A little bit of encouragement goes a long way.
Soo, the boys, and I traveled north from Tokyo and headed towards Iwate on Thanksgiving weekend of 2011. It would be our very first visit to Ofunato as a family: Soo had been curious to finally see the city we were being called to– the city that I had quit my job for because of some weird dream about a map.
Before either of us had ever visited Ofunato, we wondered what a rural town along the coast of Japan might be like. I had been there a month earlier and saw for myself that Ofunato is not the tiny fishing hamlet I had imagined it to be: it is a good-sized city with over 30,000 residents, and it being Japan, was as modern as any other place I’d ever been to. Sure, it wasn’t a gleaming metropolis like Tokyo, but it was not lacking in any modern conveniences. It even has a nice performing arts center.
Not only did we get a glimpse of the city, we had a chance to participate in tsunami relief ministries along the coast. This trip gave us more peace about moving to Ofunato, but there was a major obstacle: the shortage of rental housing. Over five thousand houses had been damaged or destroyed by the tsunami, and with city residents in need of rental homes, the demand heavily outweighed the supply. As foreigners who could not speak Japanese, we would be very low on the priority list.
The chances of moving to Ofunato City seemed slim, so we talked to some of our contacts about finding housing in a neighboring area. We could live in one town and still do tsunami relief work in Ofunato. It’d just be a bit of a commute.
On our way back to Kyoto, we stopped once again in Tokyo to connect with one more missions organization, which happened to be part of the denomination I was credentialed by. We had always planned on connecting with them, but for whatever reason, our meeting with their Japan mission representatives was scheduled to be the last one during our six-week stay in Japan.
I think God planned it this way all along.
Our family met with the Japan country coordinators for our denomination, at a “family restaurant” near a train station. As we settled into our booths and introduced ourselves, Soo and I immediately felt at ease with this warm, friendly couple. Maybe it was because they put us at ease, or maybe it was because I was depleted by the rejection and disappointment of trying to get leads on moving to Japan that I started speaking openly about our sense of calling, not caring if they might think I was weird or we were out of our minds.
First, we mentioned that we felt called to Ofunato– not Sendai, not Hokkaido, not Tokyo. God gave me a dream to go to a specific city, and by golly, we were going to do whatever we could to get there.
Shockingly, the couple did not shoot this idea down. Instead, they informed us that someone from our denomination was in fact already in Ofunato, and if we were to go there, we could participate in the ministries she was involved in.
Wait, really? Other organizations wouldn’t send us to Ofunato because they had no support structure or staff members there, but someone from our denomination was already there, starting ministries?
This positive turn of events felt odd. Soo and I just sort of glanced at each other in disbelief. Should we keep going? I floated the next thing that was seen as a strike against us: “We aren’t Japanese and don’t speak the language,” I declared.
Again, encouragement rather than discouragement. They assured us that being a foreigner might be advantageous, as the Japanese would likely offer us more grace, especially if they knew why we were in Tohoku when we didn’t have to be.
This was getting too good. Too good to be true…? I decided to test even deeper waters: “We have no strategy for ministry,” I boasted. “No plans to plant a church, no idea what we’re supposed to do.”
Yet another round of encouragement. What was going on here?
The Japan country coordinators relayed that there had been a few too many short-term missions teams who came to Japan with an agenda and would get upset when they couldn’t do what they wanted to. For example, a team skilled in carpentry might want to build a house but not do cleanup, or, in an unrelated story, one volunteer refused to pull weeds, even though weeding was a great need after the disaster, because she insisted that her calling was to preach the gospel, not do manual labor. (So what did she do? She abandoned the rest of the missions team and went to Tokyo Disneyland instead. Maybe she preached the gospel while standing in line for the Dumbo ride.) The couple affirmed us for being open and available to whatever God might lead us to.
This could not be happening– after being rejected or discouraged on all these points, here were two leaders encouraging us on them.
It was still too unreal for me. So, I ended with one last thing.
I asked, “What advice do you have for brand-new missionaries like us?”
Their answer? “Just pray.”
That’s when I knew these were my kind of people.
That’s when Soo and I knew this was the way to go. We’d apply to become short-term missionaries with our own denomination. We were warned that the process could take a while, as it involved an application process, two weeks of training in Chicago, and raising 80% of our two-year budget before we could leave.
Soo and I prayed, and although we had sensed an urgency to leave our California life to go to Ofunato, we felt that we needed to do this right and submit to a more experienced organization.
We ended our six-week stay in Japan, returned to California, and started filling out applications to become short-term missionaries with our denomination.
We thought we’d move to Japan in about six months.
Little did we know we’d remain in California for another year and a half.
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