1) Growing our Network in Toyosu

We have been living for 6 months now in Toyosu in Tokyo, our target area for planting a new church within in the next few years. In just this past month we have been very encouraged as we have been able to gather a number of individual contacts and to begin building more of a sense of community here.

- Thanksgiving Dinner Party (11/26) with members of 8 families from our community, including our Japanese Pastor Seima Aoyagi and his family.  This was our first organized group gathering of a number of different local contacts.

- Christmas Gospel Concert Outreach (12/10) in the Toyosu Area. This was our first “public” event in our target area (click for 3 min video I made of the event).  This is the concert we have been asking you to pray for these past few months.

We partnered with Crossroads International Church in Kasai (~4 miles away) and the concert included choirs from both churches.  Around 170 people gathered (about half were non-Christians), which definitely exceeded our expectations. Praise God!

It was a Charity Concert to benefit our earthquake/tsunami relief work.  I made a 4 minute video (click to see English version) introducing Grace City Relief, and then Seima (below) shared a short message about how Emmanuel “God with us” is our motivation for ongoing relationship based relief work in Ishinomaki city.

- Christmas “Block Party” (12/23) for contacts in our apartment building. 10 adults and 3 kids came (including 8 “new” friends).

2) Thank You for Your Partnership

There are many of you that have faithfully prayed for and supported us for years.  There are also many of you that joined our support team in just this past year.  We are so thankful to God for His provision through YOU to enable us to be a part of building His Church here in Tokyo. We feel blessed to be here for such a time as this.

For those of you interested in making a special year end gift:

• Follow this LINK for online giving.

• Send a check to:
  Mission to the World
  P.O. Box 116284
  Atlanta, GA 30368
  (Please indicate for: Jon & Sarah Pfeil #16039)

3) PRAYER Requests:

• Praise God for the many new contacts made and relationships deepened in just the past month. Pray also for a kids party on Dec 29th that is being planned by a Japanese Dad from our building.  He has a 3 year old son who is a friend of Calvin.  He is “doing all the work” and will introduce us to several new families. How great is that!

• Pray for our Christmas Sunday Worship Service.  It will incorporate classical music style which is a great attraction to Japanese.  May it be a great first worship experience for many visitors here in Tokyo.

• Please pray for us as we pray and plan for this upcoming ministry year of 2012. This will be a year focused on networking, evangelism, and missional community group formation.  We feel so small in such a big city, yet we are so encouraged by how God is moving in the Toyosu area already!