This month has been full of many busy days as we began preparing for our summer visitors to arrive. In May we will host Lisa Bloecher, a musician with heart for sharing her faith with the Japanese people. She will give two concerts in Sendai (May 17 and 18). Joel is also coming to visit Sendai at the end of May and teach at a preachers' meeting in a city south of here. On May 28th Crimsen will be here to stay for two months of visiting and serving. She will be a great help and blessing for our summer Let's Start Talking project; the team will arrive on June 10th and stay for six weeks. We have begun advertising and have already registered several students. We will also host Annie Keesee (former LST worker in Sendai) and her mother for a few days at the beginning of June, before they travel to Hachinohe for their LST project. Everyone here is excited to see how God will bless this summer in Sendai!
April's monthly activity was a cherry blossom viewing party. However, it rained -- a lot. So we met at the church instead. We ate lunch together and played games. God blessed our fellowship, despite the weather.
On the 29th, Debi and I, with Yuko and Akiko, traveled down to Ibaraki for the All-Japan Worship service. It was such a blessing to have girl-time with our friends, as we are all usually busy, and it was wonderful time of worship. We were all encouraged by the number of Christians that came from all over Japan to worship and fellowship. We also got to stay overnight with Judith and Michi -- hopefully, we could encourage them with our visit.
At the end of March, I began teaching a new term of one-on-one English/Bible classes. At that time I took some new students as a few of my students left Sendai. One of my new students is a young man named Naoya. He is a university student and was the lab-mate of Keisuke, one of my students who moved to Tokyo after he graduated in March. He wanted to study with me because he is interested in studying English, but also because Keisuke shared with him about many of the things that we talked about in our lessons. Naoya does not really know much about Christians or God. Please join me in praying that God will open his eyes and heart to the love, grace and truth that we have found in Jesus.
Please pray . . .
~a praise to God for all the blessings of the first half of my internship, and that he will continue to bless the rest of this year.
~for all the people traveling to Japan in the next couple months (Lisa Bloecher -- with her daughter and niece, Joel, Crimsen, Annie -- and her mother, Cami, Jason, Andrew).
~for LST in Sendai and other cities in Japan -- that God will prepare the hearts of the workers to share him and readers to see him, and that he will be glorified.
~for the people seeking God in Sendai -- that they will feel hunger for God and an urgency to find his truth that will overcome any fear they have of following him.
~that God will overcome, when I feel discouraged about learning Japanese; that God will make me brave to use what I know and that I will remember what I study.
