Our first month serving in a Japanese church has been overwhelming. We attended our first Sunday worship service here the day after we arrived. We’d just finished at language school and travelled for a day and a half to get to Yamagata city. A children’s choir that was visiting from Tokyo presented a couple of songs. During lunch after the service, we went around to thank the choir and briefly introduce ourselves to people from the church. I stuttered and mumbled, correcting myself multiple times as I tried to string together a coherent sentence to thank the children and their parents who had come all this way to worship God with us. I wondered if we had left our Japanese language ability behind at the language centre in Sapporo during the move. I consoled myself that we had only just arrived, and most of our boxes were still unpacked.
The weeks that followed have been full of outreach events, short-term teams, prayer meetings, a children’s camp, and, yes, more mealtime speeches to redeem our initial stuttering efforts. It was overwhelming, and difficult to feel settled.
We’ve been overwhelmed by the intensity of our schedule and our glaring inadequacies, but we’re also overwhelmed in a positive way by God’s work in this Japanese church. The church members’ fervour in prayer is evident even among the young. An 11-year-old boy prayed for a grieving 70-year-old widow. A church member’s husband turned to Christ and was baptized within two weeks. Children committed to baptism at the camp.
The perseverance and faithfulness of the Japanese church are underscored by pastors who tirelessly serve and minister to their members and the surrounding community. In this first month, we’ve been reminded of the overwhelming grace of God and his mighty power at work in the lives of the Japanese people. I pray that we will look to Jesus, rather than our own shortcomings, and continue to be overwhelmed by his rich mercies every day.
By an OMF missionary
