2014 May PL
Transcription
2014 May PL
The Ofunato Update Japanese Evangelical Missionary Society Chikako and Fred Whitwer News • Welcome to the new Ofunato Update • Chikako and Fred have been accepted as missionaries with JEMS. This is an exciting new direction for us. • We visited our children in San Jose California in March. Our older one is now engaged to be married and we wish blessings on their marriage. • Chikako’s travelers document paperwork went smoothly. • The photo at the right was taken before winter came to Iwate. The location is Lake Tazawa on the border between Iwate and Akita. May 2014 Day trip to Lake Tazawa. Wonderful! Prayer Requests Praises • The extension of the base house lease • Helga Theis (German missionary) and Tsunoda-san (Japanese until May of 2015. The owner seems violinist) served in April. willing to extend. • A prayer team from Newsong church in Irvine CA blessed the • Continued attendance of the Daigo, base through prayer and encouraged temp housing residents. Ayaka and Sachi at Kids Club. These • Short term missionaries (STM’s) Samantha and Charmaine from are new kids that are just starting to Singapore will stay from mid-May to mid-June. hear the Bible stories. • In April a 7 passenger van was donated to the church network • Shida-san has been given a bi-lingual for use in Ofunato. Bible. She is an English student Fred’s. • Stephen, a missionary from So Cal is a licensed Taichi instructor. Pray that the words of Scripture speak Prior to his Christian conversion he used martial arts to to her heart. intimidate people. Now he is using his ability to teach temp • Emi-san has become a believer. Her housing residents how to stay healthy. He and his wife and kids life almost ended in the tsunami. moved to Ofunato last year. Please pray that her boyfriend would • The Japanese Wives Bible Study (JWBS) located at the American no longer interfere with her new faith. naval base in Yokusuka continues to send items for distribution. At Easter time they sent chocolates and other goodies that were enjoyed by the residents. Close Up Morita-san (pictured at left with son Go-kun) survived the tsunami. He used to go abroad on a fishing boat. He was a cook on this large boat. Over the years while at sea he almost lost his life three different times. His boat was off Indonesia in 2004 when the Banda Aceh tsunami occurred. He survived. So when the 1960 tsunami here in Ofunato is included he has survived 3 tsunamis. He is retired now and raising 4 children. He has a keen sense of life and death and is now reading the New Testament. Every time when we pray for him the Holy Spirit moves to touch him. Please pray that he will understand Biblical truth more and more. Page 2 Tsunami Zone Information • Public housing is starting to be built. There are not enough apartments for all survivors so selection is done by lottery. Needless to say, the ones not selected wonder when if ever they will move out of temp housing. • At Yamagishi temp housing area one-third of the units are empty. By year’s end everyone will either move to public housing or (for those who can afford it) their own newly built homes. Compared to pre-tsunami prices the cost of land has doubled. Donation Information Make checks payable to JEMS 948 East 2nd Street, Los Angeles CA 90012 (leave memo line blank) Patchwork class at OBBC Updates Spring has arrived and with it cherry blossoms. sakura-fubuki or “cherry blossom blizzard” is a term heard in late April. The falling blossoms remind you of winter without the cold temperatures. Our trip to San Jose CA was very relaxing. During our stay we reconnected with church friends. The farthest day trips we took were to Oakland and Monterey. We of course spent time with our children Ken and Sara. Sara entered nursing school at the end of April. Kenneth announced his engagement with the wedding planned later this year. In April a missionary originally from Germany came to help. Helga Theis has lived in Japan for more than 40 years and is now in her 70’s. She brought with her a Japanese violinist. We visited a number of temp housing areas. The folks there enjoyed the classical music concert. They were surprised to learn that even though Tsunoda-san is unable to see she travels the world playing the violin. Her Christian testimony is powerful. Helga also has a stencil craft that is very popular. The patchwork ladies met for their first meeting in the second week of May. There is now a teacher that comes from one of the inland churches. The teacher, an assistant and the pastor all came to Ofunato Bible Baptist Church (OBBC) for the day. At the end of the lesson we sang hymns and heard a short message from the pastor. Of the 8 attendees four had never been in a church before. Lord willing, this will be a monthly get together. See photo at top of page. Pastor Waters came to serve at the end of May. He is an ex-missionary to Iwate and now pastors a Japanese church in Oceanside. He came by himself. God used him mightily at every temp housing area. He bravely presented the message “Our citizenship is in heaven”. He challenged them saying “raise your hand if you want to go to heaven”. Everyone did. He continued by saying that we cannot pay our way to heaven and only Jesus’ work on the cross can pay for it. The message was simple and straightforward but because he communicated with Jesus’ love they liked it. They all asked Pastor Waters to come back again. Email: [email protected] Websites: www.jems.org 311.ichurch.jp Church Contact Information Santa Clara Valley Japanese Christian Church, 40 Union Avenue, Campbell, CA 95008 USA Morioka Seisho Baptist Kyoukai, 3-6-36 Ueda, Morioka-shi, 020-0066 Japan