Hi everyone!
Thank you so much for your prayers! This time it’s Yoko writing this prayer letter.
Since the big earthquake happened in the Noto area of Ishikawa, 2 months have passed. But about 12,000 people are still staying in about 500 evacuation shelters etc. People can’t use water at about 20,000 houses or buildings. For those situations, some Christian groups who have some special skills started working on digging wells in north side of Noto where they had the biggest damage. Please continue to pray for people who suffer from the damages by the earthquake and for the people who serve them.
We have been involved with a small part of the disaster relief work by God’s leading, but God has encouraged us through the small part. We could share the joy with our home church who cooperated through gathering and carrying supplies for people in Noto. And through our volunteer work at our local gym that welcomes people from Noto as 2nd evacuation shelter, we unexpectedly met a local pastor who lives in our neighbourhood.
As we shared last month, we hosted a potential missionary on a vision trip from February 17 to 27. It was a great chance for us to get to know him better and we were glad that he could understand better what it looks like living in Japan. He and Robin attended JEMA Connect (a missionary conference) on February 19 to network with the Japan missionary community and promote Drawbridge Creations. This ministry became a JEMA endorsed ministry last year, so Robin had a chance to present about this ministry during the conference. Yesterday one missionary we know who attended the conference told me, “Yoko, you should be proud of him! He made a great presentation!” I’m sorry that I couldn’t attend this conference with him, but that’s fun to hear from other attendance about the good response like this!
By the way, on the first of this month, we released a new online comic of Waypoints. This one is special for us as a married couple, because this is the first comic where I’m the scenario writer and the art is drawn by Robin. Please check out the comic!
March will be a busy month for us that includes some travels. Robin and I are scheduled to lead worship at Immanuel Komatsu Church on the 17th and he will give a sermon, too. After the Sunday service, we will travel to Yokohama to attend the Immanuel Church annual conference (March 19 to 21), host a guest there and have another meeting in that area. Also, we will travel to Nagoya for serving at an Easter Sunday service (Robin will preach) and leading an Easter English event at Immanuel Nagoya church.
Please pray for us to keep good health and seek God’s face especially during this Lent season. We appreciate your partnership with us for God’s mission in Japan!
God Bless Your Lent Season!
– Yoko (and Robin)
PS: Apologies if you received an extra email of February’s prayer letter; it was a technical error.
