Praise the name of our Creator for loving us with his life. Let’s never keep just as knowledge that our maker, sustained, and God humbled himself becoming like one of us and entering history to reconcile his enemies with himself. He offered himself as a sacrifice for our guilt and sin (Isaiah 53:10). Let’s meditate more and more on the gospel, so we can discover more of the greatness of our God and be motivated to worship him and seek to be like him in holiness, with passion and obedience.
Praise the Lord for blessing us with the “Jesus Festival.” This is the second year that we made it and we had the chance to share the gospel with some American, Peruvian, and Japanese guests. It was a blessing to see the church working hard preaching of the gospel.
We were informed that there was a Peruvian lady who was quickly hospitalized because of an aggressive cancer. She just came to Japan and didn’t had family or friends here. Some people from the church and I visited her weekly, but we always found her very weak and tired. Some weeks ago she had her first chemotherapy session and I found her more lucid. We brought her the presents she told us she needed, and we used two hours of her limited time to share the gospel. She asked many questions about creation, but at the end she recognized that we are all sinners in need of forgiveness. We gave her a Bible and read with her some verses from Genesis, Romans, Proverbs, John, Ephesians, and Hebrews, and talked about our sin problem, the future judgment, and Jesus’ offering of salvation and eternal life.
It is always a challenge to preach the real gospel, including the reality of hell, guilt, and sin, especially when it is shared with a person who is going to pass away soon; but also there is a joy and a privilege to be able to share the most important message that a person needs to hear when they’re close to departing to judgment day. We are planning to visit her again this week and follow up about her understanding of the gospel. Please pray for her salvation.
In the next weeks, I will go to visit a man in jail and continue sharing the gospel with him. Please pray so God can change the prison rules. Right now, the visits are just 15 minutes and the prisoner is not allowed to listen or speak in his mother tongue; all his communication has to be in Japanese. It is a very big obstacle for his relatives and for sharing the Bible. We are praying that the prison will listen to the family’s requests so any visitor will be able to speak to him in Spanish, his mother tongue, and for a period of 30 minutes per visit.
Please pray for us as we finish our discipleship studies and we get ready to study as a church our statement of faith in three languages.
The church that supports our church with their facilities asked us to have our services after their service. We used to have it before them. Please pray as we transition from having our service with a new time.
We have been visited by some Hispanic people from the American Air Force base.
Please pray for God’s direction as we start to plan an outreach to them.
Thank you brothers and sisters for always supporting us, reading our updates and for your encouraging emails and for praying for us.
God bless you,
Luis Angel Ramirez-Thorne
Tokyo-Japan
