Nakahara News                    Nakahara Mission

December, 2021                                                                   P.O. Box 54842

                                                                                               Lexington, KY 40555

 

To My Beloved Brothers and Sisters in the Lord:

MERRY CHRISTMAS !

It has been a year of COVID-19 going around with scars all over the place.  Thus far we have been spared its attack upon us.  We thank the Lord for protecting the health of each member of the Nakahara family and for His guidance to this very day.  We don’t know how to express our gratitude to you for praying for us and supporting us as you always do in the midst of it all.  We appreciate you so much.

In our last newsletter we reported that our oldest son, Kazuma, will be resigning his teaching position at the end of March, 2022; and he will begin his studies at a seminary in April. He is filled with excitement and anticipation about this move.  Now, I have one more thing to report concerning Kazuma.  We believe God has brought a young woman into his life, with the possibility of marriage in sight.  Her name is Miho Kiribayashi.  She teaches English in the same Christian school as Kazuma.  In fact, she attended and graduated from this school herself, and is now a teacher at her alma mater.  While under Christian teachers and influence there, she never then professed her faith in Christ.  Hers has been a long journey to faith.    

Several years ago Miho’s grandfather was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  He remains alive at this writing.  It was about this time Kazuma’s grandfather (Tomoko’s father) passed away.  Miho and Kazma would talk together about death while in their chapel services – she from a point of despair, but he from a point of resurrection and life.  This was the beginning of her attraction to him.  As Kazuma now speaks in chapel at their high school, several of his teacher colleagues have begun to speculate that he will someday become an evangelist.  Miho is one of them.  I think she saw what he had in Christ, and she wanted it too.  Anyway, Kazuma and Miho have been studying Bible classes on line now for about six months.  The other day Miho said to Kazuma,

   “I realize now that God has been inviting me all along, and that it was my sin not to respond to His call.      So I repented of my sin, and I now want to live the rest of my life close to God with great gratitude (for  what He has done for me).  I believe that the cross of Jesus had made this possible.  I have repented and I am so grateful.  Jesus, I am so sorry, and now I am so grateful.”

To the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be glory !!!!!  Miho will be baptized at our church on December 29^th, and (although she doesn’t know it yet), Kazuma will propose to her after the baptismal ceremony is completed.  “He has made everything beautiful in its own time: also he hath set eternity in their heart.”(Ecc.3:11a).  We are thankful that we can confess “AMEN” to this verse with gratitude.”

The verse continues, “ yet we cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecc. 3:11b).

Since that is the case, then we cannot know the day when Miho and Kazuma will stand as the third generation Nakahara  evangelist couple in our church in Shizuoka.  In order for that day to come, we would like to continue to simply walk in obedience to the Lord.  Please remember us in your prayers.

May the Lord protect your body and soul in this increasingly dark  world.  Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus.  

 

                                                                                                   Michiya and Tomoko Nakahara