japan - updates

Noyuri in Nagoya:

Hello my friends!!!

How are you all?   Here is my apology for not being great at keeping in touch with you in the last few months. I hope you are doing well.

I saw new Winchester Family Church website the other day!  It looked so good. I loved seeing loads of cool pictures flashing on the top and side of the pages.   I was so amazed to see how God has increased and developed ministries in the church.  I'd love to pop over the Art Cafe next time i come to see you.  Well done for everyone who have been working on it so hard!   I hope that we can beat you by a cooler website though!!

In GraceCity Church, we had an exciting time in the last few weeks.   In the last email, I might have mentioned about Soft Opening which we had on Sun 25th May.   We decided to have 2 open days, one is Soft Opening when we can start inviting our friends who want to come along to the church, and Public Opening sometime in this summer when the church will be publicly launched and advertised.
Since the Soft Opening Day, one guy called Yuichi has started coming to our meeting every Sunday.   He is a student of one of our English teachers, and really keen to find out about what to have a good foundation of the life = Jesus.   It is really exciting to be a real church which reaches out to non Christians!   At the moment, we are planning to start Alpha, Marriage Course and Parenting Course.

Another exciting news was that we welcomed a young couple called Luke & Anna from Birmingham as our new team members last Sunday!   They are going to teach English to young kids while they are helping the church plant.
We felt it was such a refreshing experience to have new people around after 10 months and it has given a new dynamic to our church.   They are friendly nice couple, so it'll be great to get to know them more.   After the service, we met up with our friends from another church for lunch and had a great time.

We are also expecting to have another team member to arrive in July.  He's called Tim from Bedford, and he is now taking TEFL Course to be qualified as an English teacher.  However, he has a complication with his teaching job in Nagoya, and still waiting for a new job vacancy.  He has already booked a flight and we are praying that he will have a job before he comes out!

James Fraser in South Africa seems to be doing well, but we are still waiting for an update of his last text result.
If i hear from them, i will let you know.

I am busy as usual but doing well.  Feeling so much more at home in this city even compared to a few months ago, and more confident in my two jobs.  I'm so glad to get over my first 6 months which was full of excitements, loneliness, panic and culture shock!  Now I feel more normal and am able to manage things like work, day to day life, friendship, relationship, and the church a bit better than before.
The only thing I am so disappointed is that I can't make it to the Brighton Conference this summer because it is very hard to take a time off work from my restaurant... I have been so looking forward to eating English sausages and chocolate fudge cakes, sitting on the Cathedral ground, shopping in West Quay, AND of course seeing you all and worshiping God together!  But I know that God has his timing for everything, and I will be able to come over to you in his perfect timing.

Finally could you please pray
- That God will meet us powerfully in our Sunday meetings and He will help us to grow in faith more and more
- That He will keep touching Yuichi and our non Christian friends' hearts and they will receive Christ
- For wisdom for our church life - kids ministry, worship (we need more songs!), bilingual service and administration, new venue, Alpha, Marriage Course, Parenting Course
- For Luke & Anna that they will settle down quickly, enjoy their jobs, make progress in their Japanese quickly, and God will use them mightly
- For health and safety (no more stabbing!, protection from a huge earthquake which we are expecting in our region)

Thank you so much!!
It'll be lovely to hear from you soon too!

Psalm 84

Lots n lots of love
Noyu xxx