This weekend Hiroshima held it’s annual Toukasan Festival. Touka, is another reading of the name Inari, the deity of grain, and each year approximately 450,000 people participate in the festivities at the local shrine dedicated to this (so-called) deity. Because this festival marks the start of summer in Hiroshima, many people wear yukatas, summer kimonos, to this festival. For this reason, Toukasan festival is sometimes called “Yukata festival”. In fact, for the first year Matt and Misty were in Hiroshima, they only knew the festival by that name. Like many festivals in Japan, Toukasan involves rows of roadside stands selling great food and toys, holding raffles or inviting children to squander their allowance trying to catch their own goldfish. In many ways it’s an incredibly festive (hence the name) and entertaining experience.

Unfortunately, like many other festivals in Japan, it’s centered around some kind of idol worship. Matt and Misty were greatly saddened to see many people –including friends- lining up to pay homage to the deity celebrated during this time. Along with the celebrations came the sale of fortunes, charms for couples to solidify their relationships, and yakuyoke uchiwa, or paper fans said to ward off evil. As Matt and Misty asked our friends about the goings-on at the shrine, they said that even most Japanese weren’t entirely sure of the meaning of the various charms and rituals. All of this breaks their hearts as they are reminded of the blindness of the Japanese “in whose case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,” (2 Cor. 4:4).

Please pray for the “Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6) to shine through the church in Hiroshima, so that those who are now blind might turn from darkness and receive their sight.

by Matt Sargent

As David was reading through 1 Corinthians last week, he came across a passage that seemed to jump off the page at him. It wasn’t a hallucination, anything supernatural, maybe not even spiritual, but because the Rainers are living, breathing, eating, and sleeping the Japanese language, this verse stuck out:”There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me (14:10-11).”

English is a rich language full of meaning and because of it, people from all over the world, from many different countries and people groups can speak to one another on some level. However, many, if not most, Japanese only know English on a surface book level. Sure there are fluent English speakers who are Japanese, but it is most certainly the minority.

So no matter how fully the Rainers can communicate in English, unless they learn Japanese they and their words will be foreign to the lost living in Japan. Paul’s letter to the Romans mentions another form of communication:”For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse (1:20).”

Nature communicates enough of who God is to everyone, even the Japanese, inexcusably that there is a God. And Paul writes that this leaves the Japanese with no excuse on the Day of Judgment. But, Paul writes a few chapters later: ”How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? (10:14).”

And so it is safe to add, “And how will they understand the meaning of the preaching they are hearing if it is proclaimed to them in a foreign tongue? (i.e. 1 Cor 14) It would be as meaningless as the message written on the stone slab in the picture above is to you, the reader.

What Japanese behold in nature and love is only enough to condemn them without excuse. They need someone to explain the full truth to them, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they need someone to do it in their own language so that the message is not foreign to them. Please pray for the Rainers and all the IMB personnel in language training that they would be given grace to learn their language so that the peoples of the world would no longer be foreign to God, but reconciled to Him by believing in His Son, Jesus Christ.

By David Rainer, Shizuoka City

“Love, Love Me Do”    Do you remember the words of this hit song by the Beatles? We recently were reminded of them. Ever in search of ways to get to know and reach out to non-Christian Japanese, Kevin had signed up for a community group whose members met together to learn and then practice playing a “kafon” (a kind of all-in-one drum set that looks actually more like a box-shaped seat). After meeting for a couple of months, the class performed a free concert together—playing among other songs, the Beatles’ “Love, Love Me Do”. The regular meetings gave Kevin a great opportunity to become acquainted with fellow classmates. One classmate in particular who took a liking to Kevin was 50-something year old businessman, Mr. Baya. Even though the class stopped meeting back in March, Mr. Baya has continued to stay in touch with Kevin and Kevin with him. Please pray for each opportunity they have to meet together. Please pray that through their friendship Mr. Baya will come to know the love God has for him and put his trust in Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him, shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 (NIV)

by Donna Qualls

After returning to America for nearly a year, Matt and Misty are finally back in Hiroshima to share the gospel with the Japanese there. They’ll be starting out in language study, but will also be spending a lot of time ministering to the new families they’re meeting. Although they’ve returned to the same city, they now live in a neighborhood instead of in a high-rise apartment building. Life in a Japanese neighborhood is very different from many neighborhoods in America. There is a much stronger sense of community. They organize to keep the parks clean, to make sure the right trash is thrown out on the right day (we have 8 categories of trash to keep track of here), to keep each other informed of news in the area and a large variety of other issues of community life.

All of this is counter to our individualistic inclinations, and can be a little stressful at times. There are many positives as well. All the children gather together to play in the evenings. Older children look after the younger ones. Parents bond as they watch the children play. Aside from being a wonderful opportunity to watch their daughter, Joanna, grow, play and make great new friends, this is also a chance to share the love of Christ with their new neighbors. As they get to know their new neighbors, they remember what Paul said in 1 Thess. 2:8 “we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become so very dear to us.”

Please ask God to open the hearts of their neighbors to hear the truth and trust Jesus as their Savior. Ask that He enable Matt and Misty to communicate the story of Jesus’ great works to them in their heart language.

Written my Matt Sargent

We are thankful that you visit our site and pray for us. Please visit the VIDEOS tab on the right side menu of the home page, click, and watch the two videos posted there. One is about 2 and a half minutes. The second one is less than two minutes. We hope that these will bless your heart and lead you to pray more for the Japanese people around the world who do not yet know Jesus.

The picture above is of a Shinto god shelf.

The Hakata Dontaku festival happens every May 3^rd and 4th. On the first day our team stood on a sidewalk offering free Bibles to people as they walked by. In a period of 2 hours, at least 1000 people had to have passed by us. But only 17 accepted the gift of God’s Word. We were then told that the store owned the sidewalk, and they did not want us being there. I found myself praying that God would forgive them, because they know not what they do.

On the second day we went again to the festival, but rain negatively affected people’s attitudes, and our ability to find a workable place to offer Bibles again. As we stood inside one large plaza listening to a performance on stage, we saw the “Free Hug” group we had met on Valentine’s Day. They were still offering hugs, so we went and hugged them. Our two youngest team members, still in their 20’s, also hugged them and give them some Bibles. They made a connection, and hopefully some new friendships will develop from that.

Pray now that the people who received Bibles will read them. Pray that they will be hungry and thirsty for God, and not satisfied until they seek God whole-heartedly.

Written by Nancy Norton

Golden Week in Japan starts this week and it is the longest stretch of vacation for the year for many Japanese employees. Some companies will even shut down for the week. Several holidays occur during this week. One of those is on May 5^th, a holiday known as Kodomo no hi. This is a celebration of children, but in reality, this has historically been known as Boys Day, or Tango no sekku. All around Japan you can see koinobori, Japanese carp banners that are flying to signify the sons of Japan growing healthy and strong.

The eldest son in Japan is especially esteemed and celebrated on this day. However, in Japan, with being the oldest male also comes the responsibility of being in charge of the family’s god shelf. They will have to pray to the ancestors of the family for good will and protection and burn incense to them in order to appease their spirits to protect them. It seems that this could serve to put first born sons at a considerable disadvantage from embracing the Gospel since the whole family past and present is relying on him to perform the religious duties in the home.

Please pray that this lie would be exposed in the children growing up in Japan as well as the adults who carry this burden with them even now. Pray that the sons of Japan will become sons of the living God, and follow the Savior whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light. Pray that Arata and Luke, the young, eldest sons of the Collins and Rainer families (our personnel serving in Shizuoka) would come to saving faith at a young age that they may teach other young men that God is not pleased with burnt offerings but a broken and contrite heart of repentance and faith.

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This is the month when the Japanese celebrate the beauty of the cherry blossom trees and when spring begins to manifest itself all over the beautiful land of Japan. Flowers are blooming, the weather is getting warmer, once barren trees are being clothed again in green, and celebrations and festivals are being put on and attended in many cities across Japan.

One of the disappointing things the Rainers learned about the cherry blossoms is that the blooms last for about a week – only one week! – before the pink petals begin to snow down onto their eventual resting place. But isn’t that part of what makes these trees all the more awe-inspiring & beautiful? If they were always around, always in bloom, we may still recognize their beauty, but in some way, we would all take them much more for granted.

In the same way, our lives are like those cherry trees. A life is such a beautiful thing, such a blessing, and a human being is such a marvelous creation with the intricacies of sight, communication, feeling, soul, amd so many other miraculous aspects that make up man. But I think we often forget that our life is like a vapor (James 4:14) because we cannot appreciate the span of time that has come before us and we cannot imagine that there may be thousands of years behind us once we pass. In God’s economy, eternity, our lives are literally like the passing of the cherry blossom – a short span between budding, blooming, & blowing away.

The Japanese do not consider the after-life and what will happen to them when they die. Pray that as the Rainers share their lives with the Japanese that they will be able to communicate the Gospel in a meaningful way and that the Japanese will respond with repentance and faith. Pray that the Japanese will consider the brevity of their lives and look to the beautiful Savior whose glory blooms and radiates eternally. Pray that the Rainers will number their days, and seek to live every moment in Japan with the reality that though we live in the Spring of Christ, those all around us are perishing in the Winter of Judgment.

by David Rainer
http://davidrainer.blogspot.com/