June

The month of June is just a few short hours from being in the books and I have to say that it has absolutely flown by. We have been blessed this month by adding several people to our prayer partner list. We know that this is a huge commitment of time and we are very humbled by the people that have chosen to partner with us in this way. We are less than two months away from our departure date of August 13th and we are so excited for the different ways that God continues to bring partners to our ministry. He has taught us so much about His provision and His timing that we are excited to see just how He moves in our last bit of time in the states before we head to Shimonoseki. We look forward to being able to make more regular updates to our blog in the coming days and hope that you will pass the word along about our ministry to people that we cannot. There are several opportunities that people could help with, one of which is praying about coming to Shimonoseki on a short term basis to help with the Pre-School. We could use one or two people to help Stephanie for 2 weeks to 6 months that will help get the Pre-School up and running. If you are interested in this opportunity or you know of anybody that would be please let us know or pass our information onto them. 

A picture of Stephanie and I while we were at candidate school with FIM a few weeks ago in PA.

Prayer partners

Praise the Lord for the beauty of His creation. Stephanie and I are currently at a retreat center north of Allentown PA attending a conference with our mission agency FIM. Even though we have been in sessions all day and it is currently raining I am reminded by the beautiful surroundings that we serve an awesome God, and that He has given us a wonderfully beautiful creation to be a part of. We would like to send out a request for more prayer partners and would ask if you would consider committing to prayer for us during the first year we are in Japan from Aug. 2012 to July 2013. We know that everybody has very busy lives but we would like you to consider whether you can be a part of this ministry by committing to pray once a day, once a week, or however often you feel God leading you. If you would like to become a prayer partner please contact us through e-mail, Facebook, phone, or smoke signal, well maybe not the smoke signals, but please let us know so we can add you to our list of prayer partners. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for us during this week as we learn more about the tedious but necessary paperwork tasks, how we can be better equipped to reach the Japanese people, and many other things that will help us as we partner with people to do God's work in Shimonoseki, Japan.

Time is flying by

I cannot believe that it is already well into June. I often wonder where time has gone. Although the last few weeks have been a whirlwind, God has truly blessed. This past weekend Stephanie and I were able to go to North Carolina to our home church and be a part of an outreach event called movies in the park. The event was a great success and thanks to many members at First Christian Church the event went off virtually without a hitch. There were over 900 people that were ministered to and thanks to the way the event was organized almost all of them at one time or another had the gospel clearly presented to them on a person to person level. The week before that we were in a church in Northern VA and I have to say what a blessing it was. The people there were very gracious and showed a great interest in the needs that Japan has. Currently we are in the process of making final preparations to move to North Carolina the day after Fathers Day and to be in PA for a conference the week prior to that. Praise the Lord for His many blessing and His continued wisdom. We continue to covet your prayer as we move into this very busy summertime.

Happy May 15th

Just wanted to give a quick update about our recent happenings. We purchased our tickets to Tokyo yesterday, May 14th, and we will be leaving from Raleigh, N.C. on Monday, August 13th. We will arrive in Tokyo on August 15th and will stay with friends for a couple of days before we go to Shimonoseki. We were able to get our tickets for a great price thanks to a travel agency in California that helps missionaries find cheap tickets.

God has continued to provide for our needs. We are currently at 59% for our one-time outfit and passage fund, and we are at 48% out of $3200.00 needed for our monthly support. Our goals are to be at 50% for each fund by the end of May, so Praise the Lord we have already exceeded that for our one-time and only 2% away for our monthly support goal. We are well on our way to our goal of 75% support that we hope to have by the end of June. We have also added several prayer partners for the month of May but we are still looking for people who would be willing to pray for us and our ministry in Japan.

We have 2 speaking engagements set up for the rest of May and are praying for more opportunities in June and July. In the past few days we have submitted several documents needed to obtain our visa to live in Japan. Please pray that the information is correct and that the process continues to go smoothly.

If you have any questions or ideas please don't hesitate to contact us through email.