Happy New Year. As we begin 2025, it is a good chance to reflect on the past year. After a very difficult 2023, the last year (2024) has been a much more positive experience for our staff team. We have recently employed three new staff, one to oversee General Administration (Naomi Tamanuki), one to assist with the Samurai Projects work (Misato Omori), and one to help with the Marunouchi Church Tokyo work (Andy Duncan). And so we now have two staff members serving in each of our four departments: 1) Marunouchi Office Groups (Thierry Richards, Akira Endo); 2) Samurai Projects (Makito Miyashita, Misato Omori); 3) Marunouchi Church Tokyo (Takaaki Hirano, Andy Duncan); 4) General Administration (Mari Tanaka, Naomi Tamanuki). We are thankful for the LORD’s provision in answer to our prayers and your prayers.
Prayer also ended up being one of the big themes at our recent “Inspire Marunouchi” Christmas Party for city-workers. On Wednesday 11th December, about 80 guests and 8 hosts gathered in the Marunouchi Building in front of Tokyo Station for this event. About a quarter to a third of the participants were not yet Christian. There was a fifteen-minute Christmas message by Kyle Runnels (Deloitte Tohmatsu, partner), speaking from Matthew 1:18-25 and the theme of God with us. There was also a fifteen-minute life testimony by Motonori Matsuzaki (UA Zensen, lawyer), focused on God with us in Matthew 1:23, and on the topic of prayer from John 16:23-24.
After each of these talks was a small group discussion time, followed by a Question + Answer time with the two speakers. This Q+A time showed people’s particular interest in the topics of the love of God the Father for his Son and his world, as well as the topic of prayer. There were thirteen small groups, each with two small group leaders, representing thirteen of the fifteen current Marunouchi Office Groups. There was plenty of mingling time at the event for people to chat freely and make new friendships, before the event ended with singing a Christmas Carol together, O Holy Night, with the meaning of the lyrics first being explained to us by Motokuni Kannari (Go Fluent, Senior Manager), before he led us in singing the carol together. The whole evening was a very encouraging time for people, with the gospel explained and friendships formed. Here is one of the comments I received by email at the end of the night: “What a great event (and fantastic speakers)! I had a real ‘buzz’ walking out of the room.” Please pray on for the Holy Spirit to keep working through the gospel seed which has been scattered, to bear fruit of thirty, sixty, a hundred times what was sown over the next weeks, months, years and decades.
On the 15th December, Marunouchi Church Tokyo (MCT) also had its Christmas service. It was an encouraging time, with the kids joining for the first 15 minutes for the Christmas story followed by a quiz and a children’s song, and a card which the children had made being presented to the man who was baptized in August (Taketo Kamiyama). Then the kids went to their room next door and Hirano-san preached from Isaiah 9, followed by a discussion time in small-groups and then a picnic in the Imperial Palace outer gardens after the service. 28 people attended, including 22 adults and 6 children. We are thankful to the LORD for helping us to meet monthly in the Marunouchi Building over 2024 and to develop a good, healthy and trusting relationship with the company who manages the venue. Hirano-san and I plan to meet with each of the church attendees in January and February 2025 in order to present a proposal for the next stage of this work, and to glean the wisdom of these gospel partners.
Finally, on an extremely sad note, the Samurai Projects (SPs) work has gone through one of its toughest times last term. Please read on for more about this, but one of the Samurai who began with us last year in April (Yu Furukawa, 41) had to stop the project at the end of the summer due to rapidly worsening health. She stopped working at her church in Kyoto, and returned to living with her parents in Osaka, from where she was admitted to hospital in September. Tragically, despite the best efforts of the doctors, Yu continued to lose weight, and it is with deep sadness that I share that Yu was taken to be with the LORD on Saturday 30th November. Makito Miyashita (SPs director), Mari Tanaka (General Admin staff) and I went to the funeral in Osaka on Wednesday 4th December. Naoki Tachibana, who is the pastor of Yu’s church in Kyoto, and somebody whom I have been mentoring monthly for five years, led the funeral service and preached the gospel wisely, lovingly and clearly to all of us listening, including the non-Christian family and relatives of Yu. We have included below both the email which Makito wrote to inform the other Samurai of Yu’s death, and also the full-script (translated into English) of Naoki Tachibana’s funeral sermon. We hope that these words will comfort you deeply as you reflect upon this incredibly sad and tragic loss. But also, we hope that these words will encourage you and strengthen your heart in the importance of the work which both we and you are doing with and for our gracious and wise Lord Jesus Christ, work whose impact will last for eternity, as will the life and impact of our sister Yu Furukawa.
