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| One of the students at the Kindergarten where Crystal taught English in Southern Osaka |
Called to Japan
Aaron answered the call to Japan while reading a bulletin produced by Japan Mission in 1996. He was at home in N. Ireland, looking after his brother's place while he and his wife were away on holiday. 'I remember reading in the bulletin about the mission's need for a person to work in the office as the JM secretary had died suddenly earlier that year. Towards the end of the bulletin, the words, 'we believe the Lord has already chosen a person to replace our secretary' were written and I thought to myself, 'that's me'. That's where the adventure began!
After much prayer, many e-mails, an interview in London and a visit to the Japanese Embassy in Dublin, with the support of my home church, Finaghy Baptist, I left for Japan in October 1997.
The first few years were spent studying the language one day a week and then teaching English conversation classes and working at the building site for the school where Crystal would teach when we returned to Japan in 2004 after a year in N. Ireland.
The Meeting
Aaron & Crystal met at the birthday party of a Canadian friend who was living in Ikoma. At that time, Crystal was working as a kindergarten teacher at a private international kindergarten in Southern Osaka, where she taught English conversation to several hundred students between the age of 3 and 5 each week.
At that time, Crystal was attending a church called 'The Lighthouse', and the pastor there was a young man from N. Ireland who had come to Japan to work with Japan Mission and then felt called into pastoral ministry after a few years teaching English conversation.
Life in Japan
As we mentioned in the beginnings post, we have lived in Japan for almost a quarter of our lives, and it's easy to see how the country and it's customs and people have a special place in our hearts.
There are many 'foreign' nationals living in Japan, with almost 2 million living there.1 We often found that there seemed to be three groups of foreigners living in Japan. Those who were there for work, those who were there to escape from the west, and those who were there to reach the Japanese with the Gospel.
Japan has been known among western missionaries as the 'missionary graveyard', a term applied to indicate how tough it can be to live and minister there with relatively no spiritual fruit.
However, as many missionary biographies have attested, we are not called to be primarily 'successful', whatever that may look like, but rather, Jesus asks us to be faithful.
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| Kyoto Imperial Palace |
As well as our students, we had several friendships in Japan with those who as yet don't know the Lord. We're hoping to be able to re-establish those connections when we go to Japan this time.
One contact, was a man I (Aaron) met while in the grocery store. I had just been in Japan a short time and saw Tom (the name he had adopted while working in Los Angeles several years earlier) with a tennis bag (I also love playing tennis). I asked Tom where he played and he invited me to play the next Saturday at his company tennis court.
For the next 5 years or so, I played tennis each Saturday I was free and got to know several of his colleagues and was able to share the Gospel with many of them.
Pray for Tom, and his wife, Emiko, as we seek to meet up with them again this time. After we adopted Caia, Tom & Emiko visited our apartment several times and we had the opportunity to visit them in their home too. Having Caia opened many doors of opportunity that otherwise would have remained closed for us.
Yorokobi no Izumi (Fountain of Joy)
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| Japan Mission office staff preparing the Yorokobi no Izumi for distribution to churches around Japan (yes, that's Caia on the lap of Mr Fukunaga, who worked for many years in the office managing the finances). |
While working at Japan Mission, I enjoyed passing out Japanese evangelistic literature, especially when my language proficiency was limited. It was a great way for me to give people something in their language which I knew God could use to speak to their hearts, even though I couldn't have much of a conversation with them myself. Each month I would distribute around 200 of these leaflets among my students, at train stations while waiting for a ride home, or around the neibourhood where we lived in Ikoma. It was wonderful to think of these neighbours and contacts being able to receive the Word of life who perhaps had never been to a church or heard the Gospel message before.
Japan Mission still produces these evangelistic leaflets each month and we hope to be able to distribute a number of them while we travel around the Kansai area on our trip in March/April this year.
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| The daughter of one of our neighbours from Japan (Caia and Crystal on the left) |
The fields are white ...
As well as being a blessing to the many missionaries and other Christian friends we plan to visit in Japan, we are also praying about the other opportunities God will provide us to be a witness for Jesus. We pray that we'll be able to re-establish contact with neighbours we got to know who have children Caia's age. Caia is looking forward to meeting her 'friends' from Japan again too.
We find that while it is true that Japan is quite reistant to the Gospel, Japanese are often curious about the west and are happy to discuss the Bible and other aspects of our 'culture' openly. We pray that the Lord will help us see and taken these opportunities as they arise.
