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.