Hysten Rpt – Nov ’09
Dear Family,
Greetings from Shizuoka! We pray this newsletter finds each of you enjoying the love and blessings of our wonderful Lord and Savior.
Mission Update:
Our beginnings steps with the Nakada congregation have gone very well and we feel confident the Lord will continue to bless us in our attempts to reach souls for Him in Shizuoka, Japan. The past couple of months have passed quickly as we have begun the process of settling into our new base of operations at the Nakada Church of Christ. We have continued to meet with bother Maeda, the pulpit minister for the Nakada congregation, to assess how we can best help the congregation. We are in the process of developing several initiatives we laid out prior to beginning this new transition. Among them is the launching of our Shizuoka English Bible Classes (SEBC) in Nakada. The number of our students in Nakada has increased praise God! Please keep us in your prayers as we seek to serve the Lord and to save the Lost in Japan.
September:
September was a busy month. One of our first tasks was to meet with brother Maeda to become familiar with how best we could help him and to formulate a good plan and approach toward evangelizing the area. Prior to our visit with you in the States, we began contacting potential new students from the Nakada congregation’s Let’s Start Talking (LST) summer program. We credit God’s grace and kindness to our being able to begin our one-on-one and group SEBC classes for the Nakada and Ooigawa congregations. At the close of September we were blessed to have 12 one-on-one studies and four group classes. In addition to starting our classes, I began sharing in the preaching rotation with brother Maeda. I will preach twice a month for the Nakada congregation.
October:
October like September was a busy month. We saw our one-on-one classes increase by five, bringing our total to 17 classes a week. In addition to these new “one-on-ones,” we were blessed with one more group class, as well. The addition of this group is especially pleasing because the group consists of some of the individuals that were in my previous men’s group at the Okitsu congregation. Consistent with our making the move to the Nakada congregation is our new objective to make a more concerted effort to evangelize the community within the Nakada congregation’s surrounding area. One disappointment however, is due to the distance between Okitsu and Nakada many of our former students from Okitsu are unable to make the trip to Nakada. I am pleased however, that there are three men whom I have been studying with since coming to the Shizuoka area, are traveling out to continue personally studying the Bible with me. Needless to say, I am thrilled that they would make the trip to study the Word of God with me! Overall, we are excited about the many avenues God is making available to us to evangelize in His name. Please pray that the Lord will be with us and that we will bear spiritual fruit for His Kingdom soon.
We have fond memories of our recent time together with you, our family at Mac. You remain in our thoughts and prayers. Thank you so much for your prayers, support and love for us.
In Him—With Warm Regards and Love,
Ken and Etsuko Hysten
