Potter ministry 2019 Highlights!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Potters!

This year we learned a lot about ourselves and about God. Ryan and I turn 40 this year, and it feels good to be where we are, who we are, doing what we’re doing. My goal as I grow up is to become more intellectually, spiritually, physically and logistically flexible and graceful. We’ve learned not to be surprised by sin, suffering and challenge - and we’ve learned that Jesus is with us in every moment, palpable or not. This has been a year of surprises and unexpected outcomes - many of them frustrating and difficult. But God is powerful and good. 

This year our kids continued in Japanese school and we’re thankful that they’re thriving with good teachers and a crew of friends, mostly Japanese. We’re thankful that - although they fight like siblings and rivals, they also mostly love each other and come back to being friends in the end. 

Our house remains the heart of our ministry and we’re thankful for the many friends who have come through our living room and yard and table. We’re currently working on a deck for the yard - there are friends who come to say hi but won’t come into our house because of the obligation it creates for them to also host us (interesting aspect of Japanese culture!), so we’re creating a space to host them in our yard, where they will be more comfortable. We’re thankful for more opportunities and potential relationships than we can possibly follow up with, and pray for wisdom to follow up with the right people. 

As support-based missionaries, we’re so thankful for those of you who have committed to partnering with us each month - we truly could not be here without you! We send out monthly newsletter updates, as well as occasional mid-month emails. Below are some of our most memorable excerpts from our year. We are always interested in connecting with more prayer partners. If you are interested in partnering with us, get in touch and we’ll get you started! 

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

March: It’s hanami or “Flower picnic” season here, when everyone stops to take a moment to pause for a picnic under the nearest cherry blossom tree. My phone buzzed non-stop last Friday night with groups trying to meet up and coordinate picnics at our local park. By the time I made it to our park in the afternoon, I realized that - with the common denominator of our kids - three of the picnicking groups who didn’t actually know each other had introduced themselves, and set up their blankets 

together in one big party. The beauty of seeing them all sit under the snowing petals, and tearing around the park on each other’s riding toys and bikes is such lovely chaos. Please pray for us as we love and engage these friends. Picnic blanket evangelism. 

April:

We are so thankful that we made the choice to switch schools. Thanks so much to all of you who

prayed us through that decision! We're so grateful for new neighborhood friends, and new
connections at our doorstep that are facilitated through the school. Please pray for new friendships and new connections. And for safety for school kids as they walk to and from school. 

June:

We hosted our second open house this week, welcoming moms into a grace-filled space to laugh, cry, relax, and thrive. I arrived late after taking Jude to physical therapy and loved that I could hear laughter as I walked down the street towards the house. Please pray for my friend (and fellow Covenant College grad!) as she hosts the open houses. Please pray for the four of us Christian moms who host and invite our friends into purposeful conversations about parenting and living in hope. 

August: We are joyful! Our (nearly) two year old took his first independent steps! As many know, our youngest was born with significant physical disabilities and uses a prosthetic leg. He has a long way to go, but this is a big milestone for him!

Please pray for the many challenges of a new school year. Ryan jumped into the year with several new classes, running an overnight leadership retreat this weekend and a week-long off campus learning experience for the entire high school in early October. Please pray for  student safety, staff wisdom and patience, and for Ryan’s wisdom and energy as he plans and manages several of these events. 

September:

Those of you who have been with us for a while know my friend Y, daughter of my elderly neighbor, mother of a rambunctious 2nd grade daughter and a son who died of brain cancer two years ago at age 12. This summer, Y became a Christian. She’s always loved hymns and I gave her a copy of the trinity hymnal a year or so ago for her to play. She visited our church years back, and then discovered that her son’s best friend attends CAJ now and is one of Ryan’s students. This felt like a sign to her, once again connecting her to Christians. In August, I was able to connect her to a friend and mentor at one of my favorite neighborhood churches, and this woman was able to begin discipling her. Then, last week, Y drove away from her mother’s house, past mine, and leaned out the window, and said “I did that prayer, what’s it called? The sinner’s prayer? Yeah, that one. Let’s talk soon!” and drove off. It’s the kind of moment I pray for so many of my friends, and it’s such a privilege to tell you about the fruits of YOUR prayers on behalf of this wonderful woman. Please join us in continuing to pray for Y and her daughter and for the Takiyama Church family who walk beside her as she begins this new life. 

October: 

One of Ryan’s passions is helping students learn more about who God has created them to be through outdoor experiential learning. Every October, Ryan leads CAJ’s 11th grade Wilderness Camp program, gathering about 60 students and adults into 5 groups and sending them out into the woods—what better way than a 4-day hike to foster conversations about the kind of leader and servant Christ is, and how Christians can live out those characteristics! Through good preparation, experienced staff, and God’s grace, there were no major injuries or dangerous experiences that got in the way of rich conversations and growing self-awareness that students brought back to their "real" life.

November: Although the doctor was fairly confident that he could transfer Jude's toe to his hand, he was not successful. We obviously have very mixed feelings about this. We grieve the long, long surgeries (more than 26 hours altogether) and the intense scarring, without any significant positive outcome.

We lament that, once again, the path forward for this boy is confusing, painful and different from what we expect or understand. But we turn to the psalms and, like David, speak truth to our own hearts: "Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?" Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." (Psalm 42) In a true lament, the return to God is not a trite flippancy toward the deepest questions of the heart, but a willingness to hold the both/and truth of the gospel. We both lament the effects of sin and rejoice that our God is with us. Thank you for walking with us.

Ministry Snapshot

Nelle and Ryan Potter: Bringing Hope to Japan




Ryan was born in northern Japan to missionary parents, and grew up in Tokyo attending the Christian Academy in Japan for 9 years. After graduating from Multnomah Bible College in Portland, Oregon with degrees in Bible and Communication, Ryan came back to Tokyo first as a Youth Pastor, then started work at the Christian Academy in Japan. He currently (2019) teaches 10th, 11th, and 12th grade Bible, Senior Capstone, Middle School woodworking, and is the High School Student Council advisor.

Nelle Caitlin is a third generation missionary to Japan, following in the steps of her grandparents and parents. She attended Christian Academy for two years in elementary school, and then her family moved to Georgia. After graduating from Covenant in 2002 with a degree in History and minor in English, she returned to Christian Academy as a high school teacher. She also completed a masters degree from Trinity Western University in Educational Leadership. She taught until 2014, when she shifted to focus on four little students in particular. She now works primarily on building relationships with local neighborhood moms and families, partnering with three local churches and their moms outreach programs, as well as co-hosting open house coffee and conversation times for preschool moms during preschool times. 

Their four kids, E (8), L (6), V (4), J (1), attend local Japanese preschool and elementary school; J is not in school yet but is working on his Japanese greetings.


Ryan works at CAJ: Christian Academy in Japan (CAJ) is a K-12 school established in 1950 to provide Christ-centered education to the children of evangelical missionaries. While continuing in this purpose, CAJ also serves other families who desire this type of education for their children. CAJ serves approximately 450 students in the day school program and more than 300 additional students in our School Support Services program for students who are unable to attend regular CAJ classes.
Learn more here 
Strong in the Lord from Christian Academy in Japan (CAJ) on Vimeo.


We are affiliated with RCE International: Resourcing Christian Education (RCE) is a unique, service-oriented mission organization that strives to make international ministry a success for the Kingdom of God by serving international Christian schools and education ministries in their mission of providing exceptional educational opportunities with a biblical foundation and Christian worldview. Learn more at https://www.rce-international.org

Interested in partnering with us, or have questions? Use this link, or email nelleandryan@gmail.com
Interested in sending financial support? Use this link to send support through RCE.

April showers

Cherry blossoms in our park

"For Joy in our hearts, we need Light in our eyes" (Keller, God's Wisdom for Navigating Life) You know it's going to be crazy and different, but you're never quite prepared. This month found us with a crowd of new friends, stretching to let go of our kids in brand new ways, fuming outside of the district car inspection office, braving intense Golden Week crowds and finding signs of resurrection at Easter.

pre-school friends at our place

As I continue with the theme of wisdom, I've read that "wisdom is living in the present and thoroughly enjoying it" (Packer, Knowing God). It's knowing what you don't know. Confessing what you do know. Remembering that suffering points like an arrow to the path of Jesus (Keller). A friend reminds me that humans "are a  . . . cathedral" capacious to contain all the mess and beauty of the world (declaredominion.com). Please pray for us as we continue to work on our wisdom muscles. 

This month grew our capacities (as we mastered yet another realm of Japanese red-tape), our table (as we welcome the overwhelming number of kids and families we've connected with at our new elementary school), our hopes (as we watch CAJ students brave questions in Bible class), and our hearts (as we watch our first and third grader walk off to elementary school by themselves in the morning, meeting up with other kids along the way).

We once again engaged our kids in Lent. We loved the result, and will continue to tweak our practice each year. We read through nearly all of the story of scripture, and each kid took a turn illustrating the stories, composing an advent-style Lent calendar. We loved the way the story of scripture and anticipation of resurrection finally took center stage, while the chocolate and bunnies were a fun little post script to the season.

Coming up, we anticipate ongoing changes for Japan. As I write, the emperor is abdicating his throne and his son will take his place tomorrow. This isn't completely unprecedented for Japanese history, but it hasn't happened in more than 200 years. We're grateful to be in Japan in this time and place. Please pray that as Japan welcomes a new era, people will return to a timeless God. 

We are so thankful that we made the choice to switch schools. Thanks so much to all of you who prayed us through that decision! We're so grateful for new neighborhood friends, and new connections at our doorstep that are facilitated through the school. Please pray for new friendships and new connections. And for safety for school kids as they walk to and from school. In the opening weeks of school here, a 7 year old was raped on her way to school in a city 20 minutes from us.

We're anticipating our second semester of Japanese school and the close of the school year for CAJ. We're exciting that we will get to make a trip to see some of you this summer! We'll be in Texas, Chattanooga/Atlanta and Seattle in late June - early July. We would love to connect with you! Please join us in praying for the logistics and details of this trip!  

Made in March

March is about endings and beginnings for us, as well as for a lot of Japan. It seems a fitting parallel to the season of Lent. Interwoven in this season are my readings about contemplative spirituality. Words like silence, stillness, solitude feel laughably far fetched in this season of life with small children. But we’re trying. “To step into the life that is truly life, we’re invited to practice for our death.” (Huertz, 168) Pray with us as we honor Jesus’ path to the cross, and the humiliation of his death, and anticipate resurrection. “God has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.” (M. Luther, found in Lloyd-Jones). 

Luna's preschool girls

Last month we talked about the series of goodbyes: changing schools, daily friends moving on to new patterns. But we also anticipate new beginnings: new school, new classes, and new friends in the neighborhood. 

Renovation project finished

It’s hanami or “Flower picnic” season here, when everyone stops to take a moment to pause for a picnic under the nearest cherry blossom tree. My phone buzzed non-stop last Friday night with groups trying to meet up and coordinate picnics at our local park. I bowed out because of some house construction we scheduled during Ryan’s spring break. By the time I made it to our park in the afternoon, I realized that - with the common denominator of our kids - three of the picnicking groups had introduced themselves, and set up their blankets together in one big party. I wish you knew Nami and Momoka and their crazy girls, Waka, Yumi, Shino and their sweet crew that we’ve known for years, and the Hirayama boys (four of them!), who didn’t know each other before this week, so you could appreciate the beauty of seeing them all sit under the snowing petals, and tearing around the park on each other’s riding toys and bikes. Such lovely chaos. This coming week Ryan is back at work and the kids and I have another week of spring break. Please pray for us as we love and engage these friends. Picnic blanket evangelism. 

Although Ryan wasn’t able to go on the trip because of a schedule conflict with Luna’s preschool graduation, the senior class went to Thailand again this year. Through your generosity, we are able to in turn support one of the local young women, Neung. We’ve been supporting her since secondary school, and she is now two years away from graduating from her college level teaching program. We’re so grateful for the ongoing relationship to this corner of northern Thailand. This year’s trip was smooth and encouraging, and teachers came home impressed by the maturity of this class. We’re so grateful to be able to steward these humans as they finish their time at CAJ and prepare to move out into all corners of the world. Please pray for Ryan as he goes back to teaching tomorrow. 

Back in October we began our relationship with the organization Resourcing Christian Education International. We’re grateful to have their ongoing encouragement and oversight. As you know, in January we began a process of clarifying and improving our finances. We’re happy to say that we’ve reached 33% of our support goal to get us to a healthy financial situation. We feel so blessed by every one of you who are praying for and with us, and we know this is God’s economy and we’re merely vessels channeling his work and resources. Please join us in praying for our financial health as we work towards our goal. 

Masters Finished!!!

February Finale

Making it through to the end of February always feels like grounds for celebration. You too? This month was whirl, kicked off by our new newsletter. We are encouraged, galvanized, carrying the eyes, hearts and ears of so many beloved friends into our daily lives. Thank you for believing in God's hand in us. I feel your prayers in so many of my difficult and beautiful moments throughout the day. You are present with us. 

Met a Japanese Paralympic basketball player at our new school!

CAJ is well into the second semester. I have the privilege of sitting on the board at CAJ for this season, which affords a more granular look at the school and its vision and future. As we introduced ourselves around the room and welcomed a few new members, the years and layers of experience represented reminded me of just how unique of a place this school is. Most board members have multiple hats at the school (parent, alumni, former staff, former administrator), and care deeply about their role in serving the school. We prayed for the current head, as she guides through unique challenges. Please join us in praying for CAJ: most western Christians expect the spiritual formation of their children to be a team effort between home, school and church. For most students, CAJ fulfills all three of those roles. Many students who choose CAJ do not come from Christian homes, and even those who are from Christian homes aren't part of a youth ministry at a church. Their primary experience with Christianity is in their CAJ English, math, history and Bible classes with their CAJ teachers. It's a weighty task. Please pray with us! 

This is a full month for our Japanese school life as well! The Japanese school year ends in March and the new academic year begins in April, with new schools, new teachers, new friends. It's a big change. Our second is graduating from preschool/kindergarten (a three year program in Japan) and will join her older brother in Elementary school, in first grade. We asked for prayer mid-month: for various reasons, we had enrolled our oldest in the local Japanese school across the street from CAJ, which is across town from our home. This year, we took another look at the school we're actually districted for and, after much thought and prayer, we've decided to switch to our closer neighborhood school. We're sad to say goodbye to friends we've made at the other school, but feel good about our choice. Specifically: our new school is a lower economic bracket, there are very few foreigners and no Christians that we know of. Please pray with us that God will use us to reach our community through the connections we build in our new school. So, here we go! April 8 is the start of school for the older two. Number three continues in her second year of preschool, which she LOVES. She's all caps these days. 

End of the year goodbyes. We've got about two more weeks with the graduating class at preschool and with the elementary school classmates. Please pray as we look for ways to continue the relationships we cherish and look for healthy ways to say bye for now to those we will hold more loosely. Especially with the preschool moms, several of these women have been part of our open houses for three or four years, and have visited many bible studies and even church. They are very open, and we pray for ongoing opportunities to connect even though we won't see them on a daily basis. 

Finally FINISHED!!

And personally, this letter is coming out late because I was very sick earlier this week, which is pretty rare for us, thankfully. Nothing too serious, but a high fever made it impossible to do anything except sleep. So Ryan solo parented for the better part of the week! We're grateful for a supportive community and a somewhat flexible work environment. And I'm so thankful to be back on my feet and energetic! Despite ending the month sick, we've had some amazing conversations, self realization and had begun to feel some incredible new growth and balance in our personal lives, our spiritual formation, our marriage and our relationships. It's an exciting time. We feel God is doing incredible things here, and we're pleased to be vessels.  Please pray for protection for our health as we enter the spring. 


Thank you for being with us; we truly could not be here without you! We would be honored to pray for you! Please let us know how you are, and how we could pray for you and your families. Prayer is the most we can do, because it engages the power of God. 

January - changes ahead!

I’ll be honest - our first draft goal for 2019 was “slow down, say no.” We ended 2018 worn thin. Gotta do less, we thought. Take better care of ourselves. Shrink in a little. And then the pastor preached on Matthew 5; “blessed are the poor in spirit; You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world” Eugene Peterson’s commentary says: “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. . . . Here’s another way to put it. . . . Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By open up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father.” And as if that wasn’t enough, as I read the text of Matthew 5 on my phone in church, a text popped up on my screen from a single mom I met in rehab and hosted at my house shortly after. After that first visit, she told me by text that she is often too emotionally overwhelmed to get out of the house--her son, like ours, has significant limb differences. This time she texted, “let’s get together again soon!” Ok, ok. So. Seems like life isn’t going to slow down; we need deeper wells, bigger pools of wisdom and courage.

Here’s our new goal: (drum roll...) deepen our pools of prayer and wisdom. Rather than shrinking our life down to what we naïvely assume we can control, we allow that we weren’t in control of anything anyway (eye roll... I know..), and God is stretching us for his own glory. But bigger trees need bigger roots; a very deep taproot. As our life and ministry expand, we yearn for our cloud of witnesses and advisors to also expand.

With this growth in mind, we’re announcing some changes; we’re excited and nervous!

When we started this monthly newsletter, we had one small child, we could barely order at a restaurant in Japanese, and we both taught full time at Christian Academy. We wanted to reach out and stay connected, so we started sending this newsletter to . . . basically anyone we thought would like to stay connected. I know . . . we probably should have asked you first! Sorry about that.

Now, seven years later, our family has doubled in size and - largely thanks to our various local school communities - our horizons and vocabularies have opened to embrace not only CAJ classrooms, but also our neighborhood, our local churches, our parks, our hospitals, our city office and our city as a whole. In addition to teaching 100 or so CAJ students, we now also have friends and connections at every intersection in town. I can’t go to the grocery store, post office, flower shop, dentist, or park without meeting someone who knows us. Although I’m proud to say my Japanese level is the worst in my family (no way can I out-chat my daughter’s four year old preschool buddies or do my son’s second grade homework), as a family we can navigate our lives in Japanese: hospital, rehab, grocery, church, school, PTA, library, homework, pets. While the neighborhood watches. Life in a fishbowl, anyone?

So, here’s the vision: there’s this gorgeous tapestry of grace all over this green globe. The threads are silky thin, iron strong, the pattern so beautiful takes your breath away. Through this tapestry, I am privileged to serve a young woman in Thailand who is finishing her teaching degree and hoping to return to her own little village to serve her community. I get to dry my dishes with a towel made by a woman in Kenya and wear gorgeous earrings handmade by a woman in northern Japan. I don’t know these women, but because I know Rosie, who connected me with the young student, and I know Ikuyo, who brought the towel from Kenya to my church in Tokyo, and I know Sue who started the art therapy organization in Ishinomaki Japan, I get to be a tiny sliver of these women’s lives. And my life is ever so much richer because of I’m woven into this tapestry.

Do you see it? Because you know us, you have a connection to the tapestry at work in this city. We invite you to partner with us, to weave your prayers and your resources into our neighborhood, our classroom, our students’ lives, our playgrounds, our kitchen table. Partner means being committed to praying for us, allowing us to keep in touch with you, and possibly supporting us financially.

This REALLY is the only recent picture of the six of us....

By partnering with us, as we partner with Christian Academy, you sit with a struggling missionary kid who wonders if his parents beliefs are worth committing to, and with the proud atheist kid who begins to wonder if there is something to this Christianity thing after all. You play a hand in the hundreds of churches, outreach programs, schools and programs run by missionary parents who entrust their kids to CAJ. You have a seat at our table when we invite in lonely and tired moms, looking for empathy and grace. You walk down the corridors of children’s disability hospitals and make eye contact and smile at every single beautiful human.

We believe God is tugging on more hearts to look toward this corner of Tokyo, to the work He is doing  here. As our partners, you have the opportunity to connect with our school and students, this city, and for those of us who live and work here.

We’ve been incredibly blessed by generous one time gifts, and we’re very grateful that Japan’s welfare system provides some support for our special needs son. We could not meet our immediate daily needs without these one time gifts and without city welfare. But God has called us to commit long-term to this work, so we’re also looking long term and seeking to engage hearts willing to invest in this place. Prayer follows financial investment. We are looking for more financial partners to join with us in our daily work. Specifically, we are looking for 20 more partners to support us at $100 per month.

We know - because we’ve met you and we’ve sat over coffee tables and living room couches - we know that you are the kind of person who cares about lonely, hurting people. If you lived in our neighborhood, yours would be the house with the light always on. You would have a seat at your table, a welcoming classroom, a spare moment in your day to check in with that kid who just looks extra fragile. The beauty of the kingdom of heaven is that each of us is entrusted to be the hands and feet of Jesus in our own tiny neighborhoods. And because we love and trust each other, we also get to be the hands and feet of Jesus in each other’s neighborhoods, with each other’s neighbors and lonely friends.

And finally: What does this mean about how we stay connected with you?

• Instead of this more general monthly newsletter, we will now be sending out a quarterly family newsletter that we mail out and post on social media.
• Partners will receive monthly or more updates, a more personalized version of what we've been doing here, plus face to face/screen to screen connections as often as we can!
• At the encouragement of various advisors and Christian Academy in Japan, we’re making a change to our sponsoring organization. Previously, we used Japan Christian Academy Association, an offset of Christian Academy, to process donations. From this year, we’re joining a new organization, Resourcing Christian Schools International. RCE Int’l is set up specifically to help international Christian school teachers ministering overseas, and offers an array of resources including counseling, financial and retirement planning, home assignment support, and international living that we have already found to be so helpful and beneficial.

Will you join us? If you would like to opt in to our partner community, please reply to this email or click on the link below. We know each of you is incredibly committed to your own communities and everyone feels stretched thin. Please know that your reply will not change our relationship and we love you no matter what!

I’m in! Tell me more.

I’m ok for now; see you on Facebook in a few months!

Please don’t contact this email address again, thanks.