Dear Friends,

UPDATE: The students and faculty of Christ Bible Seminary had a wonderful retreat last week. Joe was able to lead a seminar on ‘Grace and Thanksgiving’ for all the students, and also spend more time getting to know them. Juliet has started part-time language school, and Isaiah’s yochien has started up again. Juliet has started meeting with a couple of the yochien mothers to begin an English book-reading/song time for Isaiah’s grade.

PRAYER/PRAISE:
1. Joe was able to meet with Dan Iverson (http://www.iversonjapan.com), the MTW country director for Japan. Dan and his wife have 9 children, and have been in Japan for 23 years. He gave us some good advice and said we should have only one goal for the first term: survival. This was wise advice, mainly because he was encouraging us not to bite off more than we could chew as foreign missionaries in a new land. We’ve been told several times, including by our MTW mentors, that we should take things slowly and learn as much as possible this term. Praise God for those who have gone before us to encourage those of us who are new here.

2. We recently had some new missionaries, the Wilson family, move to Nagoya from the Tokyo area. They have a son who is about the same age as Isaiah, and it was really great to be able to fellowship with them and see our children play together. For missionaries, having friends who speak our language and with whom we can share our lives with is so important. Please pray for the relationships among all those we serve with here in Nagoya, both for the CBI team and the Nagoya church planting team.

3. Please pray for Juliet and the yochien English book/song time that will begin in a month or so. This is a great opportunity to get to know the mothers and teachers better as well as spend more time with the children. Please pray for guidance in book and song selection.

4. This past weekend, Joe was able to attend a special day at Isaiah’s pre-school called Smile Day. All the fathers of the children go to experience what a typical day is like at their children’s school. It was really great to see so many fathers there, though there were several mothers who came in place of the fathers. Joe was able to meet the father of one of Isaiah’s new classmates. The father worked for Toyota in the USA for the last few years. Please pray that we can start building a relationship with this family for the gospel.

5. Please pray for Juliet’s language studies. She is going to Japanese language school twice a week. Please pray that her time will be maximized in studying Japanese. It is said that typically one needs 10,000 hours to attain native-level fluency in a foreign language. That’s 8 hours a day every day for nearly 4 years!

LINK OF THE WEEK:
Here are two testimonies by Japanese Christian women, sharing their hopes for the future and also for Japan. Although Japanese Christians are only a tiny, tiny fraction of the population (0.21% or so) their prayer is that God would start with those in the church to transform those outside:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiLKq9cQQMs

Praying with you for Jesus to be made famous here in Japan and throughout the world,

Joe, Juliet, Isaiah, and Evan