Week 6: July 1: roaring. July 31: resting

Thank you for your prayers. I'd like to ask you to remember to pray for my health.  "In like a lion, out like a lamb" might best describe my situation today. We started the month racing on all cylinders. We end the month with a cough and sputter.

On Monday night I had a medical consultation with the doctor friend of mine in São Paulo. It's been recommended to me that I spend the next several days resting. 

Although I planned to leave for the city of Niterói, near Rio de Janeiro this morning to work with JEMS worker, Alyssa Gozun in the local church's ministry there, I've decided that for purposes of the longer term, I should probably use this time to rest. 

The doctor indicated to me that if I kept going at this pace my current health status would deteriorate pretty badly. She was concerned that I could risk spending next week in the hospital.  Since my time with Alyssa was intended to be as a support staff situation, I feel like it is probably better that I relinquish that ministry in order to recover.

I will plan to be at the Holiness Sede (headquarters building) for the next five days or so recuperating. Just to clarify, I've had a severely bad cold since last Tuesday and its symptoms have included a deep bronchial cough, sinus congestion and infection, as well as conjunctivitis. This is all in addition to the general tiredness I have been feeling.

This is a critical week to get rest as week 7 marks the arrival of JEMS music director, Lowell Sue, next Tuesday. After two days of meetings in the city of São Paulo, Lowell and I will travel to the state of Mato Grosso do Sul as well as visit four cities in the state of São Paulo. We are trying to accomplish all of this travel within eight days as Lowell will only be in the country for a total of nine days.

  August 5  Lowell Sue departs LAX
  August 6. Lowell arrives São Paulo
                   Lunch meeting with São Paulo Nikkei Pastors Federation
                   Various scheduled meetings in SP city, including Pr Daniel Abe, Pr Paulo Taniwaki
                   Night meeting with Santo Andre Holiness Church
  August 7. Meetings and fellowship in SP city (schedule is still open)

  August 8. Air travel to Campo Grande. Visit CG Holiness Church

  August 9. Overnight bus trip from Campo Grande to Pompeia/Marilia 

  August 10. Introduction to ministry of ASA, attend Pompeia Holiness Church

PJ - Week 8

  August 11. Marilia Free Methodist Church: morning worship, Sunday School and evening worship.

  August 12. Bastos Holiness Church

  August 13. Presidente Prudente Holiness Church
                    Overnight bus ride to São Paulo city

  August 14. Rest and prepare to return.

  August 15. Lowell departs São Paulo for LAX.  Arrive Thursday night.

Before committing myself to bedrest this week, I was able to see the JEMS Team off on Tuesday morning from the airport. Greg, Holly, and Jeremy arrived safely home. Thank you for remembering them in prayer.

That's about it for now. Thanks for your prayers. Please remember me.

Pastor John

Summarizing 2 weeks of ministry

Thank you to Pastor Ezequiel of Tupa for creating this video of JEMS ministry in their city on July 4th. It typifies and sums up well the "run and gun" gospel team style of ministry during our first two weeks in South America this summer.

 

Please continue your prayers on our behalf! Thank you!

Video update with 2013 South America Summer teams

While serving as a guest speaker in a local church recently, I ran the JEMS South America promotional video and it was suggested that the video ran too fast for some older eyes.  Not everyone shares the fascination with the old 80's flashbang style of MTV. To ameliorate the situation, I've re-tooled the video to show less photos, reduce the wording and hopefully enable the video to be a bit clearer or at least watchable.  Please watch it just below.

Thank you for the constructive comment.  Hoping that this version works to better show the wonderful ministry that is being undertaken by JEMS South America department!

Past posts you may have missed:
Meet the 2013 JEMS Summer Missions Team!  Link
May posts (including my new granddaughter!):  Link

Please remember to pray for and support Pastor John's ministry!
Visit this link:  jems.org/onlinegiving

Investing in Summer 2013

JEMS 2013 July Summer/Winter Mission Team

Thank you to those of you who have been faithfully investing in my ministry with JEMS.  Your partnership and prayer support sustains me as I pass through the doors that God is opening to reach the Nikkei in South America for Christ. 

It is a bit disappointing to write that I will not be at Mount Hermon this July.  The timing of the summer mission doesn't permit me to be in both places.  I will leave for South America with a special study team on June 24th. 

What's in store for the summer (winter in South America)? 

The last week in June holds some exciting days as a vision team makes the journey to Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The initial contacts we have made with community and church leaders there will be followed up this summer with opportunities for service.  

Argentina Vision Team / São Paulo state survey team

  

JEMS Staff candidate (provisional)

We will be working with three Nikkei churches and with a mission organization based about one hour from Buenos Aires.  It is our hope to strengthen the ties of partnership and to affirm JEMS' commitment to serve alongside existing ministries in the years ahead. 

This same vision team will return to Brazil at the end of June to meet with churches that requested but were unable to receive a JEMS team this summer due to the lack of workers.  We will spend time in each church sharing our testimonies, teaching the Bible, leading games, crafts and, in one case, Hawaiian dance.  This will be a fast-paced week of ministry in the cities of São José dos Campos, Pompéia, Marília, Bastos and other cities close by.  This portion of the trip will be primarily by bus.  Please pray for our travel. 

Pompéia and Caraguatatuba Team

  

Campo Grande, Curitiba, Presidente Venceslau Team

July will be an exciting month as we receive and place our JEMS summer workers in their respective churches.  Although our team numbers are smaller, God has enabled us to serve in six churches and one camp over the three weeks of ministry.  The churches served are in four states in southern and western Brazil.  I will provide shepherding support for our teams.   

By August, hopefully my English ability will not be rusty.  I am scheduled to work with another JEMS team member in the city of Niterói in the state of Rio de Janeiro.  

Niterói Team

We will use English class as an outreach and evangelistic tool.  In addition, there will be opportunities to share with the Japanese colony there using our testimonies and Bible teaching.  They've also asked for a cooking class.  I am not sure that I will be doing that.  Ha ha!

August will be a busy month as I will also be receiving JEMS Music and Media Director, Lowell Sue.  Lowell and I will be visiting churches mainly in the city of São Paulo and in the interior of São Paulo state.  We are exploring the possibilities of Lowell forming a JEMS Creative Arts Team for the future.  This will be his first vision trip to South America. 

Which brings us to September.  I will return to Buenos Aires, Argentina where  I will be attending COPANI (Congress of Pan-American Nikkei).  The conference is a secular one, but will be the meeting place for over three hundred Nikkei young leaders.  These are the current and future leaders of the Nikkei community in Latin America, Japan and the US.  What an important and strategic opportunity this will be for JEMS to meet those who will have influence on the Nikkei diaspora in the years ahead. 

Oftentimes we overlook such events because they are not Christian.  But we are reminded of the calling of Jesus to be salt and light.  We are not called to be a Lamps Plus showroom, all congregated together in one place.  We're called to go into the world and bring light into the darkness.  We pray that we can be a presence of Christ in that place.

Please pray that God would provide an opportunity for JEMS to build key partnership relationships for the future. 

Thank you so much for your prayers for this summer of ministry and investment in the work of the kingdom.

Photo caption: Pastor John ministering to a small group at a Holiness Church in the city of Dracena, in the hinterlands of São Paulo state.

KM 41 (Part 2)

To read Part 1, please begin here:  Link

A brief excerpt from Part 2
Because I work in South America, I have encountered many people who tell me that they have relatives in Brazil or Peru. Relatives that they've never met. By the same token, I've sat in homes in Brazil and Paraguay where families will pull out a leather-bound address book and point to the name of a relative in the USA. There are the names of family members who live in San Gabriel or Gardena or Chicago. It's such an fascinating moment to think of the political and economic conditions that drove family members to resettle in completely different continents.

KM 41 (Part 2) - A journey to discover my South American family in Paraguay.  Link.

Sr Makoto with Pastor John in Asunción, Paraguay

God's blessing: I have a granddaughter!

The text came to my phone on Saturday morning.

This photo was attached. The first photo of Kaya.

The happy family!

It's love. And pride. And joy. All bundled together. It's a pretty wonderful feeling! PJ and newborn granddaughter, Kaya.

Please pray for the new family!

For a slight change of pace . . .

I wrote an article that was recently published on the Discover Nikkei website. Woven within my various ministries in South America came an opportunity to track down a mystery about my own family and the country of Paraguay.

The notation on the margin of the bookmarked page of my father’s world atlas was distinct but baffling: km 41, Colonia Yguazu, Paraguay.

This and a name were the only information my father had as to the whereabouts of a relative who had traveled from Japan to South America. He got this information when Makoto-san stopped in Los Angeles on his one-way journey to Paraguay from Japan. 

My father met the ship and extended a warm welcome to this relative during his brief stopover. They exchanged information. They took a photo together at Disneyland. The date on the back of the photograph showed the month and year to be May 1968.

To continue reading, click the link to the Discover Nikkei article. LINK.

© 2013 John Katagi
Copyright © 2005-2013 Japanese American National Museum

Does Brazil still need missionaries? Absolutely!

I would like to thank those of you who have been faithfully supporting my ministry with JEMS.  Your partnership is an encouragement to me as I continue to seek God's direction for next steps in working with others (churches, denominations, pastors, individuals) to reach the Nikkei in South America for Christ. 

In case you haven't yet made a decision about supporting my ministry, I invite you to consider partnering with me prayerfully and financially.  

Through the generous giving of approximately forty-five donors, I am receiving about one-half of my monthly support needs.   It's a great blessing to have this support team.  At the same time, being short of my financial support goal requires me to work a shorter week (30 hours/week) and to pay for my health insurance out-of-pocket. 

Understanding that you have many good choices about the gifts you set aside for missions, I hope that you (and your family) might consider contributing to my work at JEMS.    Based on the current fund income, I estimate the need for another forty or so donors.  That seems like a lot, but God is a wonderful provider.  If God should move your heart, I hope that you will respond.  

While at home in the US during these months, I am continuing to cast mission vision in the churches and small groups I visit.  April and May are the months we set aside to train our summer teams.  As the end of June rolls around, I will return to South America where I will coordinate our teams and also work with national churches to more effectively reach their communities for Christ.  

My plan -God willing- is to leave for South America on June 24th, traveling through Brazil, to Argentina and Paraguay and return home on September 21st.

Please prayerfully consider supporting the Pr John fund at JEMS.  


O Zion Haste Thy Mission High Fulfilling

Send heralds forth to bear the message glorious;
Give of thy wealth to speed them on their way;
Pour out thy soul for them in prayer victorious
Till God shall bring his kingdom's joyful day.

Publish glad tidings, tidings of peace
Tidings of Jesus, redemption and release. 


James Walch, Mary Ann Faulkner Thomson
Public Domain

Street of the Dawn

Rua Aurora or "street of the dawn," could not be more inappropriately named.  More an area than a street, Rua Aurora is a place of ill-repute.  It is a place where prostitutes, transvestites and drug dealers ply their various illicit trades.  For my teams through 1995, it was the place to break whatever starry-eyed impressions or expectations people had about Brazil.

Working in Brazil was never as bad for our groups as Rua Aurora must have appeared, but a lot of our kids came from a completely different way of life.  Privileged.  Sheltered.  Academic.  Their experience was not this raw or this real.  Rua Aurora had an edge.  It was a little frightening to walk down streets populated by people in such desperate straits.

Our guide was Pastor Nivaldo N---. He was like the "Mother Theresa" of Rua Aurora, distributing care and compassion as equally as the physical provisions of health and child care that he provided especially for the children which were the unwanted and often abandoned consequences of these lifestyles.  

A walking tour with Pastor Nivaldo opened up the dark places of an already dark place.  He stopped a moment to point out a ten-story hotel that must have been marvelous in its day.  It stood abandoned and darkened except for a few rooms on various floors from which lights peeked out.

"Luz roubada," he said to me.  The electricity is stolen.  Then I saw it.  Along the side of the building were wires and lines like a crazy waterfall of extension cords.  The "tenants" were squatters. The old abandoned hotel was a victim of "invasão" or forced occupancy by the homeless, the destitute.  It was a drug house, a brothel, a place of unimaginable hurt, degradation and despair.  The lines out of the windows had somehow been illegally connected to the city's power lines.  That's what he meant when he said that electricity was being stolen.

With Pastor Nivaldo leading the way, we continued our tour of the area.  A drunk or drug addict sat huddled, half asleep on the stoop of a building.  Pastor Nivaldo stopped to lay his hand on the head of this man and said a quiet blessing.  Or maybe it was a prayer.  I recall being moved by the gesture.

I think of an incident in Jesus' life where a leprous man, an untouchable, came to Jesus and cried, "If you are willing, you can make me clean!"  And the text says that Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the man, this untouchable, and said, "I am willing. Be clean."

The sacred reaches out to the profane.  What we as evangelicals often forget is that this is the heart of the gospel.  The good news is not that we are to live sanitized and isolated lives.  We are called to reach out to those who are hurt and broken wherever they may be. I'm not sure we've got this part of the message in our culture.  On that São Paulo street the message was not only clear, but expressed beautifully.  After a few more quiet words of blessing over this man, Pastor Nivaldo and the team moved on.

Prostíbulo da Rua Aurora (São Paulo)
1940 - Óleo sobre tela - 43 x 68 cm
Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand

There were sectors, Pastor Nivaldo told us, where the prostitutes stood and another where the transgender people stood.  This was to avoid any confusion or violence when the johns came to look for their hour or so of pleasure.  There is a market for both, but the two did not evidently cross over.  I couldn't tell the difference between the area where the prostitutes and the transgenders worked the streets.

Pastor Nivaldo briefly told the team that the distinguishing difference between the prostitutes and the tranvestites was that the transvestites were more physically attractive.

It was difficult to ride home on the metro that night. It was a dark and hard place to work.  I recall walking on another night with JEMS worker, Dave, when we decided that we would go to visit Pastor Nivaldo.  We found our way to the ministry headquarters and upon arrival were told that he had left for the night.  It was about 10pm.

When we returned to our host family and they found out where we had been, we got scolded.  We were told that it was "abunai" or dangerous to be in that area.

More than that though, I think that Rua Aurora was to most people the human garbage dump. It was perceived by some in the more traditional Christian community to be a place where no one of good reputation should find himself. 

And yet, Pastor Nivaldo and his team of nurses, social workers, child care providers and pastors were clearly a group that was taking the light of the gospel into the dark corners of the city. The street of the dawn was seeing a tiny glimmer of light through the work of these special men and women.

I’d like to imagine (and hope my evangelical brethren will not find me sacrilegious for saying this) that if this were two-thousand years ago, you might have found Jesus working there too.

PJ's spring schedule

The banner which hangs in my office says, "Sing to the Lord a new song.  Sing to the Lord all the earth.  Sing to the Lord, bless his name; proclaim his salvation . . ." (Psalm 96:1-2)

Your prayers are appreciated for a productive and blessed ministry in March and April as I continue to share missions vision.  I am also working to completely raise my financial support soon.  (Donation Link)


JEMS South America staff is in the midst of our recruitment campaign for summer 2013.  If you are interested in serving in South America with JEMS, I invite you to visit the following links:

• Video
• Qualified to Go?
• Application Form
• Reference Form (Call JEMS for the current version)

Spring Schedule
March 24
Preaching at Crossroads Community Church.  Link.
(Click to enlarge photos)

  

March 31 
Enjoy your Easter Sunday!  Christ is risen!

April 7
Preaching at Fremont Asian Christian Church (SF East Bay area). Link.

April 13 (Saturday)
So America Missions Orientation Meeting at JEMS

April 21
Preaching at Orchard Valley Christian Church (SF Peninsula).  Link. 

May 24-27 (Memorial Day Weekend)
So America Training Intensive Weekend

Please pray as our JEMS Missions teams will launch at the end of June and in the second week of July.