Friday, August 24, 2007

Newsletter August 24, 2007

WOW! How do I even begin to sum up all that we experienced on the road the last two weeks!?

We just returned from about two weeks on the road and it was an amazing trip! We made our way, 10 hours by car, up towards central Japan by car and stopped for the weekend to do ministry at one church in Toyohashi. The Sunday morning worship and Sunday evening concert were a huge blessings. We were so blessed to meet and get to know this wonderful church full of really strong believers. God is obviously at work in their church.

Then we made our way 5 more hours by car to Karuizawa, a popular summer vacation spot for the Tokyo area. There in Karuizawa, is a Christian conference center and we were blessed to be worship leaders for a missionary annual meeting there. We had a GREAT week! Karuizawa is supposed to be really cool temperature wise, in the summer, but it was pretty HOT this year. But we had an awesome time of worship and fellowship with the T.E.A.M. missionaries in Japan for almost a full week! What a GREAT mission, filled with incredibly faithful, awesome missionaries. We were sooooooo blessed!

Then we made our way back to Nagoya for 4 days of ministry with our friends Shinichiro and Shoko Saito at Hirabari Baptist Church! WOW, this was an action packed four days! We had morning and evening events EVERY day. From Asanagi and RaM's Voice concerts, to a "Let's Play in English" meeting, a child raising seminar and a cookout! We were so blessed to watch as the whole area Baptist association joined forces to make all those meetings possible. We even passed out flyers every morning at the local train station. In all, over the four days, 200 people total attended events at the church. WOW!!! MORE and MORE blessings!

Thank you for your continued prayers. We are back home and hoping to recover in the next few days! Don't forget to check out Hana's blog if you get a chance, she turned 3 years old on the 22nd! Can you believe she is already three? We can't believe how fast the years have flown! We are still so thankful for this precious daughter the Lord brought into our family!!! She did so well on the trip and had so much fun, she did NOT want to come home!

More news soon! Thanks for reading and praying.
With Love from HOT and HUMID Japan!
The Ayatsuka's