Life Together Under the Same Grace
On Sunday, May 31, 2026, we welcomed back Toshi and Masami Sasao to share their testimony of God’s faithfulness during their time at West Tokyo Union Church. Toshi and Masami Sasao were part of the West Tokyo Union Church family for over 15 years. Since 1999, they faithfully shared their gifts, presence, and encouragement within the life of the WTUC church community when Rev. Claudia Genung was the pastor here.
Together with their daughter Michelle, who was baptized and raised at WTUC alongside several other children of the church family, they experienced this congregation not simply as a place of worship but as an intergenerational spiritual home. WTUC became a community where faith was nurtured, friendships were formed, and life was shared across cultures, ages, and backgrounds.
Toshi, a community psychologist and retired faculty member at International Christian University, taught at US universities before moving to Tokyo in 1997, and has consistently engaged in research and teaching in Korea, Poland, Indonesia, and Pakistan for almost 30 years. At WTUC, he served in many quiet but meaningful ways through teaching, outreach, worship, and church leadership at WTUC. Masami, also an educator in child welfare at the higher education level for a little more than one decade, found joy and fellowship through many activities, especially the quilt ministry, where relationships, care, and prayer have been stitched together one piece at a time. Masami served on the outreach committee for several years.
Like many members of this congregation, the Sasao family has walked through both joyful and difficult seasons of life, supported by the prayers, kindness, and steadfast presence of this church community. Through those experiences, under God’s grace, WTUC became, for them, a living example of Christian “life together” under the grace of Christ.
Toshi and Masami shared reflections from their journey at WTUC and how God has sustained them through the love and faithfulness of this congregation.
We do not have a transcript or translation of their testimonies available at this time.