service project at Mrs. Hatada's

Mrs. Hatada (left) is a widow who started attending

Agape about six months ago after first attending Mr. Kaneda's Christian funeral. She has been studying English for years with a number of different missionaries as her teachers. Mr. Kaneda was a relative of her former teacher so she attended the funeral. She was very moved by the songs and the message of hope. She is becoming more and more interested in Christians and what motivates them, etc. After last week's typhoon, I learned that there was some damage to a wooden gate at her house. Repair would involve some woodwork and some painting.

Saori holding the broken gate

I decided to ask the young adults if they would be interested

in helping out as a way to show Christ's love in a practical way

to Mrs. H. We picked yesterday, a national holiday to go and

help her, but some that wanted to go were unable to because

of previous plans. The Lord gave us beautiful weather with the sun shining brightly, warm temperatures, and a bit of a breeze! At first, Mrs. H. was very hesitant to accept volunteer help, but as she saw how eager and skilled we (Ben and Josiah) were. she gradually let us help with several projects. Even her granddaughter, Ami, who was visiting for the day pitched in and helped by holding things. Ami has visited Sunday School several times when visiting her Grandma and we hope she'll come back again. At the end of the day, she served everyone curry rice. She was so appreciative of the help, but more so, the fellowship of having everyone there for the day, working together and then sharing a meal together. She has a lovely house and garden but it requires a lot of upkeep for just one woman. She was particularly pleased that Ben and Josiah were able to reuse some of the original wood when they repaired the gate and recreate it in the same style. Her late husband had made the original gate and it holds many memories for her. Hopefully, the new memories of her church friends coming to help her fix things up will also stay with her for a very long time. If you click on the link above, you can see more pictures from our day. Saori Wada, pictured at left with the broken gate, has been actively participating in church and music, even though she is now a high school senior and is preparing for the huge college entrance exams. Pray for Saori as she studies hard and works toward entering college in the spring. Pray that God will give many more opportunities to minister to our contacts/believers in practical ways. Another exciting result of this wonderful day is that we learned that Mrs. Hatada has many woodworking tools that had belonged to her husband and we will be welcome to use the tools in the future for other projects!!

If you'd like to see more pictures, click on the title above.

fixing the 2nd floor deck boards

Ami helping out with the gate repair

walking the talk

Josiah, Manaka and Kristin on an outing that had to include Starbucks, naturally.
Manaka taking a break during music time at Agape!

Last time I wrote I promised you another Manga Messiah story. In late August, Josiah met a college student whose name is Manaka through mutual friends. Manaka is a voice major (soprano) at a local women's college that has a small connection to Christianity. They have a type of chapel a couple of times per week and also offer "Bible" as a course. Even after taking the course, most of the students have very little interest in what it means to be a Christian. However, Manaka was different. She developed a greater interest in what the Bible had to say and was very intrigued when she met several young adult Christian missionaries. (Ben and Josiah, and eventually Kristin). Because of Manaka's interest in music, she enjoyed spending time with them and was curious about how unusual they seemed. In September, Manaka started coming to our music nights and bringing along her beautiful soprano voice as well as her flute. Soon after, she was attending church almost every Sunday. Meanwhile, she was having many long conversations with the other young adults. Josiah gave her a copy of Manga Messiah to read to help answer some of her questions. She was very moved and continued asking questions. One night she asked the best question of all to Josiah, (over the phone actually), "So how exactly does one become a Christian?" Josiah had the privilege of answering her question and then later that evening, leading her in a prayer as she prayed to receive Christ.

We are enjoying Manaka's presence as part of the young adults who are doing much of the worship leading at Agape. While she started out not knowing any of the songs, she has picked them up quickly, thanks to her music background. Also, while music is a big part of their hanging out together, the "group" which now numbers 7 including Kathy who tags along on occasion, also enjoys many other activities, particularly on Sunday afternoons after church.

Today a woman from the neighborhood decided to visit our church. She was probably in her 40's and hasn't really had much contact with Christianity since her Kindergarten days when she heard some Bible stories at her church school. When she introduced herself as someone who has frequently walked past the church building and finally decided to try us out, she also explained that she has a very "troubled heart" and she thought that going to church might help her. We still don't know exactly what all is happening with her, but we hope she'll come back. A very exciting thing is that after the service, she told me that she had enjoyed the music so much; in particular, how open it was, and how she felt free to sing along, even though she didn't know any of the songs. But the extra special thing was that she was very touched particularly by Manaka playing the flute. How cool is that! Even though Manaka is just a baby Christian, God is already using her to touch others through her music. Please pray for Mrs. Watanabe, especially that through the ministry of music and the Word, she will learn how to cast her burden on the Lord. Pray also for Manaka as she is preparing about 10 very difficult songs for her senior recital which is coming up October 21st at her university. The following Saturday, Manaka will also be singing for our Agape Cafe special event, "Night of the Arts". More on that to come.... There seems to be so many exciting things that I want to write about, but I'll just have to take them one at a time. God is definitely doing a "new thing" at Agape, something so fresh and unexpected and we are so excited to be a part of it.