Snow!

Beautiful Things

It's late at night, after midnight, but I can't sleep until I write this last little note.

I saw three beautiful things today. The first two I saw as I walked down to a local mall to meet my friend Mariko, a friend from our college days in North Carolina. There was snow and ice on the sidewalks with a thin layer of fresh powder lying soft on top. My boots crunched like a whisper through the snow. I love winter.

I looked up, and there it was - a cobalt blue sky with white flakes whirling against it, so lovely it took my breath away.

Then as I turned the corner past a lonely schoolyard, I saw the moon. It was almost full, round and bright, ducking in and out of a swirl of thick, puffy clouds - deep stone grey, lined with fine, bright silver. The moon over snow. White over white. Snowfall at dusk. Has the color white ever been so beautiful?

And then, in the car after dinner with Mariko at her home (an unusual thing in Japan), she asked me suddenly, "Do you think you'll go to a Christmas service at your church?"

"Yes, I hope so," I replied.

"Good," she said. "Can I go, too? I mean, if it's not any trouble?"

I was dumbfounded but managed to answer a resounding yes! Yes! Yes!

There was more.

"I think about Buddhism and Christianity sometimes, and I'm a lot more comfortable with Christianity than Buddhism," she said as we passed by the same park, now black and grey, where I had seen the moon. "I feel so good when I do Christian things. But I want to know more before I make up my mind, because it's a really important decision. And," there was a pause as we turned the corner, "I'd really like to meet some Japanese Christians. I've never met Japanese Christians before. Maybe I could meet some if I go to church with you at Christmas, and then I could see how they do things."

We were at the apartment now, and I was shaking with excitement. I could feel my face getting red with joy in the dark of the car.

"Do you have a Japanese Bible?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said, with another pause. "But I don't really understand it."

"I have some Japanese and English Bibles and some Bibles in Manga," I told her. "And the Jesus film. Would you like to see any of those?"

"Oh, yes," she said, with more enthusiasm than politeness. "Maybe they will help me understand better."

It's after midnight now. There is no more blue left in the sky, and the moon is gone. But I have just witnessed, in one evening, more beauty than one small heart can hold.

*Please pray for Mariko, who is so earnestly searching for the truth. She is so pretty and so lonely, wondering what to do with the rest of her life. God brought her all the way to North Carolina to hear the gospel, and now He has caused our paths to cross again. What an amazing Father we have... Oh, please pray that Mariko would soon find that He is her Father, too! Pray that she will open her heart to God and experience more beauty in His presence than in a thousand moons over snow.

Conference in Amagi

My favorite part of all... MOUNT FUJI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kathy said she's been to Amagi several times, and it's very unusual to see Mount Fuji so clearly - and BOTH times on the way there and back. Usually Mount Fuji is hard to see because of the clouds and smog, and if you can see it, there is often a ring of clouds that obscures the top. But not this time. God was so gracious! I saw beautiful Mount Fuji, much more beautiful and clear than I ever imagined, BOTH times. I love Japan!!!!!!!!!!!!



This is the famous Shinkansen, or "bullet train," that I've always dreamed of riding!! The picture looks like it's coming in from right to left, but actually it's pulling out of the station in Tokyo from left to right. It's so fast - up to 200 miles an hour, Ronny said - but as smooth as riding a Cadillac. I actually had no perception of how fast I was going, but it was so much fun!!!





Gorgeous morning in Amagi, nestled in the mountains. It was warmer there, so it felt like we got to experience fall all over again, since it was already winter up in the north.







We journeymen visited a little gift shop down the street one evening, and the owner and his wife gave us each a rose. Such a sweet welcome to Amagi!

Friends in Amagi

Heidi, all ready to go before the long trip to Amagi - by plane, train, and car.


Traveling together with the Cookseys, our fellow missionaries, and their five children is alawys fun. The kids draw lots of attention in the airports with their blue eyes and light-colored hair, and even the most serious Japanese businessman will stop and crack a smile. We play games with the kids, draw pictures, hold hands along busy subway lines, and make it to Amagi tired but happy.


Kathy, the mother of a missionary family in Sapporo - my co-worker and friend, on the way to Amagi. We ate honey toast in a little shop in the airport en route to Tokyo.


Naomi and the gorgeous fall leaves in Amagi.


A missionary couple in southern Japan. He plays a unique Okinawan instrument in a band and knows some college students in my city who used to go to his church... Pray for possible connections here! You know how much I love college students! P.S. - isn't the sink great?


This is the owner of the shop whose wife gave us roses in Amagi. You can see the owner and his dad(?) in the middle, his wife and little girl to the left. You can also see Heidi in the back, plus other journeymen. Naomi, a Japanese Christian from Tokyo Baptist Church, is in the front to the right. She was one of the people I interviewed several weeks ago in Tokyo for an article about the IOJ (Internationalized and Overseas Japanese) team.


The journeyman of Japan gathered around the dinner table in the conference room, all with our roses from the gift shop.


Our treat on the way back through Tokyo - Wendy's!!! I had a cheeseburger, Wendy's fries (with ketchup and napkins) and, of course, a Frosty. What could be better?

Suffer the children

"But Jesus called them unto him, and said, 'Suffer little children to come unto
me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.'" - Luke 18:16.

Such is the kingdom of God indeed. It has been a hard adjustment to get used to Japanese children, with their fear of foreigners and things that are "different." I always loved pictures of Japanese children when I was in the U.S. - children with big, black, almond eyes, little upturned faces, big smiles.

Unfortunately for me, those smiles did not appear quite so frequently as I hoped. More often than not these beautiful children hid their faces from me or pointed, whispering to the close-by parent, "Gaijin! Gaijin!" or, "Foreigner! Foreigner!"

When I gave Heidi a hand with her children's class a few weeks ago, pandemonium ensued. Children were screaming, jumping up and down on the tatami floor, doing imitation karate kicks with each other within inches of our laptop computers. I tried to rehearse what I would say in Japanese in case the man downstairs came to tell us the neighbors were complaining.

Even in the children's classes I helped with at the missionary family's house, the children's response to me was less than impressive. Since the man of the house was there, they generally refrained from karate kicks and fighting. But for me, a twenty-something newcomer on the floor who could do little more than grunt a strange word or two in Japanese, it seemed hopeless. One girl said, "Bye, bye!" to me in English, just once, before scampering out the door. It made my day. But try as I might, I couldn't seem to connect with the children. They virtually ignored me unless they needed something.

A far cry from the grand images I'd had of ministering to beautiful Japanese children, giving them a torch to carry into the next generation.

My favorite part of the English classes at the missionary family's house, though, has always been the five minutes of children's Bible stories at the end. The lady of the house pulls out the fat Japanese children's Bible, full of bright watercolor pictures, and for those five minutes an absolute miracle occurs. You would have to be there to believe me.

No matter how much goofing off, pencil-throwing or noisy horseplay has been going on during the English lesson, all activity CEASES. You could hear a pin drop in the room. The children (all young boys except one girl, mind you) gather around Cornelia, silent as mice, riveted to the Bible stories. Last week one of the boys actually crept forward on his knees and took hold of the Bible as she read, straining to see the Japanese better.

A miracle. In the missionary family's living room.

I gave up, so to speak, trying to "connect" with the children. My best was enough. And if God used me in obscurity just to hand out pencils and point to correct letters while He planted the seeds of the gospel in their young hearts, that is, and should be, enough.

In fact, in the whole scheme of things, whether or not they connect with me is unimportant so long as they connect with Christ.

If I hand out pencils for Christ's sake, then may He alone be pleased with my work, my best, given solely for Him.

That would be the end of my letter if not for Daisuke.

About two weeks ago I was sitting on the floor with six lively children as usual, bent over English worksheets and writing furiously. I always loved to watch Takumi, the littlest (and probably the brightest) of all the children as he carefully and painstakingly wrote, his long eyelashes pointing downward on his smooth, white cheeks like brush strokes.

But today Daisuke caught my attention. Rather than putting his few Styrofoam letters back in the alphabet frame properly, as everyone else had, he gave up and dumped the whole frame on the floor in a huff. Twenty-six Stryofoam letters piled on the floor.

While the lady of the house continued teaching, I went over to Daisuke (who had barely acknowledged my existence) and helped him pick the letters up and put them in the right place.

Daisuke is a little bigger than the other boys his age, skinny, all smiles, and tends to be a bit of a bully, especially to little Takumi. He's also a little slower than the others. His mind drifts, he plays with his pencil, he is more interested in flicking the spongy letters across the room than reading them.

He stuffed the letters into their spaces awkwardly, sometimes grabbing the wrong one.

"They don't get much praise and affirmation at home," I remember the man of the house saying. "Their dads are gone most of the time. And when they do get attention, most of the time it's negative attention."

As I picked up several colored letters, Daisuke suddenly held out his hand.

I put the letter in it. He put it in the right space and held out his hand again.

There, in the space of thirty second, another miracle had just happened. The tiniest, tiniest flutter of communication between Daisuke and me, Japanese boy and gaijin missionary.

We were silent, save my occasional whisper, "Good job!" and nod of the head when he put the right letter in the right space.

Once or twice he looked at me to see if he was doing it right, and I nodded at him.

I don't remember a thing about the class going on around us. I just remember his small hand, taking my letters, as we finished the alphabet together. Connecting. Communicating.

When Daisuke put "Z" in its place, I took the alphabet frame with a nod.

"Thank you," he said in English, giving me a strange sort of smile. Then he grabbed his pencil and began the worksheet with the others.

As Daisuke struggled with one of the worksheet activities, he did the unthinkable - he turned around and looked at me and asked in Japanese, "Is this right?" I leaned over the table and pointed to the right answer.

He scrubbed at his paper with the eraser, almost tearing it, and wrote the right word.

Then as he went on to the next one, he looked up at me for approval.

"This one?" he asked, pointing to the right word.

I beamed at him and nodded. For the rest of the lesson I was his personal helper, sitting by the table and pointing to the right answers when he needed help. When we split up for groups, he rattled off a long question to me in Japanese. I couldn't understand, and he didn't seem to mind. He found that by putting his pencil through the loops of "P's" and "B's" he could spin them around his pencil. He laughed out loud and, when he caught my attention, pointed to his new activity in exuberance.

Daisuke didn't say good-bye. He bounded out the door when class was over, clumsily grabbing his worksheet and leaving his nametag flung on the table. I didn't care.

Today we connected.

I was amazed at how that tiny, tiny moment affected me. I have been to Mexico and Brazil. I have held dirty children on my lap and watched them fight over who got to hold my fingers (because two hands were not enough).

And yet that one slight interaction with Daisuke, the simple act of holding out a hand, weighed almost as warm in my heart as any of those days.

Perhaps the reason is simple: This is Japan. Everything is different in Japan.

And perhaps there's more to it than that... I think, more certainly than ever before, that God speaks more often in the still, in the quiet, in the imperceptible slivers of time and space that only the hushed heart - the expectant heart straining for His voice - can hear.

God speaks in the bright, the fireworks, the powerful lots of times.

But here in Japan I find Him often speaking as He did to Elijah - in a "still, small voice."

Can you hear Him? Can you read between the commands and Biblical injunctions and hear the WISHES of God, the thoughts of God, the cries of His heart for a people He loves even without reason?

How could anyone not love such a God?

How have we as a people so filled our lives with stuff and business and noise that His voice is lost among the days and weeks and only noticed if it is big, noisy, a billboard with neon lights?

No wonder I have missed Him so many times, settling for the crumbs when He has a feast spread out just for me.

As snow falls here, without a sound, from dove grey skies, I wonder all the more who this God really is and why I have waited so long in pursuing Him. Really pursuing Him.

I know about the call of God. But what about His whispers?

Pray for the country of Japan, where millions have not heard even His loudest shouts.

A winter day

Taco Party!

Here are some pictures of the local Buddhist junior college students who came to our apartment last week to eat tacos. Please, please pray for them!



Minoru, the only guy. He comes only once in a while because he's a little embarrassed. :) He also goes to Amiko's church but is not a Christian.



Kumi, one of my favorite girls. She teaches me all kinds of Japanese slang.





Most of these girls have never had tacos before, so this was their first time.