Be my witnesses...

When you come to a new land as a missionary, there is much to learn. Language is a top priority at the beginning. Then there is the culture. The ways of doing things. The customs. The food. The list could go on and on. We have now been here almost twelve years and are still learning - every day! Last year we moved to this area to start a new church. And of course that does not happen in a vacuum. We live among a community of people, in a particular setting, with a history and local traditions. One part of that setting is the religious aspect. We have mentioned before that our house is opposite a huge graveyard. Hiragishi was once on the suburbs of Sapporo so it was a good place to site the resting place for the dead as well as house the Sapporo crematorium (which is now our local swimming pool!) There are several funeral halls round about where we live. There is a large Buddhist temple nearby and a smaller one just along the road from our house. On the main street around ten minutes walk from where we live is a large building known to everyone in the area, home to what is called the PL (Perfect Liberty) Church, which has nothing at all to do with church and is one of the many new religions in this country. That is our context. And that makes it hard to make headway here. Yet it also points to the necessity of there being a witness to Jesus in this area. In subsequent blogs, we will share a little more about the religious context in which we find ourselves and the challenges that presents.