One thing leads to another...

We have one boy at the local primary school. He has a girl in his class called H chan. Alistair goes to one of the local kindergartens and H chan's sister K chan is in his class. What are the chances our two and their two being in the same class in a kindergarten of 350 and a school of 250? Not long after we moved to Hiragishi Lorna met the two sisters in a park. We then met the mother on several occasions at school. The family happened also to be sitting near us at the school sports day last May. At Christmas time K chan came round to Alistair's Christmas party. This year in conversation with Lorna, the girls' mother mentioned wanting to send her girls to English classes. Lorna said she was thinking of starting classes but needed a place to hold them. A couple of days later the girls' mother said she knew of a possible place. Her husband works in a facility which helps disabled people and they have another building on the main road in our area which might be available for use. Lorna went to see it and it was the husband who showed her round. They have agreed in principle for Lorna to use the place but we're waiting for final confirmation. Are all of these conversations and meetings just co-incidences? Of course not. God is at work. And maybe this is a family in whose lives he is already beginning to work.

A 'bazaar' incident

A couple of days ago a lady was passing by our house when we were outside so we said hello. She seemed a little taken aback. Then we made another comment. She almost fell over with shock that we could even speak Japanese! We told her why we were here and that we had just started a new church. After more expressions of admiration for our (very basic) Japanese and a few bows, she was on her way. Today the postman was at the door and just at the moment she passed again! This time she had something to ask. Does our church hold a bazaar?! Well, we don't but many churches here do. She has lots of clothes she would like to donate! With a bit of quick thinking, Lorna said that we know of other churches in the area and we would ask around. God surely has been opening up contacts in this area in some strange ways. Maybe we should be planning a bazaar for next year! The lady didn't give her phone number but Lorna said to come back round some time and we'd let her know what we can do about her offer to give us the clothes. All in a day's work!

What do you do?

It's always good to have encouragements. Yesterday a lady who lives a number of doors away from us passed our house while David was watering the plants outside. After comments on how the plants looked, we had a conversation about why we were here and what we were doing. It was a great opportunity to share about the new church. This afternoon we were out in a park and two 9 year old girls came across to chat - and to practise their English. We chatted away about the usual things and then one asked, 'Why have you come to Japan?' Knowing that many children don't know what 'church' is, we asked if they had ever seen a cross on a building. They knew about that. And we could say that we were here to tell people about Jesus. As we look towards starting informal worship services next month, we were wondering the other day whether news about that would spread by word of mouth. Great that we had these opportunities.