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“Is it his first time?” A young man in a red coat looked at my six-year-old Cyprus sitting next to him and waiting for an employee to fit him with ski boots. I nodded and smiled. The young man then asked my boy his name and where he was from.…
Why can I never remember the word for astronaut? I paused, then said in Japanese, “The word . . . it’s not 宇宙人 (uchuujin, space alien).” After watching the word-finding struggle for a few painful moments, the Japanese teacher stepped in and reminded me of the correct word: 宇宙飛行士 (uchuuhikoushi).…
When questioned about his plans for a day, Martin Luther is famously quoted as responding, “I have so much to do; I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” How easy it is to get busy doing things that are important and skip prayer. This quote has inspired me…
As I looked out of the airplane window, my heart ached, wondering when I would ever again see the country with which I had fallen in love. From teaching to playing sports and eating at the night market with my students, I had grown to love them. After returning home,…
Each spring, Japan transforms as Sakura (cherry blossoms) blanket the nation in delicate shades of pink and white. This phenomenon, celebrated through Hanami (flower viewing) festivals, is a time of joy, reflection and community. Beneath these blossoms lies a deeper story—one that resonates with both Japanese culture and the gospel…
On February 3, the Japanese celebrate a festival called Setsubun. They throw soybeans at other people dressed like Japanese oni (ogres or demons) to force them out of the home. The beans are believed to hold the power to cast out the evil spirits that homes and other places have…
Kai is blind. Yet he is always immaculately dressed. Today he has on an ironed pink dress shirt and white pants. Dark aviator sunglasses cover the mottled skin around his eyes, the result of a tragic accident in his youth. Every week, I visit the home of Kai and Luann,…
The torrential rain slashed straight through the feeble tarps that Ronald had used to cover his makeshift shelter. For the last several months, he had been living in this hut next to the Bangon tribe’s cemetery, where the village chief had banished him. He had endured extreme loneliness as the…
Mayhem reigned. November was its month of choice. Our final intensive Japanese course ended on October 25. Between then and November 27, I did special music with a high school student at church, wrote a sermon in Japanese and preached it twice on two Sabbaths, wrote part of my testimony…
“Grandpa” appeared out of nowhere, so short that one could hardly notice him in the crowd of soccer game-goers dispersing across fields in every direction. He found me and smiled a big, stained-teeth smile. Grandpa respectfully kissed my arms and hands over and over and over. He hugged his short-person…