We forget; God Doesn't; We don't know the way; God Does!

"Move on? So soon?"

 

Couldn't Possibly!

It hasn't been 2 months since God had led me to Musashino Christian Chapel. Surely God was not asking me to leave already. Yet for awhile, some things have been happening that have been giving me an uneasiness that this might be what God would want me to do. Well then...




Where to?

"If that's really Your will," I prayed, "can You send me transcribing work?" I thought that would be a safe prayer. It was slow season, after all. Very few requests for work came into the company. I promptly forgot about this transaction, went on with my day.

Imagine my consternation when I opened my laptop a few days later to see an e-mail request for a transcription assignment. Ohhhhhhhhhhh.

"Whatever You say Lord," I slowly answered; "but I have no idea what ministries are available, where I could best serve You..."

 

That, I sensed Him respond, was for me to trust to Him. God knew what ministries were available; God knew where I could best serve Him. I was to just follow Him. So I will not be going down to the Kichijoji English fellowship I thank God for leading me to and have grown to love, knowing I will thank Him someday for leading me to paths of even greater grace.

 

Where He leads me, I will follow... 

I was going to wait until Thanksgiving...

I don't have to wait a few more weeks to post this, do I? I'm really not boasting, just thanking God. Something inside me says this has to be said.

Koriyama, March 2011

For the past few days, a childhood friend has been visiting and I found myself telling her about various blessings I've received from God through the choice servants placed around me...I really couldn't talk about the Mitas before, because I was in their church, and it would sound like I was bragging about my own pastor and his wife. But I think I can do so freely now--because I am officially not a member of the Bethel Baptist Church so I can boldly say the following:



Joe and Noney Mita. Special Servants God has put into my life. My friend told me to be careful. She said if I think of people too highly, if I put them up on pedestals and think of them as heroes, God tends to knock them off the platforms we place them on because He wants to make certain we keep HIM and only HIM in the place of preeminence that He deserves.



But had it not been for Joe and Noney Mita, our family might not have gotten out of Koriyama when we did, after that frightful earthquake of 2011. All trains, and various means of public transportation had been stopped; roads and rails had been torn up; everyone was in a panic and frantic to get out of the city; and those that remember--there was no gasoline even if you did want to move. My memory is pretty hazy, but as soon as something started moving, Noney Mita acted quickly to procure seats on a long-distance bus for us. We found ourselves on a bus--my husband, myself, and my son were all in separate rows--because the seats were taken so fast, we couldn't get three seats together. The bus traveled on back roads, bouncing up and down all the way to Shinjuku. Then we caught local denshas, I think, to get back to Iwatsuki, where Joe and Noney waited for us.


Keima's Koriyama Junior High, 2011

Up in Koriyama, Keima had given up hopes of continuing higher education. He had just finished junior high when that quake came. But Noney spotted a notice on a bulletin board that some Iwatsuki high schools were accepting earthquake victim students and asked if they might take my son. Because of this, Keima was able to get his high school diploma (to say nothing of the fact the school had the course of study in the very area of his interest)! To top it all off, when we left Koriyama, we had left behind all formal clothing, so we had nothing to wear to various ceremonies. Joe Mita loaned my husband his suit so he could attend the high school graduation. There is no handbook on earth that requires pastors to do this for their church members' family members. But he did this. I couldn't talk about this while he was my pastor, but he isn't my pastor right now, so I'm not bragging about my pastor...or my pastor's wife either, because she can't be my pastor's wife if he's not my pastor...!

Koriyama Apartment, 2011

    Joe and Noney Mita spent
    countless hours and
    money working tirelessly
    to help us in the sale of our
    Koriyama apartment.
    Then, after it sold for an
    astronomical amount, they
    Spent even more hours
    and money working on
    contracting land fees.
    Both involved legalities,
    interaction with real estate
    agencies, rent, tax. The
    Mitas, for the past five
    years, never for a fraction
of a second hesitated to give Japanese help for official papers, legal work, school procedures, medical things. I needed a spiritual male role model for my son, and Joe Mita offered to have friendly meals and Bible Studies with Keima.

Noney and Joe Mita at park fellowship, 2011

Joe Mita was always a model to us of a person who, when he would sense something that he felt needed to be done, he didn't waste needless time thinking about it--he DID it. There were times I would see that and want to cry wanting God to make me someone like that.

Noney Mita amazed Emi and me the way she seemed to be so naturally organized, yet she seemed to be a treasure chest of ideas too--how can one person be a scattergram and an outline at the same time? Yet that's what Noney seemed to do naturally.

I told my friend Joe and Noney Mita were the type of people that lived so zealously for God they probably wouldn't give it second thought if soldiers came rushing into the church and aimed machine guns at church people demanding that they give up their faith or else--the Mitas would probably throw themselves in front of those machine guns and give their lives for God.

It makes me think of:
"For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live therefore, or die,we are the Lord's." (Rom. 14:8)

There was a time I could claim the Mitas as my pastor and pastor's wife. For that time, I could say:
"And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; And to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. And be at peace among yourselves." (I Thess. 5:12-13)

*   *   *   *   *

Wherever You would lead in future service Lord, thank You for past protection and example through Special Servants like Joe and Noney Mita. Please reward the Bethel ministry with abundant doses of your loving mercies.

Gospel Train and Denshas

Several things pop into my mind with the word "train". Perhaps until now, the only thing I had to do with it was the children's song "Fukuin no Kisha", The Gospel Train to Heaven. Because of my neurological health problems, I did not make use of the Japanese mass transit--the streetcar system--and if I did, never did so alone; my husband always accompanied me, did the mental work for me.

In the past, that is.



Since last month, however, when it seemed God was leading me to the English Fellowship in Kichijoji, Tokyo; we decided if God was in this, He would have to enable me to do it alone. So Kinya came with me the first time--one way only--to show me which denshas to ride, which transfers to make, etc...; and after that, I was on my own, with God to take up the slack, if He wanted me to continue.

He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. (Ephe. 3:20) Now, not only can the streetcar system be navigated; but the Tokyo Station no longer seems threatening; and the subway system is being used for another evangelism outreach.



When Daddy came up to mainland Japan and saw the Shinjuku station, he commented that he would go crazy here. He was so used to the s-l-o-w pace of life down in Okinawa, working with individual people. I must say, some of the ekis here make people look like insects swarming around from one place to another. But there was an incident last month that I think would've made even Daddy smile.

On the way home from church, on the last leg of the journey, some former clubbers from our children's outreach happened to step into the densha I was on at the Omiya station. I walked through my car to reach the place they had gotten on and talked with them for awhile.

I have heard of house evangelism, prison evangelism, hospital evangelism, street evangelism, but never streetcar children's evangelism!

Only in Japan.

(Pictured is a stationary children's streetcar at the park. It's not really a ride but a sort of lounge for tired visitors to the park.)

Whippersnapper

"Whippersnapper." I never heard ANYBODY call Daddy that--but that's how Bob Boardman referred to Daddy.

When Daddy went out to Okinawa in 1955, still single, he had gone out under the Canadian Japanese Mission and worked with a mission agency called the Navigators. Below is his description in "Navigated for His Glory":

"In those early days, the Navigator strategy was to visit every hamlet on Okinawa at least once with the salvation message and offer free Bible correspondence courses. No cars, no beds, no money characterized some of our trips: we walked from village to village in the deep rural areas; we slept on wooden floors without mattresses; and on one occasion we ate nothing but buns for five straight meals for lack of funds. 

But after a year and a half of evangelizing, I felt a strong need for a helpmeet to continue the work God had for me. So I prayed together with a veteran missionary that God would provide me with one. - Roy"    

Daddy on water buffalo? Bob Boardman on stretcher?
 

The "veteran missionary"? Bob Boardman. He was the one who led the Navigator battalion as they raided the Okinawan villages with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And he was the one who prayed that this "young whippersnapper" would find a helpmeet when he went to Tokyo for a missions conference.

Bob Boardman's name had been mentioned before prayer meeting last night.

The question had been put to us to try to imagine existing without prayer. I smiled inwardly. It seemed Daddy couldn't imagine going on without a helpmeet. I don't think there's a human who would try to imagine living without breathing. How then can children of God possibly go through life without glancing up at their heavenly Father?

We spent a good deal of time last night just thanking the Lord for Who He is before even starting to pray for each other. It is always a good thing to think about what kind of God it is that chooses to anwer our prayers before we look to Him.

*   *   *   *   *

What happened to Bob Boardman's prayers? Perhaps he asked Roy too when he returned from the Tokyo missions conference.

During that time, he had met Kimiko Kaneshiro, a missionary with Far Eastern Gospel Crusade in mainland Japan. She, as Roy, had been called to the land of her ancestors--Okinawa--but the island, in its pioneer stage, had not been open to single women missionaries. Time together had shown them clearly God had led them into marriage, and it was evident that now they could together go to the land of their calling.

A few weeks later, Kimiko spent a week in Okinawa seeing the work there. She realized then it was for this that God had made her too ill the previous furlough in the U.S. to be strong enough, when she returned to the field, to head up various Tokyo teacher training programs as she had desired. God had made perfectly sure she would not become an irreplaceable part of that ministry; she needed to be able to pick up and move to Okinawa.

When I read old prayer letters telling about this, I got goosebumps.

This is the Sovereign God to whom Bob Boardman prayed.

*   *   *   *   *

Last night, someone did thank God for being a Sovereign God. Yes, it is so good that we can pray to a sovereign God isn't it? It doesn't matter what we are. We can be simpletons, wisecracks, even whippersnappers.

あるらい病人の祈りの答え

１０月３０日の礼拝のメッセージは、らい病人が癒された話しだった。

「らい病のことは分かりますか？」と牧師先生が言ったとき、

自分は川端さんのことを思わずにはいられなかった。

*   *   *   *   *

川端トミ姉は、１９５０年代、らい病のために隔離されていたときに救われた。

病気が完治後、彼女は家に戻った。健康と霊的いのちをてにした川端姉は、

周りの人に証し、村に教会が与えられるように祈り始めた。

 

１９５８年、宣教師大城昇・君子先生たちが、宇堅村に開拓伝道をしに来た。

「大城先生、あなたが来ることを待っていたのですよ。」と暖かく迎えられた。

そして、川端姉と数人の信者の証のため、村の３０名ぐらいが集まって

米軍が要らなくなったかまぼこ型兵舎の建物をもらって

宇堅福音教会を建てることになった。

しばらくしてから、村の子供たちは、「むらのちいさききょうかい」を、

「むらのカマボコきょうかい」と、歌っていた。♪

天の神は、一人のらい病人の祈りを答えてくれたのだろうか。

*   *   *   *   *

現在の宇堅福音教会

私が覚えている川端トミさん：

毎朝、目が覚める時、「ああ、神様に愛されているんだと、思い出して

一日を始めることにしている」と、言っていた。

*   *   *   *   *

 

百歳まで生きたいと言っていた川端さん。百歳まで生きた。

「神の恵みのトロフィー」の一人だと、父が言っていた。

 

私たちを暖かく見守って愛して下さる神様に、

自分も心の目をしっかりと留めておいて

生きたいと思う。



All We Have to do is Follow

"Vancouver? Would you by any chance know anybody by the name of 'Roy Oshiro'?" I asked. "That's my Dad. He was a missionary to Okinawa, Japan. He left Vancouver...but that was back in 1955."

"No; I'm sorry; I don't know any 'Roy Oshiro'," Katie Sisco replied; "But would he have known a 'Margaret Ridgeway'? She knew a lot of Japanese Canadians."



"Margaret Ridgeway?" I nearly flew out of my chair. That was such a familiar name. She was the person most influential in getting Daddy to become a missionary. In fact, she was the one who founded the mission board he joined. "Yes; Daddy knew Margaret Ridgeway!"

"That was my Aunt.", Katie said, smiling.

No wonder. When I first viewed the Musashino Christian Chapel

website and felt its

strange attraction, I had not known why the
Lord would want me to go
there. There had been an
irresistible tug to attend its
prayer meeting that night. It
had been irrational and
inexplicable. After all, I
didn't know anybody there. It was just another church in Tokyo with an English Department.

Little did I know that this fellowship was headed up by Ron and Katie Sisco, missionaries to Japan, who had retired in 2000 but returned last year--so actually were active missionaries again--to help the English Department of this church. And less had I known that Katie's aunt was the founder of the mission board under which Daddy came out to Okinawa.

But God had known. And no doubt, Daddy and Margaret Ridgeway must've both been smiling as they peered over the battlements of Heaven and watched us meet. As Daddy knew on earth and even better now: we are just His sheep. All we have to do is follow as our Shepherd leads us from pasture to pasture.

由来は、分かりますか？

多くの日本の学校で　イスラエル民謡として紹介されている踊り

「マイムマイム」

  

「マイム」はヘブライ語で水をあらわす言葉です。という説明までは、大体される。

イスラエルに戻って来た人たちが掘り当てた、井戸の水が出たことを喜んでいると、よく聞く。

だけど、この曲のストーリーは、それで終わる。喜びの踊りの歌詞は、どこからきたのか、わかりますか。

「ウシャブテム　マイムベッサソン　ミイマイエネハイエシュア」

（日本語訳：）

「あなたがたは　喜びのうちに

救いの泉の水をくむ。」

そう、イザヤ１２：３です！

父は、よく言っていました。神の子こそ喜んでいられる。

私たちが喜べなければ、いったい誰が喜べるだろう？

｢主よ､どんなことがあっても､神様がわたしたちを救い出し

導いてくださると信じ､

喜びに溢れる心を与えて下さい｡

マイム・マイム・・・♪」

 

Early Mornings with the Heavenly Father

Bethel Baptist Church

I had spent so many sweet, sweet hours at the sanctuary...I looked out at the empty room. I'd come early mornings alone, prayed aloud--and sang out too, and basically, because no one else was there to hear, it was time I had free for "just me and my Heavenly Daddy"...and then I'd curled up on one of the chairs near the windows to read my Bible and write in my journal.

There was that morning I saw a tiny spider on one of the chairs and resisted the urge to squash it. I remember thinking to myself, there would be no way I could love--I mean, really love--a creature like a...spider. And absolutely no way I would let my child suffer a cruel, torturous death at the hands of hordes of spiders for the sake of saving them! UGH! ...And that's just the difference between me and a spider? And the God of Heaven, the Creator of the Universe, did that for me?! I'd found that hard to fathom.


Jesus, when He was 12--His parents had frantically searched for Him--had found Himself naturally gravitating to His Father's House. He must've felt a tugging at His heart to go where He could be with the One He loved most, wanted to pray to most. And He must've been fond of those men He talked with too--they were his friends, friends who longed with starry-eyed wonder after truth strangely elusive of them. And the place that Jesus felt so drawn to and loved He ended up cleansing twice; then turning His back to it, He looked only to His Heavenly Father to guide Him the remainder of his earthly ministry.

Father, no matter how lovely the people You put in my life, no matter how blessed the places You choose for me; help me, as Jesus did, to always seek Your Face first and foremost.

父が最後に入院した中頭病院の窓からの景色

見よ。わたしは新しいことをする。

今、もうそれが起ころうとしている。

あなたがたは、それを知らないのか。

確かに、わたしは荒野に道を、

荒地に川を設ける。


郡山市のせせらぎの道から

わたしが荒野に水をわき出させ、

荒地に川を流し、

わたしの民、

わたしの選んだ者に飲ませるからだ。


イザヤ４３章１９節～２０節

Faces at the Funeral

Nobby Tajima speaking at funeral in May

"So how are you?" I said as he got out of the car at the parking lot; "I worried about you." All I did was begin to ask a simple question, and I realized my voice was breaking.

Nobby Tajima, my beloved pastor at the church in Koriyama where we had been for 20 years, had had a heart attack last month (he has had 2 strokes also!) But earlier this week, he was in Iwatsuki and gave the board chairman's greeting at the Bible School opening service.

Pastor Tajima, also the Baptist Mid-Missions Japan Field chairman, came down to speak at Daddy's funeral, and my present pastor, Joe Mita, also came down to give the closing prayer. I suppose it gave me a scare; at that funeral was Daddy's closest missionary-pastor friend in Okinawa who passed away a month later. When I heard about Nobby Tajima's heart attack, my entire being was already in the mode of "not again?!"

Joyce singing at funeral

But I suppose it is not necessarily just the men up on the frontline of battle God sees as important. There are others He needs as much in His forces. Matt Starin, pastor of Gushikawa Baptist Church, prayed and gave freely of his church people that we could have the most God-honoring funeral for Daddy as possible (he and his entire missionary family, I might add). And you'll have to excuse me for being unorthodox. You're not supposed to speak highly of own family members. But I think God needs soldiers who pray, work, give of themselves, heedless of own emotional, mental, physical needs that others could smile and sing, and I saw that in my sister Joyce. A recent Bible School graduate led funeral service proceedings. Near the end of the funeral, a present pastor gave a testimony, someone we saw growing up in one of my Dad's first churches--the one the villagers erected themselves--who has been a pastor now for decades. Dad introduced him to lemonade as a teenager, later to Christ.


Pastor Ishikawa: "It was lemonade!"

   Pastor Starin was the special speaker for our
   September 5th Bible School's opening service,
   introduced by pastor Joe Mita, listened to by
   aspiring BibleSchool students. Anyone can
   serve God, he attested.  God calls the lowliest,
   as it tell us in I Cor. 1:26-28. Maybe God wants
   followers of Jesus to be people that others want
   to be around, even simple people that introduce
   others to lemonade.

知っている人が写っていませんか？

もしかして・・・

あれは、何年・・・

Daddy and "the Doctor"



Daddy's Lloyd-Jones book:
Romans, pp. 118-119,
content below

Daddy's favorite author was hands down, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones. "The Doctor" didn't talk about church growth strategy, proven methodology, interpersonal psychology or religious moralism. Daddy liked him because he went back to emphasizing the basics and, well, sometimes he'd be telling me about something he read in his book and get all excited and lose himself. That's how I started asking if I could borrow and read some of those books myself. And I began reading Martyn Lloyd-Jones. And I know what Daddy's talking about. And I get flustered now too, knowing I know in my head and heart what I mean but can't get it out in words...well, people like "the Doctor" (that was Lloyd-Jones' nickname) will just have to do it for us. Just look at how many times Daddy read this chapter! And since it speaks of the moment one goes to Glory, I guess it fits neatly--right here!


"Keep on dwelling upon these things until they all become real to you. How real to you is this other realm? How real is this 'blessed hope'? Make it real by reading, meditating, praying, asking the Lord to make it clear. The Spirit has been sent in order to do such a work. Keep on doing all these things until you are so 'conscious' of that other realm that it becomes the greatest thing in your lives.

 

  I read a remarkable statement this very week as I was preparing these matters. I was reading an extract from an autobiography of an old Welsh preacher whom I had the privilege of knowing. He died in 1929. He says that after his mother died he was looking through her papers and various belongings. In a very old book he came across a little sheet of paper on which he found that one of his sisters had written certain words. She was then quite young, I suppose somewhere between ten and twelve years old. Her father had died, and evidently, on the day of his death, the little girl had written these words on the piece of paper, and had put it in the old book. This is what she had written: 'Today Dada has left us. He has gone into the glorious liberty of the children of God.' A little girl of ten or twelve, in the 'sixties of the last century could write in that way. Why? Because those were the terms in which she thought, the climate in which her family lived.

 

How many of us think in that way? How many of us could write like that? Is that our view of our own ultimate departure? Do we think instinctively in that way when our loved ones who are Christians leave us and go to be with Christ? This is true Christianity. I ask again, what is the value of all our head knowledge if it does not bring us to this? This is triumphing. It transforms everything. Life, death, and everything else becomes different. 'If we hope for that we see not, then through patience do we with eager expectation wait for it.' What a poor generation of Christians we are! What has gone wrong, I wonder, during the last hundred years or so? The answer, I fear, is that we are all so subjective, always looking at ourselves and our happiness, instead of thinking and meditating on the truth of the Scriptures and setting our affection on things above. Look at Christ, consider Him and what He is preparing for us. It transforms everything. That is the way in which, it seems to me, we 'through patience should eagerly wait for' this blessed hope that is set before us."



 

父がよく口にしていた御言葉

私の子どもたちが心理に歩んでいることを聞くことほど、私にとって大きな喜びはありません。

ヨハネの手紙　第三　４節



 

 



 

 

"Behold, I will do a new thing: now it shall spring forth: shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert."

(Isaiah 43:19)

 

There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.

Job 14:7

人を笑わせようとしていたDaddy

　　　　

おかあさん、ジョイス、本当におつかれさま。

老人ホームさくら館で

大城家,2015年3月

部屋の壁

found in my cellphone

Today, I came across something I 'd texted August 2013, in a hospital in Okinawa.

Daddy strengthening his arms

I talked with Daddy about aiming for "wheelchair ministry" lifestyle, and he seemed real positive about it, starting to exercise his arms, turning them around and around in the motion of operating a wheelchair. He'd been told (I may be all wrong, but this is what I told him) he'd have to eat more and gain muscle-strength in his arms and hands to get wheelchair mobility, and he wanted to ask rehab to help him start doing whatever was necessary to go in that direction. "LIVING sacrifice" was what God would be pleased with, and altho' it would be hard on pride for athletes to sit in a wheelchair, I believed Daddy could have an unstoppable ministry if he were willing to let himself be limited in this way.


Daddy was friends with everyone

By "ministry", we weren't talking about a pastorate, a church, or a pulpit. We were talking about reaching people and addressing spiritual needs.

 

Daddy used to say, "People need cheer every day." As a patient, he could be the first one to reach out and shake the hand of a medical worker, saying, "You folks know that we, who don't know anything, are completely dependent on people like you to help us, don't you?" He would never miss the orderly or housecleaner to give a word of appreciation for how pleasant and comfortable they were making his stay. Nurses, caretakers, hospital personnel were seen as people, not paid servants--Daddy always asked to know their names.

Daddy at rehabilitation

He didn't seem satisfied to smile himself but wanted to see others smile too. When learning to maneuver his wheelchair, he wore his "first year driver" (for the automobile!) symbol around his neck for all in the rehabilitation center to see and chuckle at.

"But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today" (Heb. 3:13)  Many of us are guilty of the sin of omission. Daddy didn't want to be guilty of it, at least during the end of his earthly life. Christians may speak of making sacrifices for God, serving Christ, giving their lives for the Kingdom...but what about simply walking today as Jesus walked: (I Jn 2:6), daily giving a word of encouragement here, a word of cheer there...or is "wheelchair ministry" beneath the dignity of most of us, and we'd rather do something more exciting, demanding, impressive, praiseworthy?


smiling patient

天願１３２５が写真館に変身

 

夏季学校・路傍伝道・洗礼式・プリンセル先生・福音連盟・日曜学校・福音丸・伝道チーム・祈祷会・証会・キャロリング・石垣島・バンクーバー・宣伝カー・リーズナー先生・カマボコ教会・種薪踊り・食事会・・・

子どものときの
　　自分、
　　　　　友人、
　　　　　　　　親戚、
　　　　　　　　　　　　知り合いが
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　写っているかもしれません。


ぜひ見に来て下さいね。

Refreshed



"For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether." (Ps. 139:4)

How confused I remember being that time after my senior year in high school! Too confused for words. I had hid behind the woodshed of the house in Okinawa then and wanted to cry out to God: "Why?" And God had quietly answered me then to trust His Love. It seems that never changes. Now, decades later, my often weary, broken, needing-refreshment heart hears: "Trust MY Love."

Early Mornings, July 2016

The Lord gave me ten sweet days in Okinawa. One of the last things I found myself doing was sharing my testimony about a time a few years later I couldn't understand why I had to stay ill with a borderline hypothyroid condition on the island, why it was taking so long to get better. I had had to leave college in the U.S. because of my health situation. At that time, the hospital in Okinawa was not equipped to test my blood for the condition, so my blood had to be drawn and mailed to mainland Japan to be tested, results mailed back, and the right medication was searched for in the same way. Needless to say, the entire procedure took a long, long time. For a young person who wanted to train to return to the field as a missionary, this delay seemed to make no sense, and I challenged the wisdom of God. But the scriptural admonition was clear: "lean not to your own understanding." (Prov. 3:5)

View from Paul & Janice's Weekly Rental Apartment

Imagine how I marveled at God's lovingkindness when I later learned that my mother had had stage four cancer, and passed away several months later. God had known I--the most fragile runt of the litter--had needed to be with her during her last year and a half on this earth. He had touched my body, picked me up from university studies, and plopped me down on the island then kept away all the medical technology that would allow me to leave the place any sooner than I needed. And he had allowed me to rant and rave, not realizing what was going on inside her body. Since then, I know I have often found myself begging God not to listen to me. And I know He won't...any more than what's good for me.

Daughters Reiko, Toshie, me, Joyce, Kuniko

For ten sweet days God let me drink in reminders of His utter goodness. My sister Janice and husband Paul let me stay with them in their rented vacation home from which I could walk to the beach every morning for a date with me and the Lord. I was able to have a wonderful time of reunion with my best friend from elementary days. Over the weekend, we had a blessed fellowship over barbecue with old friends and new acquaintances. We were able to make contact with girls my sisters and I had grown up with, the daughters of our Dad's first convert. We were able to make several visits to the nursing home where Dad lived, and on my last day in Okinawa, we visited another one. Daddy's friend, Zeke, who visited him in the hospital had had open heart surgery, and his wife was in this last nursing home--I wanted to see her before returning to Iwatsuki, and was glad we got to do so.


with Zeke's wife at Nursing Home

So much happens when I go down to Okinawa. I didn't even mention the picture museum my Dad made the house into or the Christian who was facing opposition from the family. That will come in following posts.
And I didn't mention that although because of my back problems and my x-ray in 2000, I hadn't been swimming, Daddy prayed that if God would will it, He would touch my body...
He did will so;
He did touch my body,
and...
I have begun swimming again.

ロイ大城昇 昇天式 経歴紹介

１９２１年７月２０日にカナダ、マニトバ州、ブランドン市で大城蒲助と正子に長男ロイ昇が生まれる。

ロイ、１歳

１９３０−１９３２、世界大恐慌の間、母正子と息子３人は沖縄に行き、カナダにいる父親から仕送りを受けながら親戚と住んで、天願小学校に出席する。

１９３２年にカナダに戻り、バンクーバーに住むようになり、小、中、高校の間、英語の学校の放課後、日本語学校でも勉強し、卒業する。西洋と日本文化の良いところを合わせて立派な日系市民を作りたいと思い、１９４１年にブリティッシュコロンビア大学に入学し、教育学を専攻する。

大学１年生のロイ

１９４２年に日本の真珠湾攻撃の結果、日系人は強制的に退学となり、ロイの家族はアルバータ州に移動させられ、砂糖大根の農場で働く。

弟明・ジョージ
ロイは後ろ

後ほど、戦争のために教師の不足が起こり、カナダは特別教育学の学びを提供し、ロイは教師免許を取得し、カナダで最初の日系人公立高校の男性教師となる。

表彰状

１９４８年にクリスチャンの同僚の影響もあり、伝道集会に出席し、マルコ８：３６のメッセージを聞き、魂の大切さを考え、クリスチャンになる。すぐさま、沖縄の親戚にもこの大切な教えを知らせなければと思い、翌年に教師の職を辞め、神学校に行き、聖書の学びをする。１９５４年に卒業し、宣教師となり、１９５５年に沖縄に行く。

独身時代のロイ

宇堅、首里、石川、石垣、平川、と様々な所で教会を開拓し、人々が真の神様に心を向けるように努める。

 

当蔵の教会の祈祷会、１９５９年

２００６年に８５歳で宣教師の仕事を引退し、２０１６年に召天するが、多くの信者により伝道の働きは続けられる。