Christmas Vacation and January Baseball Clinic Jan 2013

Dear Friends and Family,

We very much appreciate your prayers.  The world seems in many ways to be getting more chaotic, but we still serve a loving caring God that only wants what is best for us.

We were blessed to be in the states for our oldest sons graduation from the University of GA and to spend time with family and friends. Being in church together with family and all of our children and worshiping and praising God in English is a wonderful blessing.

The men that come to Peru to give the baseball clinic were in Lima again this year.  We had over 300 participants.  Testimonies and the gospel are shared at the end of each session.  We had over 100 Nikkei that participated in the clinic.

As people were asked if they had made a decision to follow Christ we had 67 hands raised over the course of the five days we were meeting with the Baseball teams.  Please pray for these 67 young men and women.  This year we had several girls participate.

Please pray for all of our friends as we reconnect and restart many of our English classes and Bible studies.

Please pray for a new church plant in San Isidro and for Matt, a journeyman that just joined us in Lima to also work with the Nikkei.

Also pray for missionaries and pastors we know that have some health problems.  (jp and jl)

God's Blessings and Peace,
the Mitchell's

Please enjoy various pictures!!!

December 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

Please pray for:

M&C who have both made decisions over the past two years and now desire to get get married.
J who desires to reach his family.
J & E as they share with their family and friends. (they are faithful members of one of our CBS groups)
A new church that we will try and start next year in San Isidro.
the H family the M family
D and M who have difficult decisions to make.
K &; K as they study the Bible for the first time

for Lima and all the people that live in this city of over 9 million people

Please see Pictures of the Matsuri Festival, Christmas Events, Skyline of Lima, Bonsai Trees, dinner with Japanese friends, etc

Also, thanks for your support of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, this offering provides the majority of the support system for the International Mission Board, SBC  missionaries.   THANK YOU...

Merry Christmas:  God's Blessings and Peace,

Tim and Joy

New Contacts:: Focus:: Sharing

We have met many new people.  We continue to share and try and help with many people that are now our friends or  acquaintances. 
Please pray for us as we share that we would be clear and complete with the message of the greatness of God's love. 

Please pray for those that do not know God that they would have receptive hearts.

Please enjoy some new pictures.

Recent events.  We moved a short distance to a new home.

We have started some new cell groups and focused more on teaching some topical seminars to help people in the areas of communication, family, marriage, relationships and business.

thanks for your prayers.

Graduation June 2012

Since our last post:  The young lady living with us had graduated from high school and moved back to Japan.  We had several good conversations with her about God and his love, but she has not made a decision to be a disciple.  Please pray for K and her family.  Her parents were here for the graduation.

Also, Jacob graduated from ICSL and is now back in the states preparing to start college and adapting to the heat.  We have just entered winter here in Lima, Peru.

Tim has also had the chance to return to Buenos Aires and have some key meetings with three Nikkei leaders there about ministry possibilities.  We had two days of meetings.  The words that best describe them were by Jerry Haas and he said "The meeting was full of good content".  We had two key topics to discuss the BTCP training materials and the options of how we could share the Gospel with the NIkkei in Buenos Aires.  We are looking at trying to create short term mission trips to reach the elderly Japanese speakers in Buenos Aires.  Obviously in this visits there would be people in the homes that speak Spanish as their heart language, but many of the immigrants in the 1950's went right to work and never learned to speak Spanish well.  Thus these teams would consists of persons that felt called to come and share the Gospel to people in Buenos Aires with some special events such as Asian events that would draw people from all over Asia including Japanese descendents.  The team could also consists of people that speak Japanese and would be willing to go door to door to Nikkei homes and share the Gospel with friends and family members of the three churches of Nikkei in BA, Argentina.

Please pray for these people.  Pray for the people that speak Japanese as a first language and the people that  speak Spanish as a first language.  Buenos Aires is a large metropolitan city of almost 15 million people.  It has a very European worldview.  There are over 30,000 Japanese descendents in Argentina and we are aware of about 300 believers.

Please pray for these people.

In Lima as usual we have our ESL ministries:  Also, we have added two key contacts that God has brought into our lives.  One of these students is in an intensive language program this summer so she can attend the ICSL school.  She is trying to increase her English level by several grade levels.  Please pray for K as we are involved in this effort.  We met K and her mother the day after our other K left Peru.  As we were missing our first K and were sad to see her leave God brought us another young person to minister to.

Please pray for Jacob in his transition to the U.S. and home.

Please pray for Luke as he is now the only one of his four brothers in Lima.  Please pray for our family as we adjust to the changes and challenges of life...

God's Blessings and Peace.  Tim

Buenos Aires, Argentina

April 8- 17th I was in Argentina to research the Nikkei population and the churches in Buesnos Aires. There are 30,000 Nikkei living in Buenos Aires a city of 13 million people. The Nikkei in Buenos Aires are a mixture of Buddhist, Catholic, Athiest, and Evangelical Christians. In the 1930's a Japanese christian business man and his family ministered to the early migrants and was able to start a church. When he returned to Japan a Japanese pastor was sent to pastor the church. One interesting thing is that because this church was started early in the migration process and by a Japanese person almost all the Nikkei I met were aware of the existence of the church. There are four churches and two pastors in the Nikkei community. One of the pastors is currently pastoring two congregations and their is one small church that currently does not have a pastor. The majority of Nikkei that accepted Christ in Buenos Aires did so at a moment of crisis in their life. They had had a friend or family member share the Gospel but it wasn't until they had a serious crisis did they make their decision. Both pastors are very interested in outreach to the Nikkei community in Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. They have different services based on language. The original immigrants still worship in Japanese and the third generation is worshiping in Spanish. Please pray that there will be a movement of Nikkei people working together to evangelize other Nikkei. I am optimistic that this will take place in the not to distant future.