The Mercers in Manila

It is truly a spiritual war in Japan. People are starting to get saved regularly and the devil is frightened. I just talked with one of the youth today. She goes to an international school here in Yokohama. Yesterday an 11th grader there commited suicide (hung himself) in the school. He was found by a teacher this morning and the students are in shock.

I'm angry that the devil stole this precious young life but I know that God is going to turn this situation around and cause many of these students to turn to Him. Please pray that the Christian youth at that school can be a light of hope there during this dark time.

Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and there are many youth living in hopelessness and despair, but we have a message of hope for them. The devil's days here are numbered and he know it! Please pray that the youth will be inspired by this tragedy to lift the banner of Christ even higher in the schools!

It truly is a new season in Japan! Every service someone is getting saved. Today (Wednesday) the father of one of our youth came to church and heard Pastor Kawamata preach. After the message he came and asked Pastor Kawamata if he could attend the afternoon "foundation class" which is a class that new believers go through. Pastor K. asked him to go through the One2One book with him first. This is a book we have translated into Japanese which teaches what the bible says about 12 foundational areas of life. The first chapter is titled "Salvation" and teaches that we must be saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. After reading the scriptures together, Pastor Kawamata asked this man whether he believed and wanted to be saved and he said "yes". So they prayed together for salvation. Later Satomi and I talked with him and prayed with him some more.

It is amazing how when one youth gets saved it opens the door to the entire family. This man's daughter has been part of this youth group for some time and her father must have been affected by the change in her life. I am praying that the entire extended family will come to know Jesus as Lord.

Here is a picture of Nao and her brother Kazuyoshi. He just got baptized last month. Nao got saved a couple of years ago and started praying for her family. In the last year Nao's mother, brother and father all got saved and last Sunday her grandmother got saved too!


Please pray for our church this weekend. On Friday and Saturday we are going to have a Men's Victory Weekend. Over 20 men who are leaders in the church are going to gather to pray through different issues that may be holding them back like unforgiveness, sexual sin, etc. We want to implement this in the church on a regular basis so that eventually everyone who becomes a Christian will go through this soon after being baptized. First the leaders will do it and next time they will pray for those under them and so on. Please pray that the Presence of the Holy Spirit will truly give everyone who participates this weekend victory.

We have decided that we are definitely going to Manila for 10 months! The Lord is providing miraculously and we have enough to buy our plane tickets and about 90% of our monthly budget commited. Please pray that the money for the deposit on our apartment will come soon.

The biggest problem we have is that we are so busy it is hard to get ready to go! This is a good problem to have because there are many great things going on - but we appreciate your prayers that we will have time to do everything we need to do to prepare. Visas, dentist appts, I have a surgery on my ear scheduled for April 26th to remove a small benign tumor, I need to renew my driver license, pack and ship some things ahead of us, etc, etc, etc. We have a looooong list of things to accomplish this month.

We also need to move out of the house that we have been living in by the end of the month. We plan to visit Satomi's parents in Nagoya and then the Sagers in Shizuoka before we leave.

This week Sam & Nancy Webb came to Japan along with Nancy Ho to minister at our MSI-Japan pastors conference. They are also travelling around to many of the churches in the next couple of weeks to preach and encourage the people around Japan. Here is a picture taken last Monday of some Pastors and Missionaries who came to Yokohama to hear the Webbs.


On Wednesday, Nancy and Millie spoke during our morning service. We had a good turnout for a midweek service. About 75 ladies came to hear the message and I saw some new faces in the crowd. Afterwards, "Auntie Millie" Ho taught some of the ladies how to hula dance. Here are some pictures from Wednesday.

Satomi led worship, I played guitar and James (not in picture) played drums:


Lots of ladies showed up Wednesday to hear Nancy and Millie preach the Gospel:


Nancy Webb Preaching:


And here is Millie Ho teaching hula after lunch

Here is a picture Pastor Glen Nabarrete sent me from a recent "convergence" meeting in the Philippines

On this day the MSI churches in Manila held a joint celebration service outdoors inviting all the members from the 40 or so congregations around the city. More than 10,000 people showed up at this meeting. I am excited to be going and working with these great churches which are currently experiencing revival in terms of both numbers of people getting saved and also in the affect they are having on this generation and the nation they live in.

Both Satomi and I are believing that we are going to receieve an impartation of the radical passionate spirit that is in the churches and leaders in Manila and bring it back to Japan with us.

Here is another picture he sent from that meeting. They used huge screens so the entire crowd could see and hear the speakers and leaders on the platform. The meeting lasted from morning and into the night.


We are making good progress toward our financial goals for living in Manila. As of today we are very close (more than 90%) to our goal for a monthly budget. Please pray with us that the Lord will also provide the finances we need to pay for our plane tickets, tuitions, deposits on our new apartment, visa fees, etc. Through your prayers and support we are almost there! Thank you!

We had a great weekend. On Friday our friends and ministry partners Ron and Lisa Wetter from San Jose took us out to eat "shabu-shabu". This is a great Japanese dish of meat and vegetables which are served sliced raw on a plate which you dip into a pot of boiling water in the center of the table and then into various sauces before eating. It was all-you-can eat and I ate too much!

Saturday was mtg day, with a men's mtg in the morning and an elder's mtg in the afternoon. I also finally got a great anti-virus program running on the church email server (clamav running on our hosted BSD server at pair.com) which has virtually eliminated all virus attachments to email sent to ygbc.org email accounts!

On Sunday we had an awesome Easter service (pictures to follow). The building was packed out and my Japanese friend Shigenari Abe visited church for the second time with his wife and boy. We took them out to eat lunch and then came back to church for an easter egg hunt in the afternoon. Please pray that they will keep coming back and become believers. There was also a baptism service in the afternoon and three more new believers were baptised! The Japanese man who ran forward to become a Christian last week has now returned to his job in New York city, but I heard that he was also baptised this week in the Morning Star Church in Times Square.

Please continue to pray for us as we prepare to move to Manila next month. I received word from the landlord over there that we can move into our new apartment for only 2 months deposit plus one month's rent in advance. We have almost enough to live in Manila comfortably now but we are still praying for the intial moving expenses, plane tickets, visas, and school tuitions.

It's picture time!
Here is a picture from the Lady's Encounter Weekend that Satomi preached at last weekend


Here are some of our crazy youth - Satomi, James, Alishea and I are all in this picture. Are you ready to play "Where's Waldo"?

I led worship and Tomi played piano during the Wed service yesterday. I invited an old friend I used to work with at Macnica to bring his wife and kid to church on Easter Sunday but haven't got a response. If he doesn't want to go to church I will just have lunch with him. Pastor Scott said that after church last Sunday one man *ran* up to him and said "I want to get saved!". I'm praying to see this more and more here in Japan. Up till now, I haven't seen it much! We are having a baptism next Sunday (Easter) and he will be baptised along with a couple of other new Christians.

I got an email yesterday from one of the leaders who's dad has been in the hospital in critical condition. He asked me last Wed. to pray for his dad to be healed because the doctors were telling him if he didn't put his dad on a repirator machine he would probably die soon. Basically they were telling him if he did, his dad might live a little longer but wouldn't be able to talk or eat becasue of the tubes, etc. Well, instead this man prayed and asked the Lord to heal his dad. Yesterday, his health suddenly improved - it is a miracle.

The Ladies Encounter Weekend went very well on Friday/Saturday. Satomi preached one session and participated in praying for and counseling two of the ladies. We are now planning the first Men's Encounter Weekend, scheduled for May 1st. Please pray for breakthroughs in the spiritual lives of all participants. I will put some pictures of the ladies mtg soon.

I chatted by email with some folks from Hawaii that are planning to move to Japan next year and join the church here, James Coble and family. James has just finished the Graduate School of World Missions that I am planning to attend and he has offered to let us move into their furnished apartment in Manila and leave us some of their things if we can negotiate an acceptable rent with the landlord.

Today I got my 50cc motorcycle from behind the Douma's house where it has been stored for almost a year. I got insurance on it earlier this month and I found my helmet up in Pastor Scott's attic. I wheeled the bike out on the street and push started it. Aside from some huge clouds of smoke it belched out for the first few minutes, it seems to run fine. The battery was totally dead and the lights didn't work at first, but by the time I drove it home the headlight was on and everything seemed fine. It should be easier to get to church now that I have my "bike".

Tomorrow we are having our first "Encounter Weekend" at YGBC. It is a new ministry which eventually will be available to all new believers coming into the church to help them spend a couple of days of focused bible study and counseling to free them from anything that might be hindering their spiritual life. This first event will be Friday and Saturday and will be for about 15 women who are leaders in the church. Satomi and the 7 other ladies who went through this in the Philippines in January will be preaching and counseling. Next time there will 23 ladies available to teach and counsel (the original 8 plus the new 15) and so on until the whole church has gone through the training. The men will have their first encounter weekend later this month. Please pray for Satomi and the entire event.