How have you been doing in this weather? We are not aware of your winter and early spring challenges or opportunities. For us, weather-wise this winter was bookended with two big snows and not much in between with the serious exception of a week of arctic cold that closed the schools. Last week we started the week with a blizzard and ended with 80 degree days. We have been warm, working on projects, and connecting with people via the Internet. Praise God we had lots of visitors for a season the last month. Some dear old friends from Iowa dropped in, another Japanese pastor and daughter dropped by. Another friend was going to come but got Covid (recovered now) and was unable to visit. We also spent 3 days with the grandkids as the parents were off east and west to various educational and construction conferences.
FOCUS ON SOUTH ASIA
We continue to develop a two-year training system that will start shortly for South Asian missionaries reaching unreached people. It makes Elaine and I both wish we could have been through this training years ago. John and teammate, Dr. Phu Pham, are working with their church network’s four working teams on 1) missionary assessment, 2) practical training, 3) mobilizing for mission, and 4) developing strategy. We are all planning to meet in June for a Leaders Summit.
Just last week, the son of our key leader of our South Asia mission project went into the hospital in LA where he lives with nearly life-threatening heart, kidney, and liver issues. He is improving but the family does not have health insurance, making it difficult. Our partner and his wife (his parents) just arrived from South Asia to help out in LA for at least 3 months. Pray for healing and comfort for that family. Ask God to bless all our planning and this key leader will still be involved through our June meeting.
FOCUS ON JAPAN
Right now, despite the time and distance connections with Japan seem to never end. We have a church planting team in Japan receiving coaching, a Japanese visitor hearing about Christ by some friends in another town, one American considering ministry in Japan, and several Bible studies and mentoring situations with Japanese church planters and leaders. Pray that God gives us wisdom in connecting with people related to Japan at many diverse levels. John will be in Japan in June for a few days to personally contact some of these key leaders.
Praise God for the continued progress in the Sonship renewal course in Japanese. Some delays in translation work have slowed it down a bit but we continue to move ahead. The next lesson is Lesson 12 of 16. John will meet with the couple in June after we probably finish. After we get the material into Japanese and this couple mentored, the dream is to get many more Japanese mentored so they can multiply the deeper character and gospel learning in more key leaders. Elaine and I are both amazed that we can conduct this training in Japanese after living in the US for over 6 years.