Japan

Japan is an island nation the size of California with a population of over 120,000,000 people. Only .2 of 1% are what we can call born again Christians. Nestled in the oldest part of this country known as the Nara Prefecture is the city of Tenri. This city of 65,000 people is the headquarters of the Tenri religion, the third largest religion in Japan.

It is here that the "Kami no Ai" Christ Church was started in 1983 by John and Gloria.

After several years of struggle, the church had a breakthrough in 1987. Mr. Fujiita, a local pharmacist and farmer allowed the struggling church to build a church building on his land, directly in front of a local train station.

At the time, “Little House on the Prairie” was the #1 favorite show in Japan. We chose to build church buildings based on nostalgia of the church/ schoolhouse so popular in that time. In the next eight years the Kami no Ai church sent out seven couples from the church to plant churches in the surrounding towns and cities. Today from this work there are five churches that continue to share the love of Christ in a land of spiritual darkness.

Pray for our pastors and missionaries in Japan. They are facing overwhelming oppression from thousands of years of entrenched Buddhist culture and tradition. The Japanese people desperately need the light of Christ to shine in their dark nation.