Month: October 2009

It’s my (Tomo’s) turn to write the blog again and I have a couple exciting news!

1. David and I had our first Partner Development appointment together last week!

We had a nice time sharing about Japan and our ministry vision (which is to evaluate the spiritual needs of the Japanese people, plant new churches where there are none, and disciple Japanese Christians.) We are looking forward to meeting with more people to share about Japan!

2. I was made an Approved Candidate with SEND!

For the last several months I’ve been in the application process for SEND International, the missions organization that David is already a member of. I’ve finished the part 1 of the application and now in part 2. Right now I’m working on my personal doctrinal statement, where I have to state what I believe in my own words with Scripture references about 16 topics that SEND provides. The only things I can use to answer these hard questions are the Bible and a concordance. So far it’s been very challenging. I have a general idea about most of the topics but writing it out in a way that makes sense to someone else and providing Scrpiture references for it is very hard. Having to do it in my second language adds to the challenge too.

Also, I was officially invited to come to Candidate Orientation Program in January to complete the application process. This also means a trip to Michigan! I hear it can get very cold in Michigan in January, but I’m pretty excited to see different parts of the US (so far I’ve seen Southern California and some parts of Northern California, Grand Canyon and the Mojave Desert.)

3. My mom’s coming to visit this week!

She’s arriving Thursday, 29th and will leave on the 9th of November. I’m very excited to see her and hang out for about a week and a half!

So that was a little update on what’s going on in my life. I hope everyone’s having a great week!

I recently finished studying Exodus in my devotions and towards the end came across an encouraging passage, from a support raising standpoint, at least. Here it is:

Moses said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, “This is the thing that the LORD has commanded. Take from among you a contribution to the LORD. Whoever is of a generous heart, let him bring the LORD’s contribution: gold, silver, and bronze; blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen; goats’ hair, tanned rams’ skins, and goatskins; acacia wood, oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, and onyx stones and stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece.
Exodus 35:4-9

In the context of the rest of Exodus, I found it slightly puzzling that God would ask Israel to donate to the cause of building the Tabernacle for two reasons. First, God did not need anything from Israel, and second, Israel did not deserve to be asked.

God had been taking care of everything for Israel up till this point. God negotiated their release from Pharaoh, decimated the country of Egypt, defeated its army, handed Egypt’s wealth to Israel, led them with a pillar of cloud and fire, and then when they got hungry rained down bread from heaven. They didn’t have to rally, take up arms, or even forage for food. Now, all of the sudden, He asks Israel to bring materials to build the Tabernacle, and appoints men to do the work of building it. He clearly could have made the Tabernacle Himself and told the people to worship Him there.

Israel didn’t deserve to participate in this grand undertaking. The building of the Tabernacle happened shortly after the incident with the Golden Calf. All these people now building a house of worship for God, were the same people who utterly betrayed Him and worshipped a man made golden cow, and praised IT for freeing them from Egypt. Clearly these people were not worthy of being involved in so holy an undertaking.

The fact that God invited Israel to participate in His work, despite the fact that they were not necessary, nor worthy, tells us that God desires people to be involved in the work He is doing, and that He will use even the greatest of sinners for the most holy of tasks. This is great news for us, and it reminds us of what an incredible privilege it is to do the work God calls us to. And more specifically in this passage we see that giving in particular is a great privilege. Suddenly when God decided to do something rather than pouring out all the resources in some miraculous way (as He had done numerous times previously), He decides to provide the needed resources through the generosity of His people. In very much the same way God provides the resources needed so that His people can carry out His work.

All that said, if there is anyone reading this who is of a generous heart and wants to participate in God’s work, we invite you to partner with us as a monthly financial supporter so that we can go to Japan and spread the Gospel as Christ commanded in the great commission. If that’s you, just send me an email: daveandtomo@gloryspeaking.com. We hope and pray that God will instill the same heart of generosity in believers today as He did in the hearts of the people of Israel long ago:
 

And they received from Moses all the contribution that the people of Israel had brought for doing the work on the sanctuary. They still kept bringing him freewill offerings every morning, so that all the craftsmen who were doing every sort of task on the sanctuary came, each from the task that he was doing, and said to Moses, “The people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the LORD has commanded us to do.” So Moses gave command, and word was proclaimed throughout the camp, “Let no man or woman do anything more for the contribution for the sanctuary.” So the people were restrained from bringing, for the material they had was sufficient to do all the work, and more.
Exodus 36:3-7

Most Japanese people know very little about Christianity. They almost never come across someone who claims to be a Christian, so a lot of people get curious when I (Tomo) tell them I’m a Christian and ask me questions. Here are some of the questions many people asked me.

“Have you read the Bible?”  A lot of people know that “the Bible” is the sacred book of Christianity. But they think it’s like any other book that you read from cover to cover once, or more if you really like it. Most of them don’t know that the Bible is made up of many different books. One time, I made a purse and embroidered Psalm 18:46 on it in English, and a friend of mine asked me if I finished making it at 6:46 in the evening. So I explained that it was a quote from the Bible and the numbers meant “Chapter 18 Verse 45” in a book called Psalms.

“Do you have a Christian name?”  I get this a lot. They’re thinking of baptismal names.

“Do you have to wear a robe at church?”  They were thinking of a robe that a priest or choir wears. They probably get this image from movies. For a lot of people, foreign movies (mostly American movies) are the primary source of information about Christianity.

“Moses, right?”  A friend of mine from high school knew that the word “Moses” had something to do with Christianity. I told her that Moses is a person in the Bible who parted the sea and she was pretty impressed, although she probably didn’t think I seriously believed it really happened.

“What’s the difference between Catholic and Protestant?”  This is one of the most common questions that I get asked.

“Is your dad gaijin (American/European)?”  I got this from a coffee shop manager at a job interiew when I told him my dad was a pastor. I told him no but he still thought it was cool and hired me.

“Is everything done in English at church?”  A lot of people associate Christianity with Western culture. When they think of Christians they think of Caucasian missionaries or a priest who performs weddings. 

“What do you do at church?”  One time when I was asked this when I was in elementary school, I said “we sing songs”. Then my puzzled friend asked me “What do you guys sing about?” So I said “We sing about God”. She looked like she was weirded out and she didn’t ask me about church again. In fact she didn’t really talk to me much after that. I was like, “Dang it, I should’ve said we hang out with other kids and eat lunch!”

Today Tomo and I went to the USCIS offices in Santa Anna to interview for her green card, and she was approved! It’s been a pretty time consuming process (to put it lightly), however we were somewhat amazed that throughout the entire process everything went as smoothly as it could. We are really praising God for this, as we have heard many stories of people with nightmare experiences trying to navigate the maze of immigration documents and procedures you have to go through.

We started applying for a visa for Tomo last summer, and after getting married and moving to the U.S. we then had to apply for an adjustment of status to permanent resident (Green Card). All in all it took just over a year or mailing forms back and forth from here to Japan or to the U.S. offices. But again, every interview went smoothly, we made all the application deadlines, and the government somehow managed to do things even a little ahead of schedule.

One of the “fun” things we had to do in all this was constantly prove that Tomo was not paying me to marry her so that she could get a green card. We had to submit emails, letters, photos of us at various stages in our relationship, and anything else to prove we really wanted to marry each other.

Things got off to a rough start this morning; we arrive a half hour ealry, but as we approached the Federal building in Santa Anna there was a huge line, and no one was being allowed inside, not even employees. As we waited in line I nervously watched the security guards placing caution tape around the building, effectively locking all of us on the inside of the danger zone, all the while hearing whispers about chemicals and gas. After waiting an hour for HazMat to come check everything out, watching news photographers walk around while helicopters circled overhead, and two guys being led out of the building in hand cuffs, we were finally allowed to go in. Still not sure exactly what happened. But after this slightly nerve wracking delay, everything turned out ok.

This last interview was one last check up to make sure we had a real marriage before granting her a (conditional) green card. We had to show pictures of the wedding (with all the guests that witnessed it), and that we opened up a joint bank account (Apparently this is what the government sees as the ultimate sign of trust).  After a nice twenty minute chat the interviewer was satisfied that there wasn’t anything fishy going on and she approved Tomo’s application for a green card.

It almost seems like a waste that we’re going to be going back to Japan next year, after putting so much effort into getting the green card, but as far as we could tell there wasn’t any other type of Visa we could get that would allow Tomo to stay in the U.S. for a year. This is a huge answer to prayer, as this has been a constant struggle to do everything exactly right. God has been so faithful to provide for us recently and we are trusting and relying on Him to continue to do so as we raise support to go serve Him in Japan.

As I learn more about Japanese culture, and begin to think about what ministry will be like over there, I’ve come to realize that approaches that are almost considered sacred here, in Japan would likely prove to be almost wholly ineffective. Particularly in the area of Evangelism, where Christians in America have devoted much time to developing strategies of effectively communicating the truth of the gospel to people who have not yet believed.

For instance, when you’re trying to share your faith with someone, what do you start with? If you’re with Campus Crusade for Christ, you probably begin with: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Others may start with sin, to explain the need for a savior. Almost always we will want to get to Jesus very shortly. However, the only reason we are able to get away with that here is because our culture has not only some idea of who God is, but WHAT a God is. As Tomo wrote in the previous post, Japanese people are at a disadvantage here.

Culturally Japanese believe in many, many different gods. Gods that have flaws, and strengths, gods that meddle in human affairs, gods that ought to be appeased, or if possible ignored and left alone. If you start with God’s love, or sin, or Jesus in attempting to explain the gospel, the odds of encountering some serious misunderstandings are quite high. So where should we start? And even more important, does the Bible give us any ideas on how to reach people from such a radically different worldview?

I think it does. In Acts 17:22-31, Paul (a Jew) addresses the men of Athens (Greeks). Greeks believed in many gods, gods who had flaws, gods who meddled in human affairs, gods who needed to be appeased, and perhaps at times better off just ignored. So where does Paul start? With God; explaining exactly who the God he’s talking about is. This is the God who created everything, who is Lord of both Heaven and Earth, a God who does not live in temples made by man, and does not require the service of men but instead is the God who gives all men life and breath. In short, Paul is talking about a God whom the Athenians had never imagined, a God totally unlike their concept of god. It’s not until the very last verse that he mentions Christ, and then only vaguely, making sure NOT to say that Christ is the Son of God, or that He was God (lest the Greeks, think Jesus was a son of a god like Hercules, or serperate god in Paul’s pantheon).

I think this is the approach Christians would need to take in Japan: starting with explaining who God is. And it may take a number of conversations before we could move on to, sin, what God wants for us, or what Christ has done.