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Dear family and friends,
Greetings in the refreshing spring season!
Before leaving from our previous mission field, we delivered discipleship training and organized spiritual retreats for local churches. In one of the retreats, Nick particularly encouraged brothers to take up leadership roles in the family, not to be a dictator but be a protector and spiritual guardian of the family. We are very thankful and thrilled to learn from a church leader that some brothers committed to serve as spiritual guardians in their families and a Men’s Fellowship has been established for them to grow in Christ together. At the same time, Alpha Course is being held in the church to outreach and evangelize newcomers. Many families are involved and are eager to invite new friends to the events.
A couple, whom we mentioned in our newsletters before, dedicated to serve God for full-time ministry and responded to His calling a few years ago while they were in East Asia. They have been equipped at a seminary in the States in the past few years. We appreciate that many of you remember them and lift them up in prayers. This seminary student couple are going to graduate this May. We grabbed the opportunity to visit them in early February and are very grateful to stay with them for a few days. They shared with us heart-to-heart about their intercultural school lives, their dreams, their passion, their worries, their concerns, their excitement, and their joy in the Lord. Despite long-distance separation with their families in East Asia, it would be a privilege for them to gain some pastoral experience in North America. We pray with them together for God’s direction and provision to their future ministry. As their spiritual mentors for years, we are touched by their devoted and undivided hearts to follow our Lord Jesus Christ. We anticipate seeing how the Almighty God uses them to advance His Kingdom in the near future.
We are thankful to participate in debriefing and renewal sessions that provided us opportunity to reflect and interpret our past experiences in the field, as well as restore and refresh our mental and spiritual health for the next term of service. Meanwhile, we keep on visiting churches in Alberta and British Columbia these months for sharing ministries. We will have our ministry sharing in Ontario in June and will participate in the Triennial Conference in July. The last time we attended Triennial in person was in 2015. We look forward to meeting old and new friends, as well as NAB coworkers at Triennial in St. Paul.
Preparing to serve in Japan, we started to learn Japanese language online from a language school in Vancouver in February. In April, we got the opportunity to attend in-person classes in Edmonton. We are very excited to learn Japanese culture through learning its language. We have been enjoying the in-person course very much. Besides, we realized how limited our brains’ memory capacity is when acquiring a sea of vocabularies written in several sets of newly learned scripts. We humbly pray that God grants us wisdom and mercy to learn a new language at our age.
Due to some changes of ministry in Japan field, NAB’s partnership with another mission organization is necessary and is being undertaken to further the missions ministry there. We invite you to join us in prayer for God’s direction and provision to a mutually successful partnership.
Once again, thank you very much for lifting us up through your prayers and with all kinds of support.
With love and gratitude,