JGPNetwork

Dear Praying Friends:

Spring is the air! Cherry blossoms are blooming. School is out for spring vacation!! Families and friends are flocking to the parks to view the flowers.The expressways resemble parking lots as cars clog arteries in and out of the city. Farmers have already begun flooding the rice fields in preparation for planting.

Gospel seeds were planted on Wednesday as eight children, ranging in age from five to twelve, gathered in the hall of the community center in Togane. Their mothers attended the worship service in the straw mat rooms nearby. Four of the children had never been to worship before so it was quite an adventure. Two had never heard of Jesus. The children learned that Jesus can forgive sin as well as heal physical sickness as they heard about four friends who brought a sick friend to Jesus to be healed.

A nine year old girl remarked that it is hard to believe a miracle but you could see the hunger in her eyes as she heard that Jesus loved her. Mrs. S who was helping with the children feels a burden to visit this little girl this week and witness to her. After worship, Mrs. Mo visited this girl’s non-Christian mother. Pray for this girl and her entire family to come to Christ. Thank you for praying for the children’s program last week You can see how God is working. We have it again this coming Wednesday so please pray for all of these children plus others to come to hear the gospel. Pray their hearts will be open.

Japanese youth, college students and young adults face tremendous stress which results in a great number suffering emotional and physical breakdowns. They quit school or work and stay at home, sleeping all day and staying up all night. The usual treatment is medication which doesn’t help them get well. They don’t know that Jesus is the answer to their problems. We were reminded of this again this week as Mrs.Ha asked the Christians to pray for and visit a friend’s son who has quit college. Ask God to help Su-san, his mother and brother believe that Jesus is truly the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the answer to their needs.

Many of the towns and villages in Japan don’t have access to the Gospel. As we read the testimony of a person who didn’t have access to the gospel being healed and then their entire town coming to Christ, our hearts are burdened for the Japanese who have no access to the gospel. We have a special burden for Noi-town and for Mr. Miga is who lives there and is terminally ill. Pray that God will heal his body and that he will be saved. Pray that his entire family and the people of the town will accept Christ as they see the living God at work in his life.

We want to say welcome to the new praying friend who joined us after visiting our website. Please visit our site and encourage others to visit, to read our prayer updates and to PRAY. Please share our prayer updates with your Sunday School class, prayer meetings, or wherever you find folks who will pray. Pass them along via email to those you know will pray. Thank you so much.

Some of you have written to say that you visited the site and took the prayer walk too. What an encouragement that is to us!!! What a wonderful way be part of what God is doing!!!

Claiming His Promises For His Glory,
Tak and Lana

Dear Praying Friends:

The Japan Gospel Penetration Team now has a website, www.JGPNetwork.org, up and running. You can learn more about us, our ministry, about Japan; see our prayer updates; go on a virtual prayer walk and in a few days see pictures from the work in Chiba. Thanks to a wonderful volunteer webmaster we now have this web. Some of you volunteer by coming to Japan, others volunteer right where they are. That is what this wonderful Christian has done. We thank God for providing someone to do what we could not do ourselves. God is so good!!!!

We shared with you in our last letter how a volunteer came to prayer walk here. We ask that YOU become a volunteer and prayer walk for our team right where you are. Visit our website and go on a virtual prayer walk. It is a very simple one but you will feel like you have visited Tongan a little, we believe. You will be able to pray for the people in our segment. Our hope is that as you pray God will burden your heart to pray even more for the Japanese. When you visit the site, please write and let us that you prayed. Your letters are always an encouragement to us. Share the information with your friends and encourage them to go online and pray too. March is Focus on Japan month, so join others from around the world in praying for the Japanese to come to Christ.

Just click on www.JGPNetwork.org to visit us. Check back frequently and keep up with what God is doing.

Spring vacation starts this week and Wednesday will be our worship time for the children. Please pray for the children to have open hearts to the gospel.

Today, Saturday, was the spring equinox and many Japanese went to visit the family graves. The roads were jammed pack and restaurants and stores were overflowing with families. It was cold, dreary and the rain poured down It seemed as though God were weeping. Just during this one day over 2,300 Japanese died without Christ. May God burden our hearts to weep and pray for the lost of Japan.

We are reminded daily as we see the daily news from Iraq that life is fragile. We only have the promise of the present so we must live in the present, sharing Christ with all we meet. We cannot live in the past nor the future. Today is the day of salvation.

Looking forward to hearing from you all. Please keep praying with us and claiming His promises for His glory.
Tak and Lana

Dear Praying Friends:

March is Free Japan month; this is a focus on prayer to break down strongholds that hinder the gospel. Our JGPTeam joined this effort by prayer walking from March 3-9. On March 3, a volunteer arrived from California to join us in Prayer Walking in Chiba. When we were prayer walking, God opened doors of opportunity to witness. As we drove in front of M’s house on our way to a neighborhood to pray, we stopped to deliver a Bible and tracts. They invited us in and we had an opportunity to witness to them. In God’s plan, Mr. T, who has been witnessed to by the Christians before, was there visiting them. During the conversation, Mr. T asked to talk to Tak who spent the afternoon presenting the gospel to him. He wasn’t saved but listened with tears in his eyes. Pray for him to humble himself before the Lord and pray to accept Christ as Savior.

Our hearts ached as we walked among the rice paddies and the scattered groups of homes in the country side. In one isolated group of houses, Tak met a lady on the street who wanted to know what we were doing out in the country. He told her we had come to pray that people would come to know Jesus and trust him as Savior. The lady’s reply broke our hearts as she said, “Who is Jesus?” Tak was able to share with her but she is old and has lived among the shrines and the strongholds of Satan for over 70 years. There are many like her who are spiritually blind. Pray with us for their salvation.

On Sunday evening as we were debriefing our day, we received another “good news” phone call from E-san. She called to tell us that Mrs. N had led her eight year old son, Mi to the Lord on Sunday afternoon. This lady had been afraid for people to find out she is a Christian. But because of a crisis in her life recently that drove her to God’s word, she has now decided she wants to be follow the Lord in baptism and tell Christ’s message of grace to her friends. Pray that she and her son and husband can all grow in the Lord and be baptized together soon.

Good news on the answering machine came on Friday evening as we returned home around midnight. Mrs. Se had invited Mrs. M to come to Mrs. Sa’s house in the evening where three of the ladies witnessed to her. After hearing the gospel, she prayed to receive Christ as Savior. We have been praying for her since October. Pray that Mrs. M will be an obedient disciple and put Luke 9:23 into practice in her life.

The school year ends on March 24th and two weeks of spring vacation begins. Students are free from homework, attending graduation ceremonies, and looking forward to the new school year add excitement as spring arrives. We are in the midst of planning special worship times and a day camp for the children of the Christians. Pray this will be a special time for the children. Ask God to direct our thoughts and hearts and lead us step by step as we plan, There are now three Christian elementary aged children. There are 10 or 15 others who are not yet Christians. Pray that this will be a time to harvest the seed of the gospel that have been sown in their hearts already.

Claiming His promises,
Tak and Lana