Hi everyone!
Hope you’re staying warm! Please check out our JapanLog fall-winter newsletter in which we talk about our time in Canada, our return to Japan, and what’s next in 2023:
Get the PDF HERE!
Thank you for your prayers and partnership!
– Robin & Yoko
Dear Partners,
Time flies! Quickly 2/3 of our time in Canada has passed. October was a busier month for us, so it was a little challenging health wise. But thankfully we have been blessed through reconnecting with partners and meeting new people. We have received a lot of encouragement.
One of the highlights of October was an arts-related workshop at Kingswood University.
Thank you for your prayers for this opportunity! We could have great experience! It was about visual story telling with comics and we did some fun collaborative art exercises too. It was a small group and a first opportunity for us, but everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. We have been wondering if this kind of workshop is possible as an in-person ministry of Drawbridge Creations in Japan. This experience helped us to see more possibility.
Here are some prayer points for November:
1. We are scheduled for four more appointments with churches this month. Please pray for God to bless these opportunities and that we will have a good finish of midterm partnership development.
2. We will go back to Japan on December 1st. Please pray for smooth and safe travel back to Japan.
3. We need God’s wisdom as we figure out how to effectively move forward with Drawbridge Creations. Please pray for God’s leading and provision for this ministry.
Thank you!
– Yoko (and Robin)
Year-End Giving
Please consider supporting Drawbridge Creations
by helping us reach our $10,000 US year-end goal.
Click HERE for giving info.
Canadian Adventures Continue…
We are already 1/3 of the way through our time in Canada. Since our previous prayer letter, we have made ministry visits to five churches and connected with several pastors and partners along the way. We’re grateful for safe travels, encouraging feedback, good conversations and new connections. We’ve also been able to spend time with family, which is also a blessing.
Thank you for your prayers!
Please continue to pray for our travels and ministry in Canada. In October, not only are we speaking at churches, but connecting with university students as well — Houghton tonight (online) and Kingswood (in person) on October 22. Prayers especially would be appreciated for the Kingswood visit, as we’ll not only be connecting with missions-minded students, but leading an arts-related workshop for the first time ever.
We’d also appreciate your prayers regarding financial partnerships. We are in a pretty good place, and thankful for all our partners, but do have some needs. If you’re interested in giving, please see below for details.
Ways to Partner Financially:
1. We need people who can give regularly to our missionary support fund. We are close but not quite at 100%. If you’re not already partnering and would like to, or if you’ve supported in the past and would like to recommit, please let us know.
2. Give to the Drawbridge Creations project fund — If you’d like to make a one-time year-end donation, this would be where we’d ask you to give. Click HERE for giving info.
Whether you pray or give or both, thank you for your partnership!
Thank you for your prayers during our transition to Canada!
We arrived safely in New Brunswick, late at night on August 23, after a long journey from Japan. International travel is a bit more complicated these days, but thankfully things went pretty smoothly for us, and we’re both in good health, which is ananswer to prayer. After getting here, we enjoyed a nice week off catching up on sleep and catching up with family — that’s us with the senior Whites above.
This past Sunday (Aug. 4) we kicked off our short partnership development tour with a visit to Faith Baptist Church in New Maryland, NB, where we shared an update on our ministry and life in Japan. We’re thankful for a warm welcome and a good start to reconnecting with our Canadian partner churches.
Here’s our Schedule for the Fall:
We’re looking forward to seeing many of you along the way!
For those of you in churches or areas we can’t get to this time: We are on a 2-year cycle now, meaning more frequent but shorter returns to North America. We kept things close to our home base this time, but hope to get to more and farther places next time.
Thank you for your continuing prayers and partnership!
Thank you for being praying partners! Here are three things you can be praying specifically for:
1. Since our last update, we’ve visited another nearby church to share about our ministry with Drawbridge Creations. It was an encouraging time! Please keep praying that we can expand our network in Japan so that the ministry tools we create will go to good use.
2. As we shared in our summer newsletter, we’re scheduled for 3 months of midterm Partnership Development in Canada starting in September. Please pray for our preparations, safe travel, health and ministry opportunities.
3. As we also shared in our summer newsletter, we’re looking to expand our team at Drawbridge Creations, especially praying for a web developer to join us either remotely or in person. Ultimately we want to see more missionaries here in Japan. Please pray with us for more workers.
In case you missed it…
– Our summer newsletter
– Blog about workers we need
– The latest Waypoints manga (in English)
Thank you as always for your partnership with us for Jesus and Japan!
As we approach the one-year mark since launching our ministry with our first project, Waypoints, we have a lot to thank God for — our financial and prayer partners, the freelance artists we get to collaborate with, the amount of content we’ve been able to create and share, and the encouragement we’ve received along the way.
But this is only the beginning.
In order to build Drawbridge Creations into a more effective and fruitful ministry, we need more workers with various skills. Of course, some roles can be filled by volunteers working remotely. But our hearts’ desire is that Drawbridge can be a platform mobilizing more missionaries to Japan — where some 99% don’t know Jesus!
As Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Matt. 9:37-38)
Please join us in praying for more workers!
We currently have three positions we’re trying to fill, but there is some overlap and flexibility here. Please also note that our sending organization Global Partners has opportunities for both short and long-term workers, as well as support-raising or self-supported paths. And as mentioned, remote volunteering is also welcome certain roles.
All Positions Require:
And here is a summary of those three job descriptions:
This is probably our biggest need right now, and it will be even more important as our ministry expands to multiple projects.
Summary of Job — Primarily, to help facilitate the ministry initiatives of Drawbridge Creations through website design, development and maintenance. Other tasks could include social media content creation and other communication.
Qualifications
This is also a hugely important role as we look to expand and interact with a larger audience in order to share Jesus with them, as well as promote our ministry to the Church in Japan and abroad.
Summary of Job — To help facilitate and promote the ministries of Drawbridge Creations through social media content creation, managing multiple social media accounts, and engaging in marketing and other communications.
Qualifications
This is probably the first thing people think of when the think about working on a manga ministry. We list it last no because it’s not important, but because the above needs are more urgent at the moment. However, as we expand Drawbridge’s ministries into more and varied projects, we will want not only freelance collaborators but on-site staff to help us up our creative game. Know anyone who fits the bill?
Summary of Job — Collaborating with other Christian creatives in writing, art and design, to produce manga, blog posts, and other artistic content for digital and print-based ministry, as well as for the marketing and promotion of Drawbridge Creations.
Qualifications:
And if you feel like you might be a good fit, please don’t hesitate to contact either Drawbridge or GP.
Hi everyone,
Hope your summer’s off to a great start! Here’s a link to our latest JapanLog newsletter, in PDF form. We’re only doing these twice a year now, so trying to make them count. Please read and pray with us about some big needs! Also something in there about going to Canada — What???
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1si_W_LRV_xQ0jSOOn0gh19lGDjFK3rxC/view?usp=sharing
Thank you for your partnership!
Hi everyone,
Thank you for your prayers this past month. Can you believe it’s June already? In Japan that means the rainy season is coming, though it hasn’t quite hit us yet.
As we mentioned in our previous prayer letter, in May we had a ministry opportunity at Immanuel Komatsu Church. We both gave testimonies and shared about the vision for Drawbridge Creations, and I (Robin) preached. It was great to get out and do some in-person “tag team” ministry after such a long time. We’re thankful for the opportunity, and for the church’s responsiveness and encouragement.
June Prayer Points:
1. We are hoping to have more opportunities like the one above. Please pray for open doors to share the Drawbridge vision in-person over the summer months. For this ministry to succeed, we feel it’s important to get buy-in from the Japanese Church.
2. Please continue praying for our work on Waypoints. Our tenth manga (previewed in the image above) hits the website this month, and the next six months of manga are in various stages of development. Please pray for us and our collaborators as we continue with this project.
3. Please pray with us about the next steps for Drawbridge Creations. We need God’s wisdom as we figure out how to go from an exclusively online ministry to one that also does print publishing. We also want to plan ahead for what comes next after Waypoints.
Thank you again for your partnership with us for Jesus and Japan!
Hi everyone,
Thank you for your continuing prayers! Yoko and I are just back from a few days’ vacation and celebrating our third wedding anniversary. The picture above is from the Takaoka Art Museum, where we got to see original art by Fujiko F. Fujio, the creator of Doraemon, a popular Japanese manga. We enjoyed our getaway to Toyama, and are grateful for the time off and for God’s blessing on our marriage.
Here are some prayer points for May:
1. This Friday, May 6, Waypoints season two begins at Waypoints.jp. A new story, “The Well,” will be posted in its entirety that day. Please pray that the manga we share over the next few months will help us connect with new readers and point people to Jesus.
2. On May 22 we are scheduled to speak at Immanuel Komatsu Church, having the opportunity to share about our ministry Drawbridge Creations. I (Robin) will also be preaching that morning. Please pray for God’s direction and blessing on our preparation and ministry.
3. Also at the Komatsu Church, a couple of members there are starting a new English outreach for kids. Please pray for this new ministry, which begins in May, and pray that we can be a blessing and encouragement through our involvement.
Thank you again for your prayers! We are grateful for your partnership!
Spring has sprung! In Japan, spring means the end of one school/business/church year, and the beginning of a new one. It’s a time of transition and change for many people. For us, while there are no huge transitions this year, here are some of the changes and challenges we’re praying about now…
Church Life: Multiple waves of Covid have made it difficult for churches in Japan to do ministry as usual, especially with limited space to begin with. So for us as missionaries, in-person ministries have been few and far between this past year and a half. But as things slowly become more open, we are praying about a potential ongoing ministry at our church in Komatsu. Please pray with us for direction about this and other ministry opportunities that may come our way in the coming months.
Drawbridge Creations: In March we finished our first season of serialized manga at Waypoints. We’re taking a break from posting new content in April, in order to work ahead on season two, which starts in May. If you want to catch up, there are eight full stories on the site now. We’re thankful for your prayers and support, and for the excellent artists we get to collaborate with. Please pray that we can reach a wider audience in the months to come, and point our readers to the hope we have in Jesus.
We recently had 10,000 of these cards printed as promotional items for Waypoints. We hope to take or send them to churches and ministries all around Japan so Christians can give them to friends they want to share their faith with. Let’s pray that these cards will all find a good home!
Thank you for partnering with us!