Drews (Japan) Newsletter 10-09
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Transcript of Drews (Japan) Newsletter 10-09
DDrreewwss’’ JJOOUURRNNEEYY iinn JJAAPPAANN
VOLUME # 1ISSUE # 1
CCSI J-Track English Class.
SEPTEMBER 2010
BOB & SHARON DREWS
6-23-9 Chiharadai Minami
Ichihara-shi, Chiba-ken, Japan 290-0142
MTW Chiba/Tokyo Team Email:
[email protected] Phone:
080-4335-5802
Send donations to: Mission to the World
P.O. Box 116284
Atlanta, GA 30368-6284 Mark Checks for: 11846
Summary Today I am working at home with the windows and shoji doors open. Last
night we slept without air conditioning for the first time since June. The rice
harvest in the fields behind our neighborhood is in. All this is to remind us
that we’ve been in Japan for six months, now, and this will be our first
newsletter. Gomenasai! Sorry!
Recognizing you are busy, I’ll briefly summarize here. If you can, please
continue reading on the following pages. We arrived in early March to bitter
cold and the sharing of our small house with a family of five and a single guy.
Good introduction to mission life! In rapid succession, we experienced
culture shock, ministry engagement, burnout, and recovery. We have made
many friends here, and believe we are in the place we should be. We are
helping with team care, Japanese ministry, team operations, and building
relationships. Please see the next page for prayer requests.
Thank You! We have been humbled by many who tell us you are praying for us and many
who are faithfully supporting us. You are awesome! Japan missions is slow,
but with your continued prayer and support, we can contribute to the ongoing
work here. We hope you will continue to pray for us, and many will come join
the work.
“FAQ”
1. Do you like Japanese food?
a. Yes!
2. Do you like nato
(fermented bean curd)?
a. Yes!
3. Do you like Japan?
a. はい!
Contents:
• Arrival/Room mates/Life in Japan
• Illiteracy
• Ministry
• Team
• FAQ
ext and place photo here.
Lunch after Worship-Megumi no mori
church Kokubunjidai
BOB & SHARON DREWS
6-23-9 Chiharadai Minami
Ichihara-shi, Chiba-ken, Japan 290-0142
MTW Chiba/Tokyo Team Email:
[email protected] Phone:
080-4335-5802
Send donations to: Mission to the World
P.O. Box 116284
Atlanta, GA 30368-6284 Mark Checks for: 11846
Life in Japan
Baptism at Toke
VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1
SEPTEMBER 2010
Arrival/Roommates/Life As many of you know, we arrived in March to bitter cold and a crowded house. We shared
it with Isaac Knopp, a two year worker from Staunton, Va, and with Abi & Roger Lowther, a
fabulous, musically gifted family with three rambunctious boys. Lowthers moved out after
about 3 weeks, part of which we spent watching the boys while they celebrated their 10th
wedding anniversary. Abi, especially, during our whirlwind arrival time, helped teach us
how to shop and how to find our way around. Abi & Roger have moved to Tokyo now to
help with the Grace City Church Tokyo plant and outreach to the arts community of Tokyo.
Here’s a list of the rest of our fabulous roommates: Brent Kooi (now in his own digs),
Joshua Kipp, Caleb Crawford, Jenn Veldhuyzen and J. Marty Cope. Brent now seems to
have succeeded us as the duty hotel.
We live in a two-story “western” Japanese house in Chiharadai, a modern suburb of Chiba.
The house is comfortable and very pleasant. It is not insulated, we have individual heat
pumps for heating/cooling, so only the room we occupy is cooled. The summer has been
very hot. I ride my bicycle about 20 minutes each way to Oyumino Chapel where I have an
office.
Illiteracy A fact of life for us here is our illiteracy. This is quite a shock, after having been literate in the US (& other countries!) for 55 years. Japan uses three character sets: Hiragana, Katakana (for foreign word sounds), and Kanj. It was a shock to walk through stores seeing sign after sign, and label after label we were utterly unable to read. Similarly, traffic signs and advertising signs were completely unintelligible. Illiteracy can be considered a symptom of culture shock. Sharon & I have experienced it differently, but both have it. Mine was characterized by frustration at not being able to find my way around, fear of getting irretrievably lost, and being stressed by the noisy chaos in Japanese stores. Each store is filled with music, ritual greetings, and blaring advertisements. It took me (Bob) some weeks to build filters for all that, and to find my way around.
We’ve never thought of
ourselves as saints-we
always think we are
sinners
(Japanese Church
member at Helping
Others Change class)
BOB & SHARON DREWS
6-23-9 Chiharadai Minami
Ichihara-shi, Chiba-ken, Japan 290-0142
MTW Chiba/Tokyo Team Email:
[email protected] Phone:
080-4335-5802
Send donations to: Mission to the World
P.O. Box 116284
Atlanta, GA 30368-6284 Mark Checks for: 11846
Life & Ministry
VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1
SEPTEMBER 2010
• For Japan:
o Growing openness to the gospel o Ministers, Elders, Leaders o Gospel Centeredness
• For Team: o Good relationships o Trust in Christ and one another o Lots of help for CCSI o More English Teachers o A long-term team treasurer o Trust and satisfaction in Christ during
the long, slow process of evangelizing in
Japan.
• For Sharon & Bob o For gospel centeredness in our work,
marriage, and prayer life. o Bob’s father is gravely ill – pray for his
peace and our ability to serve him and
our family from afar, and for Bob’s
sister who is primary care-giver. o That our service here would bear gospel
fruit. o That we would be good students of
Japan, and truly serve this country.
Prayer Requests
Illiteracy (cont) Sharon experienced the culture shock more in terms of our
unrelenting schedule and a sense of our life being out of
control. We found ourselves hosting three group meals per
week, teaching at CCSI, hosting a revolving door of
roommates, and running back and forth to the airport. It took
us some time & help from friends to recognize that we needed
to pace ourselves better, take time for breathers, and
recognize our limitations. Still an ongoing task!
We are studying Japanese (にほんご) with two classes per
month. Although both of us are horrible students, we feel this
is an important way to help understand Japan and its culture.
We will never be fluent, but hope we can be able to
communicate at a very basic level, and respect our host
country.
Something of a graduation exercise for us was getting my
Japanese Driver’s License. My US license was expiring, so
was under a time crunch. By God’s grace, I was able to pass
on my second try—not easy here. Sharon is trying for hers on
27 September.
Culture shock tends to come in waves, it seems, and go on
for some time, so we will need continued prayer, grace, and
wisdom as we adapt.
Ministry When we arrived, we determined our first priority should be
caring for the short-term team members serving at CCSI and
in college ministry. Sharon built an especially warm
relationship with one of our interns. We’ve hosted regular
team dinners, established a “small group” meeting for short
term team members, and continued a team-men’s bi-weekly
get together.
Team Sharon recently commented: “I love my team”. This was at a low point for us, when several team members stepped in to help with team activities we had volunteered for. We have an international team, with participants from Australia, Korea and the United States as well as many Japanese partners. We are a “church planting team”, so everything we do supports that. Primary outreach activities include “Open House” English classes, English and Japanese Bible Studies, college ministry, supporting worship activities, CCSI and simply being part of the Japanese churches here. We also sponsor and organize visiting teams which conduct “English Camps”, help with college ministry, conduct musical outreach, and many other activities to make friends for us here in Japan. On average, it takes four years after initial contact to profession of faith, so it takes many hours of individual discipleship to bear
fruit. Pray for laborers for the harvest.
Ministry Activities in Japan
VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1
SEPTEMBER 2010
Ministry Here’s a list of our primary areas of work:
• Caring for short term team members • Hospitality! Hospitality! Food! • Teaching Helping Others Change • Helping logistics/organization for short term teams • Coordinating vision and intern visits • Helping oversee team operations
(planning/logistics/finance) • Recruiting—mostly email contact with potential
help • Occasional preaching (about once a month) • Teaching English to Japanese • Learning/learning/learning!
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