(A recent prayer letter received from Chris & Miranda Shirrell, Japan)

2023 was quite the year. We are praising God for all that was accomplished. We want to take a moment to celebrate a few of the ways we saw God at work in and through His ministry in Japan this past year.

• We saw two individuals (both Japanese) come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior and were baptized!
• The English ministry has grown to 31 active participants, plus new visitors almost every week.
• Chris preached in Japanese a total of 12 times, each time improving.
• We broke ground on a children’s playground at Ota Bible Baptist Church (to be completed early 2024).

This is just a small summary of all that was accomplished this year. Of course we are praising God for all of the opportunities we received to preach the Gospel in ladies meetings, children’s events, community outreaches, Bible studies and new friendships in and around the community. And we cannot dismiss the growth of our family, spiritually, linguistically, and now physically as we are expecting an addition to the Shirrell family in May 2024 (it’s a boy!).

In our previous newsletter we asked you to pray for our next steps, specifically about where, out of five cities, we would begin the work of church planting. After much prayer, research and counsel, we have realized there is one more factor to consider. Our language skills are still not up to par. We came to Japan with the goal and intention of planting indigenous Japanese churches. This proves difficult when we can’t communicate effectively in Japanese. Our sending pastor encouraged us to enroll in a language school and focus our efforts on improving our Japanese skills. In our current city, we are far from any language schools, so we decided we will move to a place where we can more easily commute to a good school. We realized that wherever we move we would have to sign a 2-year lease, thus would likely end up being the location of our first church plant.

Here is our plan for 2024: We will move to Meiwa, Gunma, a small but quickly developing town which currently does not have a church. This town has easy access by car or train to large cities that have language schools, allows us to remain nearby several families that we are currently ministering to in Japanese and English, and was our preference out of the five cities we were praying about originally. I will enroll in a full-time, in-person language school. Miranda will continue her language studies online. We will continue our studies until we reach a suitable proficiency level, which is measured by examinations. We will continue to have regular Bible studies with our current international group, and will work on building relationships in our new community. Please pray with us! We are church planters at heart, so we are eager to begin the work. But everything we do in preparation will make a stronger church plant in the future. Lord willing, we will begin an official church plant in the 4th quarter of 2024.

Thank you for supporting the Lord’s work in Japan!