Oct 2014 Visit to Nikkei living in Japan

Joy and I spent two weeks in Japan in September.  We met many people and learned a lot about the ministry opportunities among the Nikkei people living in Japan.

Some of the highlights of opportunities...

The Nikkei are more open in Japan because they are outside their typical friendship and family connections.  They work M-F 8 to 8.. or M-S 8 to 8.

Because of the long work day the family does not have much time together.

The kids are in school in Japanese while the parents speak Spanish or Portuguese.

Thus there are many needs within the family structure.  The people are more open.

Please see the pictures of Japan and pray about these families and their needs and the possible opportunities to reach them.

August 2014: New Connections and Old Friends

We met two key people this month.  Francis and Yoshihisa

§Francis is a Nikkei Methodist Pastor working in San Miguel

§  He has no Nikkei in his church and is open to working to reach Nikkei people

§He works with young people and college age and young working adults

§Yoshihisa is from Japan and works in a very poor area of Lima, with no Nikkei in his church

§  He too is very interested in working with Japanese and Nikkei 

§  Tim and Joy are studying Japanese…!!!...(Please pray)

§  A few of our students have made great progress in their understanding of God and the plan of salvation.  (One lady believes she made a decision of faith in her early adult life and is at peace and relieved with her decision.  Another is close to making a decision… (please pray for R and MT) 

§  Also M and J, two business men are basically in the same place as we mentioned above.  (Please pray for them as well.)

Praises:  God brought these two families into our lives and we are trusting to see how we can work together to build ministry teams to work with the Nikkei….                       

The verse we posted last month we are going to post again.  God brought us into contact with these two families and He also reconnected us with people we have not seen for a while. 

We had two Nikkei prayer gatherings this month.  And Tim was able to spend some time with one of our Nikkei Christian friends and hear about what God was doing in their church.  There was a great amount of insight gained from this meeting and cooperation.

Please pray for all of the English students we are tutoring: students and adults.  There are a few that have accepted Christ so we are about the task of discipling them. And there are several we are still sharing the Gospel with.

The baseball clinic has been tentatively schedule for the first week of January.
Please pray for Caleb and his wife Mara as Caleb is still in Basic Training in the US Army.

Isaiah 40:31

but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Please pray for the family of Pastor Shuto and his wife.  They died in a car accident this weekend in Brazil.  They were on their way to a pastors conference.

Tim and Joy will be doing some research and ministry in Japan for the remaining weeks of September.

June and July 2014.... Bullets...Comings and Goings.. Praises and Prayer Needs...

June and July  2014...Coming and Going....

Jerry and Andrew came and did a series of Business Seminars...

Bullets

• People were invited to events and great conversations took place in giving the invitations
• Lots of Good Advice and Teaching for Business
• Many great events.
• Time with students at ICSL and Hideyo Naguchi
• Time with Japanese Students
• Two Japanese students accepted Christ
• Many people heard a gospel witness
• A key discipleship conversation took place with a newer believer.  (It was very important.)
• Many additional conversations have followed and hopefully will follow...
• Many bridges were strengthened or hopefully built....

Family

Gray came to visit...

Luke graduated from high school.

Luke has left Peru and returned to the U.S.

Tim and Joy are empty nesters.... Y arrives Friday and K returns next week.

They are both seniors.. K has been living with us for more than a year. Y's parents were just transferred.   Y & K are both Seniors.  (pray for openness)

Isaiah 40:31

but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Please note: 

Praise

We received three unsolicited gifts this past month to our ministry...  Our travel has been limited because of the lack of funds.  These gifts will enable us to travel without having to worry about where the money is coming from.   Thank you.

Prayer

Also, FYI..  I received some financial information last week that needs to be shared:  The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering has been strong over the past few years but the money given through the Cooperative Program has been declining over the past several years.  This decline has been being managed by the IMB selling assets (ie property).  There are not enough properties left to sell to continue to make up for this short fall.  

Pictures:  Friends, Family, and Ministry

Bolivia: Riberalta June 2014

Tim just returned from Trinidad and Riberalta.

In Bolivia there are 20,000 Japanese descendants.  The largest group of these are 7,000 in Riberalta.  The next largest is 1,300 in Trinidad..  Most cities such as Okinawa, San Juan and Santa Cruz have about 850.  Thus Riberalta has the highest concentration of descendants in a fairly small town of about 140,000 people.

It turns out that this is also a very evangelical city.  Almost 30 - 40% of the people in Riberalta claim to be Evangelical....  I met 3 Japanese descendants that were one of the 60 or so pastors in this town...But with all of these pastors they or none of the other pastors we met had any Japanese descendants in their congregations.     This is interesting because the descendants are much more intermarried than in other locations.  They also do not speak the language and do not seem to have much of the cultural heritage of Japan.  So the interesting question is why then are the Nikkei not in the churches.

The pastors were open to discuss this.  They also seem to work well between denominations and they are very open to having training in evangelism, discipleship and parenting.  We also discussed trying to do training events that would be an outreach to their community with seminars on parenting, managing drug and alcohol abuse problems within the family, prostitution and young adult delinquency.  

There is a great need, but there are pastors that are open to focusing on the people group of Japanese descendants.  We met with the President of the cultural center and they are open to participating in these community events as well as a cultural teaching on the Code of Values that is very prominent in the Lima Nikkei Community.

We have several Japanese (English) students ending the school year and several have completed their English level to enter school this coming August.  (These are Japanese children that are in Peru with their parents work and they only have an option of going to school in English.)

We have a series of Business Seminar coming up in June.

Please pray for all of the people that God is bringing our way.
Pray that they would see and understand God's mercy and love.
Pray for the opportunity to share in Bolivia.
Pray that the Christian Nikkei in Peru would have a burden for their people.

A key praise.  God used a lot of people to help me in the research trip to Bolivia.  There was a church that opened its doors to me in Trinidad and was very helpful.  There were misisonaries in Santa Cruz that gave me some invaluable advice and help.  My moto taxi driver when I arrived in Bolivia was a believer and he drove me around the next day to find the churches.  In all of the 10 churches I found on Saturday, the Nikkei pastor, Jhonny Tokudome,  was home with his family.   God led me to meet many key people in this community....  Please see many of their pictures in this letter..

I also met Pastor Absalon Rojas Kado on Saturday...  I had several key meetings with Pastor Absalon and Jhonny on Monday and Tuesday...  They were very open and interested in trying to reach the Nikkei....

Thanks for your prayers.  God worked in many key ways to make this trip very beneficial and to reveal Himself in a mighty way.

Some of the Key Contacts:

Key pastors:

++Jorge Llanos, Union Christian Evangelical Church

***Absalon Rojas Kado,  Friends of God Evangelical Church  (Nikkei)

++Demetrio Chipunavi , Assemby of God, Betania Church

Ministry of Oasis Church

Assembly of God, Hecker (Pastors son Uziel Juari Alvarez)

***Johnny Tokudome, Hebron Church (Nikkei)

Maranatha Evangelical Church

Assembly of God, Mount Zion  (Miguel Angel Gomez, Pastor)

Juan Pedro Fuglister, Evangelical Swiss Mission

Tuesday:   Pastor Angel Higa, Iglesia Emanuel  (Nikkei)

President of Cultural Center:  Dr Walter Mendez Tateishi    (Nikkei)

Please continue to Pray....  God is at work...  

Thank you for your prayers....  Tim and Joy