November Ministry Update 2022
Dear friends and ministry partners,
Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving and are excited to be entering into the Christmas season! This is always a busy season for me (and I'm sure for many of you too), but this year was especially busy with my transition back into Tokyo. In my last update, I shared about how God provided me with my beautiful apartment. I thought that would be a big jump towards adjusting to life here, but that was just the first step! In the last two months, I've furnished my apartment, got reconnected with my church here, joined some of the team's ministries, helped welcome a new teammate, and started full-time Japanese classes!
I'm really glad that my apartment has come together so well. I spent most of October finding furniture and appliances. Starting from nothing was much harder than I thought it would be! I feel like I went all over Tokyo going to furniture stores, secondhand stores, and really anywhere that I could find that had what I needed. While exhausting at times, it was fun too. And thankfully, my apartment is now very relaxing and I love coming back to it after a long day at language school. I feel really blessed by it and I'm excited that I've started having opportunities to share it with others by hosting friends and the team.
For Thanksgiving this year my team decided to do a progressive dinner which for those that don't know is where you visit multiple people's homes with different parts of the meal at each house. We split the Thanksgiving meal up among four of our teammate's houses and my apartments was one of them. I served the stuffing, rolls, and a green bean casserole that Jo Beth made. We all had a great time together!
I was also able to host the English group from my church at my home recently. I'm looking forward to more opportunities to host people and I'm praying that my apartment can be a place of rest for those that come through my door.
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I love experiencing Japan's beauty with my church at our monthly outreach events. Japan's parks are incredible. Right now in Tokyo the fall leaves are just barely turning colors and our most recent outing was to see them lit up at night.
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Church Updates
I've rejoined the Waseda Tsurimakicho Small Church which is the one that I was a part of during my first two years in Japan. It has been encouraging to see everyone again and the new members who joined while I was gone. They have mostly been meeting over Zoom the last couple years due to Covid restrictions in Tokyo, but as restrictions have lifted, we are moving more towards meeting in person. To encourage more face-to-face fellowship with each other and to try to invite new people to church we have been doing outreach events the last couple months. Last month we went to a flower garden outside of Tokyo and had a picnic together. This month we went to another park that had lights set up to illuminate the autumn leaves.
The church is steadily growing and we now often have a Japanese group, English group, and kids/families group all meeting at the same time. From that growth, we have also added a new brother in Christ to the group as one of our church members accepted Christ! Shoki had been attending our church for about a year before he finally made the decision. In his testimony he shared how our church community and the witness of people in the church had been so important to his decision to follow Christ!
In the beginning of November, Shoki was baptised in Tokyo Bay with our church and many others present. We are all so excited for him and his walk with the Lord. Please be praying for him in his new faith that he would continue to grow and be encouraged and that he could be a witness to those around him. He has already shared about how he wants to reach out to some of his friends.
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We were blessed with a beautiful day for Shoki's baptism!
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A New Teammate!
Another exciting update within the last couple months is the arrival of my teammate Kim. Previously, Kim worked for Apex and had come to Tokyo on three separate short-term trips where she led a group of college students to join in on some of our team's ministries. She brought one of her teams in December 2018 while I was in Japan and I helped with some of the leading and planning for their time with us. After her short-term trips, she felt God leading her to long-term ministry in Japan. After raising her support she finally arrived in Tokyo in October! I've gotten to know Kim over the last few years and she and I am excited that she is part of the team. She brings our team total to ten adults (and six kids). In the next year we are expecting six new teammates, so we are really growing!
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A few of us welcomed our new teammate Kim at the airport last month!
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Japanese Learning
My biggest transition yet has been starting my full-time intensive Japanese classes. I began attending them at the end of October and just finished my first month last week. I go to Coto Japanese Academy about 20 minutes away from my house and I am really loving it so far. I have class every day along with daily homework, quizzes, and weekly tests, so it feels a little bit like I'm back in college, but it has been so helpful to my Japanese learning. The format can be difficult, especially since i come home tired most days, but the structure works really well for me. I am more of a structured learner anyways and my teachers are all great.
The way the intensive classes work is that each class is four weeks long and there are multiple classes for beginner, intermediate, and advanced. They don't take any holidays so the weekends are my only time off except for two weeks between Christmas and New Years and another break during Golden Week in May.
My plan at the moment is to continue taking the intensive class each month with maybe a month break after a few months of learning. I've been told that taking breaks can really helpful to the learning process. Since I'm in this for the long-haul, I'll do whatever I need to keep learning!
Overall it has been such a blessing for language to be going so smoothly. It's still difficult and overwhelming at times, but I am very encouraged. I know that God is going to use it for His glory in the ministry He has for me here!
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My Japanese classmates at the end of our first month's intensive course. I've really enjoyed getting to know them and I'm glad that most of them are continuing on to the next course.
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Prayer Requests
- Pray for my language class. While my Japanese learning is going well, please continue praying for endurance and perseverance to continue on learning. Learning another language is draining. Pray that I could continue learning effectively. Pray that I can be energized in my studies and continue to create good study habits that boost my learning abilities. Pray also for the relationships I am building in my classes with my classmates and teachers. Pray that I could be a good witness to them.
- Pray for a language exchange partner. Learning Japanese in a school is definitely effective for me, but it doesn't substitute for real conversations in Japanese with Japanese people. Please pray that I'd be able to find someone or a couple people who I could regularly speak to in Japanese. Many people want to learn English too so it could be a language exchange situation, but mostly I just want to develop more Japanese friends, so pray that I could do that.
- Pray for me to get settled. With my my apartment mostly done and having started Japanese classes, I am feeling much more settled, but there are still small things I need to do and figure out. I'm grateful for the time I've had to just focus on language, but I'd also like to fit in ministry things where I can so pray for wisdom and discernment in what to add and what to say no to. Pray for the small apartment details I need to figure out and pray that I can continue building healthy rhythms in my daily life to keep me healthy mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
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Giving Tuesday
Today is also Giving Tuesday so if you'd like to support my ministry by committing to regular giving, increasing your regular giving, or giving an end-of-year gift then you can click on the button below to sign up to give online or you can email me to let me know what you'd like to do. As a missionary I am fully reliant on the generous giving of my partnership team which includes churches and individuals. I have people from 19 different states that come together to make my ministry in Japan possible. I am so grateful for all of you! Whether you are able to support me financially or only in prayer, you are so important to brining the Gospel to the unreached here in Tokyo. Thank you!
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If you'd like to give, please click on the link below!
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Thanks for reading!
I appreciate you all! As always, feel free to email me at adam.bailey@efca.org or text or call me at 802-505-7676. You can also go to my website at adamintokyo.com. Thanks! - Adam Bailey
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