Sunday, June 3, 2007

Looking Back to Look Forward...

As many of you know, our ministry here in Japan took a dramatic shift in January 2006. At the time there were a lot of days that I felt our ministry here had been basically worthless. It wasn't that we hadn't seen ANYONE touched or ministered to, it was just that both the NUMBER of people touched and the QUALITY of the "touch" didn't meet MY hopes or expectations.

However in the last few months the LORD has continued to show me that what we did before really has fruit that remains...and of course this encourages us for the future.

Going ahead like Joseph
One example is a woman that was baptized here about 4 years ago. At the baptism her daughter cryed buckets. The woman said "At first I was reluctant to get baptized alone. I wanted my whole family to get baptized together, but I felt the LORD tell me ""You are like Joseph. You need to "go ahead alone" so your family can be saved later.""

This past Easter the daughter got baptized at the church they now attend AND the husband has made a confession of faith in Jesus.


A Daughter's salvation and 2 grandchildren

Another woman who got baptized in our big January 1, 2000 baptism, when we baptized 6 people, had a daughter that was very anti-religion, anti-Christian at the time. The daughter was having difficulty having children. Of course this became one of our focused prayers.

Well, the daughter got pregnant and had a healthy little boy in 2oo2. After that she made steps toward the LORD and got baptized. Her husband also has grown closer to accepting the LORD.
And on June 4th she gave birth to a healthy daughter...

A Husband's salvation and Home School

Another young lady who came to our church was raised in a Christian home, but got "in trouble" and married an unbeliever. They had two children in a short period of time and things were not always good at home.

The husband came to know LORD through the ministry of a friend of ours from Australia. Even after that things were not always easy but they have grown in the LORD their lives have been greatly touched by the LORD.

During this time she began to home school their two young children through our example. Recently several people have asked her how she can make her children behave so well. Then this past week end the two of them held a small seminar at the area home schoolers convention.

Althought these may seem like small testimonies compared to those from other mission fields, they encouraged us greatly here in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Please pray for any other seeds that the LORD has allowed us to sow in the past years...As I mentioned before, there are days that I feel like not much remains for our labors. But that is not true...the LORD has already shown us that.

For HIS glory and HIS kingdom.

1 comment:

ali said...

Hi Eric,
Just wanted to say Hi and tell you that I love you all and am blessed by your blog..I will keep you all in my prayers and believe that God is using you in a mighty way in Japan, God is so good and even when we don't see him move he is still moving...because we can't look at the "seen" we must look at the unseen things...because they are eternal!! We may never know until heaven how many lives we touch, how many souls were saved because of one word from our mouth. Keep believing and keep sowing, if you faint not you will reap and the harvest will be great!

Love to you all
Alice