We arrived in Osaka November 2013, and with the help of the church planters already here, we moved into a quaint apartment right in the heart of the second largest city in Japan. We were eager to begin serving at our new home church, Mustard Seed Christian Church, right away, with Matt immediately joining the worship band and Jessica contributing to creative projects currently in process. But ministry was not our only big priority, as we started full-time language school shortly after arriving. Having had very little language learning time prior to our move, school proved to be as difficult as everyone promised. We may or may not have been warned by other church planters who went through the same process that: “we will want to die, and we might question our faith.” Yikes! We studied, prayed, cried, failed, laughed, succeeded and scraped by (not in that order perhaps), and somehow survived one-year of Japanese Language School, taught to us 100% in Japanese of course. Still having a lot to learn, for 2015 we met one-on-one with private tutors to help us continue to advance in the hopes of one day being highly conversational. Prayers always appreciated for this!

 

God has been so incredibly faithful. He is there with us every morning when we rise and we feel His presence and see Him working around us, and when we’re really lucky, even through us. God clearly loves using the ill-equipped and weak to show that the glory only belongs to Him, and we have been happy to volunteer on behalf of this demographic. For the greater first half of 2014 our most reoccurring feeling was that of uselessness. We weren’t good at anything here—barely able to figure out how to pay our bills and find our way home via subways. Forget being able to actually be a contributing member of society here, we were just trying to be a functioning one. But we relied on

much wise counsel from our mentors, family, friends, and our team here, and leaned heavily on God and one another, embracing the fact that, yeah, we were pretty much useless, and it was time we accepted it with joy. Now when God uses us, we truly know it’s not because of anything good we’re contributing, only because He is good and we are here. A painful, humbling process at times, but so freeing and hopeful now. 

 

As for our day-to-day ministry since we’ve been here, the emotional roller coaster has had far fewer surprise up-side-down loops than our language learning or our “where does my worth come from” inner crisis. Actually, it’s been down-right amazing. If you haven’t already gotten a chance to see our Living & Doing Ministry in Japan Video or our Year One in Japan Video, you can check them out on our Videos page. They really sum up the exciting and beautiful things we’ve miraculously seen God’s hand in, something we would never have been able to do without the graciousness of our many generous and thoughtful mission-minded financial supporters. You are so good. God is so good!