Hello from Tokyo! Hope all is well with you and yours
Our calendar has been quite full, it feels like the Lord has done a lot this past month. A pastor friend invited us to be a part of their conference during the “Golden Week” holiday at the beginning of May, and it turned out to be a wonderful surprise and blessing for our family. Among the attendees was a Russian couple, pastors that were alumni from my Bible school. I had met them once before, way back in the early 90’s when I was still in high school and Russia was still the Soviet Union. They were a part of a group based in Houston, and we had a great time worshipping and connecting with the whole team and the church people in downtown Shibuya. Our kids loved it as well.
I also had a friend pass away unexpectedly and was asked to do the funeral. She was young and it hit the community she was a part of very hard. The Lord gave grace and help, and I shared many meaningful moments and conversations with old friends and co-workers. Over 600 people attended the ceremony and another 140 watched online. Your prayer for me was felt. Thank you.
As we continue to press into this “new thing” in Tokyo, we find ourselves fighting the tendency to fall back into doing what we know. Doing what we know isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s just not the right thing for now. We know the Lord is doing an internal work, like a “rewiring” in us. He is faithful to lead, bringing the right kind of encouragement along the way while helping us to walk on this new path. These days, our time is spent meeting people one on one, writing, and creating teaching videos. Kumi and I both have felt the need to be as focused and intentional as possible with our time, which has meant saying no to invitations into other ministry projects and events, and bringing a few other ministry activities we were leading to a close. We are staying open and light; there are a few specific things on the horizon we will share about in the near future once things are more setGod’s kingdom is about relationships. Real, authentic relationships. We enjoy making new connections and deepening old ones the Lord highlights. But what we are looking for is a connection of the heart. It’s less about connecting as ministers or ministries, and more about connecting as people. Last week, the editor of a Christian publication (of which there aren’t many!) here in Japan saw some of our content on our Youtube channel and reached out to us. He is hungry for more of God, and over coffee, we got to know each other and shared our own life stories. It was fun to explore together what God may have in store for us and for this nation.
God has made each one of us wonderfully unique, distinctly equipping us with different gifts, and there are specific people God wants to reach through each of us. This happens when we are authentically who God has called us to be. We don’t need to do everything, and we can’t be for everyone. But we do need to be fully present as ourselves in the life that God has given us, and when we are, God does something beautiful through our life in touching those around us.
That is our prayer for you as well, that the Holy Spirit will uncover more of the uniqueness and beauty of the story he is writing in your life.