Our very first harvest season on the farm is now over. Finally!! And before we got to enjoy some time to just rest, we ended up
getting Covid and being sick in bed!!

COVID, WE HATE YOU!

We got Covid both of us at the same time at the end of September and became very sick with such a high fever. We stayed in bed for a couple of days; Our bodies were screaming in pain, giving us such a hard time to even sleep. Never would we have imagined that just walking to the bathroom felt like it took us forever to get there...! We had lost our taste buds and smell for a little while. Oh, how bland we felt all our meals were!! But praise God, He’s given them back little by little.
Looking back though, we had stayed very busy working on the farm and not been able to rest much ever since we moved here. So regardless of how sick we ended up becoming, we believe our bodies received much needed rest. Before we got sick with Covid, we had some symptoms of a possible trigger finger and our bodies were all sore due to our long hours of working on the farm. But thankfully we’ve felt those symptoms are all gone as God healed us of Covid!
After all, it was a great experience that we could walk through this painfully hard season together as a married couple.

OUR FIRST EXPERIENCE OF A HARVEST SEASON

“The harvest is great, but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37 NLT)— This is the very thing we faced in our experience working on the farm. The owner of the farm we work for grows 10,000 shares of zucchini plants.

They are prolific producers, and generally one plant continually produces 20 or more of it throughout the growing season. So this requires us to harvest them in the morning and evening. If we leave them untouched, they will soon be overgrown; It results in not meeting marketing standards. There are only 5-6 of us working on this farm, and we tackled this never-ending like harvest of zucchini plants for the last two months. It was sad but true that we couldn’t harvest all the crops with the limited
manpower. We could experience at first hand that farmers who manage a farm are responsible for judging how much to plant based on how many workers they’d have at the time of harvest. Without careful consideration, they could not only lose their crops they put so much time and effort into, but also their workers. God surely taught us valuable lessons in life.

GREAT UNCLES
We would love to share with you about some uncles we met here:

• our next-door neighbor

We were mowing our yard when he first spoke to us. He is a retired farmer who still grows tasty home-grown vegetables in his front yard! He comes to our place once every 2 to 3 days just to see if we are doing ok and gives us some of his fresh vegetables, such as egg plants, cucumbers, chili peppers, tomatoes, and you name it.

• Uncle Cowherd

He makes hay for his cows in the field right next to our zucchini farm. One day he was working to make hay bales and accidentally rolled one of them down to our farm! God does humorous things sometimes!! That was our first time meeting this “Uncle Cowherd”. From then on we often waved at him during work as he drove by us. He then pulled over one day and said, “You guys want some cucumbers?” and handed us an arm-full of cucumbers and tomatoes!! We went to see him a few days after just to thank him, then he gave us too many potatoes and green onions this time! He is such a down-to-earth kind of a guy with a tender heart.

• Uncle from the tractor driving course

We met him in the 4-day course we took to get a tractor driving license before. He is a super friendly guy with a “high-tech” skill; he often contacts us, using this communication app, LINE, widely used among young people in Japan! He thinks of us and texts us often saying things like, “Come and see us some time. We got some corn for you,” and “We have some edamame (soybeans) this time.” He works hard at a soba noodle factory and gave us many packs of noodles as well.

We just went through a crazy-busy season on the farm. But in the midst of all, God has never stopped encouraging us by bringing into our lives these amazing people, who are professional farmers, to remind us of the spirit of generous giving.

CAFE OPPORTUNITIES

We shared in our first newsletter that we got to open our pop-up cafe in a community event for the first time. From then on we’ve got many invites to do so at different occasions like in a flower arrangement class and in events held in various cities nearby Ueda. It was too bad though we got Covid and needed to turn those offers down. But God’s surely been connecting us with those event coordinators and other individuals who personally give us the opportunities to offer our coffee. Thank you for your prayers!
Everything is up in the air still, but we may be able to start our cafe only for weekends! There is this historical site called “Unno-juku”, in which we can still see how the city was like in the Edo Period (the Japanese historical time between 1603 and 1867). There is a spot open, and a manager of this site has been looking for someone who could open a cafe. This cafe is desired to be used to revitalize the region as a place where people gather. We are excited to meet the manager soon to discuss further on this matter. It would be so awesome if we can be the one to start the cafe. Please keep this in your prayers.

By the way, did we tell you the name of our cafe already?
It’s “Aquila Coffee” (pronounced [Ah-Khu-lah] in Japanese). Some of you may have easily guessed where the name is from! We’ll tell you more about it next time.

FUNDS FOR A COFFEE BEAN ROASTER

Great news for you! We’ve received about 95% of the funds to purchase a roaster! We never thought we could achieve our financial goal this fast! Now we’re in the process of contacting gas companies to get ready. We can’t thank God enough for all your generosity and support.
Now we’d like to tell you a little bit about why we dream of running a cafe like last time we shared with you why we are passionate about farming.
There are many reasons why we dream about having a cafe. But the simplest reason is that we ourselves love to go to cafes! When I (Takeshi) was ministering in Canada, we didn’t have our own church building and rented a place for our services. So we found our own place to get together to have our daily devotion. We basically met at a cafe most of the time. One cafe we were usually hanging out at was run by a Christian owner. He was always happy to see us there reading the Bible and praying together and gave us a free refill and things. Since then I’ve always had this desire of having a cafe in a church in the back of my mind.
I believe cafes have the potential to become a place to offer anyone opportunities to meet those he/she wouldn’t probably meet at any other places. A cafe space could be utilized to have various events, and even church gatherings unlike regular church buildings used specifically for weekly services.
I found an interesting church when I was studying in the U.S. The church was built on the strategic plan of using a cafe as a way to minister to people. That was when I saw a practical example of making use of a cafe as something more than just a place to get a cup of coffee. As they run their own cafe, they provide job opportunities there and reach out to their staff and customers. The building used for the cafe has other rooms for their church services. When we enter the building, we can easily find a bulletin board where anyone can have access to different information. The cafe itself is tightly connected to its community and provides people the opportunities to get information about church events and hear the gospel. It can also be a place for believers to have small group meetings and to create a safe place for people to receive help as well as to provide job opportunities, minister to people by using God’s given gifts, and equip believers, etc, etc... Numerous possibilities!
This is just a short version of why I’d love to open a cafe. Feel free to contact me if you want to hear more and/or if you have any questions!

WE ARE MOVING. AGAIN!!

Yes, you heard us right. We’re moving to a new place. We had been considering our current place as temporary housing ever since we moved to Nagano. So we feel we finally found a place to settle! A pastor friend of ours in Ueda introduced us to the owner of this place. What amazed us was that the house had previously been used as a house church because there was no church in that area. It had been left unused for the last couple of years since the previous owner of this house, an elderly married couple, passed away. When we went to check the house, we could find God’s word and Christian paintings hanging on the wall of its entrance and a piano in the living room which was possibly used for their fellowships. Right after we stepped into the house, we felt the house must have been filled by the prayers of His believers.
The current owner of the house lives outside Nagano. We talked with him on the phone a few times and received a decent offer to rent the place in the end, which was way lower than his first asking price. The house has a backyard where the elderly couple used to grow some vegetables. This would be perfect for us as well to start our small vegetable garden if we’re allowed to use it. And this house stands within easy access, which will enable us to have our future gatherings. We can’t wait to see what God will do!
We haven’t had a set date for moving in because there are tons of things to do beforehand like moving all the belongings left by the previous owner, renovating and all, but we are hoping to spend our first Christmas in Nagano in this house!

PODCAST

We just started a podcast! You can listen to it on Spotify. We plan to release a new episode hopefully every week, sharing weekly reflections on our lives and introducing our coffee and things! It’s just nothing but our friendly chit- chat! So, stay tuned!

Prayer Requests

1 The young family of three: Continue to pray for this family for a God’s great personal encounter and for their salvation;
2 A friend of ours who’s been led to minister with us: Pray for God’s open doors and favor to move to Ueda;
3 Our Cafe on weekends: Pray that God will work things out for us to open our cafe in the
historical site (Unno-juku), and through running this cafe we’d be able to start building up relationships with people in the community;
4 Moving: Pray for a smooth transition to our new place, and that God will make this
house a great place for us to host His presence to bring more people back into His House!

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Podcast: Tak&Chee Journey
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