Japanese group

[Pastor Gary]

It was exciting Wednesday at WWC. We have been working with the Japanese wife of a U.S. Navy dentist who ministers to a group of young Japanese wives of U.S. Marines, These are mostly girls/ladies in their very early 20's or younger, some with babies, and they speak little or no English. They are precious gals. Most of them are married to lower-rank Marines (E3's - E4's) who are at K-Bay to be deployed to Iraq, at which time these ladies will be LEFT HERE with little support structure, non-existent communication options, and not much income. The lady we are dealing with is a wee bit quirky, but loves these girls and really ministers to them.

She has bought, with her own money, a Japanese Bible (equivalent to an NIV) and a Japanese language "Purpose Driven Life" at a combined cost of over $100/person with shipping. She holds a weekly Bible Study for them, at which she buys and prepares Japanese foods, etc. for them. They had approached several churches in Kailua, and all wanted to RENT them a room for that study. We, of course, jumped at the chance to offer them the free use of the multi-purpose room for their meeting and today was the first day. There were seven ladies (+ the leader and her daughter) and some babies, and Amy and I were able to sort of greet them and smile and nod a lot. (I made them laugh when the leader asked if I knew any Japanese, and I said one phrase only: "nani in tendo" which basically means "What are YOU looking at!??)

I got one of my Japanese-fluent members on the phone and had him extend a welcome and greeting in Japanese on speaker phone, much to their delight.

Here's the best part. They had one first-timer join the group today, and she accepted Christ in the meeting!

We just feel that God may be opening a new door for us, and we are cautiously easing toward it. I have asked one of our Japanese-fluent guys to pray about serving in an undershepherd role for this group if they follow through and start attending WWC as we have discussed. We will need to secure a low-power FM transmitter for translation and a few other details, but if it is God's direction we're in. We now have at least three people who are very fluently bi-lingual English/Japanese, and several who speak a few phrases.

Who knows where God may take this? Exciting!

[RamboPreacher]

wow - this is very exciting! my prayers continue.

[Shellie]

Not only is this exciting, it is encouraging!! Thanks for sharing!

[Mike Vande]

That's so cool! What a wonderful thing for the body of Christ to reach out in unfamiliar ways to reach a new field of souls and find people hungry for Jesus!

Just a thought; you have servicemen in your congregation, right? You might set about organizing a welcome committee for the husbands of these young women for when they return. Finding a Christian at home when they left a nonChristian could be a severe shock to both husband and wife. If they see there are others like them at your church, guys they can identify with, you might see some new believers among them too.