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?