Successful 1st Int'l Family Fellowship

Brian Dirige
Oct 16, 2023
2 min read

Once again, Filjap East District community joins Hachioji local church for this month's 3rd Sunday Worship Service , Oct.. 15,2023 where the long awaited planned 1st English Sunday Service , International Family Fellowship with the theme ," Have Faith, Gather Hope,Share Love" has finally been realized.

Rev. Ryou Akaishi, the chief leader for Church Growth from Japan HQ who have rich experience of 17-year missionary works in Africa , came over to deliver a very inspiring message timey with the current situation in Japan. Marietes Sato shared a short testimony on how his family felt God's Love and Rhea Tawata, sung and offered a very inspiring and touching song. Jun Granada offered the opening prayer while Jack Calugan did a great job being the MC as usual with Wilma Kondo, leading the praise songs with passion.

More than 65 individuals gathered welcoming new guests from Philippines, Malaysia,Srilanka, Africa and church members who haven`t been joining local Sunday services for a long time. Many of the Filipina sisters came which gave warmth in leading many praise songs of worship. Many young people were among the crowd and some Japanese members who are interested in English. The worship lasted for almost 2 hours followed by a tour to the 4th floor to the panel showcase hall of introducing FFWPU vision and activities to new comers.

Few months back in July, such an international gathering has been the vision of chairmain Rev.Dongsu Jeong in alignment of True Mother's call for the 210 days condition for witnessing from June to December this year. He welcomed everyone before the worship service started. Timely, Filjap community will soon be connecting to Japan local churches which would pave way for Filjap members to start building relationship with other members of Japan local churches and at the same time have a platform to do witnessing particularly to English speaking community around the area. Hoping this would become a best practice to the rest of the other local churches in Japan.

For this month , Filjap East District was asked to lead this initiative but we are looking forward to having more engagement from other nationalities. The next upcoming fellowship is scheduled on November 19 , looking forward to creating and organizing a band for the live worship songs.

Our special thanks to all the staffs engaged in the planning and prepartion . It was an exciting and challenging journey of experience from planning the program concept to actual practicing songs of praise equivalent to organizing a major event.

Everyone were inspired and felt renewed , many stayed for snacks , cakes, pastries and coffee at the church`s cafe until 6PM.

The picture gallery and short videos below give as a glimpse of the whole experience.