Dear friends and family in Christ, Praise God that the humidity and temperature is finally decreasing and that I survived my first whole summer here in Japan!! (it actually wasn't that bad!!) As you may have noticed, I'm changing up my updates to include this mail chimp update as well as on my website! I'll try to keep things short here and maybe go more in detail on my website, if I ever need to. But anyways, in August, we were really blessed and encouraged by a short term team that came to help us for a week. They were from Disciple Community Church in Irvine, California and right when they stepped off the plane, they got to work (or we put them to work hah!) They did soo many things, including a concert, teaching english, putting on a bbq and tiramisu class, etc.! God was really working through this team and He blessed all of us by having so many people come to the events and eventually to church on Sunday (we had over 50!). They even created a mini documentary of their trip, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/o5fMl3f1wmY
September was a little crazy for us because Kevin left to America for two Sundays and the first Sunday, Ethan got food poisoning. However, through God's providence and sovereignty, we had a guest speaker lined up that day and God gave me a sense of peace and confidence knowing that He was with me (Mt 28:20). We didn't need Kevin because we have Jesus!...(but we do need him, he's our head pastor haha! but Jesus is the Head!) Anyways, I also finished Kevin's ad hoc sermon preparation assignments so I'll be giving a sermon in our next series in Galatians!! (whaaa!? Crazy!) So yeah, please pray for me! I'm both nervous yet excited to be preaching the Gospel to those that have never heard it!! Thank you soo much for your prayers and support! I have truly been encouraged and blessed of this opportunity this past year thanks to you all! God continues to give me his strength and energy and I feel excited for this next year. Please continue to pray for us! - Reo (aka Dale, sneaky, sneaky-d, lobes, etc.)