Japanese Tea House

Last week, we went to the nearby city of Cluj and met with Katsutaro Kawai to discuss ministry opportunities with him.  Brother Katsu is a missionary from Japan who has worked for more than 20 years in Romania, ministering to university students and in various churches. Last fall, he visited the Gherla Open Bible Church with his wife and their Japanese intern who are both from the Open Bible Churches in Japan.  We ate lunch with them and enjoyed our time together.

For the past ten years, Brother Katsu has operated a Japanese Tea House near the main university in Cluj.  He uses this business primarily as an outreach to the university students.  Since the COVID-19 outbreak, all restaurants were closed, so Brother Katsu is using this time to make plans for future ministry.  He invited us as his guests to the tea house and he and his Romanian employee Malo served us delicious Japanese tea with Romanian pastries. 

Katsu, Malo and Mike

We had a wonderful time discussing ministry and encouraging each other in the Lord.  It is unlikely that we will be able to help much with the ministry in Cluj since our schedules do not work together well at the moment, but we praise God for the testimony of faithful servants like Brother Katsu.

On a side note, there are tables available in the tea house where guests sit on the floor, but our hosts were gracious to us and allowed us older Americans to sit at a regular table.