A Report From Sunday, September 8

Thank you for praying for the special evangelism opportunity we had this past Sunday at Bethel Baptist Church in Iwatsuki, Japan. Pastor Joe Mita asked me to teach on "A Christian View of Life and Death" for the morning worship service. The Scripture passage I used was Jesus' story about Lazarus and the rich man, a story that contrasts significantly with beliefs and fears underlying Buddhism. I'll try to write more about these contrasts in a future post.

When I first wrote this post, I was able to include more details about our day. If you would like to know more about how the Lord blessed, please write to me at my Hamilton Hills email address or make a comment below. Suffice it to summarize for now that we had a good day and the Lord is working!

We are very excited that one of our students has decided she would like to be baptized. This is such a significant decision here in Japan. There are so few Christians, so when believers declare themselves in this way, they are risking relationships that they might otherwise have with friends and family. This reminds me of Jesus' words in Matthew 19:29: "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life."

The student desiring to be baptized has several non-Christian family members she has asked to attend. Earlier this morning, a few of us spoke to some non-Christian friends of SYME and also invited them to witness the baptism. They are some people who do business with us locally. They are very interested in coming. Their business might prevent both husband and wife from coming; we'll see. Please pray for the Lord to use the student's baptism to honor the Lord and uplift his name.

By the way, we finally found a place to do the baptism. It will be in a river running through a nearby park. The source of the river is run-off from Mt. Asama, the mountain/volcano we see on clear days. The water is clean, but very cold. I checked it yesterday. We hope to post the student's testimony and some video afterwards. The date is set for September 22.

Please pray for the Lord to use the baptism in the hearts of the rest of our students, especially those who are not Christians...yet!