Christian Reformed Japan Mission

Dear Friends, I left you hanging the last time I wrote, unsure whether or not we were going to be assigned to the earthquake / tsunami / reactor meltdown area of the area northeast of Tokyo (called the Tohoku region). The Mission decided to send Ken Lee, our specialist in youth evangelism, up to the Tohoku each time teams of young people came from various Christian Reformed Churches this summer. The urgent need during the early months after the disaster has been to help people with digging out from under the rubble. To address the longer term heart needs, of the trauma that people have suffered by the loss of loved ones and all their earthly belongings, the Mission invited Ray and Sharon Hommes to come to Japan. The Hommes were CRJM missionaries here from 1970 to 1989, and have a wealth of experience in evangelism and church planting, as well as in marriage and trauma counseling. They have been brought out of retirement, like the mighty mothballed WWII battleships anchored on the upper Hudson River (apologies if that analogy seems offensive to anyone). They will be coming to Japan regularly over the next few years, Lord willing, to serve in a Christian Heart Care Center which the Reformed Church of Japan, the Koshin Presbyterian Church of Korea, the Orthodox Presbyterian Japan Mission, the Christian Reformed Japan Mission, and the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee are joining together to set up in the Sendai, Fukushima area. In the mean time, we have seen more evidence than we had expected of the disaster right here in the Choshi / Hasaki area. Hasaki beaches, we discovered, are covered for miles with the kind of debris you see above, washed in by a tsunami that reached

3/4 of the way up the dunes, but thankfully did not get over and into the town. The tsunamis I saw come in while standing with others who had fled to the highest hill in Hasaki, did more damage than I had imagined. We found out that several large fishing trawlers were sunk in Hasaki harbor before they could escape to open water. Ruth and I watched the operation as a huge barge crane towed here from Osaka by an ocean-going salvage tug lifted the trawlers from the

George & Ruth Young 9088-2 Hasaki, Kamisu Shi, Ibaraki Ken, 314-0408 Japan young@sta.att.ne.jp June 22, 2011

bottom of the harbor. Thankfully, none of the sailors lost their lives. Just south of us, around the tip of the Choshi Peninsula, in the city of Asahi, 13 people lost their lives as a tsunami from an aftershock on March 11 roared into the town. Several weeks ago I spoke with one of the survivors who, along with a dispirited looking group of people, was laying a foundation for a new store immediately behind the sea wall where all the stores and many houses were washed away. In some tsunami-prone areas the government forbade rebuilding but, it seems, not here. Most memorable to me was a conversation I had with one of my English Conversation / Japanese Bible students, Atsuko, and her daughter. Ruth and I had gone to Atsukos restaurant for lunch and to tell her that we were starting up classes again. Atsuko introduced us to her daughter who used to live between the two Fukushima Nuclear Generating plants, but who had escaped the tsunami and reactor meltdowns, bringing her children to live with her mother in Choshi, and was serving now as a waitress at her mothers restaurant. Her husband, one of those whom everyone is calling the Fukushima Samurai, continues working in the reactor buildings, trying to bring them under control. Atsuko is an eager student in my classes and has recently started wearing a cross, which may mean that she knows she is standing in the need of prayer. I told Atsukos daughter that I would tell all my friends in the U.S. and Canada to pray for her husband. Some of you have been asking about my friend Tom, who is a Shinto priest. At the end of January I brought Tom to meet Mr. Usami, an elder of the Niiza Shiki Reformed Church near Tokyo. We were astonished as we walked into his dining room which looked out across Tokyo from the 20th floor of his apartment building. Spread out on the table were perhaps 30 books that described the evidence for the influence of Jews who in ancient times were scattered in the diaspora under the Babylonians and Romans and, the theory goes, came to Japan. Genetic mapping provides strong evidence for this having happened. The lack of graven images in most Shinto shrines (in contrast to Buddhist temples), and the outer court holy place-most holy place-layout of Shinto shrines also is evidence. My natural reaction to these theories has usually been guarded skepticism, given the old theories of British Israelitism, and Mormonisms idea that certain Amazonian tribes are descended from the lost tribes of Israel. And even if there was influence of a biblical concept of God in Japan in ancient times, the fact is that it quickly was swamped by polytheism, and now all that is left is a faint memory of a God In the Middle of the Cosmos. Yet Tom is very interested, and has started going to Mr. Usamis discussion groups that are held every other month. Pray that this will be a point of contact for the Gospel, for Christ to touch his heart. Backpedaling a bit to the Christmas season, I think you may remember that we made plans for our daughter, Laura, to come from Alexandria, Virginia, to play evangelistic Christmas concerts in three churches. The idea has spread from the church we served in in Higashi Kawaguchi to the other churches in that area, and they collaborated in the plans and publicity. One elder, who is a businessman, who travels from Japan to Europe to China, even contributed extra mileage points to fly Laura to Japan for next to nothing. All in all, about 150 people came to the concerts. Laura, Ruth and Mariko Nakagawa performed beautifully, and I gave an evangelistic message in each place. I am having Still Small Voice Media (a Christian media company which can be googled) edit the DVD one of the elders at Minami Koshigaya Church took of the concert there, shortening it up, putting in subtitles, and removing anything that might be construed as a copyright problem if it is distributed. I will be sending the DVD out to our supporting churches and any others of you who might like to hear a piano, violin, cello trio and hear an evangelistic message in Japanese. Please let me know if you are interested. And if anyone has been blessed with an abundance of airline mileage points that you could spare, plans are in the works for our daughter, Megumi, to come for three concerts this coming Christmas. One other thing I hope you will pray about is that I have been invited to lead a one day retreat about personal evangelism on September 19th at the Misato Reformed Church on the edge of Tokyo. Im kind of nervous about it, but look forward to it as an opportunity to share what I have learned over the years about evangelism, hoping that our Japanese brothers and sisters may be encouraged in their witness. Your Missionaries, George and Ruth Young