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"
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| 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.
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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.
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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.
