Tomigusuku Church, Japan

Pastor Nam HyoungWoo

Though it’s a pioneer church, there are quite a few invisible helping hands serving Tomigusuku Church.  One of them is Deacon Osmi from the nearby Shuri Church.  He is a wonderful elderly deacon that drives a taxi and gives evangelistic pamphlets to everybody that takes his taxi.  He really feels sorry for me, saying Korean missionaries are doing the job that Japanese people are supposed to do.  I see hope for the mission in Japan through him, but he feels guilty about not being able to do enough things for missionaries.

Deacon Osmi visits my house every Wednesday with 50 liters of mineral water he purchases.  He has been doing so for over a year, saying it’s the only way for him to help missionaries drink good water and spread the gospel every week.  I haven’t caught a cold even once in the past year thanks to his love, which is contained in those five 10-liter water pails.  I suffered much from rhinitis in Otaki, but I feel so much better now that I hardly remember suffering from it.

Not only did he give me water, but he took all my name cards and gave them to passengers that lived near Tomigusuku Church, saying, “There is a Korean missionary living near here.  Please contact him if you want him to pray for you.”  However, my expectations were not that high.  I didn’t think it was likely that anybody would call me just from getting my name card.  But then a housewife gave me a call in September last year.  She told me she was living with her daughter after getting divorced due to domestic violence, and she asked me if I could visit her house and pray for her.  I readily went to her house and found out how she was able to call me.  She turned out to be one of Deacon Osmi’s steady customers.

She confessed that her pastor hadn’t visited her at all, even though she had gone to a Protestant church for the last 20 years.  So she asked, “Could you still pray for me, even though I can’t change churches because I have gone to my church for so long?”

“By all means!” I said.  “I can pray for you as much as I can.  You can even call me every day.  I will certainly pray for you.”  Probably taking my word literally, she and her daughter called me all the time and asked me to pray for them.  There was a time when she called me at 11 p.m. and asked, “Could you visit my house?”

She had been suffering from depression for a long time because her ex-husband used to beat her.  Her second daughter, who was 29 years old, got divorced because of the mental anxiety that resulted from her father’s violence and was living with her mother.  Her first son had been put in a mental hospital by his father for 20 years because he stood against his father’s violence.  Her first daughter, who was a nurse, was so fed up with her family that she moved to Tokyo on the pretext of her job and only kept in touch with them once in a while.  Her second son, who majored in Architecture and got the level 1 certificate for civil engineering, shunned marriage because of his fragile family environment and always feared forming social relationships.  As I was thinking of ways to help these wounded souls, I gave them Bible studies and counseling therapy every Wednesday.  I gave her second son counsel on life for an hour at 9 p.m. on Friday night because his job prevented him from coming to the Bible studies.

I also gave her second daughter piano lessons every Monday and began to teach her how to play church hymns.  Two months passed, and she confessed to me last November, “I’m now ready to attend the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  My first son will also ask for leave every Sabbath to attend church.  Would you help us out?”  I had never mentioned my church, thinking that reaching out to church members of other denominations was forbidden by an unwritten law.  But she came to me first, voluntarily.

Six months passed, and after attending the baptismal service of Uehara Hiroko in April, she and her family told me that they would like to be baptized.  I was able to experience the wonderful providence of God, who gathered together His people.  After two months, she and her first son Uehara Kazya, along with her second daughter Uehara Mayumi, were born again into the family of God.  My church had joint worship and baptismal service with Naha Church on June 17.

She and her second daughter Mayumi shared this beautiful testimony right after the baptismal service: “Tomigusuku Church has saved our family.  God has restored our family.”  Then Naha Church and Tomigusuku Church gave glory to God together.

She keeps on praying for her second son, Uehara Senda, who hasn’t decided to get baptized.  She doesn’t hate her ex-husband anymore because she has forgiven him.  I pray that her family may be restored as she encourages her children to love their father.  I also pray that her second daughter Mayumi may get closer to God by reading Steps to Christ as she continues to make spiritual war against Satan.

The baptismal service of Uehara Yoshiko and her family