Thank you all who pray for us. Please keep praying!
Nagoya felt the quake yesterday-quite strongly, but there was no physical damage. We can tell, however, that people's hearts have been shaken to the core. For example, tonight at our community choir practice (about half Christians, half non-Christians) one lady related to me the fear she experienced yesterday. She was in the subway during the quake and thought that she may be buried alive. I've never really considered this lady terribly interested in Christianity. She loves to sing, but I thought her interest in choir didn't go beyond that. In tears, she asked me, in that kind of situation, how should she pray? Would God be with her in that situation? It breaks my heart to see a grown woman cry!
Tonight we practiced a setting of Psalm 23 (Mack Wilberg's "My Shepherd Will Supply My Need"-Absolutely gorgeous!-listen to it here on youtube). I took the opportunity to address our choir member's tears by explaining that Christians aren't promised a life without pain. In fact, we're reminded that we will walk through the valley of the shadow of death. . . but "Thou art with me!" Jesus is Immanuel. He experienced our pain, sadness, and even our death. The promise we have is that Jesus understands us and is with us.
Please, please pray that we will take advantage of the rare opportunities in which we are asked the questions every missionary wants to be asked. It doesn't happen enough here in Japan.
Please pray for this lady (and others) to join a Bible study in our area to learn more about our great God who came to be with us, save us, and love us.
Please pray for us as we try to finish practice cds that we make for our gospel choirs. We will be singing 10 songs this term in our gospel choirs, all with wonderful messages of hope. Teresa and I record our voices singing every part and then we distribute the cds among members of our choir, and other choirs affiliated with us around Japan (over 40 choirs). Thus, we send 700 cds to people around the country- many in the worst affected areas of Sendai, Fukushima, and Ibaragi. May these cds bring the message of hope to people who desperately need it. As a side note, gospel music became popular in Japan after the last big earthquake in Kobe in 1995. Gospel music gave hope to the devastated people of Kobe and then spread in popularity around the country from there. What will God do this time after the worst quake in Japan's recorded history?
Christians and missionaries here in Nagoya want to assist with relief efforts, but all roads and train lines into the devastated areas are closed off to the general public. May God give us wisdom as to what to do and when to do it.
Below, I've included a portion of an email from our MTW country director, Dan Iverson, who is near Tokyo. He and the missionaries on his team felt the quakes much more intensely than we did. What he writes puts the death toll in perspective of the greater need in Japan. This has turned into a long email, but please read and pray!
By the way, we're nowhere near those nuclear plants-but we still won't go outside if it rains!
Thank you so much,
Tom. Teresa, Ian and Liana
Tom, Teresa, and Ian Wilson • 2-9-15 Mitake, Togocho, Aichi-gun, Aichi-ken, 470-0156 Japan • tomteresawilson@gmail.com
Tax-Deductible Donations: Payable to Mission to the World • PO Box 116284, Atlanta, GA 30368-6284
(Account # 018228)
Now as I send this after writing below info (w/o proofing), news is saying 1400 dead and missing, including 4 trains of people, and 5 nuclear power plants in trouble (Japan news is still saying only 2 nuclear plants... trying to prevent panic, maybe???)
Sat 3/12 12:10 pm Jpn time (USA EST+14 hrs)
Family, Friends,
Please pray for us we decide where to go and help with hands, food, water, diapers, and money, etc. More than 1100 dead or missing, which sad expectation that this will go much higher considering how big and widespread the tsunamis were.
Where to go?
130 miles, 200 km of coastal area devastation from monster earthquake and resulting tsunamis, so it is difficult to know where we should go to help. We are looking for missionaries or churches in area to partner with/ be a base. Pray for wisdom: when, where, who to go... what to take.
1100 killed= 12 day total of suicides in Japan
To put the spiritual darkness of Japan in perspective, Japan averages about 90 suicides per day. It is so sad that already 1100 people appear to have died in the earthquake/tsunami and that is making world-wide news. It needs to also break our heart that this very rich country is really so spiritually impoverished, with so many with no hope. But if indeed 1100 are dead from the killer earthquake, we need to also remember that a normal 12 days in Japan brings about this many suicides. But it does not make CNN news.
Poor Japan in 1970 had half as many suicides as today's rich Japan with so much "abundance."
it is sad but telling that Japan had half its current @32,000 suicides a year in 1970. Japan was poor, beginning to grow strong economically and educationally. Now Japan "made it", has 100 literacy, longest life expectancy in the world, etc, but with the Bible's Ecclesiastes 2, so many Japanese people who sought the "abundant" life have found that "all is vanity." Pray for a new turning to the One who really does give abundant life (John 10:10b).
So, as we and so many Christians mobilize and seek to relieve incredible suffering and pain in the name of Christ to the 5 million people of the devastated areas, pray that this will bring a turning to the true and living God, and to Christ and his grace and love. Japan really needs true hope that does not disappoint.
Below are some stats on the affected areas, and just how lost and unreached they are.
We are just having another tremor right now, not so big, but no one even stopped what they were doing... it must have been the 100th I felt... but we all stopped counting. What power and might!
How do we help? Our plans?
Concert with Korean professional choir today at 3pm, now turned into concert and offering and prayer time afterwards:
We have a concert at 3pm, in 3 hours, here at our church building, planned from long ago as an outreach event. The choir arrived yesterday (Fri) to Narita airport 30 min before the 1st and biggest earthquake. The airport was soon closed down.
So we decided to go ahead with it, make it shorter, and use it as a time for witness to the many non Christians who will come (if they still come with all that has happened... we were expecting about 100), and offering for the devastation, and prayer afterwards for Christians to stay and join in on. Non-Chrisitans will be welcome to stay, and some probably will.
Rented a truck, preparing to go: Need to know where to go. Please pray for that.
We have rented one truck from tonight, and are having people bring supplies to take north to worship tomorrow. Email and cell etc are down in the Sendai area, where things were the worse. We know OPC missionaries there who could be a base for us to help with their churches, if they and the churches are okay, but all we know is that "OPC missionaries the Cummings are okay, but have no electricity or other utilities" (word we finally got 2d hand). And, because the two nuclear power plants in the affected region are a very serious concern, we may not be allowed into some areas to help.
The stats on Japan's spiritual poverty, and especially the affected area:
The areas affected by the earthquake and tsunamis of Miyagi, Fukushima, and Ibaraki are some of the most spiritually needy places in Japan. With over 4.9 million people yet only about 9,000 active Christians (about 0.15%; about 1/6 of 1%). Fukushima has the lowest average worship attendance in all of Japan with only 19 per church. There are is one city and 44 towns with no church at all. There are 86 missionaries (adults, including husband and wife) assigned to these prefectures. One town in Ibaraki has over 46,000 people with no church (OperJpn 24) and several others have over 24,000 people with no churches. Average attendance for all the churches in Japan is the lowest in Fukushima prefecture. Ibaraki prefecture has the least number of people claiming to have any religious beliefs.
Please do pray for Japan! And for us.
In Christ, who rules all,
Dan
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