Learning to trust God as He leads us into the unfamiliar.
My friend Jack, who was on that first mission trip to Japan with me, suggested that we return to Japan together and visit Ofunato, since God went through the trouble of showing me a map of that city in my dream. We planned our trip for October 7, 2011– the same day as my official last day of work. We didn’t know how we’d get to Ofunato or what we’d do when we arrived there, but we kept our trip in prayer, trusting that God would lead us.
We got connected with a missionary to Asia, who lived in Japan for many years. Since he would be traveling to Asia around the same time as us, he offered to accompany us to Japan and drive us to Ofunato, since the railroads were damaged and there was no easy access via public transportation. The three of us met in Tokyo, spent a few days there, and made our way towards Ofunato, a fishing town on the coast of Iwate Prefecture.
Ofunato is nestled between the highlands and the Pacific Ocean. To get there requires one to navigate winding mountain roads through some spectacular scenery, with autumn colors splashed across the countryside.
We crossed over a peak and got our first glimpse of Ofunato, a city built along the shore of a long, narrow bay, flanked by mountains. My heart began to pound– Ofunato was just a name I got out of a dream, and now, here I was, about to enter the actual city.
The missionary pulled the car over and the three of us began to pray, asking God to reveal to us why He called us to this particular city. We prayed that He would lead us to people in “random” encounters that weren’t random at all, and prayed that we would meet the “gatekeeper” to the city.
During our prayer time, I got a few impressions, or “clues” like I’d get when I used to lead “treasure hunts” as the prayer pastor in California: a group of us would pray for clues about where to go and whom to share the love of Jesus with by simply talking to them and offering to pray for them, and the Holy Spirit would lead us in unbelievable ways; for example, our group would get impressions such as “movie theater,” “water fountain,” the name “Neil,” “Seville,” and “Richard Dreyfuss”(!), so we’d go to the movie theater with these clues written down, encounter a security guard named Neilsen near the water fountain, ask him if he needed prayer, find out that he was stressed over issues with his car– a old Cadillac Seville– and pray for him right there, and the entire time, there was a poster for a movie that happened to be starring Richard Dreyfuss on the wall behind him. (Yes, this really happened, and it’s just one example.)
Does God really give “clues” on where to go or whom to pray for? In Acts 9:10-12, we find this account:
In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”
“Yes, Lord,” he answered.
The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”
We find something similar when Cornelius prayed and was told to find Peter, who was staying at a house by the sea (Acts 10:4-6), and while Peter was praying on his own, miles away, he was given a heads-up that Cornelius had sent three men to find him (vv. 19-20).
So here we were, about to enter Ofunato for the very first time, and I was getting clues on what to look out for: a navy blue jacket, a part of town closer to the water where we could talk to the locals, and an older woman emotionally welcoming us to this region.
“Well?” asked our missionary friend. “What do you think?”
My eyes were drawn to a small pocket of houses and fishing boats down by the water, on the other side of the bay. “Can we get closer to the water and start talking to people?” I asked.
We began to drive downhill into the city, and as we got closer to the water, we got an up-close look at the damage caused by the tsunami. It had been over seven months since the disaster, and though there had been much progress with the cleanup effort, there was still much work to be done. Some roads were submerged or flooded. Parts of the town sank two feet. The railroad was contorted into what looked like a gnarled bundle of giant twist ties. We saw dirty, smudged streaks along the sides of buildings, 15 feet up, marking how high the water rose. In one neighborhood, 60 out of 108 homes were completely destroyed.
We reached a small dock by the seashore– I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the same area my eyes had been drawn to from the top of the hill– and parked there. Parking signs and concrete barriers were poking askew out of the water, as the ground had sunk a few feet after the earthquake. There were about a half-dozen fishing boats, each one around twelve feet long, with a group of men fitting an outboard motor onto one of them.
The missionary began to chat with them, and an older gentleman in a navy blue jacket began to converse with him.
Navy blue jacket? Check. Part of town closer to the water? Check.
This gentleman, whom I’ll refer to as The Boss, clearly wasn’t one of the fisherman– he was dressed differently than they were, more business-like, and he had parked his shiny white Toyota Prius nearby. The Boss told us (through our interpreter, the missionary) about the destruction he had seen from his hillside apartment on March 11. He pointed out all the vacant lots where houses once stood, now reduced to shattered foundations. He told us that the former residents of that neighborhood were now living in a temporary housing center, and he asked us if we wanted to visit it.
As it turned out, The Boss ran a construction company that was involved in the cleanup effort as well as the construction of kasetsu, or temporary housing units. He had us follow him up into the hills to a school, where prefabricated housing had been erected on the sports field. The Boss introduced us to some of his friends, who were kind and welcoming towards us.
These evacuees told us that their town was closer to the epicenter and therefore was one of the first areas hit by waves. They also mentioned that they hadn’t received as much help as some other kasetsu because this one was located on the outskirts of the city and was more challenging to get to considering post-disaster road conditions.
One woman in particular (also wearing a Navy blue jacket) was very friendly towards us. She asked Jack and me why we had come to Ofunato. I asked the missionary if it’d be all right to share my dream with her. He thought it’d be fine, so he interpreted as I told her of the dream I was given in which God highlighted Iwate prefecture and pinpointed Ofunato. I felt that I had to tell her that God did this to show me His care for this city.
The woman began to weep. She excitedly started telling her neighbors about this, and she said to me, in an emotional voice, the equivalent of “Welcome to Iwate.”
This was the third impression I had gotten during prayer– a woman emotionally welcoming us.
After our first night’s rest in Ofunato, I woke up at 5:00 A.M. for no particular reason. I turned to see that Jack was also awake. He asked if I wanted to go outside; I felt like we should, so we put on our street clothes and went downstairs, even before our regular morning routine. As we stepped out of the hotel, we prayed and asked God to show us what He was doing today and whom we should talk to. We crossed the street to take pictures of the gorgeous sunrise when a car slowed down- it was driven by The Boss, whom we had encountered the day before and took us to the kasetsu.
He waved at us, pulled over to park his car, and got out to greet us. Several other drivers slowed down to wave at him, and one of them even got out of the car to bow. It seemed like a lot of people in Ofunato knew him, as he ran a construction company that built many of the temporary shelters in town and assists in the cleanup effort. He invited us to come to his office, which was up on a hill overlooking the boat docks where we first met him; during the tsunami, the water had come all the way up to the base of this building.
Over the next few days, we introduced some local missionary contacts to The Boss, who brought us back to the temporary housing units he had constructed at the school and introduced us to the principal, a childhood friend of his.
Our missionary friends politely asked the principal for permission to reach out to the residents of the kasetsu. The principal said that it would be fine, and told the missionaries to let him know if they needed anything.
Tsunami relief and recovery ministries had begun at this remote kasetsu, where God led us to out of His love for the people there.
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