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The Davidson Family
Kari and Dwight serve the Lord in Yokohama, Japan.
Dwight serves as missionary chaplain at Kanto Gakuin
University, a school
related to the Japan Baptist Union (JBU). The vast majority of students and
many faculty members at the university are non-Christian.
Kari ministers to young mothers and children in the Yokohama community. An outreach to Japanese women who have school-age children is greatly needed. Most Japanese women stay at home while their children are studying, so there are many opportunities for friendship evangelism and community building. Both Dwight and Kari also serve in education and evangelism through Japan Baptist Union churches.
They write: It's a busy time for us.
125 years ago American Baptists started a seminary here in Yokohama, Japan.
That seminary has now grown into Kanto Gakuin--an institution providing
education from preschool to post-graduate levels on 5 campuses, serving over
15,000 students.
Missionaries have always been important at Kanto Gakuin as teachers, chaplains,
administrators and student ministry leaders. But whatever we’ve done,
that ministry has always depended first and foremost on building strong
relationships — relationships with colleagues, local leaders, students and
parents.
As missionaries, we’re often busy “doing” —
but doing is not as important as being, especially here in Japan where
resistance to Christian work is still rather high. I often feel that the
most important work we do is sitting around tables, making friends with people
in the community, showing others how interested we are in them and in their
culture, and learning new things as others share their lives and spiritual worlds
with us.
Of all the people we know personally who have been added to Christian churches
here in Japan
during the past year, every single one of them came in as the result of having
had a friendship with a caring, Christian person. That is, those people
decided that Jesus was important because a welcoming, gregarious person had
been a witness to God’s unconditional love. During this month of
reflection on world-wide evangelism and service, may we all be a little better
about slowing down, and taking the time to focus on being a Christian rather
than just doing Christian activities! Sometimes it’s easier to do, but in our
experience, it’s almost always more rewarding to be.
- Pray for Dwight and Kari as they serve Christ in Japan.
- Pray for the many people that they relate to in a variety of way so that Christ may shine through them to others.
- Pray for God’s direction and guidance on them in their lives and ministry.