To help you take a closer look at each of our overeas offices, our directors are keeping an ongoing journal with snapshots and stories of the joys and struggles of ministry in their part of the world. From Japan, we'd like you to meet Satoru Yanagitani.
Email Updates from Satoru
June--BJapan left its former office space last November and has since been working out of temporary, borrowed space. My partner in this work, US missionary Tim Selander, was on furlough until early April. Now that he is back, we are looking for office space, but it's going to be difficult. In Japan it is standard to pay 10 months' rent upfront for the security deposit. With the high cost of rent, that adds up to a huge amount of money just for the security deposit.
These days I am having staff meetings with Selander--san in a restaurant half way between our homes!
One big benefit of the move has been with the stability of the broadcast. Friendship Radio is BJapan's channel on Japan's most popular cable & satellite radio system. We create the program and send it to the satellite company over a leased digital phone line. The company picks up our feed and runs it into the broadcast system. The building our old office was in had electrical problems that led to occasional interruptions in the broadcast. But we now have our automation system at my house, sending it to the satellite company from there. And the broadcast has been solid as a rock! Praise the Lord!
While we broadcast mostly Japanese programming, we do run some of Back to the Bible's English programming during an 'International' block. The May 9th audio file had a glitch in it, and we had contact with a new Japanese listener telling us there was a problem. That English program airs in the middle of the night. I was impressed again by the fact that you never know when someone will tune in to hear the Gospel--and also impressed that this fellow was good enough in English to know there was a problem. And now we know that Dr. Kroll has fans in Japan as well!
We have about 15 Japanese pastors recording programming for us. These men are part of our volunteer Bible Team. One of the exciting things we're doing is to send our Bible teachers to visit the smaller, struggling churches in Japan to encourage them and build them up. There are many, many really small churches in Japan. We just got a report back this week from one of the churches we recently sent a pastor to help them conduct a special evangelistic meeting. In addition to the church people, there were six visitors and two of them made decisions for Jesus! Two precious souls! Pray for their growth in the Lord.