News on the Missions Front

Thanks Brice. Our work here in quite slow and "unexciting" in man's eyes. We don't see great numbers and great visible results. We do know that God is working in hearts and lives and that we are striving to be faithful to Him.

You can see a photoblog of God's work here at www.naaspreacher.blogspot.com . Some of the pics are simply of people we have asked folks to pray for in our ministry updates.

Thanks for your interest.

 

Thanks for asking, Brice.

Like C4K's work, ours is slow and unexciting. We are thrilled that we have three more people coming this year, though: the 90 year old mother of a believer, and a woman who made a profession of faith through one of my tracts, now bringing her husband.

On Saturday we will have a Christmas Eve service, since Christmas Eve events have become popular in Japan, for some reason. We've gotten out 500 leaflets and invited folk personally. We'll see what happens. We'd be very happy with an attendance of 10 Japanese!

We have a brand new website at www.johnofjapan.org (what else?). There is not much content on it yet, but you can get an idea, anyway.

Kind of funny story. H. San, a bachelor in his 50's, got saved and baptized several years ago, and seemed to have a speech defect. I found out I could understand him, though, and he became our usher and my evangelism partner. Then one day he showed up at church with his false teeth in and, miracle of miracles, his speech deficit disappeared! But he doesn't like the teeth and rarely wears them. Yesterday morning I showed up at H. San's house to go out with him for evangelism. He had forgotten, came to the door all ruffled and messy, and I couldn't understand a word he said for once!

 

John of Japan,
I read your testimony on your website, and missionary Jim Norton taught some of our missions classes at Maranatha! It was wonderful meeting him and hearing his stories and his wisdom!

 

Our story here in Ghana is a different one from many missionaries I have seen post here on the BB. We are laboring in a white harvest field. Ghana is certainly wide open to the gospel. It is also wide open to the cults as well. To God's glory we have started two churches since 1998. We have three areas we are beginning to reach out into to start three more churches when we have saved, discipled, and trained leaders ready for the work. Until that time we continue to use busses to bring them in from those areas to my church, Rehoboth Baptist. You can see our ministry at www.GracetoGhana.com.

 

Bro. Norton was a wonderful missionary. He's retired now, as you may know. I worked with Bro. Norton for our first two years in Japan (while in language school) and learned a lot. Well, actually I worked with him for the first year. The second year he was on furlough, so we lived in his house and I pastored the branch work of his church.

 

Regarding numbers, I have some very large churches supporting me, but I am almost never asked about numbers on the mission field. However, one large church has recently gotten interested in missions (after decades of neglect) and started featuring missionaries in their Wed. eve. bulletin. For that purpose, they ask average attendance, etc., every few months. I always fill out the thing with trepidition, thinking this will be the time they drop me. So far so good, though.

Other than that, the churches that have always shown real interest in our ministry know the score about Japan, and give us prayers rather than judgements.

 

I have mostly the same response John. Most of our churches are quite good and understand the problems of this field as well.

 

Right C4K. It's those young pastors who come in and learn about missions for the first time who can sometimes be scary!

 

I can tell you some stories of men who came to Ghana for a week or two and wrote some whopper prayer letters. That is realy sad that men feel pressured to write such things. We have always been very careful about those sort of things. It is not healthy to "spiritually boast" of great numnbers. Afterall, it is God who gives the increase. I tell people all the time that it is only our job to be faithful stewards of the true gospel. It is up to God to do the saving.

I do have a ton of stories the Lord "allowed" me to acquire. I say that in jest. Have any of you done a funeral only to have someone strip naked, throw his clothes into the grave on top of the casket, then jump into the hole? Yes, it is completely true, every whit!

 

Hilarious, Mike, but I can't imagine that happening in Japan. These people are too prim and proper, too conscious of "saving face" for that incident to be possible.

Tell you what, I've got lots of language blunders, though. Japanese is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, so naturally we blunder a lot when we learn it.

After 2 years of full time language school we moved to Yokohama to start our first church. One day I was talking to a lady in front of a bank, inviting her to church and hoping to witness. In order to build the relationship I tried to talk to her little boy, but he hid behind his mother's skirt. So I added an adjective ("seems like") to a noun ("doesn't like") and said it about her little boy. Her jaw dropped open, and without a word she grabbed the boy and stalked off. I hadn't a clue what I had said until I got back home and looked it up. There is another word with the same pronunciation as those two together which means "filthy, immoral"!!

 

Hey, I'm back!

Our work is a lot like C4K and John of Japan said-
'slow and unexciting'. We work primarily with the deaf in Mexico. Most have never heard (NO pun intended, thank you!) the gospel. It takes a long time to disciple new believers because most deaf folks have very little education and cannot read well. We're trying to get a deaf children's class started so hopefully we can get to them before they become sin-hardened teenagers.

Stories- well, the sign for 'fellowship' in American Sign language means 'adultery' in Mexican Sign Language. I learned that the hard way the first time I signed 'After church we will have a time of fellowship'. Sure got their attention, though !!!

 

Welcome back, Mexdeaf. I trust your Christmas services went well.

Loved your language story! I never would have guessed at that difference. I thought sign language was pretty universal.

One thing to be careful of in learning Japanese is, when you politely give a tract to a lady you must be careful to say, "O yomi ni natte kudasai" instead of using the word "yome." If you goof you are saying, "Please be my bride!" instead of "Please read this." I didn't make this blunder, though I've had my share of them.

 

Praise the Lord that our language barrier is not as serious here.

One error I heard I can't repeat, because an American term is VERY offensive here.

Another time a zealous preacher told women that they should not wear pants. Don't want to debate whether he was right or wrong, but here "pants" refers to underwear .

 

John of Japan, you're going to love this one...

The Japanese Sign Language sign for 'brother' is the same vulgar sign in the USA involving the use of the middle finger. Imagine our surprise when a deaf preacher from Japan used that sign while he was preaching at Tennessee Temple!

BTW, Sign language is no more universal than Klingon.

And here's another one for you... the Chinese Sign for 'Amercan' is the sign we normally use for 'crazy' involving the index finger revolving around the side of the head.

As far as Spanish, it is easy to get the words for 'horse' (caballo) and 'gentleman' (caballero) mixed up. I once called a fellow a real horse- he wasn't too pleased!

 

Brice,

I have jokingly threatened to collect these stories and title the book, "Oh, the Beds I've Slept In." Mainly referring to the rigors of deputation and furlough. Do you think it will catch the interest of the reading public?

 

Missionaries possibly .

I could tell you about a bed I slept in on deputation .