Greetings once again! Whether it be morning, evening, or somewhere in between for you while you read this, I would like to wish you well, and extend the gratitude of the whole team to you for your cares and prayers! (yes, I put those two together purely for my own amusement)
We visited Yasukuni (I think that’s the name anyway…) shrine, and the Imperial palace today. I’ll see if I can update this post tomorrow with a couple pictures, but you’ll have to bear with me in the mean time.
When we were at the shrine, I don’t even know how to describe it. It isn’t as big as far as land area, so we were all over the place praying, singing hymns/praise songs, and reading scripture. It was wonderful, even though we were in the enemy’s territory. But I will say this, as I finished my circuit around the shrine, I saw a flock of doves in the trees at the end, and that was surprisingly encouraging. It was a beautiful reminder of the Holy Spirit and Him walking with us, and also it felt to me as a promise that our prayers were not in vain.
At the Imperial Palace we not only set aside the time to pray for the leadership of Japan but also for many of the “Prefectures” (the Japan version of a state, I guess) specifically. All of the Prefectures have a special stone landmark built into the sidewalk around the Imperial Palace. We stopped at a bunch of them and read some information about them, read some Scripture, and prayed for them as related to the specific needs/differences of that particular Prefecture.
As far as prayer requests, there are a couple spirit festivals coming up, and we would greatly appreciate you joining us in praying against them and their influence. Also, many of the Japanese want to bring back the honoring/worship of the emperor, so please remember to pray about that as well.
As I mentioned in the last post, we are now in the second half of our time here. Please pray that we will stay strong, and finish more passionate, and more in tune with Christ than ever before.
God bless you and keep you, all! We can never thank you enough for your prayers and support.
