We've enjoyed having Anna here in Japan for the holidays. We're heading up north to see some of the places where she spent her early years, and will be at Yamagata Deaf Church on Sunday. After a few days back at home, we'll be flying to the U.S. January 3rd. We'll be a few days on the East Coast, and then fly on to San Jose where we'll be (mostly) until we head back to Japan January 20.  Oh, and we'll be flying standby until we get to San Jose, so please pray for 2 seats, together would be nice, but any seat on the plane is better than a seat in the airport. Thanks for standing with us.

Pray especially for Y today. If you remember, she is a Japanese Deaf person living and working in the large country west of us. She has a meeting with a group here in Japan that may be able to help her start a viable business in the country where she lives. Pray that she will be able to get a clear picture of the group she is meeting with, and have wisdom as she seeks to build a viable industry to employ Deaf people in the city she works at.

Thanks for praying. Mary Esther's testimony at the Deaf Church Christmas service went well. It was the best she has ever done signing in front of a group. Several people asked afterward about things she had said, giving opportunity for deeper discussion and teaching on forgiveness.

Thanks for praying. Speaking in front of that many people in Japanese was a major hurdle for Mary Esther, but as she says "I know people were praying. I just felt completely at peace, and just talked." For those of us who were listening, she felt both at ease, and at the same time deeply passionate about her thanks for all the wheelchairs Daniel had and her concern for those who might never have a chance for one.

She will be giving a 15 minute testimony at the Deaf Church Christmas service this coming Sunday.  A much less threatening scene, but she still asks your prayers.  The testimony will be about “the gift of forgiveness.”

This coming Saturday will be a Black Gospel Charity Concert which will benefit Wheelchairs of Hope. Midway through the concert they’ll show a short power point about the wheelchair project, and then Mary Esther will speak for about 3 minutes.  There are about 250 in the choir and 750 guests are estimated to attend.  That’s about 975 people more than she’s used to speaking in front of, and this will be in spoken Japanese—please pray!

While Mark was meeting with Sign Language translation groups in Bangkok, Mary Esther was on another kind of adventure, winding up narrow mountain roads in a van with six people and six wheelchairs toward the Thai/Burma border where citizens of no country in the world eke out a living in the jungle. Among them, too, are the disabled, and the consequences are more severe here than anywhere else we know. Here, more than anywhere, a needed wheelchair is hardly a dream. But a Christian group called Candlelight is working specifically with this segment of the refugee population, meeting needs as able, and had distributed four Wheelchairs of Hope chairs a year ago. Six more chairs were a boon, and Mary Esther, going with the chairs, had the chance to follow up on the previous recipients as well. Visiting from hut to hut on the back of a 50cc motorcycle, she held babies, changed clothes (no diapers there), and just sat and listened to people's stories.

She writes:

Yes, life can by crazy here in Japan, but it doesn't even come close to where I just came from.  I have water at the turn of the tap, and it’s clean enough to drink and yet I have so much I even bathe in it—and it comes out at any temperature I desire!  And I have a toilet that is clean where the waste doesn’t stay under my house.  And there are screens on my windows, and even if there weren’t I don’t fear Malaria from a mosquito bite.  And when I walk down the path I don’t watch for snakes, or worry about stepping too far off the path where a land-mine might be planted.  And I have whole fish and lots of green veggies to eat with my rice.  And at night, the noises I hear are cars, trucks, dogs, all of which stay outside my 6th floor bedroom.  The jungle is not quiet, and I didn’t recognize the sounds—some sounded like strange clapping/clacking, and another like water in the pipes, and yet another like some shrill electrical catastrophe.  And even when I asked what the noises were, the answers told me meant nothing as I didn’t know the creatures they named. Here in Japan people stop at stop signs (or at least pretend to) and no-one here crosses a yellow painted line on a hair pin turn just because they honked and no-one honked back.  The Burmese soldiers aren’t raping my children, and the national hospital doesn’t refuse to see me because I’m not a citizen.  It was an unbelievable week.  My heart was pierced and part of it was left there.

Please pray that God will send us more wheelchairs here in Japan so we can help keep the Light shining there in spite of incredible darkness.

Thank you for praying! Since we've come back from Bangkok, momentum just keeps building.

Last week ViBi received the Japan Bible Society’s (JBS) 2007 Bible Work Distinguished Service Award.  Pastor Matsumoto, our board chair, came from Yamagata to receive it, and our whole staff was there for the ceremony. While there, JBS told us that in November, they received a 1,000,000 yen ($9,000) gift to support the JSL translation. We were also encouraged by JBS’s most recent newsletter. Not only was ViBi featured up front, in the body was a story telling how an Assemblies of God church uses the Sign Language Bible translation in their Deaf group and the difference it makes having the Bible in their language. Knowing that people are using it and growing helps us feel all the more eager to produce top quality translation.

We have a lead for a possible translator, a Deaf of Deaf person with Bible training. Pray for wisdom and good timing as we follow up.