Glory to God! A month where all of our plans fell through has been turned into something even greater, as God revealed His plans!
We left off in our report last month by announcing that we had designed and printed 2,500 Japanese-English Gospel tracts to be passed out in Southern California, the place with the highest concentration of Japanese people living within the continental U.S. Of course, August was originally a month that we had planned to be in Japan, hosting multiple groups to evangelize at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. We had decided that, if we could not be in Japan, then we would work to reach as many Japanese people as possible in the U.S.
The Lord allowed us to host two major outreach events with our home church in Wildomar, California. As Japanese people often assimilate very well into American society, we found that the best place to try to find them was in and around Japanese grocery stores. Thus, we planned our first outreach to the parking lots of multiple Japanese grocery stores and businesses in Torrance, California, where over 10% of the city’s population claims the Japanese ethnicity. We gave the announcement during a Wednesday night service and trusted God to provide the laborers for that following Saturday. My wife and I, along with a few teenagers, surveyed the area on Friday and prayed that God would do a miracle by allowing the Japanese people to be more receptive than they are often known to be, that He would give us favor with the authorities in the area, and that He would allow us to see a full van of soul winners come from our sending church. On Saturday morning, God did an absolute miracle. Our church van rolled in with 26 laborers from our sending church! Note that the announcement for this outreach was made with just a three-day notice and that this was an hour-and-a-half ride one way for them! Hundreds of Japanese people received our Gospel tracts! Over a thousand Gospel tracts were passed out that day! Two people trusted Christ as their Saviour! God gave us such favor with the local authorities that many of the store managers allowed us to leave stacks of our tracts at their front counters! This all happened in Los Angeles County in some of the most difficult areas of California!
We had such a good weekend that we decided to host another outreach, this time to Gardena, California, a city with a smaller population, but with 11% of the people claiming the Japanese ethnicity. After a week of serving and doing some music visitation to some of the members of our home church who cannot leave their homes, we did the same thing. We surveyed and prayed on Friday, and God did a miracle on Saturday. Twenty-two other laborers came out, hundreds more Japanese contacts were made, and one got saved! On each of these tracts, we left our personal contact information, as well as our website, so we are praying that God would allow us to continue to see fruit out of these efforts!
Near the end of the month, we completed our seventh cross-country trip to our two meetings in Iowa, marking the beginning of the final leg of our deputation. The first was in Anamosa, Iowa, where we had the privilege of helping with the recent storm damage, as well as starting a website for their church. While out soul winning with that church, a young man named Josiah was led to Christ! Soon after was our Missions Conference in Washington, Iowa, where we went soul winning for 4 hours and saw 3 visitors come as a result! They, as well as a church in Moorhead, Minnesota, and Loveland, Colorado, financially partnered with us during that last week. Praise the Lord! His work has not stopped when the world has!
Your friends and co-laborers to Japan,
Go and Danielle Oishi
