Yori's Testimony

Last Friday I went with Abe Sensei and his wife, Keiko, to their weekly bible study. Actually, I don't know who normally attends, but on this day we went to a woman's house in Yokohama. Her name is Yoko. She is a Christian and lives kind of far from their church, but attends when she can make it. On the way to her house we also picked up another housewife named Yori. She speaks very good English and translated for me during the bible study.

When we first sat down at Yoko's house Yori shared her testimony with us. Even the Abe's hadn't heard all of it. She told us how the first time she 'met God' was when she was 18. She went to study for a year in Ohio. Before she left for the year abroad she tried to make contact with her host family to introduce herself, but somehow she could never get ahold of them. On the day she arrived in the States she had to take a plane by herself from Cincinnati to Chicago, if I remember correctly. As she was sitting there waiting for the plane she became really homesick and afraid because she was in another country and was going to be there for a whole year and she didn't know who her host family was. So if they didn't come to the airport she wouldn't know what to do because she didn't know much English at the time.

There was a woman who noticed that Yori was wearing some badge that said the name of the organization she was doing the abroad program with. This woman turned out to be the wife of the president of this organization. So the woman talked with her and comforted her because she understood how Yori felt as a foreigner in a new place. The woman's daughter happened to be going on the same flight so they helped Yori get to her host family. They exchanged information so that if Yori ever needed help she could contact them.

This organization also generally has the students rotate homes every four months so that neither the student or the family gets too stressed out, one year is a long time. But the organization couldn't find any other families to host her by the end of her first four months. She told them about the people she met in the airport, the organization contacted the family, and the family agreed to take Yori in. So Yori moved to the home of the people she met at the airport. They were Christians and took Yori to church every week.

Now, most Japanese people aren't interested in Christianity, but of course for the sake of the family they attend church with them. Yori wasn't interested either, but she found a lot of healing when she stayed with this family. When she was even younger she had been bullied a lot and she had at one point tried to commit suicide. [This is not uncommon in Japan, students that are bullied come to the point of being suicidal.]

So although Yori didn't become a Christian from her experience with her host family, she experienced God's love from them. It wasn't until years later that she came to accept Christ. She is now in her forties.

Abe Sensei made it clear to me that this is how many Japanese people come to know Christ. There is such a strong sense of doing what everyone else is doing in Japan. Don't be different, don't put yourself first, do everything for the good of the group. That is sort of the idea. It's perhaps like the ultimate bandwagon scenario. But when a person from Japan travels, as a student studying abroad for example, he or she is no longer surrounded by their friends or family. It is like they are free to make choices for themselves in a way. Of course, this would probably happen to anyone going to another country--you see things differently and are usually open to new experiences, etc. So I have met several people who have had the same experience of going abroad and meeting Christ for the first time in host families. If you ever feel God leading you to host anyone from Japan or another culture, go for it and be open to showing them what you believe to be true with wisdom and love and without apology.