DDrreewwss’’ JJOOUURRNNEEYY iinn JJAAPPAANN

VOLUME # 1ISSUE # 1

CCSI J-Track English Class.

SEPTEMBER 2010

BOB & SHARON DREWS

6-23-9 Chiharadai Minami

Ichihara-shi, Chiba-ken, Japan 290-0142

MTW Chiba/Tokyo Team Email:

mtwdrews@gmail.com Phone:

080-4335-5802

Send donations to: Mission to the World

P.O. Box 116284

Atlanta, GA 30368-6284 Mark Checks for: 11846

Summary Today I am working at home with the windows and shoji doors open. Last

night we slept without air conditioning for the first time since June. The rice

harvest in the fields behind our neighborhood is in. All this is to remind us

that we’ve been in Japan for six months, now, and this will be our first

newsletter. Gomenasai! Sorry!

Recognizing you are busy, I’ll briefly summarize here. If you can, please

continue reading on the following pages. We arrived in early March to bitter

cold and the sharing of our small house with a family of five and a single guy.

Good introduction to mission life! In rapid succession, we experienced

culture shock, ministry engagement, burnout, and recovery. We have made

many friends here, and believe we are in the place we should be. We are

helping with team care, Japanese ministry, team operations, and building

relationships. Please see the next page for prayer requests.

Thank You! We have been humbled by many who tell us you are praying for us and many

who are faithfully supporting us. You are awesome! Japan missions is slow,

but with your continued prayer and support, we can contribute to the ongoing

work here. We hope you will continue to pray for us, and many will come join

the work.

“FAQ”

1. Do you like Japanese food?

a. Yes!

2. Do you like nato

(fermented bean curd)?

a. Yes!

3. Do you like Japan?

a. はい！

Contents:

• Arrival/Room mates/Life in Japan

• Illiteracy

• Ministry

• Team

• FAQ

ext and place photo here.

Lunch after Worship-Megumi no mori

church Kokubunjidai

BOB & SHARON DREWS

6-23-9 Chiharadai Minami

Ichihara-shi, Chiba-ken, Japan 290-0142

MTW Chiba/Tokyo Team Email:

mtwdrews@gmail.com Phone:

080-4335-5802

Send donations to: Mission to the World

P.O. Box 116284

Atlanta, GA 30368-6284 Mark Checks for: 11846

Life in Japan

Baptism at Toke

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1

SEPTEMBER 2010

Arrival/Roommates/Life As many of you know, we arrived in March to bitter cold and a crowded house. We shared

it with Isaac Knopp, a two year worker from Staunton, Va, and with Abi & Roger Lowther, a

fabulous, musically gifted family with three rambunctious boys. Lowthers moved out after

about 3 weeks, part of which we spent watching the boys while they celebrated their 10th

wedding anniversary. Abi, especially, during our whirlwind arrival time, helped teach us

how to shop and how to find our way around. Abi & Roger have moved to Tokyo now to

help with the Grace City Church Tokyo plant and outreach to the arts community of Tokyo.

Here’s a list of the rest of our fabulous roommates: Brent Kooi (now in his own digs),

Joshua Kipp, Caleb Crawford, Jenn Veldhuyzen and J. Marty Cope. Brent now seems to

have succeeded us as the duty hotel.

We live in a two-story “western” Japanese house in Chiharadai, a modern suburb of Chiba.

The house is comfortable and very pleasant. It is not insulated, we have individual heat

pumps for heating/cooling, so only the room we occupy is cooled. The summer has been

very hot. I ride my bicycle about 20 minutes each way to Oyumino Chapel where I have an

office.

Illiteracy A fact of life for us here is our illiteracy. This is quite a shock, after having been literate in the US (& other countries!) for 55 years. Japan uses three character sets: Hiragana, Katakana (for foreign word sounds), and Kanj. It was a shock to walk through stores seeing sign after sign, and label after label we were utterly unable to read. Similarly, traffic signs and advertising signs were completely unintelligible. Illiteracy can be considered a symptom of culture shock. Sharon & I have experienced it differently, but both have it. Mine was characterized by frustration at not being able to find my way around, fear of getting irretrievably lost, and being stressed by the noisy chaos in Japanese stores. Each store is filled with music, ritual greetings, and blaring advertisements. It took me (Bob) some weeks to build filters for all that, and to find my way around.

We’ve never thought of

ourselves as saints-we

always think we are

sinners

(Japanese Church

member at Helping

Others Change class)

BOB & SHARON DREWS

6-23-9 Chiharadai Minami

Ichihara-shi, Chiba-ken, Japan 290-0142

MTW Chiba/Tokyo Team Email:

mtwdrews@gmail.com Phone:

080-4335-5802

Send donations to: Mission to the World

P.O. Box 116284

Atlanta, GA 30368-6284 Mark Checks for: 11846

Life & Ministry

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1

SEPTEMBER 2010

• For Japan:

o Growing openness to the gospel o Ministers, Elders, Leaders o Gospel Centeredness

• For Team: o Good relationships o Trust in Christ and one another o Lots of help for CCSI o More English Teachers o A long-term team treasurer o Trust and satisfaction in Christ during

the long, slow process of evangelizing in

Japan.

• For Sharon & Bob o For gospel centeredness in our work,

marriage, and prayer life. o Bob’s father is gravely ill – pray for his

peace and our ability to serve him and

our family from afar, and for Bob’s

sister who is primary care-giver. o That our service here would bear gospel

fruit. o That we would be good students of

Japan, and truly serve this country.

Prayer Requests

Illiteracy (cont) Sharon experienced the culture shock more in terms of our

unrelenting schedule and a sense of our life being out of

control. We found ourselves hosting three group meals per

week, teaching at CCSI, hosting a revolving door of

roommates, and running back and forth to the airport. It took

us some time & help from friends to recognize that we needed

to pace ourselves better, take time for breathers, and

recognize our limitations. Still an ongoing task!

We are studying Japanese (にほんご) with two classes per

month. Although both of us are horrible students, we feel this

is an important way to help understand Japan and its culture.

We will never be fluent, but hope we can be able to

communicate at a very basic level, and respect our host

country.

Something of a graduation exercise for us was getting my

Japanese Driver’s License. My US license was expiring, so

was under a time crunch. By God’s grace, I was able to pass

on my second try—not easy here. Sharon is trying for hers on

27 September.

Culture shock tends to come in waves, it seems, and go on

for some time, so we will need continued prayer, grace, and

wisdom as we adapt.

Ministry When we arrived, we determined our first priority should be

caring for the short-term team members serving at CCSI and

in college ministry. Sharon built an especially warm

relationship with one of our interns. We’ve hosted regular

team dinners, established a “small group” meeting for short

term team members, and continued a team-men’s bi-weekly

get together.

Team Sharon recently commented: “I love my team”. This was at a low point for us, when several team members stepped in to help with team activities we had volunteered for. We have an international team, with participants from Australia, Korea and the United States as well as many Japanese partners. We are a “church planting team”, so everything we do supports that. Primary outreach activities include “Open House” English classes, English and Japanese Bible Studies, college ministry, supporting worship activities, CCSI and simply being part of the Japanese churches here. We also sponsor and organize visiting teams which conduct “English Camps”, help with college ministry, conduct musical outreach, and many other activities to make friends for us here in Japan. On average, it takes four years after initial contact to profession of faith, so it takes many hours of individual discipleship to bear

fruit. Pray for laborers for the harvest.

Ministry Activities in Japan

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1

SEPTEMBER 2010

Ministry Here’s a list of our primary areas of work:

• Caring for short term team members • Hospitality! Hospitality! Food! • Teaching Helping Others Change • Helping logistics/organization for short term teams • Coordinating vision and intern visits • Helping oversee team operations

(planning/logistics/finance) • Recruiting—mostly email contact with potential

help • Occasional preaching (about once a month) • Teaching English to Japanese • Learning/learning/learning!

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