Flyer or Fryer?

We appreciated the effort of several young people who braved the summer heat to pass out flyers for our Kids English Outreach next week. The group came from various church backgrounds in Japan, but the leader, Satoshi, shared common CB roots with us.

The group put some 3000 flyers into mailboxes in our community. Along the way, we stopped to pray at some key locations for Japan, the outreach activity of the church, and the spiritual battle we are engaged in here.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of the day was bearing the oppressive heat and humidity of Japan this time of year. This was a FRYER of a flyer distribution! After 3 hours of walking about outdoors, we were ALL very well done! We ended the time together with a victory prayer meeting and time of worship.

Censored...again

I've mentioned before that I was thrilled to get the blessing of the local chounaikai (community group) to place our church flyers on their numerous bulletin boards around the neighborhood. This gives us more exposure, and perhaps a little more credibility, in the neighborhood.

There are some twenty bulletin boards in a 3 or 4 kilometer radius around our house. I make the rounds and tack up our letter-sized flyer relating to a specific event: English, Gospel, concert, Kids, etc. The church address and telephone number is always listed at the bottom.

I've been saddened, however, to find on numerous occasions that my flyers have been either obviously torn off the board, cut to shreds, or mangled in some other way. In spite of this, I continue to replace the destroyed flyers and go on.

With our Kids English outreach (7/28-8/2) just around the corner, I once again put up flyers this past week. This time at each and every location someone deliberately moved another item tacked on the board to cover mine. Here's a photo (above). I moved my flyer to a new spot, only to have it recovered. Someone is obviously not happy with my flyers.

And so the spiritual battle for the hearts of Japanese continues. It is frustrating at times to lose little fights like this along the way, but we know God will bring the ultimate victory in the war.