Hope for Japan

Allie's First Meal- Broccoli

This week marked the beginning of Allie trying her first food. She seemed eager to grab things and touch food, so we tried to make her own food. We started with pureed broccoli. Though some got on her lip and the bib, she ate it, though not with great joy! We wouldn’t enjoy it much either, since it is just boiled broccoli then blended with water!

This week also marked our Christmas outreach planning and preparations. We are gearing up for a few things later this month. One is a Candlelight Christmas Eve service, which we hope Miho’s brother’s family and our next door neighbor will be able to attend. The other is a “Family Fun Christmas Party” on the 23rd for families and kids in our neighborhood. Since Allie is the only child in our church at the moment, this event is exclusively built on attracting those in our community to join. We will be playing a few fun games, singing Christmas songs (in English and Japanese), sharing a Christmas story, and building Gingerbread houses (a great tradition we are taking with us from our youth ministry in Boston). We will also be handing out gifts to the kids who come. So far a few families have already expressed interest in coming. We are dreaming big that we can pack out the place for this fun and unique event.

In the next week, our church will be placing a two-page insert into newspapers. We were able to write one entire page for this. We were able to introduce ourselves, share a bit of our story, Grant’s experience of Japan so far, and highlight some of the events coming up and our plans to benefit the community in the coming year. We really hope people will read this and become interested in getting to know us and our church more in the near future.

Please pray for the planning and reception from our community this Christmas season. We are also beginning our Young Adult Ministry tomorrow after the church service. Please pray for the start of this ministry that we hope will develop the faith of those already in our church, while also being a place for outsiders to come and explore Christianity.