Kojima Mission News
January 2007
Brent and Sandy Rogers2-17-702 Ekimae Kojima, Kurashiki 711-0921 Japan
Winter English Conversation Bible Study Project.
For the first time, we are doing this in the winter. New Year’s is the busiest season of the year. Not only is there the traditional shrine visit, but housewives have to do a major house-cleaning, and cook or buy a special meal, and do lots of entertaining. It is a big time for visiting grandparents and almost every hobby or club, group or class, will have a year-end party.
Even as recent as ten years ago, retailers closed two or three days for the New Year, but now that is less common. And it is a busy time for companies and workers. There is a huge amount of Christmas decorating done. The traditional Japanese Christmas food is fried chicken with Christmas cake, usually decorated with strawberries, for dessert.
All the activity, and perhaps just the change from summer, is cutting into the response to our ads for people to read the Bible this year with the team from Chico, coming for their fourth time from California. We have room for about twice the 40 Readers who are signed up.
However, this year, we were also hoping to “go deeper” with returning, especially continuing, Readers. However, we do not really know how to go deeper with our Readers, so we need your prayers for a lot of wisdom. I
LOOKING BACK AT 2006
The year brought us many changes. Our English school, LOGOS, started the year with Elizabeth Ellis, Jackie Reed, and Brent as teachers. Now the teachers are Heather Ditzer and Brent. One other teacher both came and left in 2006. The Ellis family is in Atlanta, wehre Elizabeth is in law school. Jackie is back in Florida, working at a pre-school.
Heather has been a great asset to both school and church. We are both teaching a load and a half until we get a new teacher. Know anyone?
Also new to the church is David Curry, who teaches junior high English for the city of Kurashiki. Both David and Heather are good with people and very helpful to us. We hope they can be here a long time.
In November Brent and Sandy traveled to Tachikawa up in Tokyo for the Area- wide fellowship. Brent spoke about the work and the need in Kojima. We feel that the brethren are cheering us on and will keep us in mind as workers become available.
It is our constant prayer that God will send us a Japanese evangelist, or at least a Japanese person with a heart for church planting or evangelism.
Social Conditions
Please pray for Shun, a boy at the Jr. hi where David teaches. He is one of many troubled boys these days. 2006 was another year where student suicides were in the headlines a lot. To me, suicide is a pretty natural result when students are taught that they are a random result of billions of random accidents. Then government tries to get schools to put on a push to teach students the value of life. I am afraid it is doomed to fail unless a lot of other things change first.
For example: A drunken elementary school vice-principal gropes a woman at a taxi stand and the response by the board of education is to promise to “send out explicit memos to make sure this never happens again”. About 100 government officials also committed suicide this year. One principal committed suicide to take responsibility for a student suicide.
One of our friends was on her way to one of our activities when she noticed her neighbor’s child crying. The young mother had left her small child at home with just juice and snacks. Wakako stayed to make sure he was okay.
There have been at least two recent cases in Japan of grotesque murders by family members, where the bodies are cut up.
Hoping for Joy
Reading in Psalms, I noticed again that the guy going around weeping with his bag of seed will be able to rejoice in the morning. We pray for that morning to come. We want the Lord to build His church here, because a little later, it says, Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who work early and late to build it. We read this verse on Sunday morning Dec 31 and it also appeared on two New Year’s cards we got on Monday.
We are both making good progress in language skills. Of course, it continues to be frustrating as each advance helps us realize how much there is to know.
Family
We still need a lot of prayers for our kids. Rachel is enjoying motherhood, but is not seeking the Lord. As of this moment, her house is freezing due to the power outage in Springfield.
I know this sounds fishy, but Tim claims to have a job working at night at a bank. He likes the work better than phone-calling for donations to MADD.
We are extremely grateful that Eddie found a good place for Brent’s dad to be in assisted living in Jacksonville, not too far from Eddie’s. Sandy’s mom is still very healthy, for which we are also grateful.
We are now enjoying the visit by Priscilla, “Prisy”, from India by way of New Zealand. She is 17, about the age her mother, Nahomi, was when we knew her in Bangalore, India a bunch of years ago.
Here , for your prayers, and without commas, are the first names of most of the current group of Readers in the “Shall We Talk “ project.
Takahiro Yoshie Yoko Aoi Yuka Naoko Sachiko Suzuko Akemi Sachiko Maka Yoshiko Sumiko Hisae Mika Kumi Yukiko Yukari Kazume Mari Michan Mihoko Chikako Noriko Kazuko Rumi Nobuko Ayako Yoshiko Wakako Masako Aya Emi Fumi Miho Atsuko Kyoko Machiko Misuzu Yukari Yokoba Izumi Misato
1.
Praise God from whom all blessing flow!!
Brent and Sandy
brentwrogers.com