Japan Newsletter #4 - Niigata

Today is the day. I finally get to know what exactly I’ll be doing.

I’M THE SOUND GUY LET’S GOOOOO

HAHA but for real that’s what I'm doing for Beautiful Feet Ministries in Niigata. I actually love that I’m doing this because I get to fully experience God’s people worshiping. After eating lunch at a world-famous, multi-billion dollar restaurant (McDonalds), my family and I went to Grace Chapel where they will be hosting 4 sessions of praise and prayer. There, I met the team that I would be serving within Japan. What I found SUPER interesting, was that this ministry is a church made up of families, and they travel around the world together to evangelize, worship, and serve the communities they go to! So my “team” was the youth group, led by Grace (an adult), the leader of the worship team, and Aram (another adult), the sound/keyboardist. However, although the team was young, you could see that they were filled with the Holy Spirit, carrying themselves in a manner worthy of 1 Timothy 4:12.

“Don't let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.”

1 Timothy 4:12 NLT

After meeting the team at 1 PM, I had some time to myself before meeting up again at 6 PM for a soundcheck. I took this time to get to know some of the church members and to set up the equipment for worship. What I learned was that this church, Grace Chapel, was planted over 40 years ago by a Japanese pastor and his wife who went to seminary together! The pastor’s wife was actually there to greet us and explain the history of the church to us, with the help of an interpreter. When they first started, they said there was a lot of spiritual darkness in Niigata. Although there still is much darkness now, through prayer and God’s grace, it has been getting brighter. They pray for God to continue working through them to bring the hope of Jesus Christ to Niigata. Also, two of their daughters serve as staff in the church as well! It brought me great joy to see a family working together to glorify Christ. One of their goals was to keep the church open 24/7 so that people could pray, but in order to do that, they gave out the code to the door to all of the members so they could come and pray whenever they wanted. Wow, what if I had the keys to KCPC... I would pray of course. Why else would I want the keys 🙂

As a praise leader, I’m often told after service, “Praise was great today”, or “The music was a little too loud/quiet….” LOL I’m kidding about the second one (or am I). But the reason I bring that up is ‘cause when I hear these comments, I think to myself, “What do I say to that? I wasn’t exactly doing it for them or myself lol”, for all the glory is given to God. But wow, the worship tonight was great HAHA. It wasn’t even because the music itself was top-tier. If I could remind you, the team was mostly made up of youth. IT DOESN’T MEAN THEY WERE BAD, (If you’re one of my youth praise team kids reading this right now, I don’t think you’re bad).

Okay, I’m just gonna move on, I can feel the angry texts coming already. They’re great. But the REASON why I thought worship was great was that I could see everyone genuinely worshiping. No one was looking at each other to see if they were doing “the right thing”. No one held back from shouting, clapping, dancing, or doing whatever they wanted to do to worship God. They were free, worshiping with all they had. If I had to say whether a worship session was great or not, I would base it on this. Was God glorified? Was He the center of the worship? Did His people see His glory and worship in response? I would say yes to all of these questions for this. It was amazing to see God’s people in Japan worship. As I mentioned in my last letter, this was what I missed the most while here. So to experience this was a great refresher to my soul.

“May our lips sing never-ending, ‘praise God for He is good!’”

lyrics from a song I made, I like what I wrote here 🙂

I’m having wayy too much fun writing these. It’s a good way to decompress after a full day. But before I end this, I want to remind you all again of some things. As much fun as it is to write and to remember the events of the day, I always have God’s kingdom in mind. We pray for His kingdom to come, for His will to be done. But especially for Japan this prayer must be prayed. If you are a believer, pray for the lost, brokenhearted, the destitute. Our God is a JUST God, an ALL-KNOWING God, a POWERFUL God. Yet, this same God is GRACIOUS, MERCIFUL, and LOVES His people, to the point of sending His own son Jesus to die for us. Gracious, by giving us what we didn’t deserve. Merciful, by not giving us what we deserved. He hears you, so pray with confidence in Him. I will be praying with you.

With Peace and Love,

Hongki Lee