Craig and Yumiko Chapin are global partners to Japan. Craig serves as acting president of Christ Bible Seminary and also is a senior advisor on Christ Bible Institute’s (CBS) executive leadership team. Yumiko plays piano for worship services at Nisshin Christ Church in Nagoya and sings in the choir. She also helps with outreach via two other gospel choirs. You can read more about their ministry in Japan on their website. This is their prayer and support update.

Our tickets to Japan usually take us one way. This winter, however, we flew round-trip. Though our move to Japan has to wait until our fundraising is complete, Yumiko and I were able to make a brief trip—thanks to special gifts from Tenth and a kind relative.

Yumiko had two weeks to encourage and help her family. She gave her mother’s spirit a needed lift. Her twin’s husband remains in the hospital with serious health problems, but he showed surprising improvement while she was there.

At CBS, I taught a two-week intensive course on Acts and the Pauline Epistles. It was terrific to be back in the classroom. Students asked good questions, providing great opportunities to address issues important to them. One student told Yumiko that it was so good to have a teacher who really understood the students and their context—even though I’d never met most of them.

Besides teaching, I spent time with new students and staff, dealt with seminary issues requiring my physical presence, and got better acquainted with our new facility and its neighborhood.

I can’t tell you what a joy it was to be back. Yumiko and I saw friends and co-workers we love and were reminded of what we love about serving God in Japan. We can’t wait until we’re able to move back.

While there we heard over and over again—from students, from staff, and from faculty—how anxious everyone there is for us to get back. Michael and Joe, my fellow Christ Bible Institute board members, put it more strongly. The seminary is languishing for lack of on-site leadership. It’s urgent, they both said, that we return to Japan as soon as possible.

We can’t do that until all of our support has been raised. After fifteen months of effort and a large, voluntary salary cut, we still need to raise pledges worth $3,600 a month. We’ve got to speed up our fundraising progress dramatically. And—praise to God—an opportunity to do that has just arisen.

An anonymous donor, familiar with the need in Japan, has offered to match pledges if we return to Japan by July 4 (the start of the summer term). That means that new pledges will be doubled—but only if MTW receives pledges equivalent to $1,800 per month by early May. (It then takes six to eight weeks to get a visa.) If the full pledge amount isn’t received by then, the anonymous donor will put his money to use elsewhere. This is a remarkably generous offer and a marvelous opportunity for us to finally return to the field and to full-time ministry.

Please pray for God to provide for this match. It actually would take very few people to send us back to Japan: just 21 at different levels of financial ability.

Japan has a great need. The Lord is using Christ Bible Seminary to meet that need. CBS now has an urgent need of its own: a need for us.