Adam recently came to be part of our church and is recently married to our missionary in Japan, Sabrina. Hear from Adam, a missionary himself to Japan, as he shares more about himself.

Please share a little bit of your background and how you came to Evergreen.

I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. I come from a family of Italian Canadian nominal Catholics. I decided to follow Jesus during my third year at university, becoming involved in student ministry and by extension, missions. I’ve traveled to India and Japan for short-term missionary work, and spent one year in Osaka, Japan (August 2019 – August 2020) for medium-term missionary work. Amid my preparations for my Osaka term, I met Sabrina through an online dating website. As we met in-person and dated in Japan, we decided to meet each other’s families. This brought me to California in September 2020, where I had the privilege to meet Sabrina’s biological family and her spiritual family here at Evergreen.

How has your time at our church been so far? What are you initial impressions of our church?

COVID-19 has definitely made things interesting in my initial engagement at Evergreen. I first started attending Sunday services online. I’ve appreciated the love of Jesus being made explicit during the services, and seeing that incarnated with the people of Evergreen as I’ve been attending in-person.

My initial impression was that Evergreen is big! My home church in Canada is a small percentage of the size of both the congregation and the campus. The size and scope have definitely been a change for me, especially after returning from Japan, where a group of six people every Sunday was a successful turnout.

The few families that Sabrina has invited me into fellowship with have been loving, patient, funny, and encouraging. These families have been intentional in cultivating community with us, not as a duty, but as a natural outflowing of their character and care for us. We’re excited to dive deeper in relationship with them.

What are you most looking forward to in your time at Evergreen?

More than anything, intentional community and the organic discipleship that comes out of that are something that excites me about my time at Evergreen. I’m excited to learn more about the vision of discipleship here, and encouraged to see that vision play itself out within these families of community Sabina and I are engaged in.

How can we pray for you and Sabrina? 

1. Our marriage. We are seeking to cultivate a space where we are living out our identities as family, as missionaries and as disciples. Pray that we prioritize loving God, loving each other and loving others in this.

2. Immigration and citizenship processes that we’re currently involved in. We are seeking to become dual citizens (Canada-USA), and the processes are long. Pray for favour.

by Ian Nagata

“Say you strike up a conversation with someone on the train who’s never heard of Jesus. How would you share the gospel with him?”

It was a great question. And like many of the other questions people asked about my missionary game plan, I hadn’t envisioned that far yet.

So I said the first thing that came to mind:

 “I’d try to find a way to get him to sit down and read the Bible with me, so He could encounter Jesus.”

Nine years later, ironically, it’s the only question that I would still answer the same way. The person of Jesus is our greatest evangelistic tool.[1]

I could share why I feel this way based on multiple conversations, Bible studies, and yes, random people I’ve met on the trains here in Tokyo. But the past three weeks I got to experience this not only in Japan, but on a global level.

For three Wednesdays, I participated in an online training on the Person of Jesus by seeJesus ministries. Participants logged in from Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, alongside trainers from Guatemala, Jordan, Philadelphia, and So. Cal. 

Besides the personal joy of seeing Evergreeners Jon Hori and Darren Inouye, we delighted in six hours of seeing and studying Jesus’ compassion, honesty, dependency, love, and ultimately, beauty throughout Scripture. (Though Jon and Darren are also quite lovely and beautiful.)

What struck me most however, wasn’t just Jesus’ beauty. Rather, His particular beauty in each of our cultural contexts.

For example, Jesus’ washing the disciples’ feet is beautiful to those of us in America. But have you ever thought how shocking such humility would be in a hierarchical society like Taiwan?

Or take Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. Have you ever thought how the Father’s welcoming would resonate all the more in a shame culture, like Jordan? 

Or think of Jesus’ acknowledging Bartimaeus amidst a great crowd, asking what He could do for him. Can you imagine how courageous this would be in a culture like Japan, where people ignore each other on the trains in fear of disrupting the peace?

So pardon the seemingly sensational title. But I truly mean it when I say we have no greater evangelistic tool in the world. Because as the hymn says, only Jesus is our “Beautiful Savior, Lord of all the nations,” from Jordan to Japan, La Puente to the ends of the earth,

[1] Stole this phrase from Jon Hori’s teaching during the Person of Jesus online training!

By Sabrina Yee and Adam Pietrantonio

Hello Evergreen SGV church family!

This is Sabrina Yee and Adam Pietrantonio. It is such a joy to announce to you—through this blog—that we are getting married on June 26th this year! We also wanted to use this space to introduce Adam to the Evergreen SGV family and provide some insight into our wedding planning, which has been a unique season to say the least.

Adam’s Story

Adam is originally from Toronto, Canada and was born into an Italian-Canadian family. He decided to follow Christ as a university student, through the student ministry Cru. He is currently the only Christian in his family, and as a result, quickly saw the need for evangelism and discipleship among those who do not know Jesus. Through various conversations and events, God ignited a desire in Adam to love and serve the Japanese people in Japan for the sake of the Gospel. He is currently a career missionary with a Canadian mission agency: Fellowship International. He and Sabrina are committed to serving long-term in Japan together, as God permits. If you would like to know more about Adam’s story and his journey to Japan, feel free to approach him when he is at the Sunday services at Evergreen SGV.

Wedding Planning

Wedding planning for us has been unique for two main reasons: we are planning during a pandemic, and we are planning with families living in two different countries. While the pandemic has forced us into realities that we would not choose for ourselves under normal circumstances, we have sought to be intentionally grateful for the blessings we have experienced during this season. One of these blessings has been the relative (key word: relative) ease in planning the wedding. COVID-19 has forced us to scale back our initial plans, which has presented us with fewer decisions to make. We are grateful that Christ has given us spaces of rest during this time. 

Another unique reality has been navigating our times with each of our families. Traveling back-and-forth from the U.S. and Canada over the last several months has had its challenges, as we have had to quarantine each time arriving in either country. We are both approaching four months of quarantine cumulatively, so it has been extra sweet to meet with friends and soon-to-be family during this season of movement. 

Also, with the travel restrictions varying significantly between the United States and Canada, there is a chance that very few—if any—of Adam’s relatives will be able to travel to California in June for the wedding. Navigating these changes and the possible scenarios that may occur has been difficult for us. We are praying that the small contingent of Adam’s family will be able to attend in-person.

Thank you

With all this, we have received such great love and support from those at Evergreen SGV that we have connected with. (From Adam): It has been a joy to see from afar the care that Sabrina has received from so many of you at Evergreen SGV. I am excited to meet many of you in the coming months and say a socially distanced thank you!

by Darryl Wong

During 2020, I was originally planning two trips to Japan for work as Missions Coordinator with JEMS.  However, just as I was getting ready to fly in March for a missionary retreat, the COVID-19 pandemic started spreading.  Both Japan and the US closed borders to foreigners, and travelers were mandated to quarantine for two weeks.

After the missionary retreat was cancelled, I had also planned a short-term mission project in June.  My wife, Helena, and my son, Leo, were supposed to go with me to serve with a church from Austin, Texas, in ministering to people from the Tohoku region, northeast of Tokyo. However, this trip was also cancelled due to COVID-19.

Needless to say, having two trips cancelled was disappointing.  However, there is a saying, when God closes a door, another one opens.

Because we could not go to Japan, my boss Roy Toma, the JEMS Japan Mission Director, learned about Zoom video conferencing.  Although we were not able to get the missionaries physically together for spiritual encouragement and learning, we found a virtual way to get them together.  About once a month, we have a meeting with the missionaries to pray and see how they are doing.

In addition to not being able to travel outside the US, the JEMS office in downtown Los Angeles was forced to close, because considered a non-essential business.  I was suddenly thrust into working from home.  Although it took some time, I was able to set up my home laptop and gain access to files from the JEMS headquarters to continue to connect with and provide administrative support for the JEMS missionaries.

Lastly, the opportunity to share the Gospel in Japan did not stop due to COVID-19.  All of the long-term missionaries continue to live in Japan.  They are doing live-stream messages or putting their worship services on YouTube.  In fact, some churches are allowed to get together with physical distancing.  Please pray for the missionaries as they continue sharing Christ in Japan!  

by Ian Nagata

“Should we say our names [into the mic]? So he knows who’s speaking when he listens later?”

“Um, ok. Hi Ian, this is Leo…”

So began an evening of sharing. It was the final night of the 2012 worship team retreat, just a month before I’d leave for Japan. One by one, each member shared an affirmation, encouragement, or ridiculous memory. And to make sure I wouldn’t forget, they even recorded it.

Only so much fits in two check-in suitcases. But I had plenty of space for an hour of audio on my smartphone (thanks to my iPhone 4). So across the ocean we came.

The first few years, those tracks would pop up on shuffle mode at the oddest times: jogging in the morning, biking to language school, on an evening stroll to 7-Eleven. I’d be memorizing kanji characters at a Starbucks, when all of a sudden – a joke from Peter Lau. A witty word from Chris Hong. A thank you from Diane Lieu.

And there was nothing I needed more. 

When we think of missionary support, we tend to think finances and prayer. But if I could name a third leg to the “support tripod” that's held me up these eight years, it’d be affirmation. 

Here’s why. Two check-in suitcases really don’t fit much. You can’t fit your family, friends, church, job, even wife. (Ok, I didn’t have a wife.) And without the steady stream of affirmation all these bring, we sometimes forget who we are. 

“Why am I here? Did I really sign up for this? What is my identity? How has God prepared me for this?” In the “why’s” of our wilderness, we need voices that speak truth over us. And the voices we’ve known longer, speak louder. 

So thank you Evergreen SGV for reminding me who I am. Thank you for “speaking the truth in love” that I wouldn’t be “tossed to and fro by the waves” of missionary madness. (Ephesians 4:14-15) Thank you for every email, snail mail, FaceTime, text and LINE.

I haven’t forgotten who I am, and I definitely haven’t forgotten you.