This week Landon and I will be travelling to Japan on the first formal international missions trip of All Saints Honolulu with the main goal of establishing long-term missional relationships there.
What follows is a loose itinerary of our trip —at least, what our itinerary looks like right now. As you think of us in the days ahead, and as you pray for us, this itinerary can help give you and idea of where we are at as you pray.
Wednesday
We leave Honolulu in the middle of the day and fly direct to Tokyo. Though the flight is only 9-ish hours, we lose all of Wednesday as Japan is ahead of us on the dateline. So we get there “Wednesday night” Honolulu time, but ‘Thursday night” Tokyo time.
Thursday
Once landed and through customs one of our pastor friends will pick us up and take us to Mitaka, a city just outside of the 23 special wards of Tokyo proper. Most of our time in Tokyo will be out here in Mitaka: the churches we will be visiting, the conference we will be a part of, our lodgings, etc. all in Mitaka.
Friday
Friday we will be participating in a Theology conference hosted by Mitaka Evangelical Church and sponsored by the Theopolis Institute. There will be pastors from seven different countries gathered for lectures, fellowship, liturgy, and conversation. Several of us —even Mr. Landon Twombly— will be giving lectures on the theme of ‘hospitality.’
Saturday
The gathering continues, with a slight variation, the following day with a half-day pastors’ gathering. I will be giving one brief talk as will the Rev. Dr. Bogumil Jarmulak after each of our talks a panel of pastor respondents will hold a conversation and question time.
After this there will be more fellowship, prayer, and relationship-building. I understand that one of the Japanese pastors is a master at Japanese Tea Service and will be doing one for us.
We also have a few contacts in the Tokyo area (some churched some not) whom we hope to connect with after all of the conference festivities are concluded.
Sunday
We plan to worship in the morning at Mitaka Evangelical Church and at The Missionary Order of St Augustine (OMSA) in the evening. OMSA is the first GAFCON church-plant in Japan and we are excited to pursue continued formal relationship with them (Alli already visited them back in November, you can read about her trip here).
Monday
Monday will be our last day in Tokyo. We will have our last series of meetings before getting ready for our trip south the following day. This will be a day in which we will be dreaming with our friends in Tokyo about what a continued missional future together might look like in the years to come.
Tuesday & Wednesday
Tuesday we will take the Shinkansen bullet train down to Osaka and there meet-up with Narayan and Gretta who are working at the YWAM base there. They have a long-term hope to move permanently to Osaka to plant an Anglican church (perhaps the second GAFCON church-plant in Japan). They’ll be spending several months this summer and early fall with us at All Saints.
This time with them will be key in assessing their needs and scouting-out the area of their future mission as we walk alongside them in discerning a future church-plant.
A lot of our time will be spent walking through the city, praying, waiting on the Lord, and dreaming together.
At some point during these two days I will be meeting with a pastor from Kobe (just a little ways away from Osaka) who got connected to me through Dr. Leithart. He’s followed the work of Theopolis for a while now and is excited to get more involved. I will be meeting with him to foster that relationship and explore how we might be able to partner for the Gospel in Kobe.
Thursday
Thursday is our last day in Japan. We will squeeze as much out of the day as we can before heading over to the Osaka airport for our return flight to Honolulu.
Whereas we will lose a day on the way to Japan, we gain a day on our return. We will live “Thursday” twice.
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Please pray for us on this inaugural All Saints missions trip to Japan. Pray that God leads, directs, and guides us with clarity. So much of this trip is the result of trusting God, of following his leading even when we are not quite sure of his purposes. Pray that he makes some of those purposes clear and that our time there would be fruitful for the expanse of his kingdom.