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April, The Month of God Bringing the People
Sarah McKisic • June 7, 2021
April! It was a month of God bringing the people and milestones for our family! We began the month with Liam starting all Japanese kindergarten, celebrated 6 months of living here, and celebrated Ella’s second birthday! This past month we also saw many hungry new people come humbly asking to be discipled. Many wanting to dive deeper into the word, grow in hearing God’s voice, and be activated to do ministry. There were some late nights of outreach, worship, and hosting hungry new believers and unbelievers in our home. If you know me, you know I am not one for late nights, but sitting there hearing people ask questions about God late into the night and saying, “I want you to teach me,” really changes things. I mean, I still don’t like being up late but this is why we are here. This is why we came. For these moments.
Celebrating Ella turning 2!
We ended March with a team retreat where we worshiped, prayed, and dreamed as an Iris team. Lorelei shared she saw a picture of people coming in like the waves and that we need to make space for all the people God wants to bring. April was the start of that with nine people coming to Aaron and I for discipleship. We are now making space and time to meet with them weekly!
This month we have felt God highlighting worship. Bringing us to this place of focusing on God in all we do and offering Him worship in that place. Worshiping Him with guitar and song before Liam’s school days, worshipping Him in the coffee shop conversations with the many many people God has opened up to us, worshipping in the cleaning of the dirty kitchen or in the training during tantrums with our children. It can all be worship if we let it. This month we have begun to dive deeper into the word, making our one focus Him.
Scripture says, salvation comes only from God. It is His kindness that draws people to repentance. From delighting in His instruction and law, fruit comes in its season. Focusing on Him keeps us green and ripe, prospering in areas we never could prosper on our own. As much as we believe in what He is doing here through us, we know it all starts with worship and fixed eyes on our beloved. From Him the rest flows.
From this place of worship we have jumped into the start of recording youtube training videos and plan to launch our own channel for training and equipping the church body. We are now meeting with nine people weekly (sometimes twice a week!) for discipleship and are inviting others into our home that are open and hungry for the gospel. Many meals were had and discussions on who Jesus is, for the unbeliever and believer. This month we had a picnic with a family we met at the coffee shop and she opened up sharing they have it all yet don’t feel they are living for anything. They feel no purpose in life. Aaron was able to share the gospel and how we live for eternity. It was the beginning of a conversation of Jesus we hope to continue having as we build relationship. This is one of the many conversations we are having with unbelievers. There have been times of praying and sharing Jesus with Japanese people on the streets that are highlighted to us or approach us because they want to practice english or see our kids. Both have opened doors and we find many people afraid and carrying heavy burdens during this pandemic to which we can pray for God to protect and carry them through it. On Friday nights we are leading worship nights with the Barbutti family and have one special family coming weekly who are so on fire for Jesus. There’s no doubt God’s bringing the people and we want to continue to find ways to receive them, love them where they are at, and invest in them.
We are beginning to dream and discuss ideas for a house church, Iris training school this summer (maybe online due to covid), and assisting where we can in building the Iris Cross Culture NGO here in Japan so we can one day bring over missionaries! Please pray for refined vision and ideas that are from God so we can be about His work and not our own. Life is full and we are thankful we can be here in such a time as this. Japan is on the heart of God and we can feel the compassion he has for the Japanese. If you’d like to partner with us to see the kingdom advanced in Japan please read the bullet points below!! God is expanding here and we are so excited to be apart of what He is doing and inviting others in to be apart too!
With love,
The McKisic’s
Partner with us in prayer:
God to touch and lead to salvation the unbelievers we hosts for meals, pray for in the streets, and connect with in our community
That God would continue giving us a clear vision on what to put our time and attention to so we can be about His purposes and plans
For our next steps building as a team, for God to open doors and give us favor
For all our financial needs to expand the kingdom here
Soft hearts and God to go before us in all we do
Grace for Liam’s schooling and language for us all
Partner with us financially:
We are looking to expand our ministry! We currently have enough coming in monthly to hosts a few dinners a month and meet our monthly living expenses. Our hopes are to move this fall to a part of Tokyo that is near our Iris team so we can build deeper and more with them. This has been the goal all along but we have been waiting on timing. In this case we will no longer have the church covering majority of our rent costs and will need to raise more funds. We would like to rent a home where we can hosts those who want to be discplied, people who visit for missions, and friends and family who come over (and have a bedroom for our kids ha!). In addition to this we want to begin opening our home up more often and have some really fun dreams on what that will look like!! We are $800 away from our monthly goal and need 8 people to join us at $100 a month or a few people to join at an annual amount of $9,600. If you have been following along and praying about joining a missionaries team we would love to have you apart of what God is doing here (no matter the amount!)
