Hi everyone!
Thank you for your continual prayers! We could smoothly sign a contract for our new office space this week! In the midst of the process over past a few weeks, we had some travels and ministry opportunities, as we shared in October prayer letter.
One of the highlight was last weekend. We attended a Christian conference that was held by CBI (Christ Bible Institute) in Nagoya, where we lived before. We were blessed and encouraged through several conference sessions, catching up with old friends and promoting Drawbridge Creations. More than 500 people attended the conference and we could get new connections who showed interest in our ministry. The conference also celebrated CBI’s 20th anniversary. I thank God that I could be involved in the 1/3 of their history as a student and a staff there. So we were very happy to celebrate this milestone with CBI folks!
Another highlight was ministry opportunities in Noto, where the big earthquake took place last year and Christian relief work continues. Robin preached at a church whose current pastoral missionaries were in States and we had a fellowship lunch time there including a non-Christian neighbour of the church. One couple at the church shared with us that the repair of their house finally started more than 15 months after the earthquake happened.
Still about 20,000 people live in temporally housing. There was some sad news that elderly people who lived alone in temporally housing and lost their community after the earthquake died lonely and were found after several days. With some members of our home church in Kanazawa, as a part of volunteer work of NOTO HELP, we visited a temporally housing town, Fugeshi, that has about 100 housing units. We could have some conversation with some residents there. The time and energy of our team is limited, but we hope to visit there monthly and to build relationships as a neighbours.
November will be busy for setting up our new space, and some ministry opportunities are scheduled. Here are some prayer points.
- We’re excited how God will lead us to start building a new good relationship around the office space.
- We have opportunity to attend an active listening seminar for disaster relief worker on Nov. 9th and we are scheduled to visit Fugeshi temporally housing again for NOTO HELP volunteer work on Nov. 22nd. We hope to learn well and serve at Fugeshi more effectively.
- We are scheduled to host a meeting with Immanuel Church leaders and WGM missionaries in Kanazawa on Nov.25th.
- Advent Sunday (11/30) we’re at Immanuel Fukui Church , where Robin is scheduled to preach and I will lead worship.
- We are waiting for a document from the immigration office for our new missionary. We hope to get it soon so we can make a plan for his moving.
Thank you so much for your partnership with us!
– Yoko (& Robin)
