Updates on the life and ministry of the Pfeil family - missionaries in Japan with MTW. We have recently moved to Tokyo to support Grace City Church Tokyo, and look forward to helping start the next Tokyo church-plant.
Three bikes, a scooter, 5 kids, and dog!
Here we have Calvin chasing our Japanese neighbor's dog across several lawns with his lawnmower!
Little Yuri was sweet to push Calvin around on her bike (brought over all the way from Japan!)
Riko (Olivia's age) shows off her moves on her bike. Olivia can't wait to "catch up" to her level!
Here are a few photos of Sarah and I leading the Sunday School time at Christ Presbyterian Church.
We enjoy the "tag team" approach, taking turns telling stories from our past 4 years in Japan. The best part about it is sneaking a peak at my cute wife while feigning thirst and taking a slow drink of water. :)
The husband works for Honda and they will be in the States for up to 4 years. We know exactly how that feels, haveing just returned from 4 years in Japan!
They speak very little English, which gives us a great opportunity to keep up our Japanese! What an unexpected blessing!
They have 2 girls very similar in age to Olivia & Annabella. We have fun playing outside on nice days. Please pray for us as we seek to build our friendship in the months ahead.
I met the Dad and his 2 girls at the park back in October. They soon started coming to Oyumino Kids bilingual kids program on Sunday mornings.
When all the kids started practicing for the Christmas program in November, the Konishi kids got excited and kept coming regularly. For Christmas worship on Dec 20, the family stayed for worship for the first time!
They have continued attending Oyumino Alive Church regularly, even after we left for America. Please pray with us that through the community of Japanese and missionary believers at Oyumino Alive, they would come to know God as their Creator and Heavenly Father!
We have a diverse congregation primarily composed of Japanese, but also including Filipino, Korean, African, and American members. Our Sunday morning worship is bilingual (Japanese & English) and has attracted a number of Japanese families with overseas experience.
The last 2 Sundays in Japan, church members stayed after to make special hand-made gifts for our supporters in America. We were blessed by their efforts - plus we had lots of fun fellowshipping together.
We had a community dinner at the church building our last night and we were blessed to have some of our non-Christian Japanese friends join in - and get to know the local community of Japanese believers as well!
I had the opportunity to share about God's faithfulness to us in our trials, and the hope that we have in Christ! It was such a special night together with these dear friends. May God Continue to bless and guide Oyumino Alive Church ... for His Glory!
This is Kakeru, our good friend who loves to play with Calvin.
Calvin charming our friends Yukko and Saki.
Here is our good friend Keisuke. He grew up in Japan but goes to college in America. He was back in Japan for winter break and it was great to have him join in our last Home Party before we headed off to America.
We had some serious time of sharing that was very meaningful
A few people left early, but this shows most of the people who were there. We felt very "appreciated" and encouraged that night. We can't wait to get back to Japan to continue in our journey with these students.
This photo includes Matt & Carly (new long-term MTW missionaries in Japan), Isaac (finishing up his 2-year term), and Yukko (Japanese national staff) who will be continuing in relationship with the many Japanese students involved with Crossway. Please pray for them!
We were blessed to have a number of men help us load our truck. It took 4 trips in this little Toyota truck with a canvas cover. Several friends from church, as well as friends from the neighborhood also helped.
After all the big stuff got moved out, we still had work to do, packing up all our luggage and boxes to take on the plane.
At the airport, we had the help of 6 college students who not only honored us by coming all the way to the airport to say goodbye, but helped us roll our 6(!) airport carts up to the checkout counter.
Here is the whole group who came to send us off. We were moved by their commitment to come all the way to the airport (~$18 train fare) to show their appreciation. Pray for these 6 students who will all become college Seniors during the year we are gone. Pray that they will remain in relationship with other missionaries and Japanese Christians.
We were jam-packed in (it was quite hard for some people to get out for seconds!) and we eventually took down the folding tables and spread out on the floor for games and fellowship.
9 of those attending are not yet believers, and it was good to share about what we each were thankful for. It was a meaningful time, and several people became emotional. It was encouraging to see the growing trust level in our community
Here is most of the group from that night. Please be praying for the many students who had been exposed to the truth of the Gospel, but do not yet believe.
It has been a great blessing to work together with Dedachi-san, our Japanese Pastor. When I lead the worship service in English, he translates into Japanese, and when he leads in Japanese, I usually translate for him into English.
Translating sermons takes more preparation on my part (working through the sermon script in advance) but has been good language learning and good ministry experience for me. I've done it 4 or 5 times now and each time I've felt more and more comfortable and had to rely on my notes less and less. Language learning is a life-long process!
