Here are our testimonies on how God answered our prayers!

1. Farmland

God provided a few different locations in our neighborhood for starting our own farm!

Our friend, who is also a great teacher in farming, happened to chat with his neighbor one day and found out that she was an owner of farmland located right behind our new house!

She was unable to take care of it after her husband passed away and had left it untouched ever since. So she allowed us to use it from that day on for free!! We could rent two more spots in our neighborhood a few weeks after that. We were blown away by God’s goodness and divine appointments!

2. A Team from Texas

We requested you guys last time to pray for teams to help us start up our home church. And God opened up a door for a team from “Sozo Church” in Texas to come visit!

Seven of the church members are planning to come this July. We already had a ZOOM meeting once with all the members; Some are students, and others are a cowgirl, a mom with 5 kids, a musician, etc…

They are so willing to help us with anything like working on the farm, helping at the cafe, going out for street outreach, and all. We felt as if we were about to catch a big wave of God on a surfboard after hearing them coming.

We can’t help but wait with a great expectation upon our miracle-working God to move mightily among us, saving many, reviving people’s faith in Him, and building His ecclesia.

3. Surprise Invitation

We were invited to a middle school as a guest speaker one day.

One of the guys we met in our cafe before is a teacher at that school and asked us to share with the students about our experiences in moving from outside Nagano and our personal thoughts on living in Ueda. Other people were also invited; one was from the office of the city administration, and another one was the middle school alumnus who is currently working as a farmer.

We all got to share our thoughts from different angles in this panel discussion. We couldn’t share about God straight with the group of students though, thankfully we were able to express our desire to start our church here and to come alongside the younger generation to support them in any way we could.

A writer from a local newspaper was also there and reported about this event in the paper the next day. Our neighbor stopped us, saying, “We saw you in the newspaper!!” We never expected this, so we know it was God who orchestrated this so that we could build better connections with the locals.

This was another experience that made us truly feel God’s hand was moving behind the scene and left us in awe of Him. We don’t know how else He will connect us with others in the community, but please pray that we could become open vessels for Him!

4. Our New Buddy

We became friends with an apple farmer before, and he sold us his old K-van for only ¥30,000 (about US$300)!

In Nagano almost all people own at least one vehicle because they need one to go anywhere around here. We’ve also had one and been going everywhere together, but we were just hoping to have another one to use our time effectively and go get things done individually. And God sure is a good God; He got us one so cheap!

The car, however, is quite rusty and needs significant repair work. But still we’re so thankful that we get to use it for our work on the farm! We have a Christian friend who has his own YouTube channel on car repair; According to him, we got a pretty good deal on it. He’s given us some “How-To” lessons on fixing cars, and we’ve been getting some new skills!!

5. Working Together as Christ’s Body

God has been giving us opportunities for us to connect with local churches in our community, and we have been invited regularly to speak at two of the churches; one church without a pastor and another one we go to as visitors. We stay busy with our own church planting and can’t really do much to help out, but we are asked to speak at these churches once a month.

Please keep them in your prayer also so that the hearts of some believers at these churches will be stirred up to step up to the plate to serve His body—His Church!

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