News from AJ and Aven

A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22

Short Devotion
Dear friends. As we continue to live during a global pandemic many of us are dealing with lots of stress and negative emotions. Many of us are struggling with bones that are dry with despair and doubt. Solomon reminds us that the best medicine is a joyful heart. These past few weeks Aven and I had to relearn how to find joy in God and how to be content with our current situation. We read a book together called: “Don’t lose heart: Gospel hope for the discouraged soul” by Jason Meyer. An excellent book that I can highly recommend for those who feel discouraged. By reading this book we were reminded of how great God is and how wonderful the Gospel is. At one stage the writer took us to Isaiah 40. Where we can barely hold a spoon of water in our hand, God holds all the waters. Where we weigh some bananas on a scale, He weighs the mountains!

One night I was lying in a rotenburo (Japanese outdoor public bath) looking up into the night sky. There was no-one else around so I began to pray. I told God about all my fears, discouragements and how frustrated I was for not being able to do more ministry. Staring up into the stars I was reminded that God put those up there. I saw some mountains in the distance and remembered, God weighs those in a scale! But much more special is that this God knows me and loves me and that is not dependant on how much I accomplish. Even if I can hold 2 spoons, or a whole cup of water, what is that compared to THE WATERS. This year might be another difficult year for us but we need to look to our God who is great and greatly to be praised. His purposes will stand, He loves us, and that will never change. May we pray for each other to take courage in these days.

Although in person ministry is limited for the time being, we are thankful for opportunities that the Lord continues to give us. Here is a quick update on what we have been doing.

Christmas Outreach and Hand-bell Practice

Christmas and New Years
Thank you for praying for our Christmas outreach. There were many technical details but everything went well except for one or two minor hiccups. There were nearly 1000 people who watched the service including non-Christians who don’t attend a service. I was grateful for the opportunity to be involved with the music part and Aven and I both assisted with the technical stuff.
Our church had a new years’ service which was very well attended and our pastor preached on the urgency of sharing the Gospel with those around us. Usually, Japanese people will return to their home towns over new year but this year most people stayed home. New Years is also the time when people visit their local shrine to pray for a good year. Meiji shrine in Tokyo usually gets over 3 million visitors over new years but this year the number of visitors was about half of that. Even half of the normal New Year’s attendance at Meiji shrine alone is more than the total number of Christians in the country. Pray for breakthrough.

Getting ready for the last stretch
In the second half of January, Aven and I participated in a 2-week online workshop to help us prepare for our home assignment early next year. We were encouraged to see God’s hand at work over the last 3 years and prepared a number of stories that we are looking forward to share with you. Here's one story Aven did recently posted on my blog: https://calledeast.com/2021/02/05/its-like-ive-woken-up-written-by-aven/

We are also seeking ways that we can make the best use of our final year of training. Please pray for wisdom and guidance so that we may be involved with things that will help us in the long run.

Weekly ministry
We continue to be involved with different ministries in and through the church such as Bible studies, music ministry, preaching, youth ministry, as well as a few OMF organizational responsibilities. I started going through the book of Mark with a non-Christian and its going well so far. A lot of ministry however happens by just living life and being a witness where we can. Although we have capacity to do more, we also value having time to just be available when needs arise. At the moment using English teaching as a tool for evangelism is a small part of our ministry (Aven and I each do one 1on1 English Bible study) but from April it will most likely expand. We are planning to start 3 English classes for people at different levels. These are English lessons that uses Bible stories as a base. We also thinking that having more classes will help keep the numbers at each class low. Please pray that these plans can move forward.
We are also looking at having a big sports outreach event over Easter. Please pray for the planning and that we can go ahead whilst being sensitive to restrictions.

That’s it for now. Thank you for your prayers and kind support over the years. We praise God for you.

"Refuse to be average. Let your heart soar as high as it will". AW Tozer

Thanks for reading!!!