Please click here to get a comprehensive video update about what is going on. -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZaJ6qZiSYs
In this issue:
- Jazz concert
- People came to Coffee Time
- Rosie meeting with ladies to study the Bible
- Recon tour in November
- Kids Club help
Please pray for:
- Kid’s club outreach
- Our personal connections to bear fruit
- God to lead us to the right place to use downtown for ministry use
Yours for Japan,
James Miyashita
Please click here for a printable version of our prayer letter.
Transcript from the video:
Hi! So we’re the Miyashita’s, and I’m James, this is Rosie, and we are in Japan. You probably already knew that, though. But we know that sometimes some of our supporting churches, you might have somebody that’s new to the church, and they might not know who we are. So we’re here in Japan, we’re church planters, and we wanted to give you an update on what’s been going on in Japan. And thank you so much, by the way, for bearing with us. We have received some feedback about. We’re trying to move to a video first way of communicating because, you know, there’s a lot that goes on that we can’t typically communicate in just a written one-page letter. And so if you’re seeing this, if you’re watching this, if you could let us know that you actually saw it, drop us a comment or something. That would be great! But yeah, I’d like to share a little bit about what’s been going on.
So, first off, we are doing a “Christmas Jazz Concert” in December. We’re pretty excited about that once. Once we hit November in Japan, the country goes into just full on Christmas mode until December 25. And then the day Christmas hits, everything basically disappears and we go into New Year’s mode. So we’ve got this Christian saxophone player, a professional, coming to do a concert for us, and we’ve already seen some registrations, and that’s not us, like, registering ourselves. Like, that’s like people that we don’t know who are registering for this concert, and so we’re pretty excited about it. To use this as a way to connect with more people and share the Gospel with them and just kind of start those conversations. He’s going to be sharing his testimony doing this. And it’s not at our church. We’re actually renting out a concert hall that’s run by the city to do it. So it’s the acoustics are going to be really nice, but, that is something that we’re pretty excited about.
You want to tell them about your Bible studies? (Rosie Speaking) Sure. So, I’ve had the opportunity over the last few years here in Nagoya to meet with some different ladies one-on-one, studying the Bible. But kind of a neat development over this last month is two of the ladies I’ve been meeting with. One of them is a Christian, one of them is not yet a Christian, but she has been attending for about a year now and just asking a lot of questions. I think she’s really trying to consider if she can believe this or not. But, they said, hey, let’s all meet up. So we all met up the other day, all three of us to sit down and study the Bible together. And that was just really cool to see that. Like coming from just like one-on-one to actually a little bit of group and community coming together. And hopefully we’ll be able to continue to witness to this particular lady and see her get saved soon. Yeah, she’s been with us for most of the Gospel of John, and still there’s a lot of just fundamentals that she’s still trying to process wrap her mind around.
So last time I told you about we us doing a monthly coffee time. So the one we did at the top of October, we actually had two people come, and one of them has actually come to church several times since then as well. So that was pretty exciting to see that. It’s like, People actually came. So that was really cool to see.
Next month we in November, we have a group of three people coming to visit us for our fall Recon tour. It’s our third run this year. We’ve already had several people apply for next spring and summer, and so those are starting to fill up as we’re trying to, you know, help people understand the need here and get them in the way to help reach Japan with the Gospel. And join our church-planting efforts here. So we’re pretty excited about that.
We’re doing a monthly kid’s club. You know, we’re doing our monthly coffee, and then we’re like a monthly kid’s club. The kids, it’s like trying to take off. It’s trying to really. Anyway, but one thing that’s come out of it is there’s a lady who found us on Instagram and said she wanted to help. And so she’s actually by trade, she helps as with like event daycare. So if there’s an event, they have a daycare company that takes care of the kids while these people are at their events and stuff like that. And so she has a lot of ideas and is really, well, creative. Yeah, creative with, helping, you know, entertain kids and crafts and things like that. So she started helping us with our children’s craft. She’s not Christian. She’s not a professing Christian at all. She’s like, I’m not sure, but maybe this is a way for me to kind of begin understanding some of this. So that was pretty neat to see the last craft we did this past Sunday, right? Her idea? Yeah, she completely came up with an idea for us that went along with the Bible verse and the lesson we were teaching. And it was really cool and the kids loved it, having a real time. So it was like, hey, here’s the lesson that we’re going to be doing. Here’s kind of the theme that we want to do and usually our crafts and end up being some kind of like coloring sheet or like sticker sticking, cut, paste, the end. So it was a lot more elaborate. It’s like a jar and it. Yeah, it was very nice. So, that’s been pretty neat to see as well.
So we definitely need your prayers as we are going into Christmas season. I’m sure many of you are feeling that, as you know, in the States, you’re going to be having Thanksgiving. We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving like the US does, but as we go into this next season, finishing out the year. So I definitely would appreciate your prayers. Pray for us as we are continuing to try to reach out into the community and be praying for us as we’re trying to figure out how to start something downtown. I think that in their previous video, I mentioned that we’re looking for a location or just be praying with us about a location. This is we’re looking at somewhere in the next two years actually having a our own place. But right now, we’re looking at maybe sometime next year starting something maybe at least once a month downtown and then kind of gradually doing stuff down there more. So if you could be praying with us about that. Because there’s several people who have come to our church, but just the location that we’re in, it’s a forty minute bus ride from the main hub. And it’s just kind of out of the way. And so, we want to capitalize on all the opportunities to share the gospel and get in people’s lives. So we would definitely appreciate your prayers for that. So thanks so much and appreciate you. Bye. Thanks.