one further test of faith, to see if I can rely on God to supply all my needs, as I will be forced to do once I’m in Japan in full time ministry.

Meanwhile Tomo’s been busy with filling out mountains of paperwork trying to get her conditional green card so that she can remain in the US legally until we move back to Japan in a year and a half or so. It’s a little frusterating how slow and expensive the whole process is, especially for Tomo. It took a few weeks for us to get a copy of our marriage certificate, which she had to wait on before proceeding to file her adjustment of status, getting a social security card, applying for a work permit, getting a drivers license or being added to my bank account. Since that finally came, all these things are now in process. There were a few vacinations she still had to get here, so she had her first ever tetnus shot today (her arm hurts), and she after I finally secured a drivers manual for her she immediately began pouring through California traffic rules so that she can get her driver’s permit. Soon enough she will be unleashed upon the unsuspecting roads of Orange County, free to go wherever her little heart desires.

 We had prayer meeting tonight, and tomorrow night we’ve got a young adults Bible Study we’re going to, where we’re studying Ecclesiastes. I’ve been reading through Exodus and Jeremiah for my devotions, though not as faithfully as I ought. Something to work on this week.

Hi friends and family, and anyone else who’s reading this blog,

David and I decided to take turns blogging so this week it’s my turn.

Thank you so much for all your prayers, support, and friendship! Like David said in last week’s post, we got married! We’ve been married for almost exactly a month now. We had a wedding in Tokyo, flew to Hawaii the next day, and came back to California as a married couple on the 9th of this month. (It was hectic!) We have a nice one-bedroom condo in Aliso Viejo in southern California. I love our place. David says it’s not too big but coming from Japan, this place is HUGE to me, at least for a newly-wed couple. I have to be careful not to get too used to all this space so I won’t start complaining how small the house is when we finally make it to Japan.  

We will be posting weekly, hopefully more frequently, on this blog to keep you guys posted on what’s going on with us. And here’s what’s going on right now.

We just sent out our first newsletter this afternoon. (Thanks JoAnna for licking the envelopes 🙂 We were also privileged to visit a friend of ours to talk about Japan and our plans this morning and had a very blessed time. It was such an encouragement because she called us and said she wanted to have us over and hear about Japan, instead of we called her and asked if we can meet with her, which is usually what happens. Praise the Lord for encouraging us as we just set out on our support-raising journey together.

Also, exciting news today, our marriage certificate came in mail!! I came to the States on a fiancee visa, and now I have to apply for a permanent resident card (or green card) so I can live in the States legally after my visa expires. And we were waiting for the marriage certificate to come in. Now we can start doing tons of paperwork again to get a green card, social security number, driver’s license, bank account, etc, and to file a Japanese marriage paper. I could do some of that without the marriage certificate, but I didn’t want to go through all the trouble again to change my name on everything so we decided to wait. I am not so excited about all the paperwork we have to do because getting the visa was a LOT of work and I feel like that should have done it, but I guess I’ll just have to get to work.

So that’s it for now. Come back again next week and see if I got the green card yet. Well, probably not, but we might have more exciting things to share with you so make sure you come back!

 

I know, it’s been way too long since I’ve made a blog post. But all that is about to change, because a lot has changed already. For instance, I’m married now. This is a wonderful thing, and even though I’ve only been married for about three weeks, I’m loving every second of it. Tomo has already become a great source of encouragement and motivation, and we’ve been talking a lot about how we’re going to get to Japan, and what our plans are going to look like. But I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. Let me fill you in a little on the details first.

On May 30th, 2009, Tomo and I were finally married, after spnding an excruciatin ten months of our engagemtn on different continents. The wedding took place in Tokyo, Japan, in the same church that I first went to help on a short term missions trip back in 2003. I had no idea at that time that I would even return to Japan, much less come back again and again and eventually return to marry Tomo in the very same church I had been privilidged to serve on so many occasions. It was an incredible experience.

 This has some major implications for me as a future missionary to Japan. SEND requires that in the case of a married couple, both husband and wife join SEND as missionaries, and Tomo is in the process of doing so right now. We will both be going back to Japan as a missionary couple, working and serving together to plant churches in Japan. I am very, very happy with this arrangement. Transitioning to a new culture can be a daunting experience, and I am grateful that God is not sending me to Japan alone. Furthermore Tomo, being Japanese, will be an enormous help in learning the culture and language, and I feel that together we will be far more effective than either of us could have been alone. She is also very excited that God has provided a way for her to dedicate all of her time towards serving and building up the church in Japan and reaching her people. One consequence of this arrangement is that we will now need to raise approximately double the support that I would have had to raise on my own. This means that currently we are at about 15% of the total needed for us to go to Japan. Even though there is more to be raised, I am more motivated than ever to complete the support raising process, as Tomo and I are both very anxious to return to Japan and take part in the work that God is doing there even now. We have set a new goal of being fully supported and heading to Japan by the end of next year, 2010. Tomo will be attending SEND’s candidate orientation program in December, and will officially be appointed at that time as a SEND missionary. It seems that God is also opening the door for us to be able to dedicate 20 hours a week towards support raising as part of a new ten month program SEND is using to get their missionaries up to full support. We hope to get about 50% of our support raised before then, and raise the second half while on that program.

That about cathces ou up to speed on where we’re at and where God is taking us. One thing we’ve decided we need to be doing more often is keeping all of you updated, so we’ll be updating this blog faithfully every Monday night. So check back to hear from either Tomo or I what God has been doing in our lives, and what progress we’ve made in getting to Japan!

This post could be a lot of things. It could be an apology for not posting a blog update for so long. It could be a scriptural study on the importance of prayer, or a meditation on how vital prayer is to missions. But I don’t feel like writing any of those things at the moment. Instead I just want to share what a blessing it is to have so many of you praying for me, and to share two short, small, but incredibly encouraging examples of how God answers prayer.

 I just sent out a prayer update last night. I try to send these out to my supporters and prayer partners on a monthly basis, but this one was long over due. I’d been feeling a little lost in regards to exactly what I was supposed to be doing when it came to support raising, and it was about then I figured I could use some prayer, and remembered I was two months late in sending out an update. This morning I found two emails in my inbox, mixed in with the spam, forwards and day to day work stuff. One was from one of my supporters who, without me asking, just out of the blue said he wanted to double his support for me. The second was from a person who isn’t even on my prayer list, and so didn’t get the email I sent out last night. She said her and her husband had been praying yesterday, and decided they wanted to send some financial support to me for when I do eventually move to Japan.

So often I try so hard to do the things I think I’m supposed to be doing. I know God wants me to go to Japan, so I try to talk to people, and I send out newsletters, and hold meetings, but in the end, it’s all God’s work. Sometimes He uses my efforts, and sometimes He simply answers prayer. Those two little examples are not isolated incidents, things like that happen every time I send out a prayer update. It’s an interesting observation that more seems to happen after sending a quick email asking fifty people to pray, than after I spend hours writing, folding, stuffing, stamping, addressing and mailing a newsletter out to 150 people asking them to consider giving.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the low percentage of Christians in Japan. The latest figure that I’m aware of is from a 2006 survey by the Gallup organization, which found that 6% of the Japanese population claimed to be Christian. However it is also generally agreed that less than 1% of Japanese people attend a Christian church on a regular basis, and so most Pastors and missionaries that I know still believe the long standing statistic of 0.2% is the most accurate. 

 The question I have is: why? Missionaries have been active in Japan since the end of World War II. That’s about 60 years. Despite that fact, it seems that the percentage of Christians in Japan has not increased in those 60 years, and this is not from lack of effort. I’ve been over to Japan on 5 short term trips, all of which had the goal of at least in part increasing the number of Christians in Japan. More importantly all of those trips were to assist ministries that were going on all the time in Japan, so while I spent a few weeks out of the year there, work was being done by these organizations year round.

 Virtually every person I have talked with about Japan has informed me that it is one of the most difficult mission fields there is, that it is a very slow process requiring years of work. Most missionaries involved in planting churches currently plant one or two churches over the course of perhaps a 30 year career in missions in Japan. So why is that? I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone knows besides God.
One obstacle to Christianity is Japanese culture. Here is a chain of islands that has been populated since the Stone age, and yet over the course of its long history has had virtually no exposure to God. Some believe that missionaries arrived in Japan in the second century AD, however the first confirmed Christian presence in Japan was not until the later half of the 16th century. It’s possible that during that time around 1.5% of the population converted to Catholicism, but this was short lived. A few decades later Christianity was outlawed, and almost totally expelled from Japan. It would not be practiced openly again till the end of the 19th century.

 I mention all this because I come from a culture with nearly 2000 years of some form of Christian influence. If you trace western civilization from Rome, we find Rome being heavily influenced by Christianity, and later passing that on to Europe, and from Europe to the New World, and here I am. My culture is largely compatible with Christianity because it’s been embracing it for nearly two thousand years. Not so with Japan. Becoming a Christian in Japan means braking from many cultural beliefs; certain national holidays can no longer be celebrated, attitudes towards family have to be changed, customs concerning death and life have to be abandoned and even some traditional communal dances must be abstained from. So many parts of a normal Japanese lifestyle must be modified or abandoned in order to honor Christ.

I don’t believe that Japanese Culture is wholly incompatible with Christianity. But I do believe that many parts of it are, and thus it is one major stumbling block to the spread of the Gospel. If this is the case, then Japanese culture needs to find a godly outlet of expression. New songs need to be written which praise God. New dances must be created. God does not want to force a Western Culture upon the whole world, He wants every culture to express itself in its own unique way, to the purpose of praising and honoring Him. I’m really excited to have a Japanese sister-in-law who desire’s to compose original Japanese worship songs. I think this is precisely the kind of thing that needs to happen. And I hope that this next generation of Japanese Christians will be able to creatively redeem their culture in a way that honors God and resonates with the Japanese heart. I don’t know if that will “fix” the problem, but I think it will help. Be praying for them.

First off I’d like to thank you all for your support and prayers as I’ve been in the process of raising support to go to Japan full time as a missionary. It has been a very rewarding challenge, and I anticipate that the challenges and the rewards will continue until I make it Japan for good, Lord willing in 2010.

As I’ve mentioned before God developed in me a heart for the Japanese over the course of numerous short term trips. Each of these trips has been very encouraging, not merely for me, but for the teams I’ve been, and I believe the Japanese we have been able to minister to and touch, both those in the church and outside the church. For the last four years God has opened the door for me to go to Japan with the Jesus Film Project for a Christmas distribution project. In 2004, I was able to introduce the director of Jesus Film’s Short Term department to the church I had worked with previously, and paving the way for an annual partnership each December ever since. Also by God’s grace I’ve been able to return with every single team and assist in any way God enables me to. Once again, the Jesus Film will be sending a team to Tokyo, and once again, if the Lord wills, I’ll return. I anticipate that this will be my last short term missions trip to Japan before moving there to be involved in full time missions.

The Christmas season affords Christians an open door to reach the Japanese with the message of the Gospel. It is a Christian holiday, adopted by a culturally secular, religiously pagan people; the majority of which have little to no idea what it is all about. It is also a lonely time for many young Japanese, because in Japan it is often celebrated as something of a romantic holiday, to be spent with a person’s girlfriend or boyfriend, and those without anyone feel the sting of loneliness even more than usual.  It is (perhaps only) in this situation where a string of smiling American faces, wearing funny Santa hats, and passing out free Christmas music becomes an effective ministry strategy. The sheer volume of CDs that we distribute each year is staggering. Last year we distributed over 15 thousand CDs, each one containing not only Christmas music, but also clips of the Jesus Film, testimonies of Christian celebrities, and an invitation to attend a Christmas service at church.

Each year we always hear stories of people who received the CD, and came to the church service, and heard about Jesus Christ for the first time. Last year our team had the joy of meeting a young man who had been faithfully attending church since receiving a CD the year before, and was excited about getting baptized shortly. And for the other thousands who received CDs, it was I believe part of a larger work by God to begin introducing Himself to millions who have never heard of Him before.

I am excited to go back and be involved in this project one last time, just as I am excited to go to Japan full time to reach these same people. Please be praying for the trip, and for God to provide the needed support to go. Also, the team is comprised of primarily men, and the team leader has expressed that he would like to get some more women to go, so if any of you lady’s out there is up for a trip to Japan this December,  check out the trip on the Jesus Film Mission Trips website!

If any of you would like to support me for just this one trip, you can do so through Paypal by clicking the button below! Thank you all so much!