A Living Hope

In January we wrote in our prayer email update about a friend and her now-12-year-old daughter. The mother studied the Bible with Lisa and other missionaries on our team and her daughter became a Christian through the ministry of our church. Her family was transferred from our neighborhood in Shin-Urayasu back to their hometown in another part of Japan. We learned that our friend’s mother was very angry that her daughter let her granddaughter become a Christian. The grandmother tried to take her granddaughter to a Buddhist temple, but the then-10-year-old refused. The grandmother then tried to take her to a Christian pastor to renounce her faith, but again the granddaughter refused. Her grandmother gave an ultimatum; give up Christianity or give up their relationship with her. My friend’s husband forbid his wife and daughter from attending church.  He wanted to bring peace to his family and had hopes that his daughter’s interest in Christianity would be forgotten. This young believer is standing firm in her belief that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.”

This is not always the response to family members becoming Christians in Japan, but it happens, often to a lesser degree. This grandmother has a lot of fear of fear of what she believes will result in a bad afterlife because her only grandchild won’t make sacrifices of food and prayer to her after her death. This is the traditional belief in Japan.

Our young friend wants to worship God in a church, to continue to grow in her faith, and to experience Christian fellowship. So she made plans to attend a junior high school in her area that has a Christian heritage. This all-girls school has a strong academic reputation and requires a difficult entrance exam. So, our young friend enrolled in a Japanese “cram school” to prepare to take the exam…a year and a half before the exam.  She studied every day after school, on Saturdays and Sundays, and on school holidays! 

She took part one (the academic portion) of her entrance exam on January 19th. She says that she was conscious of God's help, especially when she realized at some point that she had made a significant mistake in an earlier part of the test and was able to go back and correct several answers which were affected by the mistake. On January 21st she took part two (a physical education test),  a component which most schools no longer include. She and her mother had long bemoaned the fact that she had to take a physical education test, especially because there was one element of the test, a double jump with a jumprope, that she had never been able to do. During this portion of the exam, she was able to perform the double jump for the first time in her life - twice!

The next morning, January 22, she received notice that she had passed the entrance exam and would be admitted to the junior high school she had so wanted to attend.  Because this school has a Christian heritage, she will be required to attend school chapel services during the week and a worship service at a local church on Sundays.  And, because of the prestigious reputation of this school, family members who once opposed any involvement with Christian things will no longer stand in her way.  Her primary motivation in wanting to go to this school, and in attending hours and hours of cram school studies to prepare for this exam, was that she wanted to be able to attend church to worship Jesus. God has honored her desire.

There are still many fractured relationships in her extended family, but her faith in Jesus has been stretched as she saw God enable her to attain this lofty goal.  Please pray that God will continue building up this young woman's confidence in Jesus.  Her mother, who is a sincere seeker, is rejoicing that her daughter was able to achieve her goal.  Please pray that God would use these circumstances to help her mother take the step of trusting in Jesus.  And, even her father, with whom we have had a friendly relationship, but who has kept his distance from anything spiritual, was heard to comment that angels had lifted his daughter during the physical education test when she was doing the double jump.  Please pray that these circumstances would be used to open his eyes to the presence of the God, the One his daughter trusts and his wife seeks.  Please pray that God would bring this whole family to trust in Jesus.

These friends came to visit us in Orlando in February! We had a wonderful week together recalling the story of God’s faithfulness!!!