Mourning

"When Job's three friends, Eliphas the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon (Job), they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was." - Job 2: 11-13 NIV.

I got news from my dad this morning that a close high school friend of mine named Aaron Jones died in a car accident a few weeks ago.

I haven't been in touch with Aaron for several years, didn't even know where he lived or what his job was.

But I remember one day in particular - a day about six years ago, on a winter afternoon. I had never been to Aaron's house before since we didn't generally run in the same crowd, but this day I marked out a map to his house in the country and left James Madison University with a bag of cookies for him in the passenger seat. Two days earlier I had stood with him while he wept as they carried his younger brother's casket through the funeral home. His brother had been killed in a car accident.

I followed the winding country road through the cold Virginia hills and sparse trees to Aaron's house and knocked on the door.

His mom answered, and I found Aaron inside.

There wasn't much to say, but he hugged me and was glad I came. We talked about his brother, about how life would change and about how death and life become more and more a part of us as we grow older. I told him about the hope I had in Christ and how I would be praying for him and his family.

"Strangely enough, I'm finding out more and more about peace," he said, his dark eyes far away. "I thought it would be the opposite, but I've become much more interested in spiritual things lately."

His eyes were red. He held back the tears.

I stayed a little longer in the small kitchen and then took my keys to leave, promising Aaron and his mom to pray. My little Corolla rumbled down the lonely gravel driveway, headed for home with a heavy heart.

I never heard the phone ring at Aaron's house as I pulled out into the main road.

I never knew they were looking for me, my gold Corolla, as the gears shifted and country fields became familiar.

I never heard him drop the phone, fall to the floor and cry out, "No! No! Not her mom, too!"

They were waiting for me when I pulled into my own driveway to tell me the news.

Aaron was too upset to come to most of my mom's funeral arrangements, but he did come to the funeral, heavily drugged so that his eyes were glassy.

"Your mom is cool," he said to me once. "I'm like one of those long-haired kids everybody else's parents are terrified their daughter is going to be friends with, but your mom likes me."

She did.

Mourn with me for a moment over the death of a young man you've never met, a man I don't know if I will meet in eternity or not. Mourn for the sin of the world that brought death in the first place, for the heartache of a mother without two sons, and the brevity of this life that makes no bargains.

But those of you with Christ, mourn as those who have hope... whose tears will shortly be wiped away.

Those of you without, consider, consider the cost...

---
"We know know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. FOR IN THIS HOPE WE ARE SAVED." - Romans 8: 22-24 NIV.

Hiking

Here are some good pictures of a recent hiking trip up a mountain here in the city...so much fun!!!

Hiroshi, Athos, and Christy


Yukie, Jenny, and Yuko. Yuko is a Japanese Christian, and Yukie is a non-Christian college student who has been coming to house church occasionally and is interested in finding out more about Christianity.

Faraway

Horimoto made for me, when suddenly the liquid notes made me stop, in mid-word...the music, the melody, something from my faraway past, years fading like mountain mist, and then I remember - a music box from somewhere in my childhood, note for note, memory for memory. I am seven again, or eight, tucked into bed next to my younger sister. My mom has kissed us good night, said our prayers, scratched our backs, sang to us, and now she's standing at the chest of drawers, turning the music box key once, twice, three times, so we can have just a little more music while we sleep. The room is dark; the white canopy over the bed hangs in soft gray folds in the shadows. The hall light is shining yellow, illuminating the door frame, a patch of brown and white wallpaper in the hall, a corner of the brown ceiling, and my mom's slight, feminine figure as she sets the music box down. She steps outside and pulls the door closed, leaving it open "just a crack," the way we like it. I think about the stories I'm writing, my homework, whether or not the U.S. will go to war with Russia, whether or not I'll be a writer and get married when I grow up, how funny it is that adults do things like marry and have children and sit around and talk rather than play, how safe I am in that room from faraway cities and crime and rawness of the world, how glad I am that I know how to say my prayers and not be afraid, and why does my sister always go to sleep before me so I don't have anyone to talk to?

Almost twenty years later, and the only thought that dares to form in response to this faraway memory is that God was there, too, still...still...

A good story

beginnings, and this is one of them. First I thought it started on the way to the post office, then I thought, no, it started in the ramen shop, and then, no, it started my first few weeks in Japan on the sidewalk outside of my apartment.

I was coming home from somewhere in the crisp fall, and I saw a little, hunched-over, wrinkled Japanese lady walking a little dirty white dog that looked even older than she was. But when I started to pass them, the dog started jumping around and wagging its stubby tail, and I stopped to see if it was friendly. It was, and the old lady walking it, surprisingly enough, was, too.

"Gamba," she said loudly with a smile, pointing to the dog.

Ah ha - Gamba is his name. Right?

Yes, she said, nodding up and down with her whole body. And that smile!

She began chatting with me rapidly in Japanese, most of which I couldn't make out except the word "daughter" and "your apartment." Her daughter lives in my apartment? No.

Her conversation was a mystery, but after I petted wiggly Gamba, the old lady bowed low to the ground several times and waved at me as she walked on.

I still remember walking into my apartment lobby in slow motion, smiling because there was someone friendly here.

I would have forgotten the incident if it wasn't that months later, in the spring, the i-Witness volunteer team from Texas was in town for evangelism. The whole team came for lunch at the ramen shop on the corner near my apartment, and when I walked in, a middle-aged lady working behind the counter acted as if she knew me. I couldn't place her face and racked my brain as she spoke in rapid Japanese. The she said it: "Gamba." Gamba, the dog? Yes. Her mother is Gamba's owner. So this lady was the daughter of the old lady!

The team left the shop after giving the lady and the ramen owners cassette tape versions of the JESUS film. The lady was thankful. She bowed and held it in her two hands.

Fast forward to a month or so ago, when I was walking to the post office down the street to deliver some mail. The same lady in the ramen shop was coming in the same direction just a few steps behind me, carrying her own mail, so I waited for her and we went together, chatting in Japanese and broken English.

On the way back I waved good-bye and stopped at the convenience store for milk and juice, and she headed back to the ramen shop. Before she left, she said in English, "Please come to my house." I happily said yes and turned to go. But she stopped me. "Promise?" she said, holding out her hand.

"Yes," I said.

I felt her shaking mine and realized there was something special here, something more than just wanting to be with a foreigner... maybe?

In the store I was still thinking about her word, "Promise?" and the way she shook my hand, not a Japanese custom, when I heard my name.

I stood up from trying to decipher the milk kanji (which one is lowfat again? Is that the one with the discount or not?) and turned around to see her standing there with a shy-looking high school girl.

"My daughter," she said proudly.

I greeted the daughter, Kanae, who kept silent and shook my hand until her mom poked her in the arm and whispered furiously for her to speak English.

"Nice (pause) to (pause) meet (pause) you (pause)," said Kanae uncertainly, her voice tone completely even like normal Japanese speech.

I was surprised and pleased, if not a little caught off guard, when a hand-written card appeared in my mailbox the next week inviting me over for dinner the next night. I already had plans for Saturday, so on my way home I stopped by the ramen shop and passed the message on to the old ramen owner, and they said they'd let the lady know.

So when another hand-drawn card appeared in my mailbox on Friday night, inviting me to go fall-leaf viewing with the family (complete with drawings of colored trees), I said yes.

Yesterday I was dressed and ready by 8 a.m. when the lady came by to pick me up with her family - and she meant family! Two cars were waiting outside, and they contained - in order:
the lady
her husband
her 13-year-old daughter
her 12-year-old daughter
her mother
her brother
plus, me, the foreigner, and a nice supply of green tea and candy.

So I, a little nervously, set off for a town out in the country with a family I've never met... and it was INCREDIBLE. We made jokes all the way to the small town, they pointed out scenery and different places in broken English, made jokes and communicated via English-Japanese dictionaries.

When we got to the town, the leaves were indeed turning copper and yellow in patches, and the Japanese walnuts were a nice, flaming red. They paid for my ticket up the ski lift, and we climbed to the top of a mountain and looked out over the forested mountains and valleys around.

I began to notice the family dynamics - the bright 12-year-old walking arm-in-arm with her dad, the energetic grandmother who beat everyone up the mountain without even looking back, and the dyed-blond uncle took pictures who smoked every time we paused, the quiet 13-year-old, the mom who told me about her Filipino friend, the taxi-driver dad who smiled and said only one sentence in English: "I am very tired."

All of my nerves melted away and I missed passionately, for a moment, the comforting feeling being with family.

We took pictures around the location signs (a tradition for Japanese), interrupted only by a strange man in a business suit who noticed my foreign face and started shouting in English, "Action! Action!" and pretending to take my picture with his camera. My embarrassment only made him laugh, and all the two thousand million Japanese tourists who had descended on that spot turned, stared at ME, and also laughed. But mostly stared.

And for once I didn't care. I was, after all, with a FAMILY - a whole family, one who had brought me, paid for me, and weren't either embarrassed of or flaunting my foreign-ness.

Yes, there are some advantages to being a foreigner in Japan... and yesterday was one of them.

We tried to find a place to eat lunch and were forced by the sheer size of crowds in town to go to the only place with seats, a huge INDIAN restaurant (my favorite!), and then we hurried to the onsen, a local hot springs/public bath kind of thing which Japanese love.

I found it comic to be washing my hair with the mom, the grandmother and the two daughters - all strangers to me until yesterday. We sat in one of the hot pools talking about my faith - was I Mormon? Was I Catholic? What is Protestant?

It turns out that the younger daughter, the one with the bright face and wide-mouthed, innocent smile, goes to the same school as the daughter of a local Japanese pastor friend of mine.

Strange how our paths are all crossing...

It had begun to pour rain outside, and as we drove back to the city, I tried to describe the location of the church where I needed to be dropped off for English worship. As soon as I gave him the location numbers (our city is on a grid), he zipped the cars around and dropped me off right in the parking lot. I was amazed.

"Well, he is a taxi driver," said the mom with a laugh.

I waved good-bye to everyone, holding the umbrella they had given me over my head, and entered the dark church. No one was there yet, so I crumpled, tired, in a chair facing the rainy window and puzzled over the events and words spinning in my head.

If only this family, like Cornelius in Acts, would seek the Lord and send for someone to explain the truth.

Could I be the one?

Or could I prepare the way?

Dear Father, show them the way!

Will you pray with me for this family, in entirety, to know the Living God, the One who loves them with an everlasting love and died to pay for their sins?

The rain is gone now, and I am starting a new week. Will there be another day for them to believe?

Sidenotes

but the whole sky is blue from horizon to horizon - bright, clear, punctuated by cool breezes. I love summer. I wish it wouldn't end...not yet...

So many little things I've been wanting to share, small things, details in between the normal routine that makes up my life in Japan.

Do you want to hear? Have a seat.

* I've had a permanent retainer (little wire) on the back of my bottom front teeth ever since I had braces my first year of college. Well, I was eating a carrot two weeks ago, and part of the bonding came off. Uh, oh...a visit to the Japanese dentist. It looked like any clean-scrubbed American dentist's office, except that the dental assistants wore pale blue uniform dresses and there were these amazing cutting-edge video cameras attached to each chair.

The dentist, who spoke English (and heard me when I asked Kathy to make sure he was careful and PAINLESS), put this skinny thing about the size of a ball-point pen in my mouth, and all of a sudden he beamed pictures of different parts of my mouth and teeth to the video screen so I could see it.

Amazing! (And they do this to everybody?!) He took one look at the permanent retainer, kind of shook his head like, "I can't believe these primitive Americans still do this," and told me it definitely needed to come out. What about my teeth going back all crooked? It's been long enough, he said. Let's just take it off. So he did. We had requested a cleaning, so he did - those teeth. Only those teeth. When it was done, I couldn't believe the change - beautiful, white, clean, straight, bottom teeth with NO wire. "What about the other teeth?" I asked Kathy. Kathy asked the pale blue uniformed dental assistant. The pale blue uniformed dental assistant said something long and polite in Japanese which basically meant "no." "I guess they're only going to do those," Kathy said with a shrug. So now I have six clean, wire-free teeth, and I got to see them on a video screen the size of a Pop-Tart. Pretty cool.

* The leaves are starting to change here already. Sad, but true... Some of the big green trees are turning splotchy yellow and brown (not very pretty yet). The Japanese walnuts are patchy red and green, and the Japanese maples turn deep purple. There is a kind of tree I see every day that has beautiful clusters of bright orange-red berries, round like peas.

* My skin allergies have been getting worse and worse since I've been in Japan, itching and turning red and bleeding when I scratch them. So I finally gave up and went to ANOTHER medical office, this time with my bouncy young Japanese teacher. Everyone was quiet and solemn in the dermatologist's office (except us). They stared at me because I was a foreigner, but they stared at Ichihara-sensei even more because 1) she was with a foreigner and 2) she did not fold her hands in her lap and look off into nowhere. She actually made a joke to the receptionist and GOT UP OUT OF HER CHAIR to look at a child walking past the window. When the receptionist called me back, we went together so she could translate. He took one look at my horrible blotchy red legs and told me I had really, really dry skin. In English. He didn't even look at Ichihara-sensei. "Do you think it might be...?" she was suggesting. "No." He said. People are very protective of their English. So when the bill came for the visit and medicine, I almost fell over - it was only about $30. Ichihara-sensei and others had told me to expect at least $100, maybe $150, for any kind of specialist like that, and it had gotten so bad I finally said, well, who cares, and went. But $30??!! Either the dermatologist was REALLY nice to me, or God was blessing me, or both. I think both. I've been using the medicine every day like he said, for about a week and a half now, and you wouldn't BELIEVE how much better everything is! It's like I have new skin.

* I don't think cars in Japan have mufflers. They must be banned.

* I spent Saturday in the SUN and on the WATER about three hours away from here, whitewater-rafting with seven other people. It was soooo much fun! We made fun of each other from our respective cars, our raft guide was Nepalese, we got to float around in VERY cold water in dry suits, and several of us got soaking wet faces (thanks, Athos and Georgi!). The river was perfect, surrounded by mountains and trees just starting to change color. Our Nepalese guide even gave us permission to splash the other rafts around us with our paddles, which we did enthusiastically. On the way back we stopped at a Japanese hot springs to thaw out and watch the sunset. The moon was completely full and bright. What a beautiful day...

* I have a new bed! It seems more and more like I might be allergic to tatami, the grass mat flooring inside traditional Japanese houses (and my apartment). It's only in one closed-off room for formal events, but I'd been sleeping in there on the floor because the old futon bed I had was lumpy and uncomfortable. So when we started thinking the tatami fibers in my sheets and in the room might be aggravating my dry skin (I'm VERY allergic to grass), I needed to get out of there. Back to the old futon bed. Back to my back hurting. What to do? Well, we took the old futon bed apart and are going to give it a one-way ticket to the landfill. And in its place is a brand new little single bed, pine frame, just put together yesterday. It's up off the floor (since my doctor last year said I was having allergies to dust - is there anything I'm not allergic to??!). Today I put clean sheets on it, washed in special non-allergenic detergent, and can't wait to get in it tonight. A clean bed and clean sheets - one of the best things on earth!

* Make absolutely SURE the automatic doors are ALL THE WAY OPEN before you go through.

* They're putting sweaters out in stores now. I put my sandals in the cabinet for next year just this evening. It'll probably be too cold to wear them from now on.

* It's too much trouble to cook eggplants. Ken from the seniors' class gave me a whole bunch of them, but I would have had to buy so many special ingredients to make anything palatable. Any suggestions? I think it's too late for these (I mean REALLY too late - I won't go into details) but maybe next time. Most Japanese like eggplants. Or better yet, give me your address and I'll send you mine.

It's almost nine in the evening, so I should go... Thanks for listening! Ask me about the armadillos sometime when I have more time.

Even more pictures!

Fondue at Athos' apartment with friends, just before watching fireworks from his balcony - man, that was sooooooooo good...


Heidi in black and white...


Yumiko eating a kiwi during our lunch together - she says I'm a "vegetable missionary" since I always try to get her to eat fruit and veggies. Is it working...?


My friend Maki, a staunch Buddhist, and I with her friend's guitar (wish I could say I KNEW how to play!!)


A cookout at the end of the ESS club semester.


Notice the older lady, Shinobu - I really, really like her. She lives nearby. Please pray I will get to know her better!


Kumiko, the girl I REALLY want to get to know better, and Shouta, a loyal ESS guy. They are both really quiet, but if you press them, they are SO smart, friendly and fun. Quiet Shouta is the best karaoke singer I've ever heard in my life - who would have guessed??


I stole the glasses of one guy and somebody else's cell phone during the cookout... heh, heh, heh...

A little moment

The eastern sky is brooding again, boiling with thick, heavy clouds in layers of blue and gray so deep they almost look black. But something disrupts the monologue, and sun spills gold from the west in a sudden flash of brilliance, silhouetting bright lime-green trees and gleaming tan houses against an apocalyptic backdrop of midnight violet.

I smell rain.

I pull open the glass, eager for a glimpse of the sun, shining from one mutinous break in the clouds to the west. The sky is playful aqua there, robin's egg blue, and the tips of the clouds shine white, pearl, soft gray.

The moment passes, and shadows descend like a huge, black crow lighting on a tree branch, slowly, softly, resolutely.

The trees turn from lime to deep emerald, and the rows of houses and rooftops begin to turn deep gray, one by one by one, until only a ribbon of pale, distant sky separates dark land from dark clouds.

I strain my eyes to the west.

Somewhere, against distant mountain slopes, the sun is dancing in the pines, lighting clouds in beautiful, dappled peach and eggshell white with misty edges.

A flock of crows flies westward, dodging power lines, calling back and forth with rough, throaty calls.

Perhaps they, too, miss the sun

Coincidence... or not?

I can still hear the drums outside my closed window, hollow and tinny, echoing from the street between whistle blasts. Boom! Boom! Whistle, whistle. Boom! Boom! Marching feet. I slid open the glass to hear better and was sorry I did. I can't see anything from my window, but I can hear the festival processional coming through the big street in front of my apartment, apparently blocking traffic.

A festival wouldn't ordinarily bother someone - unless, of course, you are a Christian in Japan. Japanese festivals are full of Buddhist and Shinto religious symbols, chants and activities. Even if they're couched in the guise of a harmless dance or cultural/historical event, don't be so quick to think all is well. So you've seen "Karate Kid II" - remember the Bon Dance they introduced so innocently? It's a festival and dance inviting the spirits of deceased ancestors back to their native homes so they can be worshipped.

I hear the drums again, coming back up the street.



Two weeks ago, in fact, a lady came to my door asking for money for the local Buddhist temple festival. This may indeed be it.

At any rate, I was unable to sleep last night because of strange noises in the floor above - under - both - I'm not exactly sure. Running feet - back and forth, back and forth, strange music, drum beats that made my floor vibrate - after 10 p.m. in a family apartment!! I turned on my lamp, read my Bible and prayed, and eventually the noises stopped.

Then early this morning my dreams turned from normal to creepy to demonic - a sure sign for me that something is afoot in the spiritual realm.

I am a child of God who is not welcome in Satan's kingdom.

And then, at 2 in the afternoon, a festival marching up my street.

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand agains the devil's schemes. FOR OUR STRUGGLE IS NOT AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD, BUT AGAINST THE RULERS, AGAINST THE AUTHORITIES, AGAINST THE POWERS OF THIS DARK WORLD AND AGAINST THE SPIRITUAL FORCES OF EVIL IN THE HEAVENLY REALMS. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand." - Ephesians 6:10-13.

Friends, our actions are NEVER neutral!

Our lives and the way we live them are always accepting someone and rejecting someone. Some choose to accept God and rejecting Satan; others choose to please people, please the crowd, accept the ways of Satan ("called the prince of this world") and reject God.

There is no such thing as an action with no consequence. Even to choose NOT to believe in anything is a choice, a statement, a coming to one side of a line drawn in the sand.

P.S. - Christ already won, He wins now, and He wins in the end. Not a bad record!

Summer at home

with long cloudy spaces and a few bright days jammed with flowers.

I look out on the trees clumped along the road, waving in the breeze, and I remember summer in my own hometown - before the introduction of college, jobs, faraway cities.

It was just the road and me then - a long, black curve of asphalt lined with Queen Anne's Lace and powder blue chickory blossoms, winding through the countryside, going nowhere important... except past my childhood friend's house, or to the old Tastee-Freez with creamy white ice cream, or over that small hill where I could see the whole line of Blue Ridge Mountains surrounded by green pasture like a wide picture postcard.

If I followed the road long enough I would see my high school, and expressionless cows blooming like black-and-white mushrooms in a green garden, then the old railroad tracks, and then vast stretches of national forest and Appalachia - complete with log cabins - in the general direction of my favorite camp sites. But if I turned off to the right I would see the small, white church where I asked to be baptized (I remember its green shag carpet well); around the bend stands the brown-roofed house on Crawford Drive where I spent ten years of my life.

The blue sky over the mountains, the peach glow of a clear sunset, the sunlight in the grass and heat in the morning, rest in the shade and tomatoes ripening on the vine, a long, winding, lonely country road...

Time stops along such a curve of pavement; white and gold daisies are neither snobs of century or of person. Daisies do not care if you are eight or 80, or even whether you see them. They will bloom quietly along the roadside, where God scatters their seed, summer after summer in forgotten places.

The road stretched out in the other direction eventually runs into a bigger road, and then a bigger one, until it merges with the interstate, from which you can spend two pleasant hours until the big trucks of Richmond try to wrestle you into the shoulder... you will find signs for a Richmond International Airport, a plane that will take you to Newark, N.J. and then on to Tokyo, then a small plane bound for northern Japan, then a bus, and another bus, and finally a quiet street like mine today, intermittently dark and light as big clouds roll by, smelling of ramen and the last of summer grass. The wind smells of fall.

Far from home but full of memories.

But I would be wrong if I thought those summer days in Virginia would stay the same. My friends have grown up and married, moved away. Someone with a pickup truck lives in my old house, and the roses I planted are in disrepair. Someone I've never met pastors the little white church (which recently acquired a steeple), and few of the teachers left at my high school would know or even recognize me.

Even the last vestige of my childhood memories, the old elementary school building which had been there for decades, joined its predecessors in a pile of rubble next to a huge, new, gleaming brick elementary school. The playground, the cafeteria, the gym echoing of squeaky gym shoes - gone.

There are more malls and fewer farms, more strangers and fewer friends.

What job would a girl with an English degree have there?

The likes of small towns were not made for journalism and big plans.

Instead I am here, watching Japan's short, strange summer unfold, sitting as close to the window as possible to soak up every bit of sun even as I work.

This is God's season, God's time.

Jesus gave up a lot more than a summer when He left Nazareth, feeling perhaps a little torn as I do - He gave up His life.

What if He had stayed there, raised a family, lived the good life with his friends?

Where would we be?

Not here, not saved, not living changed lives.

And what if Paul had lingered in Tarsus, or Abram in Haran, or Ruth in Moab?

There are those who God calls to stay in their hometowns and work for Him, and those He calls to leave - some for a short time, some for a lifetime. But we are all called to make ourselves available to His kingdom - no questions asked.

And sometimes that call leaves us feeling a little far away from everything we know, are familiar with, understand, remember.

But the day will come when summer in north Japan will go on without me, and I will get off the interstate at a little no-name exit in the Shenandoah Valley.

I will see new buildings and old ones, strange cars and familiar hillsides. I will drive through the roads I once knew like my own breath and savor the colors of a Virginia summer.

Maybe it will be less spectacular than I remember. Maybe more.

But two things will almost certainly remain unchanged: wild flowers along the roadside, blooming in delicious, delirious obscurity; and Tastee-Freez ice cream, the best in the world. My favorite has raspberry sauce.

Stop in sometime and see for yourself - my treat.

Sapporo music show!

Kegani

The wonders of communication

Communication is an incredible thing.

The Heartlanders team was in Okinawa for a team retreat last month - eating REAL American food for the first time in months, enjoying the warm wind (and warm rain), watching morning break across the ocean and silhouette slender palm trees against the sky.

We met new team members and team members who have been around for years. We prayed. We talked strategy. We sang hymns.

And on the way home, God gave me a breakthrough.

I was riding in the front of a taxi-van which hauled seven of us (plus our luggage) from the hotel to the airport in Naha, Okinawa's capital, about an hour away. As we loaded everything in to the van, I noticed our driver - a little old man who appeared to be in his late 60s or 70s... pleasant face, gray hair, cute fishing hat.

I have a soft spot for older people, especially older Japanese, so my interest was peaked immediately. And that cute fishing hat... That did it for me. I had to talk to him.

"Good morning," I said to him in Japanese as he swung our suitcases into the back of the van.

"Good morning," he replied with a big smile.

"Do you speak English?" I asked hesitantly in Japanese.

He laughed and waved his hand back and forth. "No, no. Not at all." He paused, loaded some more suitcases, then tipped his hat back and said, "You speak good Japanese. Where are you from?"

Aha! He WAS friendly. And he wanted to talk to me, too!

I sat in the seat behind him as our taxi-van caravan took off, watching the fields of skinny sugar cane and summer blue sky slide past the windows. I asked him about the sugar cane fields, Okinawa food, where he was from and what things he liked.

And he answered me in fast, gutteral Japanese with a strange, slurred Okinawan accent, beaming all the while.

He told me the Japanese names of the flowers as we passed by, what to call palm trees, how to say "hello" and "thank you" in strange Okinawa language. We listened to part of a baseball game on the radio.

"Do you like baseball?" I asked him.

"Not really," he replied. "How about you?"

"I love baseball," I said. "And I really love soccer."

"Is that right..." He watched the road a while. "So what do you do in Japan?"

"I teach in English and Bible in Sapporo," I said.

"Really! You're a missionary?" he asked.

"Yes. I came to Sapporo last August."

We talked about Sapporo ramen and the long winter, the feet and feet of snow that fell every year.

So the two of us talked almost the whole way to Naha - a little brown-haired missionary daughter sleeping in my lap, the driver (hard of hearing) tilting his head to hear my broken Japanese.

It wasn't until we were zooming through the narrow, crowded streets of Naha that I realized what a miracle had just happened.

He hollered something in Japanese over the noise of traffic.

"He says people aren't allowed to ride bicycles in town because the streets are so narrow," I told the others in the van.

I asked him another question, and he was listening so hard that he had to tap his brakes to slow down in the traffic flow.

"Oh, sorry - I'm dangerous," I joked in Japanese.

He roared with laughter - face crinkled in a big smile, watching the other cars in the rearview mirror.

Wait a second - what just happened?

Did I just have an hour conversation (and tell a joke) to old Okinawan man - all in Japanese?

Did he really just tell me something about bicycles and crowded streets and I UNDERSTOOD?

Did he actually UNDERSTAND what I said and laugh?

It was like a gigantic neon sign suddenly burst into brilliant, gaudy light overhead: Jenny, this is COMMUNICATION!

I could almost hear the Hallelujah chorus showering down in our little taxi-van as I took it all in.

I just COMMUNICATED with someone.

I just carried on an entire CONVERSATION with someone. Not an, "Excuse me, where's the bathroom?" question or even the typical, "I'm from America. Nice to meet you," thing.

No, this was a conversation - a giving and taking of information, a blending of lives at tiny, interconnecting points.

And the miracle - IT WAS NOT BECAUSE OF MY JAPANESE!!!

I've been in Japan a year, but believe me - years of Japanese could not prepare me to talk for an hour with an Okinawan man.

No, it wasn't my SKILL but my TOOLS! I didn't even realize it, but being in Japan has taught me how to say some basic things: "Could you say that again, please?" or "I don't understand this word. What does it mean?" or "I don't know what that means. Does it mean...?" or "Could you repeat that slowly?"

I've learned how to ask questions a different way when I come to a roadblock.

I've learned how to DESCRIBE what I mean if I can't think of the word.

I've learned to locate the problem words and go around them.

In short, I've learned to communicate. I can't translate. I speak many grammatically correct sentences. I could NEVER write a paper in Japanese.

But God has taught me, without me even realizing it, to communicate.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS???!!!

IT MEANS I'M NOT ALONE!

It means I can erase the invisible lines that separate me from other people!

It means means I can share questions, joys, pain, faith, funny things, strange things, ANYTHING with a person, even a stranger, if they're willing to talk to me!

It means I have my life back!

It means I have a connection to other living human beings, a connection to lives beyond my own!

For almost a year I have lived in Japan feeling lonely and isolated, trapped behind a massive language barrier like jail bars. And God has been slowly handing me the keys. Keys to freedom. Keys to my old talkative self. Keys to let people know that I'm more than a friendly American - I'm a CHRISTIAN.

I said good-bye to the taxi-van driver at the airport as we loaded suitcases out onto the hot sidewalk.

He shook my hand with his worn, calloused hand, and said, "Thank you," several times in Okinawa slang and then Japanese (just to make sure I understood).

I thanked him back and told him to take care.

"I had fun," I told him. "Thank you."

"Me, too," he said. "See you later."

He waved to me from the taxi-van as the caravan pulled away, probably headed off to pick up more people.

I waved to him until the van was gone.

See you later. No, I probably won't see him again. I don't know his name, his email address. I couldn't even pick his face out of a crowd now.

But the miracle is still there.

When I met friendly Japanese strangers back in Sapporo, I chatted with them and listened to their lives.

When I gave a fragile old lady my bus seat, I let her know that I was a Christian.

I sit here even now, amazed.

Thank you, little Okinawan man, for showing me the gift of conversation.

Thank you, God, for working as you so often do - in tiny, undiscovered ways that suddenly pop out in stark relief one day (to our great surprise!) Thank you for the spoken language, the sharing of words and blending of lives, the intersection of thought between two people.

Use our mouths, God - whether we speak English or Japanese, like a translator or in broken syllables, to declare your praise to a lost world.

Make us like Moses - whose "slow" speech set a nation free.

Set this nation free, God.

Set Japan free.

Let your people go.

World Cup Party!

Hiking Mt. Moiwa

My senior adult class and I hiked up Mount Moiwa, a small mountain in the outskirts of Sapporo. The grass and trees were green and lush, but it made me sad to see mountain shrines and offerings to the gods left along the forest trail.

Yoshie and Keiko




A wildflower called "kurumabaso," which translates, "car leaf flower" because the leaves are shaped like the spokes of a wheel.


Our fearless leader, Ken, looking up flowers and plants in his guidebook. He loves nature and has a beautiful vegetable garden, besides teaching physics or biology (I forget which) at a local university.


The mountain path we took was dotted with all kinds of Buddhist statues and stone idols. There is a Buddhist monastery nearby, and I met a female "monk" (nun? not sure of the name) when we were almost to the top. She was so surprised (and happy!) to see a foreigner (me) that she let us take a picture together, although I think I heard her telling the other Japanese that she usually doesn't let people take pictures but this time it was okay. She was wearing a long robe. I can't remember her name, but it started with "Ko" - "Koko," "Koro," something. Please pray for her, that she would find God's truth... Romans says that creation speaks of Him, so pray that she would reach out for God and live.


Mr. Horimoto, one of my favorite people in all Japan.

Beautiful days in Okinawa