Babienco Missions

Stories and Updates from Michael and Caitlyn's mission service in Japan
-May/June 2026-

Greetings from warm and sunny Japan! The heat has come earlier than expected this year in many parts of the country, and although we quite enjoy the warmth, we are always thankful for air conditioners being available! As you are aware, we are in the midst of a time of uncertainty with our son being in the hospital after the discovery of a life-threatening heart condition. If you missed the last newsletter (March), you can read it on the Updates page of our website.

First of all, we want to say a big thank you to all of you who have reached out, shared words of encouragement, prayed and done so much more for us during this time of difficulty. These have helped to keep us going. We don’t want to think about where we would be without the prayers of many people — literally around the world! — praying for our son and for us.

Our son had his second surgery on March 24. Out of the four surgeries he will need, this was the surgery with the most risk, the longest recovery time, and so on. The surgery took about eight hours and had one small complication, but overall, it was a success. For this, we praise God! The third surgery will happen sometime between when he is four and six months of age (July through September), though right now the doctors are leaning toward the latter end of that period rather than the start.

Since that time, our son has been in recovery in various sections of the hospital. His first stop was the PICU, or pediatric intensive care unit. The original forecast was a 2-3 week stay; however, he ended up staying there for over a month. Helping our son re-learn how to breathe on his own took longer than expected, and his recovery has been slow overall. The PICU staff are wonderful, and we made friends with several of them.

One of the practices we were doing during PICU visiting hours was singing songs to our son so he would know we were there. One time, as Caitlyn was singing to our son, two workers came over and started asking Caitlyn why she was singing. She answered, and then they asked what she was singing. It just so happened that she was singing “Jesus Loves Me” at the time, so she explained what she was singing and why it mattered. They were very interested in this. So we hope that this and other events help to plant some seeds there at the hospital.

After the PICU, our son was in the High Care Unit (HCU) for about a week, after which he was moved to the general ward, where he is still residing as of May 31, along with Caitlyn, who can now stay with him 24/7. The medical staff has been slowly reducing his medications, monitoring his vitals around the clock, assisting with care and so on. At this point, a discharge is possible before the next surgery, but it is not 100% guaranteed.

There have been a lot of highs and lows, but we are thankful that we have started to see some “normal” baby behavior coming out after so much time in the hospital. Thank you for continuing to pray for him!

Of course, we have been extremely busy over the last three months with our son’s care and needs, but work continues as well. Hiroko has just concluded a series of afternoon Bible studies with church members in Yamaguchi covering various Bible doctrines. For some time, she has also been translating a discipleship manual by Laurence Burn, former training director of AFM, into Japanese. Caitlyn has been assisting her with formatting the translation for printing. Soon, Hiroko will be piloting the use of these materials in a discipleship seminar once a month or so at the church.

We had the opportunity to see our fellow AFM coworkers in April. They recently launched to Japan and are living in Kyoto. They came all the way to the hospital area with our field director so that we could enjoy some time and fellowship together as a team.

As for me (Michael), I have begun work on a Bible study guide based on the three-part sermon series I gave several months ago. Unless we put this information in a reproducible format that locals can use, it will go to waste. Unfortunately, there have been some delays in writing that guide. The Japanese government has been revising many laws related to visas and foreigners this year. Several of the changes increase language requirements for certain visa types. As a team, we are very concerned that the language requirements for the visa I hold will also be increased. If this happens, I will not meet that standard, and we will have to come up with another visa. With a visa renewal coming up in November, we decided that I would once again focus on language study and attempt to meet the higher language standard via a standardized Japanese test taken on July 5. Studying for a test is not what was in our game plan, but we feel it is important at this time to have security, whether required by law or just in preparation for the future, in our current visa, so that we can stay here and continue to work for God in this country. Please be praying for this test!

• Please continue to pray for our little one as he recovers from his surgeries.

• Please pray for us to meet people in our time here who would become friends with us and be interested in learning more about what a relationship with Jesus looks like.

• We are so thankful for the many different ways God has clearly blessed us during this hard time.

We would love to hear back from you. You can email us at adventure@shoesatthedoor.net. We are happy to pray for any prayer requests you might have, so please feel free to send them our way.

Thank you so much for your support!