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Conversations
April 13, 2012
By Ruth Kim
It’s funny how God can be so responsive. I was a little worried about my role here in Kesennuma in terms of whether or not I was doing enough – if I could be doing more. I felt like I wasn’t having the conversations I should/could be having about Him and interestingly enough, that’s exactly what I had yesterday.
I had two interesting conversations. One was with a student (Mr. Takahashi) that will drop in just to talk when he has time – he lives an hour away but he takes the time and effort to come out to have these conversations. During the course of our conversation, we started talking about Christianity (he has been reading the Bible comics – he’s on Moses) and I remember hearing that he was interested in Christianity but I didn’t know if he believed in Jesus or in God. When I asked him, he identified himself as Buddhist because he said that if he said he was Christian, he wouldn’t be able to go to his friends’ or relatives’ funerals because they are traditionally Buddhist funerals. It was interesting to talk about his point of view in terms of what Christianity entailed. He told me that he believes in God and in Jesus (which by my definition makes him Christian) so I think he’s just working out what it means to live as a Christian. When I asked him why he was interested in Christianity, he said that it was “cool”. Since the ideas are so new and different from Buddhism and shinto, I think he found the theology behind Christianity to be pretty interesting. It was so heartening to see a person from a different religion and a different tradition become more and more interested in Christ. On his way out, he met with Mrs. Sato and she invited him to our weekly Bible study on Saturday. He said he was interested in coming out and would try to make it this week!
The other conversation I had was on the train on my way back to the hotel. I was looking for an open seat and found one by an older woman sitting by herself. At first, I was planning on just quietly reading the ride back, but we started talking and ended up talking the whole way back. She knew about Christians and Christianity (which was actually surprising for me since the percentage of Christians in Japan is pretty low). She didn’t seem interested since she knew about it and didn’t really say anything more beyond that (apparently there’s a pretty big church community in the Nagasaki area though). We talked about all sorts of other random things and she ended up giving me her number (”Call me if you’re ever in Tokyo.”). It was really unexpected since I feel like people don’t easily give their contact information out so hopefully I’ll be able to meet up with her in the future!
Praise God for these types of meetings and these types of conversations!
Read more at WELS Christian Aid and Relief
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