We're off to Tokyo, Japan on April 8

Why, you may ask, are we heading to Tokyo for almost three months? Well, we have several missionary friends in Japan, and one thing they kept mentioning was the need for volunteers to manage the TEAM guest house in Tokyo. We thought about this for about a year and finally decided that we could probably do that job! After all, it only is a 3-month commitment and anyone could handle that, right! (How about you?). Japan is a country in great need spiritually. Here are some quick facts from the TEAM web site:

-Only 0.43 percent are Protestant Christians.

-Religion does not play a big role in the lives of most Japanese, with many not understanding the main two religions of Shintoism and Buddhism.

-Japan is smaller than the state of California, but less than 20 percent of the land is habitable for its 127 million residents.

-On average, there is a suicide in Japan every 15 minutes.
-The birth rate is just 1.35 children per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

Our initial request was for 3 months over Christmas, figuring that would work best with our other ministry obligations. However, they didn’t need anyone right then and preferred that we come in the summer.  However, that’s our very busy time for outreach at fairs with Child Evangelism Fellowship.

So, we are leaving April 8 and returning June 18, God willing.

Our job will involve supervising the Japanese housekeepers hired to clean the rooms (20 beds total), collecting the money for guests’ board and room, shopping for breakfast foods, cooking and cleaning up hot breakfasts 5 or 6 times a week and preparing occasional luncheons for TEAM staff meetings. Heather will be doing a lot of this, including keeping track of all the related finances.  Roger hopes to be involved in some English language conversation with the the hope of discussing matters of eternal  significance. He will also likely be doing some facility maintenance and repairs.

Here are a couple a Googled images of the Team Center in Mitaka: