"An Unexpected Invitation" by Seiko Lovestrand

"An Unexpected Invitation"

by Seiko Lovestrand

For the past four years I have worked with OMF International as a missionary in Sendai, Japan, together with my husband and two children.  During these four years we kept praying for our neighbors.  Whenever we had a special evangelistic meeting at the church we would put a flyer on our front door.  One of our neighbors seemed to be interested in our activities.  I invited her to come to our church a couple of times, but she never came.

One day the neighbor invited me to her house for tea.  I had invited her to my house before, so I was happy going to her place.  When I arrived at her house I found that she had become a member of an extremist Buddhist cult a year before!!  She had only invited me over to convert me!  For the next two hours she and her boss continued trying to persuade me.  They even threatened me.  This group attacks Christians especially.  According to their teaching, if they can get Christians to convert, they get extra points and it will help them to be like Buddha when they die.  I told them that their teaching was wrong, especially about Jesus (whom they insulted!).  I explained to them about our sin and Jesus’ crucifixion.  Before going to the neighbor’s house, I had prayed that God would give me a chance to share about Jesus with her.  Even though it wasn’t the way I expected, God gave me that chance.  A week after that, I invited her to a tea and handed her a few pages I had written explaining how we could  recognize a cult.  We are still praying for the neighbor. 

Because there are so many religions in Japan, including cults like the one above, many Japanese don't want to be invited to a “new” religion.  People are afraid they might be forced to join if they interact with a new religion or teaching.  This is one reason why it is difficult for Christians to share their faith or get their friends to come to church with them.

We have another Japanese friend who came to Christ about a year ago.  When I met her in the U.S. about ten years ago, I had a chance to share my testimony with her.  She had never heard anything about Jesus, so she was quite upset to listen to it.  Over the years we and other Christian Japanese friends kept in touch with her.  Last year she finally came to Christ through many difficulties which she was experiencing.  It took about ten years!  Our work seems slow, but God is working through many Christians.  We would like to see more of God’s work through us and other Christians in Japan, too.

Seiko Lovestrand

OMF International

"Providential Timing" by Joel Lovestrand

Providential Timing

by Joel Lovestrand

(Joel & his wife, Seiko, are WBC Missionaries in Japan)

It was nearly midnight on March 10, 2011, and my wife and I had almost finished preparing for our 3:30 a.m. departure for Tokyo.  Seiko needed to take care of some paperwork at the U.S. embassy and we wanted to take part in a reunion of her veterinary school class that weekend.  We like to get an early start on these trips and get a big chunk of the driving out of the way while the children are asleep in the car.  Besides that, there is a fifty percent discount for those who get on the tollway before 4:00 a.m.  But making the drive after only three hours of sleep was not an appealing thought and we talked about delaying our trip one day.  In the end, however, we decided to just go as planned and rest when we arrived in Tokyo.

Even with a long stop at a rest area, we made good time and arrived in Tokyo in the middle of the morning.  We had lunch and headed toward Seiko's father's house in Yokohama.  We had just gotten off the expressway and were stopped at a traffic light when the earth began to shake.  Earthquakes are a relatively common occurrence in Japan, but this was a big one!  People began running out of buildings.  In some areas the electricity went off and traffic lights stopped working, but we managed to make it to Seiko's father's house and turned on the television in time to see live coverage from a news helicopter of a tsunami sweeping into Sendai!  While the quake we felt in the Tokyo area was strong, it was even stronger in Sendai, which was near the epicenter.  A tsunami larger than most people could ever have imagined was inundating the whole northeast coast of Honshu!  In shocked amazement we watched the water surge over fields, roads, buildings and moving vehicles, all the while wondering what would become of our neighborhood, church, and friends.

For a few days communication with anyone in Sendai was difficult.  Soon we heard that our coworkers were safe.  One by one we heard reports of our church members.  In the end, it turned out that, while some lost loved ones or property, none of our church members lost their lives.  We were stranded in Yokohama for two weeks.  Gasoline was in short supply, so even if we could find passable roads up to Sendai, running out of gas with nowhere to buy it was a real danger.  On the first day the expressway was reopened to general traffic we returned.  Our neighborhood was in much better condition than some.  Our apartment had suffered very little damage.  Bookcases had fallen over leaving a huge mess to pick up, but our building was sound.  Electricity, gas, and water service had already been restored.  The tsunami had come to within a mile of our place and stopped.

When we consider the timing of these events, we wonder.  Why did God allow us to escape so that we watched the destruction from afar?  Was it because he protects his own children who believe in his Son Jesus?  We have no doubt that God in his love was protecting us and that he looks on us with special grace because we belong to Jesus.  But didn't he help others who were not believers to survive?  Didn't some faithful Christians perish in the tsunami?  We don't understand all of God's working in this disaster.  But we do know he was at work.

A couple of months after the tsunami we were scheduled for a year of home assignment in the U.S. so we packed up our things and prepared to move, albeit with some ambivalent feelings.  We knew it was time for us to return, but we also wanted to stay and help those who had been affected by this disaster.  We did not leave them alone, however.  While we have been back in the U.S., our coworkers and church in Sendai have been busy ministering to those who lost their homes in the deluge.  We look forward to returning and continue to pray that God in his mercy will use these events to turn their hearts toward the living God.