Thursday March 11, 2010
Waiting on the Lord
Dear co-laborer in the Lord,
We are nearing the time we would like to depart for Japan, especially now that the baby is due in less than two months! The airlines won't let us travel within 28 days of the due date unless we have written permission from our doctor (or travel with a doctor if traveling within 14 days of the due date), and we'd much rather travel with the baby in Jenny's belly rather than out. Departing sooner than later would save us a lot of stress, hassle, and money too. Please pray all the pieces of us being able to depart quickly would come together. We are praying for God to work through several key decision makers to give us their blessings, to meet our financial goals and that all our paperwork would be completed in a timely manner. Ultimately, we are praying we would go in God's timing, whenever He would send us, and that we would enjoy His peace during these exciting yet stressful times. Thank you for your prayers! :)
Blessings! Peter, Jenny, Juhee, and Baby Oh
Partnering in Dallas
Thank you for covering our time in Dallas with your prayers! We had a great time connecting with churches and made lots of new friends during our two weeks there. We also had an unexpected surprised - LOTS of SNOW! Juhee had a great time playing in the snow with Uncle Jon and Auntie Jade and got to see her first ever snowman too (it was bigger than her and she was a bit scared of it). =D God blessed us with a car and GPS to use during half of our time there, and Juhee loved attending Graham Cracker Express at Trinity Bible Church. Jenny also finished the 4th out of her 5 mandatory books assigned by Pioneers that she needs to finish before we depart for Japan. We also enjoyed lots of yummy Dallas specialty foods we can't get anywhere else. :)
It's a shame that we didn't have time to meet with most of our friends from our last trip but we know now that we definitely need to stay longer in Dallas next time! The best part was being able to spend time with Jade & Jon as we won't be seeing them for a while. The sad part was not being able to spend more time with them and having to say good-bye... :(
Partnering with You
We now have 274 prayer partners committed to praying for us regularly, and thanks to almost 50 individuals/families supporting us financially on a monthly/quarterly/annual basis, we are now at 71% of our Monthly Support (up from 60% last month)! Our English & Korean newsletters are sent to almost 700 email accounts and about 25 mailboxes every month.
God has blessed us with so many people who have come along side us as partners, and we give thanks everyday that He has brought you into our lives and our ministry to Japan. We would be nothing without you!
If you would like to partner with us in prayer or financially, please email us at peterandjennyoh@gmail.com.
Partnering with Churches
Our sending church is our home church, New Vision Church , in Milpitas, California, where Jenny's family have been members since 1984 and Peter served as Youth Pastor since 2002. Through an amazing sequence of events and connections that only God could have orchestrated, God has blessed us with a mixture of American, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean churches to partner with us in our ministry to Japan, both in the USA and in Korea. Here's a list of our supporting churches:
* Santa Clara Valley Japanese Christian Church, San Jose, California, USA
* Davis Korean Church, Davis, California, USA
* Dallas Chinese Bible Church, Dallas, Texas, USA (in picture)
* Skillman Bible Church, Dallas, Texas, USA
* Antioch Church, Suwon, S. Korea
* Shinbanpo Central Church, Seoul, S. Korea
* Kangbyun Presbyterian Church, Seoul, S. Korea
* Hwapyoung Presbyterian Church, Seoul, S. Korea
* Global Missions Church, Bundang, S. Korea
Please continue to pray for the leadership of the churches that are prayerfully considering partnering with us as we are still waiting to hear back from a few. Praise God!!! :)
Partnering with Japanese locals
We recently received a newsletter from John Gibbs, a co-laborer in the Lord serving in Japan. He wrote about an interesting study that we would like to share with you, by permission. (Picture of John and us sharing a meal together during his furlough in Sept. '09.)
The Japan Evangelical Missionary Association (JEMA) recently held their annual conference. JEMA convened a panel of missionaries to study the reason for the lack of church growth in Japan. After two years of research and analysis, the panel presented their results during the Monday morning session.
Japan's church growth rate is 0.61% per year. Japan is currently 0.5% Christian, and at current growth rates, 100 years from now Japan would only be 0.8% Christian. It would take 400 years for Japan to become 5% Christian. This is in contrast to scripture, where Jesus call for exponential growth of believers (Mark 4:8)
Six primary factors were presented for Japan's low church growth rate:
1. Little evangelism in general
2. Little personal evangelism on the part of lay people
3. Pastor-centered authoritative leadership style, rather than empowering and delegating to lay leaders to take control of ministries
4. Little vision for impact and growth - missional outlook missing
5. Lay involvement in ministry is low
6. Little engagement with society
Factor 2, lack of lay evangelism was considered the primary reason for lack of growth. There are 280 times as many Japanese Christians as missionaries. This could be a tremendous resource that is not currently being unlocked for the Kingdom.
Please pray that God would equip Japanese lay Christians to share their faith!
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