Suddenly the year has come to an end and it is time to think about what has been learned. Ever year brings forth new blessings, challenges, and experiences. This year was no different. Here is the verse of the year:
“The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.” – Psalm 145:9 KJV
I remember with excitement as we headed into the new year with meetings with the family who had come out to help us with a church plant as well as a new believer freshly led to the Lord. There were also many hopeful prospects to share the gospel with in our neighborhood as we were settling in. However as we continued on into the year to try to build a core group for a future church, it slowly dissolved back to being just our own family. The process of disciple making is work as well as spiritual battle. To work closely together and find cohesion as a new group was difficult. So, the family that came with us decided to go back with the original church, until further notice. Eventually they quit going to church consistently. Please pray for them. The new believer did not want to take steps to grow in his faith at this time, so I had to step back and pray. Hopefully in the future he will desire to grow in his faith. Sometimes these things can take years. So, we had to start over and re-evaluate our situation. We essentially had to start over from zero once more.
What seemed like a good start, turned out to be a humbling situation. Even more so when I got a kidney stone and had to go to the hospital by ambulance! Good thing that it is God who plants churches and not me!
We decided to keep meeting as a family each Sunday morning out of our house. We have grown closer as a family together. The children have also grown a lot with their homeschooling and Bible memory. It was shortly thereafter that we met two Japanese families in the neighborhood that were interested in learning English using the Bible, so we started to meet with them gradually. We still meet with them to this day. Around this time I decided to start trying to find students to teach English with using the Bible. Eventually I was able to find five students to teach the Bible using English. Later one eventually left, but the other four remained consistently over the course of the year. Gradually over time they have learned about God, memorized many Bible verses, and heard the gospel. At the time of this writing they continue to study with me. Most Japanese are very skeptical concerning Christianity, so it takes a lot of time for them to open up to spiritual things in this way. It takes a lot of patient work as well as prayer here to see fruit. Ministry is quite a battle here. On a more positive note, a lady that we had led to the Lord the year before has been going to our previous church and growing, so we are thankful to God for that!
During this last year I have spent a lot of time studying Japanese to try to improve my speaking and listening skills. I still have a long way to go, but am continuing to try my best, and Lord willing will be fluent some day. God has showed me that it is not about my ability or plans, but His plans rather that His work is accomplished. We had to be patient during this time until God opened a new door. I was able to get a driver's license for the first time this year, which changed our life greatly. Up until this year we had used bikes, walking, buses, and trains to get around. Having a car was a great life changer. During this time we continued to plant gospel seeds with 56,000 tracts going out around Tokyo with some of those in many different languages. Thank God for different gospel tract distributors that send us gospel tracts to put out each week. We again attended three different annual international festivals to put out gospel tracts (Vietnamese, Laos, and Thai) which is always a blessing. People for many countries are starting to move to Japan, so there are increasing opportunities for the gospel.
Perhaps the most unbelievable thing this year was soul-winning over the internet. After years in Japan of scarce opportunities for soul-winning I started to pray and seek out ways to reach people. Using email, Facebook, Twitter (now x), Chatroulette, OmeTV, and Omegle (no more as of November 23') I decided to take some time every day to actually share the gospel with people all around the world as part of my routine starting in April of 2022. In 2023 alone there was a total of 194 Salvation Confessions, 145 Salvation Affirmations, 81 very close, and over 500 rejections. It was an incredible year for soul winning, which I don't think will be topped since Omegle shut down. There were many many spiritual battles, but overall I was just amazed at how God transformed so many lives. The gospel truly is the power of salvation. I recorded some of the memorable conversations on YouTube here. If you have never shared the gospel before, I want to encourage you to take a look, pray about it, and try it yourself sometime. What do you have to lose?
Another amazing opportunity happened when my long-term missionary friend introduced me to a native pastor in India who was going all over rural villages in his area preaching the gospel almost every day. After a period of healthy skepticism, testing, and prayer I decided to start helping him by giving him learning resources, connecting him with a mentor, and helping him preach once a week over the internet. Our time zones are 3.5 hours apart so it made it possible to help him each week. I pray that many can be reached through this man's ministry in a very difficult area. He and many like him are doing incredible work in hard to reach areas of India.
At the very end of the year after having a slow go for church planting here we started praying about renting an area for use for ministry purposes. We had been finding it difficult to meet with people in the home and thought it would be better to just take the risk and rent out a place to use for teaching Bible and English. So, after much prayer and negotiation we decided to rent a first floor of a small building nearby. We will have to put a lot of work into it to get it operable, but it will be a start to a new direction. We feel peace from God about this and are excited to see what the future holds. We have had some ups and downs but believe that God is good and his tender mercies are over all his works. We are looking forward to 2024.
