Go and Danielle Oishi Prayer Letter: House to House Still Works in Japan!

Praise the Lord! Every month has been full of new blessings, challenges, and people to minister to! We are so thankful for your part in it all!

One of the reasons why we established a permanent church office before securing a rented auditorium was so that there would always be a public place available for people to freely come and be blessed by God’s Word at any time. We made sure that a good portion of the walls were glass so that the people in our community who have never stepped inside a church can see in at any time and find a welcoming place available for them. It is not uncommon for me to exchange smiles with those in our neighborhood when working in the office. We praise God that on June 4, God used this church office to help a non-verbal autistic man who had gotten lost in our neighborhood. A young lady on her way home from her mail route who was trying to help him and two police officers had a place to calmly identify and help find the young man’s home in a cool place on a hot, humid summer day. Though there was no appropriate opportunity during this emergency to present the Gospel to any of them or to his mother, who eventually came to pick him up, we rejoice that the young lady who found him came to join us for the following midweek service on June 5! We were able to host her for dinner, as she came early, and present the Gospel to her. Though she did not get saved that day, we rejoice that God used our church office to be a help to our community and, most importantly, allow this young lady to hear the Gospel for the first time in her life! Please pray that God would continue to give us these divine opportunities.

On June 12, God brought more excitement to our church office, as we had a group of five friends from like-minded churches in the U.S. and Canada, who were on vacation, join us for our midweek service. On that day, we also had one of the unsaved men who come regularly to our church join us. After the service was finished, he asked these friends how they each came to know Christ, allowing him to hear the Gospel five additional times that night! We are thankful for the doors that the Holy Spirit opens for us. Please pray that this man will come to trust Christ! On Sunday, June 16, one of the Japanese couples that comes faithfully to our services brought a Nigerian visitor who has come almost every week since. On June 26 and 30, we had the privilege of hosting the Saltzmans, a young missionary couple that is getting ready to raise support to come to Japan, as they came to visit our church as the final part of their survey trip. This was a special blessing to us, as the other reason behind establishing the church office was to be a help to missionaries. We praise God for all of these opportunities this month!

Due to the societally closed and private nature of people here, door knocking is not the typical way we have seen churches go soul winning in Japan. However, this month we tried an approach that we have been praying and strategizing about since first coming to Japan. We went with one of our most faithful men at our church on June 29 on our first outreach, where we actually rang the people’s doorbells around his neighborhood that has been canvassed twice before, with a small gift bag from the church, with the approach of introducing ourselves as a new church in the neighborhood. We were amazed that most of the people answered their doors, gladly took the gift, and gave us a generally positive response! We look forward to polishing and adding this method of outreach to our arsenal. This month, we were also able to finalize the preparations for our summer “Open Church” evangelistic program, as well as our missions trip group of 17 through our missions agency. Please pray that July would be another great month where more souls are touched with the Gospel!

Danielle’s Journey

Summer is here! The weather is getting warmer, and we are preparing for our church’s summer program! We will be hosting an “Open Church” event with the help of a visiting group from our missions agency. There will be a day focusing on children, a day focusing on music, and a day focusing on families. I have made flyers for adults and children in preparation for the event. Please pray that God will use this event to help reach families in Kisarazu! We also were able to do our first door-to-door outreach! We prepared gift bags with chocolates and flyers for our “Open Church” event. I made a map for the area surrounding where our church meets on Sundays. Then we went out and began to ring doorbells! Those who answered received the gift bag happily, and many were interested in our upcoming event as well! Though in many areas in Japan, going door to door is faced with the challenge of people not recognizing you and refusing to answer, in our city, that was not the case! Their response was encouraging, and I’m looking forward to doing more door-to-door outreach in the future! Thank you always for your thoughts and prayers, as they mean so much to us.

Your friends and co-laborers to Japan,

Go and Danielle Oishi