The church is the body of Christ, a body composed of Christ-believers. The Tsukuba International Church is a local church I consider my spiritual home.

I came to Tsukuba in March of 1984, initially attended a Japanese church with some Brazilian Christians. Because of the language barrier, as my Japanese was still at its infancy, I would feel missing something after each worship service. Praise God! I was introduced to our church through a Taiwanese friend. I rejoiced because the first time I came to this church, I felt I have found a church I could call my home.

Pastor Oyamada, our first Pastor, immediately recruited me to be an interpreter the following week. There were two Indonesian brothers who were unable to understand neither Japanese nor Chinese. Since then other English speaking students came, Malaysian, Americans, Filipinos, Thai, Singaporeans, etc. It's a privilege to help fill the gap between our Chinese, Japanese members and the English members. Although we differ in our languages, we have a common language -- love.

What I treasure most in the church is the way God touches our hearts for each other. As one of the responsible persons for the church's general affairs I used to be bothered by how we could keep the church physically clean, inside and outside. I have experienced that whenever we post some call for people to help out in cleaning, fixing the yard, there would be brothers and sisters responding to our call. Psalm 133:1 says, "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity !"

My prayer is that we may continue to allow God to work in our hearts, that we may be able to work out his will in us and in our church in the coming years.