This month in Japan, my team was split among different host families. I lived with three different families this month with my new teammate: Adri (she’s from Costa Rica)! Being with our families was the majority of our ministry this month. I loved how relational this ministry was and it was really cool to get a true Japanese experience and be immersed in the culture. This month showed me a lot about how ministry will look like for me when I go back home. Most times on the Race, ministry is a team of people going to a specific event or doing a specific thing. Ministry in Japan was more “real life” because ministry was literally just living everyday and letting the people around us see the light of Jesus in us and sharing what God has done in our lives whenever it came up in conversation. We got to love these families, do fun things with them, and serve them in various ways such as babysitting the kids to let the parents have a date night and washing their dishes. The days were long and we didn’t have much time to ourselves but God always gave us the energy we needed to get through each day (jetlag definitely made things more difficult for us, too). Meet my new Japanese families:
The Moriyama Family: They have a 5 year old son and a 2 year old daughter. They are not Christians, so Adri and I were glad to be able to come to their home so we could serve them, talk to them, go shopping with the mom (her favorite activity), play with the kids at the park, and love them as best we could. There was a heaviness in the house that we could feel because of the loneliness, burdens, tiredness, and anxieties the mother carried with her. Pray that the seeds we planted in this family would be watered by other Christians in their lives.
The Takebuchi Family: This family is a house of 4 boys! They have a 1, a 3, a 5, and a 7 year old. This family just became believers this past summer and it was so great to encourage them. Less than 1% of Japan is Christian so most of them don’t really know what being a Christian looks like so it was great to clarify things and pour into our host mom. She is supermom raising those 4 boys, but it takes up a lot of her time and there are not many Christians in her life so she doesn’t have much opportunity to just sit and talk about Jesus with people. It was cool to be able to tell her we saw the joy of Jesus in her, something she didn’t see in herself, and tell her she can pray by just talking to Him while washing the dishes or doing the laundry. I had so much fun with those precious boys as well! One of my favorite things was when Adri, the 5 year old, and I would all bike to preschool together. Pray this family would continue in their faith even when it’s hard and pray for the mom as she recently fractured her foot, making taking care of 4 boys much more difficult.
Our host dad took us and the 2 oldest boys to a soccer game
The 3 youngest at Ninja Village
Our Sweet Mama
The Miyoshi Family: We had so much fun with them, their friends from their apartment building, and their two precious daughters. This family is not Christian but they are so, so close. Becoming a Christian in Japan is very difficult. They are all about culture, tradition, and doing what is expected of them. You are expected to take on your families religeon and in Japan, they are almost all Bhudist. Most of them i would say are not devout Bhudist but simply claim the name and celebrate the holidays just because it’s apart of their culture. Our last night with this family, we had a long conversation with them and based on how it went, I could tell they really wanted to be Christians but in that moment were not ready for the possability of loosing friends, being different from everyone else, doing something completely different from what they’ve known and make the desicion to follow Christ. I can tell that God is in hot pursuit of this family, so pray that He will continue to put people in thier lives to keep pushing them towards making that final decision.
Me reading the Bible to the girls
When people think of countries that desperately need missionaries, they often think of the physically poor countries, but the host dad from our last family said it best, “The Japanese are rich, but they have poor souls.” Japan is a country that needs you to pray for them.
