Triple Disaster Update

This posting comes courtesy of John Gibbs (website link), a missionary based in Tokyo with WorldVenture, who is also from the Bay Area.  He's much closer to the affected areas and he speaks perfect Japanese (seriously, he passed the JLPT level 1 test, which even Japanese people find difficult) so he has a much better grasp of things than we do as he watches & reads Japanese + American news plus understands the updates given in Japanese by pastors.  He's my age and has lived in Japan only for a couple of years.  Amazing, huh? :)

Here's an excerpt from his April newsletter, sent out on May 5th.


Earthquake and Tsunami Updates

Your prayers for Japan are continuing to make a difference. Please continue to keep them up, even if it's only 10-15 seconds during your morning devotional.

Here's the latest of things I've noticed recently:

• Christian books and books about how to read the Bible are selling like crazy in Japan.
• Article (in Japanese - feel free to translate using Google): http://book.asahi.com/clip/TKY201102210096.html
• The article describes Christian books as being a "quiet boom"
• At a meeting of Japanese pastors a couple of weeks ago, we had a young man come from Canada, 24 years old, who was a missionary kid born and raised in Japan and fluent in Japanese. The Lord impressed upon him to return to the nation of his birth after the disaster. He came to Japan on his own, made his own gospel tracts in Japanese, and was getting ready to take them up north to the affected areas, pass them out, and do personal evangelism in the affected areas. This was very encouraging to see. I hope this kind of thing increases.
• The level of cooperation between different churches and Christian organizations in light of the disaster is amazing and probably unprecedented.
• Our mission has sent teams up north to the affected areas several times, but I have not gone (yet).
• We heard that one of our churches in the affected areas was at overflow capacity for it's Easter service, for the first time in the church's history. The pastor came in at 9 AM and saw 20 people lined up outside for the 10:30 AM service. An additional 20 people came later, making it so crowded people had to stand in the back.
• There has been an abundance of materials and money pouring in for churches in the affected areas. We don't need much more of either of those. What the Christians in the affected areas are asking for is "PLEASE SEND PEOPLE WHO CAN TEACH THE GOSPEL!" That is one thing neither the Japanese government nor the Red Cross could ever supply, and is in short supply. That is our responsibility, like our Canadian friend above.

An English version of the link John mentioned above can be found here (link), titled "Christianity a trendy topic for publishers".

Thank you for praying for Japan! I hope this blog posting encourages you to continue to pray for even greater news to come! :)