Newsletter Vol 4 - 3 Weeks, 3 Mountains Moved!

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Thank you all so much for your faithful prayers for us and for the spiritual work that the Lord has for us here in Japan! We wouldn’t be able to do anything here without our faithful God and your faithful prayers! 

3 Short Weeks, 3 Gigantic Mountains Moved!!!

We have begun to see many of the deep spiritual needs here at this school. Like any Christian ministry, it is far from perfect, and in need of the grace of God daily. And so we started to pray recently for divine connections and for like-minded brothers in Christ for me to do spiritual labor with. We also prayed for the Lord to bring a new move of His Spirit to this campus and to wake up the sleeping students, teachers, and staff. We began crying out to the Lord for this school and for this generation… and then to my surprise God began to move really quickly & so mightily in our midst! Here are 3 great big things that our great big God did with my teeny tiny “half a mustard seed-sized” faith:

#1: A Brother in Prayer

Suddenly, a missionary who speaks regularly in chapel, writes an email to me and says that the Lord had been putting it on his heart to pray for this school regularly and to find another brother to meet to team up in prayer with. (This was my exact same prayer too!) I was amazed to find that he is a like-minded brother who had been praying for (for the past 6 years) the EXACT same things that I was praying for (for the past 6 months)! We have decided to meet and to do spiritual battle for our school for an hour each week. Praise the Lord!

#2: A Chapel Change

For the past 5 months on Mondays, I have been spending my 1 hour lunch breaks observing HS Chapel time. It usually consists of 1 student led worship song and a 30-45 min message by a staff member. Unfortunately, the worship time often seemed half-hearted. And every week during the message when I turned to look out at the students, I was sad to see that MANY of them were sleeping. On good weeks I estimate 30% are asleep, on bad weeks it’s about 70%. I began interceding for chapel, during chapel, and for the students while they slept. Chapel is arguably the most important “class” they have and God can use it for transforming hearts & lives!

Suddenly, the head of school asked me to come to her office and said that they wanted to offer me the opportunity to be the Chapel Director for the next school year! She then apologized to me for "handing me something that was broken" and went on to say that chapel has had a bad reputation among students and teachers for many years but that bringing in someone new gives me the freedom and opportunity to turn it around. I was shocked! Overseeing chapel wasn’t even on my radar… and I hadn’t had the chance to even speak in chapel even one time yet at that point! (I really wanted to sign up to speak but the Lord told me to wait until 2nd semester.) I instantly knew by the excitement in my heart and the intercession we did that this was an unexpected answer from the Lord to our prayers! I all but accepted the offer on the spot! After taking time to prayerfully confirm it with Motoko, I accepted. :)

#3: Spiritual Shift

I have been getting the sense that too many students aren’t being spiritually fed here nor at a home church. To address this hunch/concern, I created a spiritual survey for students and sent it off to admin for approval. The head of school emailed me back saying that by coincidence the

school board had just approved the decision to do an assessment of our school’s spiritual health/climate and will be hiring an independent consultant and would like me to collaborate with him (to make a single survey). I’m really excited about this because: 1.) it’s a sign that the school board recognizes there is a spiritual problem and wishes to address it, and 2.) it’s a golden opportunity from the Lord for a spiritual shift for our school! This is a total answer to prayer! Praise the Lord!

The Newbie Chapel Speaker

As mentioned, chapel time here has had a bad reputation among students & teachers for many years. I asked some students why, and here were some of their complaints: boring, just Bible stories that we’ve heard a million times before, judgemental/condemnation, not relevant to where we are as students, etc. When I mentioned to some HS students that my previous school had chapel  everyday for 25min (instead of weekly for 1 hour), one student (who I am certain loves the Lord) responded, “If we had chapel everyday here, students would riot!” I responded to her, “But what if chapel was awesome? Let’s take chapel, shift it and transform it for the Lord, and make it awesome!” 

On Valentine’s day, I spoke in chapel here for the first time. I felt it would be a very appropriate day to speak to them about Biblical Love & Marriage. It took a ton more hours of prep than I thought, and I was a lot more nervous than I thought, but in the end, I believe God really used that time to speak to the students. As far as I could see, no one was asleep, and many individual students approached me later and told me they really enjoyed the message! Praise the Lord! I am scheduled to speak 6 more times this semester. Please join us in prayer that the Lord would turn the students’ hearts around, turn the chapel reputation around, turn the spiritual atmosphere around, and make it awesome!!!

Note: some of our future videos (like this one) will not be made public on YouTube and will only be available from this mailing list or from our website (https://vicmo.cc). Here is a link to the Chapel message I gave on Love & Marriage: https://youtu.be/6cVUerPScr4

Love & Blessings from Japan,

Victor & Motoko

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Here's a photo of us with our dear friends Sanna & Gord enjoying "conveyor belt" sushi.