Jun and Mayu Sawada

About our ministry
We both grew up in Christian families in Japan. As we grew up, we felt that it is hard to live as a christian in Japan because the christian population in Japan is just 1% of the total population and we can hardly find other christians outside of church. We thought that it would be better not to tell our friends and people around us at school and office that we are christians as discussing religion is somewhat taboo. However, after we got married, our passion to share the gospel grew stronger and we started to pray about what we can do.
In thinking and praying about this, we realized that even though it may seem like a detour, the first step is to create a better environment for Japanese christians to connect and encourage each other. This isa necessary foundation for evangelism to the Japanese people. There are many people who want to hear Bible stories and testimonies from those close to them, but at the same time, we know the difficulties to do so in everyday life in Japan.
We named our ministry MESHRASH from the verse Eccl 4:12 and started to make goodies to help people turn back to God and give them a chance to share Bible verses in daily life since 2017. In 2023, we also started Cafe C&R (the name comes from Matt 11:28 and C&R stands for “Come and Rest)” to create casual opportunities to meet christians in their daily lives and share gospel in natural settings. We hope that our work will help many Japanese christians live their lives following Jesus and testify to Him. Moreover, we hope that more Japanese people will come to believe in God through the testimonies of those close to them.
For more information, please visit our website.
cafe C&R website : https://www.cafe-candr.com/
MESHRASH website (English) : https://meshrash-english.square.site/
How can you help?
① Visit our cafe (cafe C&R located in Osaka, Japan)
If you have a chance to come to Japan, please come visit our cafe(cafe C&R). It is very encouraging for both Japanese christians and non-believers to meet christians from overseas. We also have many customers at our cafe who are interested in English. Now a missionary who lives nearby comes once a month to teach English conversation lessons at our cafe. If you are able to teach English conversation lessons more often, or if you are interested in having an English event when you come to Japan on a short-term missionary trip, we would love to have your help.
② Prayer
If you would like to support us in prayer, please sign up for our newsletter by emailing us.(jun.sawada@meshrash.com) We will email you updates and prayer requests every 3-4 months.
③ Financial support
We are also in need of financial support to continue this ministry, especially to maintain and operate the cafe location ($2,000/month). It is very important for both christians and non-believers in Japan to have an environment where they can meet and interact with christians in a natural way on a daily basis, so we would be happy to have your help in our ministry.
Give online here or if you prefer to give by check, make the check out to “JEMS” and write our name on the memo line. Mail the check to P.O. Box 86047, Los Angeles, CA 90086-0047. If you have any questions please call the JEMS office at 213-613-0022 or email info@jems.org.