I was looking back at the July 17, 2016 post "Refreshed" (my 2nd most read post), and realized something. In the post, there are 3 sisters I am having a meal with. I mentioned they were children of my Dad's first convert.
Well, it was these 3 girls' older brother Takashi who got saved, married my cousin Rumiko, and was active in children's work until paralyzed from an accident and then was called Home on Mar. 6. That was the person mentioned in the Mar. 8 post!
Rumiko is actually my second cousin. Her mother, my Mom's cousin, had been chosen to become a priestess in the Ancestor Worship system, as was Dad's cousin Seiko's wife. However, different from Seiko's wife, who was merely tormented by the demons, Rumiko's mother was at times actually possessed by them.
Sometimes, Rumiko and her siblings would come home from school to find their mother at home claiming identity of an island aristocrat, addressing them in dialects they did not know, speaking with frightening voices she did not possess.
"Bow down, bow down, I am the lord..."
No wonder when she came over to our house, there was usually some kind of trouble between Rumiko's mother and Grampa Nagata (Mommy's retired uncle). He had come from Hawaii to help my parents with their missionary work among the elderly. You would expect dissonance between the evil spirit in her and the Holy Spirit in him, as staunch and outspoken as he was.
Oh--it was just before the day of the new priestesses' initiation ceremony that Grampa Nagata died, and she missed the ceremony in order to come to his funeral. It was that day she cried before Grampa's form that lay there.
"Your God is powerful even when you are dead," she admitted; "What can I say--I lose." And she found salvation in Jesus Christ that day.
I remember Rumiko's mother's eyes had looked hard and bulging before but looked soft and beautiful after that. But I shouldn't keep calling her "Rumiko's mother". Her name was "Kiku".
