Guatemala – Day 3

Everything here is so different. Half of the time I’m just trying to figure out what in the world is going on. Yesterday I had to use a traditional Japanese bathroom at the Buddhist cemetery and it was beyond bizarre for me. Today the “western” bathroom at the hotel kept confusing me with its automated features. Ruth King took Jenelle to see the hotel bath today. Breakfast included some mystery items, fish, rice, eggs, and unlimited vended drinks.

We left our bags with the front desk at the hotel so we could travel light on our way up into the mountain villages of Niihama. We took the bus as far as it would take us up the mountain. On the way up the mountain there were Torii gates all up the side of the mountain. The last bus stop was at a 400-year-old copper mine. From there we expected to call a taxi to take us the rest of the way. When we called the taxi service we learned that a landslide had closed the mountain road. We were told it maybe several months before the mountain access can be restored.

Since we were at the mine we decided to look around their gift shop and purchase some items that were representative of the culture in Niihama. When Japanese travel it is customary to bring gifts back from wherever you go. We bought some local treats that we will give to the Wakaba mission when we return there at the end of our trip.

On our way back into the city of Niihama we stopped at a Buddhist temple to look around. We heard priests chanting in the background so we asked a priest if we could observe what they were doing. Apparently they were only praying over their lunch, so there wasn’t really anything worth seeing! The Buddhist temple was fairly large with a girls school attached.

We made it back to Niihama and ate some lunch at a ramen shop. The ramen noodles in Japan are nothing like the noodles we have in the USA. There are many more ingredients and it is tasty! Jenelle accidentally ordered cold ramen! Yum! We grabbed our bags from our hotel and started our trip back to Takatsuki. On the way back to Takatsuki Ruth wanted to stop at Himeji castle. We didn’t know it but there was something important that she wanted us to see.

The Himeji castle is very old and is in the process of being restored. Many shoguns ruled at this castle over the many centuries it has been standing. Over the centuries additions and repairs have been made to the castle by the shoguns that lived there. Each time an addition was made to the castle, whoever was building the addition would have his family crest engraved in iron on the edge of the roof. The Japanese have made it hard to find by placing it off the main path of the castle, but if you look around enough you will find that on one of the edges of the roofs there is a large iron plaque and on it is engraved a cross. A small sign nearby explains what the cross is. Christianity was flourishing in Japan before the shogun Iemitsu banned it in the sixteenth century.  The iron cross that is engraved on the side of the castle is a lasting testimony of one of the shoguns that was our brother in the faith. He made his family crest into a cross.

We walked back to the train station from the castle. The train stations are confusing since most everything is in Japanese. Sometimes if you wait long enough the signs will change to Romanized letters. Ruth King and Jim Smith say I’m quickly picking up how the train system works in Japan. It’s a pretty complicated system and its not entirely standardized. There are many different speeds of trains and different rail companies that do things differently. Our rail passes are active now and it’s nice to be able to flash a rail pass at a rail worker and they just let you through the system. For the first week of our trip we used the same system that the Japanese use.

By the time we made it back home to Takatsuki we were drenched in sweat. Everything in our bags is wet. We are unbelievably tired. Jenelle says she feels like she has walked an entire day on a treadmill. Praise God that he has given us energy to walk all around Japan and clear minds to try and understand the Japanese people!

Today we took the Shinkansen and an express train to Niihama. Ruth King went along with us to help as a translator. Niihama is a city located on a coastal plain on Shikoku Island. To get there we had to take the train over the bay between Shikoku and Honshu.  It was very beautiful to see God’s creation of the water, with rugged mountains just coming out of the water and small islands everywhere made of mountains that look uninhabitable. Most of them have people living where the land is flat enough to build a house.

We arrived in Niihama carrying our heavy backpacks with the stuff we needed to spend the night there.  If you look to one side of the city you see steep mountains and God’s creative glory displayed and on the other side of the city you see the bay. In the middle are people who are blinded and don’t see God’s creation or worship Him. Instead they enter into relationships with spirits of the creation or spirits represented by statues that they have created. We walked around and saw a Buddhist Temple and cemetery.  There was a place where there were rows upon rows of little statues that had been placed there that represent the spirits of aborted and miscarried babies.  Some women fear that the spirits of their aborted babies will come back to haunt them.  Some of the statues had a red bib hung around it.  Some of the statues had offerings such as baby items, bottles, and water placed next to them to appease the spirits.  Next we walked to another Buddhist Temple but there was a sign that said if you aren’t a believer then it’s forbidden to pass beyond this point.  Good thing Ruth could read and translate for us so that we didn’t go in.

We continued walking around the town and came to a Shinto shrine.  At the shrine Ruth talked to a man that was there and he explained to her that this shrine is for the god of the great mountain and the goddess of high places.  We saw people coming to offer their money and to pray to these false gods.  On the trees people would hang their prayer request on a little piece of paper or a wood plank.  How great is our God that we know he hears and answers the prayers of His children.  Also, how great it is for us as Christians to be able to worship God with our lives and at any place, we don’t have to go to a temple or shrine. Our bodies are the temples of the living God!

We had good conversations with Ruth and she explained a lot of things to us as we were walking around this town.  We saw how she was just willing to talk to the Japanese people at anytime.  It is uncommon for the Japanese people to just start a conversation with someone. They keep to themselves and live a closed, private life.  We would see idols just anywhere, even on street corners.  There would be offerings of incense or food lying in front of them.

We went to Niihama to see a different part of Japan and because there are no Baptist churches there.  However we did find a few churches there that are possibly preaching the good news of Jesus.  We even found a Christian kindergarten!  It was time for us to head to our hotel.  Our clothes were soaked with sweat.  Literally, they were the same as if we took a dip in a pool with our clothes on.  Even all of the stuff in our backpacks was soaked with sweat, including my bible. We probably walked about 10 miles that day.  So off to the hotel to relax! Right?

We arrived at the hotel and they had told Ruth that her room had been canceled!  It didn’t take long and they got her another room! Remember us saying how everything is so different?  Our room was a lot smaller than what we are use to.  Our pillows are made of something very interesting!  Tim says they felt like marbles!  You want to fill your pillowcase up with marbles for the night and sleep like that?  God is still good and we were thankful for a place to sleep for the night!  We were given button-up gowns to wear to bed if we wanted!  Of course all the tv channels were in Japanese so we couldn’t understand any shows. Although Tim tried to figure out what was going on. It would have been nice to just pick up the phone and order a pizza and have them deliver it to our hotel but that isn’t possible if you can’t speak the language and ordering pizza is expensive here in Japan!

Ruth said she was going to spend the rest of the evening in her room relaxing so we were on our own!  We were hungry so we decided to stay on the same street as our hotel and walk to a restaurant.  We saw one on our way there and headed for a restaurant called Tomato & Onion.  The name was actually written in English so we thought we might be able to read some things on the menu there.  When we walked in the waitress spoke to us in Japanese and Tim said in English, “I don’t know Japanese. I only speak English.”  She actually bowed and ran away!!  Then a guy came and pointed us towards a table.  When you are ready to order here, there is button on the table that sends a signal for the waiter to come and take your order.  The menu did not have any English like we had hoped, so we just pointed to our items that had pictures and said onegaishimasu (please).  He got our food right and was very polite to us.  We survived our first restaurant adventure out by ourselves!  We had enjoyed seeing the city of Niihama and are just in awe of the mountains!  We are thankful to have found out that there seem to be some Christian churches here and pray that God might reach all of these Japanese people in this smaller city with the truth!

Tomorrow we go into the mountains to try and see some small villages!

Tuesday was our day reserved for traveling from Wakaba (outside Tokyo) where Jim and Amy Smith live to Takatsuki (outside Osaka) where George and Ellen King live. While we were getting ready to leave Jim’s house there was a small earthquake. Jenelle didn’t feel it at all. I was in a small room and I thought someone kicked the wall because there was a small thump and a shake. There was no damage or anything. The Japanese don’t even talk about the earthquakes unless there is damage because they are so common. But to us foreigners it gives us something interesting to blog about.

We packed up our clothes and things we needed for the part of our trip with the Kings.  We were able to leave some things at the Smiths house since the end of our trip we will return there, so that was helpful to not have so much to carry with us.

Before we left we stopped at the post office and were able to send our son Simon and Moe’s brother Sou birthday cards.

We had to make a connection through Tokyo station. The station was very crowded. We had ekiben for lunch. They were cold station lunches in a box. Jenelle’s had cold chicken and some rice in it. Mine had a bunch of mystery items since I always want to try the local food. Jim and the two of us sat on the stairs in the station and had lunch together. The culture shock is in full swing for us. Japan is completely backwards from the United States. Almost everything done in daily life is completely different. Even the most simple things like paying for something or eating have a different procedure.

We got onto the Shinkansen (bullet train) to head towards Osaka. This train is extremely fast and levitates off the ground. It feels and looks like a jet plane except it never leaves sight of the ground. On our Shinkansen ride we had planned on trying to get caught up on our blog, balance our finances, and read a book that Pastor Kevin had prescribed for us. However, the train ride offers us views of the Japanese cities and countryside that we can’t get anywhere else so we weren’t able to get a whole lot done. We also got to see Mt. Fuji which is a dormant volcano that lies on the horizon for much of the Tokyo area. The tracks are about 30 feet off the ground so you can see over the sea of buildings that usually block your view when you’re walking around. Some of the cities here feel endless and you’re zooming through them on the train. There are so many people here.

Ruth King met us at the Kyoto train station and we took a connecting train to Takatsuki. Ellen King picked us up in her car and took us to the old church building where we are staying for this phase of the trip. We got to meet D.J. who is a BBC student who is spending the summer here with the Kings. He desires to be a career missionary in Japan and is here to confirm his missionary call. He started desiring to be a missionary to Japan in 2004, which was the same year as me.

We attended prayer meeting which is on the bottom floor of the building where we are staying. There were 13 people there for the prayer meeting. They sang familiar hymns in Japanese, allowed us to share our prayer requests, and briefly shared our testimonies.  It was very personal and casual.

We’ve been going nonstop and our bodies and minds are feeling the effects of exhaustion. Tomorrow we get to go to Niihama and see a city with no Baptist churches!! Thanks for praying for us!

Today we woke up early to go to some cultural sites to try and better understand the Japanese way of life and spiritual influences of Shinto and Buddhism. We started out our day by getting on the train with Jim Smith and going to the other side Tokyo to the largest fish market in the world. Some people make the trip to the fish market every day to get sushi fresh off the boat. When we got to the fish market we entered the public market. There were many small shops and restaurants in the market and the lines were already getting so long they were going outside and around the shops. As we were walking around the market we noticed a Torii gate, which is the entrance to a Shinto shrine.

Shinto is the national religion in Japan. People say Japan has freedom of religion and it does in their constitution, but the emperor is the high priest of the Shinto religion. Japanese businesses, families, and neighbors will make your life extremely difficult if you don’t worship the Shinto gods. Christian missionaries are not persecuted in Japan but their converts are. Shinto is a polytheistic religion that believes in the existence of kami, which are territorial gods. They are usually tied to things in creation such as trees, rivers, fish, etc. The Japanese people think that the kami protect or curse people depending on the status of their relationship with them.

We went through the Torii gate onto the shrine property to watch the Japanese people worship. We saw workers from the fish market come and purify themselves with water, make an offering, ring a bell to wake up the kami that protects the fishermen, bow in respect, clap their hands and make a prayer. It’s a normal morning ritual for the employees at the fish market. If they get hurt on the job and they didn’t worship on that morning, the employer considers it the fault of the employee.

After this we went into the wholesale area of the fish market where we saw people unloading fish, cutting them up, preparing them, and selling them. We saw fish that were bigger than the men who were working on them. They were huge! We saw a whole lot of fish and other sea creatures. I think Jenelle was grossed out but she says it was cool to see the creatures that God had created, regardless of how stinky they are.

Our next stop was a large Buddhist temple in Tokyo. This particular sect of Buddhism is very interesting in that they stress enlightenment by faith rather than good works. We saw a Buddhist priest chanting an invocation to the Amida Buddha for the blessing of a family. Although they are sincere in their faith, we know the Bible teaches that they are still dead and blind in their sin and in need of Jesus Christ rather than Amida Buddha as their savior. Buddhist Prayer and Ceremony Video

Later in the day Wakaba mission’s deacon Takahashi-san and his wife took us to historic Kawagoe. The buildings in Kawagoe are extremely old and beautiful. They seem like a cultural icon of Japan. We went through several Japanese family-run shops and in one of them we got to see a back room which was a traditional Japanese restaurant. You had to walk through a Japanese garden with wind chimes and the sound of dripping water which has a psychological effect on the Japanese. The restaurant had bamboo woven floors and a table that was very low to the ground so you had to sit on your knees to eat. It was very aesthetic.

Takahashi-san took us to an old bell tower that is attached to two Shinto shrines. People came and made their prayers to the kami to heal their ailing family members. It’s truly heartbreaking to see people that honestly believe the kami will help them.

Afterwards he took us to a large Buddhist temple. Inside was the birthplace of the shogun Iemitsu. We discussed with Takahashi the influence that Iemitsu had on Japanese society and how he banned Christianity from Japan. Iemitsu had paintings made of Jesus Christ and had the Japanese people step on his image. Those that refused to step on the image would be executed. He implemented a system of pressures and demonic infleunce in society that to this day does a very good job of keeping Christianity out of Japan.

On the temple grounds we had an interesting experience. As many of you know I’m not one to ascribe to felt spiritual experiences. However when we walked onto part of the temple grounds where there were 500 statues of the disciples of Buddha I had an overwhelming feeling of repulsive spiritual darkness. I told Jenelle I thought I was going to cry and throw up. Jenelle said she felt very creepy. After we left the property I explained my feelings to Takahashi-san. He said the first time he went to the temple after he was saved he had the same experience. He thinks that since we are all spiritual people we are able to sense a strong presence of demonic activity at the site. The missionaries here agree.

After the temple we had dinner with Takahashi-san and his wife. We ate at a Hamburg restaurant. Hamburg restaurants specialize in steak and hamburger entrees. The food and the service here are always amazing. The employees here are unbelievably nice to you. I always try to eat whatever is the local flavor, and Jenelle usually goes with a western-style dish. I think she is adjusting well and I love her so much.

The Japanese here are in a desperate need of missionaries. Some mission agencies have left the country because they aren’t seeing the number of converts that they want. The low number of Christians, missionaries, and churches makes this a very needy nation. The Christian converts are persecuted in secret. These people are enslaved to demonic religion and need the truth of the Bible to set them free. Please consider your part in reaching the Japanese people.

Church in Japan is an all day thing!  It was the second day of VBS at the Wakaba mission.  VBS was during the Sunday school hour.  Tim was able to serve by playing the guitar again and I was able to do face painting for the children.  Amy gave the lesson this morning about how sheep are dirty and unimportant and need to be led however Jesus calls us his sheep and is the good shepherd and cares about each one of us.  We are very valuable in God’s sight.  In Japan everyone is pressured to conform and the Japanese don’t feel very special.  Today we had six children at VBS as well but other than the three Smith children the other three were different children than on Saturday.

In Sunday morning service Jim gave the sermon in Japanese about how God is good.  A lady sat with Tim and me to translate the sermon and prayers for us.  It is fairly uncommon to find good English speaking Japanese.  However at Wakaba there are several people who speak English really well.  We were able to talk to a few people there. We split up into groups of two for a time of prayer.  Their church family was very welcoming and excited to see us, they had been praying for us for a couple of weeks.

After morning service, lunch is prepared in the church kitchen and then served.  Almost everyone stays until after lunch.  Most people at Wakaba travel by train or bicycle and would be a long trip home on an empty stomach if lunch were not served. The Japanese Christians crave fellowship with one another all week until Sunday.  Most of them are giving up some sort of club or other activity that they were actively involved in and are now able to come to church for the day.  It’s a great joy to be with the other Christians and to get a break from the culture that is deeply ingrained in the Shinto and Buddhist system.  We enjoyed curry rice for lunch with some snack foods that were given to the church as gifts.  When someone from the church travels to another location it’s expected to buy a local snack food that is individually wrapped and to bring it back to the church as a gift for others in the church.  Gift giving is very important in Japanese culture.

After lunch was a short business meeting over coffee and then a choir practice.  Tim and I had a short rest with the Smith’s children during choir practice time.  Then we were given the opportunity to share our testimonies with the Wakaba mission.  We all sat around a table with barley tea. The atmosphere was very casual and friendly.  Tim shared his testimony first with a lady translating.  Then I shared mine with a different lady translating.  We shared how we were saved and how God has changed us and how God has placed a burden for ministry to the Japanese on our hearts.  Then there was a time of discussion with all the questions and answers and thoughts being translated back and forth in Japanese and English.  These people really cared about us and we knew we were brothers and sisters in Christ.  It’s a very special bond.  Church ends about five in the afternoon.  Most people go home for dinner.

We took the Smith family out for dinner at an Italian restaurant with an English teacher from the mission.  It was very special for me to meet her. Her name is Shinobu. She shared with me how she was an exchange student to the USA when she was younger.  The first time she had heard about Jesus was from her host father.  He shared with her how she no longer needed to offer sacrifices or burn incense to the Japanese gods but that Jesus Christ was the perfect sacrifice for her sin.  At that time she did not believe but always remembered the love her host parents had for her and how they told her she was a very special person.  They tried to explain to her how God loved them so much and that is why they could show love to her.  For ten years Shinobu still chose to reject Jesus Christ then she finally believed!  Now she can understand how her host parents loved her and still to this day she keeps in contact with them.  She carries around printed emails of encouragement from her host mother.  Her biological family is not Christian.  Please join Shinobu and me in praying for her biological family to believe in Jesus Christ.  There is no other name by which the Japanese can be saved!

After we had a full morning of VBS, our exchange daughter’s mother, Ritsuko, met us at Wakaba mission.  We were so excited for her to be willing to take a two hour train ride from Tokyo just to meet with us.  She had a long conversation in Japanese with Amy Smith when she first arrived.  We are thankful for Amy’s good speaking ability to be able to talk with Ritsuko.  She was impressed with Amy’s language ability.  She also told us that the small church environment was very welcoming and comfortable to her.  She said it gave her good feelings. Amy had invited her back to church any time and told her about an English Bible Study they have.  We exchanged gifts with her and then Tim and I left to spend the rest of the day with Ritsuko.

Ritsuko is very nice and we immensely enjoyed our time with her! She took us to a Chinese restaurant for lunch.  Tim accidentally ordered a feast that filled up our entire table with just his food!  Ritsuko was very open with us and we had good conversations.  Then we took the train to Ikebukuro, which is a ward of Tokyo.  We went to a building complex called Sunshine 60.  This place is filled with shops and is sixty stories tall!  We were able to go to the top of the main building in an express elevator that started in the basement! The elevator ride was like a theater show, the lights went out and the whole inside lit up and looked like a planetarium.  Once at the top we were able to view Tokyo and look out at the mass of Japanese people.  We were able to see cemeteries where the cremated bodies are kept.   We could see Tokyo tower.   From a spiritual viewpoint we also saw a mass of people who don’t know about Jesus and are on their way to Hell.  Someone at least needs to tell them so they have the opportunity to repent and believe in Jesus Christ.  There are so many spiritually blinded people.

Next we went to an aquarium and saw big rays! Tim and I bought our first items in Japan in this huge shopping center. Then they neatly wrapped each item and put them in a decorative bag with nice tape to close it. Some culturally different things we noticed is there are no trash cans anywhere and you can’t get free water anywhere.  If you have trash you bag it and throw it away when you get home.  They have extravagant vending machines with all kinds of drinks including hot ones and even other things you would normally buy in a store.  We enjoyed some ice cream and Tim tried the popular green tea flavor.

We were able to talk about some spiritual things with Ritsuko.  Our train was stopped a little longer then it should have been so Ritsuko mentioned that she was wondering if someone has committed suicide by jumping in front of the train.  Suicide is the first thought that crosses a Japanese persons mind when the train is delayed.  Ritsuko said she thinks the suicide rate has increased because of the decline of the economy.  Tim explained to her that because the Japanese tend to define their life based upon their career and then loose their job because of the economy then they no longer have hope or see any purpose in living. We explained that Japanese can have lasting hope and meaning for life found in Jesus Christ.  And we would love to help her understand more about Jesus.  She said she hopes that we can come back to Japan to live as missionaries.  Tim and I mentioned that we were giving our testimonies at Wakaba mission the next day and she said she really wanted to come but she had to work.  We had a great afternoon with her and I gave her an American hug when we left and she said she appreciated that and wanted to keep in touch through email and asked if we could now be friends.  Relationships are deeply felt in Japan and it’s very important with who you have a connection with.  Please continue to pray for God to work in the hearts of the C. family and other Japanese people!

Today was the first day of VBS in Wakaba. They’ve never had VBS at the mission in Wakaba. They’ve also never had a morning event here. Nobody knew how many people to expect to show up. Six children showed up including the three Smith children. The other three children are regular attendees.

Church attendance is much lower in Japan than it is in the United States. There are many cultural factors that create this difference in church attendance numbers. These cultural differences are difficult to pinpoint and explain. For the Japanese there seems to be a deeper felt connection between the few people that you know. The conversation isn’t necessarily any deeper between the people, but the felt connection is deeper. An expression of this is that Japanese don’t listen to people they do not know. Japanese will generally ignore you if they do not know you. This makes spreading the gospel and inviting people to church difficult. In addition, the Japanese people are inundated with flyers as they walk the streets and seem to be desensitized to the personal impact that the message of a flyer may have. These are just a few of the deep rooted differences between American culture and Japanese culture.

While American culture may be moving this way, it is much more deeply prevalent here. This seems to indicate that some methods of spreading the gospel such as door to door soul winning and tracts aren’t as effective here. For example, ten thousand door to door invitations and tract handouts may result in a single visitor, maybe. That is if you can even get to the door. Most Japanese homes have gates so you cannot approach the door. It seems that if the gospel is to spread here it must be along already established relationships such as family, friends, and coworkers. This does not mean that Japan cannot be reached, but to be an effective missionary one may need to use evangelism strategies that are different than those used in the USA.

The theme for VBS was “Jesus loves me.”  I was able to play the guitar to accompany the Japanese versions of Jesus Loves the Little Children of the World, Jesus Loves Me, and a native Christian children’s song. Amy introduced me and explained that the airplane ride had messed up my voice so I was stuck talking like Donald duck. The children enjoyed my Donald duck voice. Jenelle brought some bookmarks and stickers along that said Jesus Loves Me. It’s very rare to find Christian items in Japan so they were very special.

The VBS lesson was taught by Wakaba’s resident Bible student and was about Jesus feeding the five thousand. The point of the message was that God can use anyone that is willing to be used, even little children. It was precious to see Japanese children soaking up the word of God taught by a native.

We played some relay race games outside and it was very hot. The temperatures are about the same in Japan as they are in Saint Louis, but the humidity feels higher and the buildings do not have central air conditioning. Needless to say our bodies have to adjust to the heat. The Japanese drink a tea made from barley in the summer to help stay hydrated. We also had individually wrapped squares of jello as a snack.

Japanese people are generally socially closed, but Jenelle was blessed to have an open conversation with Era-san, a mother of a child that was attending VBS. She explained how she was saved as a result of her husband’s counsel from the scriptures as she went through an extremely difficult circumstance.

God is working at the Wakaba mission. Please pray for them.

Our first full day in Japan started out at the Smith’s home. In the morning I walked with Jim to the church building in Wakaba to help with some computer issues. Jenelle drove to the church with Amy shortly afterwards. We got to meet Nakahata-sensei who lives at the church building and is preparing to go to Bible Baptist Graduate School of Theology in the USA after Jim teaches him English. Jenelle helped Amy prepare some things at the church for vacation bible school tomorrow. I was able to make it back to Jim’s house walking by myself. I thought this is a pretty big deal since there are no legible signs anywhere and its a fifteen minute walk. When I got back to Jim’s house I set up the wireless network for him. In the evening Jim and I left to go to a men’s meeting at a nearby bread restaurant. There were two Christian Japanese men that ate with Jim and I. I learned some of the cultural differences between conversations with Americans and those with the Japanese people. I also learned about some social issues in Japan and opportunities that the churches have here to help fill those needs. Jenelle ate with Amy Smith who made yakisoba noodles. She used chopsticks for an entire meal for the first time. Amy and Jenelle talked about educating children in Japan and we determined that international school is not an option for our children since the price is far too high for a missionary to afford and the children would have to ride a train by themselves for long distances. Jenelle and Amy and the kids walked to a grocery store and ate some bread together. Seeing someone from America is deeply appreciated and exciting for the Smiths. The Smith family thanks you for sending us.