Pastor Eddy Leo from Indonesia came with us to train church planters in Ishinomaki last week. We had a wonderful time learning about God’s eternal purpose and how to practically be the fullness of Christ as a whole Body! We hope to see God work through these principles and further His Body in Ishinomaki and Japan.
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We are so happy to welcome a healthy baby born March 24, 2012 @ 21:48. Both Ai and I are ecstatic! Ai is recovering very well and she is planning to come home with the baby tomorrow.
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the ROCk Ishinomaki from Sunrise International Ministries on Vimeo.
Still serving up in the tsunami disaster area of Ishinomaki. Recently, we have been building a bouldering wall for kids and people to enjoy and build relationships. the ROCk=the Relationship-based Outdoor-activities Center. Here is a short video. Check it out.
I will update more about some of our project up north.
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On February 15, 2012, we celebrated the birth of our new nephew. We are so glad to finally meet the kid and can’t wait for my brother and his wife to finally name him.
We are also excited to meet our baby in a few weeks!
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Happy New Year from Japan!
After traveling for almost three months, we made it back to Japan in time for Christmas. We are excited to be back in Japan and catching up with friends and relationships here. We look forward to all the new possibilities this new year brings. We hope that the new year will bring you new opportunities filled with God given passion for His kingdom.
All blessings,
Joey, Ai and Meissa
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We’ve been traveling for a few weeks now. We’ve gotten to see many friends and meet many new people. Last week, we gave two presentations at Princeton Seminary, one on our Tsunami Relief efforts and another on discipleship and church planting. On Sunday, I spoke and shared at a Japanese Church in New Jersey.
Since leaving Japan, we have already driven over 2,000 miles through 8 states and we are just getting started. Pray for us as we continue our travels, especially for Ai and the baby!
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Population: 126 million
Religion: In a recent survey, 213,826,661 people identified themselves as adhering to a religion (source: Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Statistics Bureau). Now,you may be saying, “Wait a minute, I thought that the population of Japan is 126,000,000 people!?” Yes it is. A majority of people identified themselves with both Shintoism and Buddhism. What is going on here? Well, simply put they really don’t believe in anything, but believe in everything at the same time.
I would loosely define many Japanese as being postmodern cultural-polytheistic atheists. In other words, most Japanese don’t believe in absolutes, say they adhere culturally to Buddhism and Shintoism, but don’t believe in God or any gods for that matter.
This can make ministry really confusing at times. A few years ago we were sharing the gospel with one young man, meeting with him every week for almost three months. He came from a rather devout Buddhist background, but always had good questions and wanted to understand Christianity. One night I told him, “you need to believe in Jesus alone as your Lord and Savior.” The next week he came back to our Bible study and said, “I talked to my Buddhist priest (a nationally recognized Buddhist leader and author) and he told me, ‘that is a wonderful idea, you should become a Christian[too].’” I couldn’t believe my ears. Sadly, this story is not an uncommon occurrence when doing ministry in Japan.
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Japan has historically been dubbed the missionary graveyard because of how hard it is to penetrate the culture with the gospel and save souls. Many well trained missionaries come to Japan excited to spread God’s kingdom. Yet, for so many of these missionaries, Japan fails them. Some would even say, God has failed them. Even after years of dedicated tireless service they see no lives changed, they don’t see God at work.
Many missionaries leave Japan discouraged and unable to return to such a disheartening field. They say that the average career (long-term) missionary spends less than 6 years in Japan. This is barely enough time to get to know the language and the culture.
I am on my 7th here in Japan as a missionary and I can tell you from experience that it is a hard place to do ministry. But, the harvest is just that much more beautiful when it comes. In other words, it is so worth it.
We believe that God is going to move in a BIG way here in Japan. We are so excited to be a part of His kingdom and cannot wait to see that day when this nation will bow before the one true God.
Instead of being know as the “missionary graveyard,” I want Japan to be know as the missionary sending nation. This is why we want to plant a movement and not just one church. When there is a movement BIG things can happen. Japan could become a missionary sending nation instead of a missionary graveyard. We long for this day. Until then, my prayer is that missionaries to Japan will endure and plant kingdom seeds, even until the point of making their graves here in Japan.
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Let me briefly share what we want to see through our ministry here in Japan (i.e. our goals/vision).
goal: be a part of God’s kingdom movement in Japan
method: building up church planting networks that reproduce
to this end: we disciple, train and plant churches THAT REPRODUCE
The vision of our mission Sunrise International Ministries is the same. We want to see God radically change the nation of Japan. We realize that this will be hard. The founder of our mission puts it this way, “This will require new models and new forms of spreading the gospel especially among young people. It will also require a lot of faith. Jesus said, ‘Everything is possible for him who believes’ (Mark 9:23).”
We need faith. Join us in our journey of faith to reach the lost people of Japan. Subscribe, support and pray for us!
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