This April we will be in need of prayer. There are a lot of changes in our daily routine. With the lose of a fulltime teacher (to a new teaching job at her home church) Kazumi and I will be on our own. It will be too much for us to handle without a lot of grace. Our English school is still quite large, Bianca at two is more demanding, Cherry will be home schooled from April, and I (John) always have some new idea to work on.
We will be cooperating with a new ministry. I was orginally going to start a new outreach center, and talked to Kazumi's uncle about using a store front building in front of the station. We painted the walls and cleaned it up when my mother was here last September to open this spring. However we just could not find someone to replace the teacher we were losing and I was not going to have enough time to make a go of it.
As we were getting the new location ready I was networking with the only other pastor in Mizunami (a town of 45,000). Pastor Inoguchi's church has an after school ministry that opened about two years ago. They have worked really hard but it has been a struggle for them. Last year's enrollment was at about the break even level. So we worked out an agreement of cooperation; involving us using a room as an office/homeschool resource center and providing 30 English lessons to their after school program a year. Pre-enrollment has finished, and they have full enrollment at 25 students during the school year and 40 over summer vacation. They do a great job at children's ministry and I thank God for being able to work with them this coming year.
Pastor Inoguchi told me that a new after school center had opened in the same area as the church and expected it to be a difficult year, but that God has blessed the work of our hands. God knows the plans he has for us and they are gracious.
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