Praise the Lord! As the title suggests, God has allowed us to reach 100% of our support goal this month! We are truly thankful to every church and individual who has been faithful to pray and give toward the cause of the Gospel reaching the Japanese people.
Our month began in the city of Mt. Pleasant, where we enjoyed a tremendous final meeting in the state of Wisconsin. A day after, we drove down to Hammond, Indiana, for our final Exit Interview with our missions support agency, FBMI. The meeting went very smoothly and resulted in a raise in support from the First Baptist Church of Hammond, the church under which FBMI serves! During that same meeting, we were able to finalize some of the fine details of completing the “cleanup” process from the 2020 trip and moving on to the planning of the 2021 Japan Olympic Outreach!
From there we finished up the last of our meetings in the state of Michigan, my home state, as well as one of our highest-supporting states. One of these meetings took place in the form of a Missions Conference in the city of Temperance, where my wife and I had the privilege of reuniting with many familiar faces. We started the conference with two hours of soul winning and ended with our personal decision to double our missions giving!
Our time in Michigan was followed by our last two meetings in the state of Ohio. The first of these meetings took place in the city of Broadview Heights, where the Lord encouraged us in a special way. Some of the core members of that church are a Japanese family of eleven that had an amazing testimony of moving from Japan and getting saved in the United States. They now have two sons in Bible college, and the entire family serves together faithfully in the church. Hearing their testimony served as an amazing encouragement to us for the lives we pray to see transformed in Japan! At that same meeting, two young people came forward after I had the privilege of preaching their evening service. A young man named Ethan surrendered his life to be a missionary, and a young lady named Alayna surrendered her life to the Lord! Praise God!
We finished this month at a Missions Conference in Williamsburg, Kentucky, where we had the joy of sharing the meeting with one of my closest friends and a groomsman at our wedding, now on deputation for Nigeria with his sweet wife and daughter. This church, as well as some of our churches visited in previous months in Galesville, Wisconsin, and Brookings, South Dakota, all partnered with us financially this month!
Another miracle that took place this month was the easing of Japan’s borders. Though we have been working on visa paperwork for Japan since this past January, rules have changed constantly, and many parts of the process had to be redone due to interferences caused by COVID-19. On top of this, all official government paperwork in Japan expires after three months. Timing has been difficult; however, we were able to complete and gather all needed paperwork, and it is now on its way to Japan. Please pray that it will be processed in a timely manner to make our intended arrival in November possible. Until then, we will complete the last of our meetings, where any additional support raised can go directly towards doing more for the work of God! The 100% is a bare-minimum figure recommended by pastors in Japan, as well as by FBMI, to sustain life and ministry. God has already blessed us with a small surplus, increasing our ministry funds and allowing us to have a greater vision for what can be done for Him!
Your friends and co-laborers to Japan,
Go and Danielle Oishi
