First off, it was great seeing so many of you at our home church last Sunday as we shared about the needs of the people of Tohoku who were devestated by the Tsunami last year. We’re excited that God is calling us to be part of the next wave of Christians going to the region to share the love of Christ with those who so desperately need it. As Christian relief and aide work draws to a completion, we long to go and build upon the relationships and trust that has been established by our faithful brothers and sisters, in working alongside Japanese beleivers to establish new churches. You have all been instrumental in helping us get to this point. Through your prayers and generosity, almost 1/3 of our monthly support has been promised. Please continue to partner with us in prayer, in giving, and in whatever way God leads, to help take the gospel to Japan.
If you were unable to make it, most of the videos that were shown at the event have been posted to our new Facebook page: Keep Loving Japan. Please go watch them, and like the page so that you can get more videos and news as it becomes available.
Begining next week I’ll be taking off 4 days a week from my job for a three week period in order to dedicate time to support raising. We’re excited about this. It is an answer to one of the first prayer requests that we sent out to you all at the begning of this year, as we were asking God to provide a way for me to spend more time in support raising. Since we started I have never been able to dedicate this much time to the task, so we’re excited to see how God will use it. My Goal is to dedicate 40 hours a week to support raising during each of these three weeks.
Our hope is to be able to meet with:
- Individuals who are willing to hear about our ministry and to consider becoming monthly partners
- Small groups, Bible Studies, Sunday School classes, and desert parties where we can meet new people to share our vision with
- Church missions directors or comittees to build partnerships with local churches
- Current supporters to update them on our progress and direction, and to see if they can introduce us to any of your friends who might be interested in hearing about our ministry.
Please be praying that we will be able to fill my scedule with appointments during this time, that God will expand our network of people we can meet with, and that through all this He will equip and supply us with the financial partnership necessary for us to move to Japan. Pray that we will make substantial progress towards our goal of reaching 50% support by the end of May.
I will be trying to get in touch with some of you who are in the area this week, particularly those of you that we don’t get to see very often. We’d love to be able to share some of the exciting things God has been doing in Japan and how our ministry direction is begining to take shape. We also are in desperate need of meeting new people. If you are part of a Bible Study or Small Group, or Sunday school group that I could come share at for 5 – 10 minutes, that would be a tremendous help. If you know someone who might be interested in hearing what God’s calling us to do, it would be an amazing help and blessing if you could find some way to introduce us.
Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement. God is begining to work in some more visible ways. I can’t wait to see what He has in store next, and I’m over joyed that you are all sharing in thos journey with us.
Prayer Requests
- Pray that this week I’ll be able to get a hold of people and make many, many appointments for next week.
- That during the next three weeks God would lead many new people to partner with us in prayer and monthly financial giving
- Pray that we’ll be able to finalize our plans for our trip to Texas in late April, so that we can purchase plane tickets
- Pray for the pastors and missionaries in Tohoku who are trying to bring hope to people who are still desperately hurting
Praises
- The service at our church for the 1 year anniversary of the Tsunami went well. We had a wonderful time meeting with many of our supporters and friends, as well as sharing with a few new people.
- That God has provided the finances for me to be able to take off three weeks from work (largely unpaid) in order to do support raising.
- We’ve got three new supporters coming on board since the last update! Praise God! We’re now up to 30% of our monthly.
- We have raised 80% of our one time outgoing costs! This means that we’ve almost got enough raised to cover language school, and moving expenses. Basically, as soon as the monthly budget is promised, we’ll be all set to move over to Japan!