Going to the Dogs

"Hey, I've got a secret! We can live like kings in Setagaya!"

Every time I get on this topic, I have to begin with a disclaimer: No, I don’t hate dogs. It is true that we’ve never owned a dog in our 31 years of marriage, although we’ve had three cats, a rabbit, a couple of birds, numerous aquariums of fish, hamsters named Don and Betty Jo (after the grandparents), and, heaven didn’t forbid, mice that began reproducing way too fast. Still, I repeat it: I have nothing against dogs. Really.

Having said that, however, I do admit I have a problem when I see how dogs are treated in Japan—or at least here in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward, where we live. Setagaya boasts the highest number of registered dogs among the city’s 23 wards. Some 29,200 canines are listed, not to mention all the “illegals.” To give some perspective, that’s pushing twice as many people as live in Bernie’s hometown in southeast Missouri.

So how do Setagaya folk treat their dogs? Let me give some examples.

I can remember when I thought taking your dog for a walk meant that the dog walked, too. What I usually see these days are proud owners strolling with their dogs cuddled in their arms. Fresh air for little poochie, yes, but walk him? I guess that would be cruel and unusual punishment. It’s no wonder diet dog food is sold in the stores here.

And speaking of stores, in our neighborhood there’s a doggie furniture store. How about a couch or an arm chair? And I thought it was extravagant to spend money on Fido’s own special cushion! There’s a computer in the window, too, but surely that’s for the store and not for someone’s pet. But then again . . . .

There are also many pet clinics rivaling the number for people, in addition to more than a few doggie boutiques within easy walking distance. You can buy your beloved pet the latest in fashion, some garments boasting designer names (and prices), too. You do want your poochie to be the talk of the town, don’t you? After all, isn’t she worth it?

Or how about going out to dinner with your dog? There’s the Deco Dog Café where you can order an entrée for yourself from the people menu and your pet’s favorite from his own menu. They’ll serve your beloved dog in a silver dish right there beside your chair. Who knows? Maybe if you ask, they’ll even place a doggie high chair at your table. I’m only half being factitious.

And now, according to The Daily Yoimuri, there are accredited “dog life counselors” in Setagaya, certified to talk with dog owners about improving pet etiquette, training, and health care. The more I read, the more appalled I become. After all, here’s something else I read recently: UNICEF reports that 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. Yet dogs are treated like kings and queens around here. Am I the only one who’s upset?

His Praise Glorious

The cover of Cheryl's new book

Many reasons to praise
“Shout with joy to God, all the earth! Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious!” (Psalm 66:1-2).

We join the psalmist in praising God for many things at the start of this month:

►The 12th international testimonies book that Cheryl has compiled and edited has just been published by Warner Press. Titled His Praise Glorious, it is a collection of 28 of some of the best stories from her previous 11 books, with a new twist—all stories were updated to show what has happened in the intervening years since the testimony was first published. Please check http://www.warnerpress.com/, phone 877-3346-3974, or e-mail wporders@warnerpress.org to find out how to get your copy.

►International Day at Tamagawa Seigakuin was a wonderful success! Bernie reports that 165 third year junior high schoolers responded enthusiastically to the May 16 visit of 42 international guests representing 18 countries. We’re confident many seeds were sown as the girls were challenged to think about God’s call on their lives personally, even while witnessing in this international group that God is working in the whole world, too.

►Many prayers were answered at the national youth convention in Okinawa, May 3-5. Our heartfelt prayer was that some participants would answer God’s call to full-time ministry. In response to these prayers, Cheryl had the privilege of praying with a 10-year-old boy and an adult woman, two who did indeed answer this call. There also were several who gave their hearts to the Lord and/or made a decision for baptism. More than 40 people from 7 congregations joined the convention.

►Eleven people met together for the May Praise Time. Among these were three non-Christian women, one of whom seems quite close to a decision. Please pray that she will have the courage to set her doubts aside and step out on faith.

►Cheryl joined her family at Mediterranean Bible College in Beirut, Lebanon for the inauguration of the Johnson Chapel on May 20. The special event included one student’s graduation and honored John and Gwen Johnson, Cheryl’s brother and sister-in-law, former missionaries there. (Cheryl’s sister, Don Deena Johnson, now serves as MBC dean.) What wasn’t expected was the car bomb that exploded that night near Ashrafieh Church of God, blowing out all the windows in the church and nearby buildings. We praise God for safety for Cheryl in Lebanon and during her travels there and back.

An opportunity
We are continually grateful for your support of us through prayer. Rarely have we mentioned finances in this newsletter. However, we want to let you know of an opportunity to support Japan financially. Three Church of God congregations, Tarumi Church (Kobe), Saga Church (Saga), and Gospel Family Church (Okinawa), are all repaying loans on buildings they’ve constructed within the past 7 years. Each of these congregations is small—typical of churches in Japan—and the debt on their facilities is significant. Tarumi Church, for example, has paid about $20,000 annually for 6 years on its debt, reducing it to nearly $200,000. Although the other two churches owe less, this continued debt is a tremendous burden on the congregations.

If you would like to help, Church of God Ministries has a project called Church Buildings Japan (Project #42.40315). For some time, no funds have been received for this project, so we want to make you aware of this opportunity. Whether or not you can contribute financially, please pray to support these three churches and their ministries. As always, we also ask you to pray that God will soon bless Tarumi Church will a Japanese pastor.

Other ways to pray
Looking ahead, we ask you to remember the following:

►The Kansai SAM position, to be filled by mid-August, is suddenly without a candidate. This is a significant prayer request. Please pray for God to provide this individual very soon so that the English-Bible outreaches of the Kobe and Osaka churches will not be disrupted; and,

►For Cheryl as she travels to the States on June 22 to participate in Kid’s Place, the children’s missions education program at North American Convention. Pray especially that some children will hear and answer the call to missions and ministry.

From Beirut, Lebanon

Looking out through a shattered window of Ashrafieh Church, Beirut

Packing. I'm at it again, like I was when I last posted to this blog. Then I was in Tokyo; today I'm in Beirut, Lebanon. I've done no shopping since coming here, but two "new" items are going into my suitcase as I return to Japan: a piece of jagged, charred metal and a 50-cent-sized piece of broken glass. Needless to say, these are not the usual souvenirs travelers take home from Lebanon.

The hand-sized metal piece with razor-sharp edges used to be part of the chassis of a car—until two evenings ago. That was when the car exploded in the parking area outside a new multi-level shopping mall in the eastern (and Christian) side of Beirut, igniting a destructive fire. Fortunately, the mall was closed for the evening and there were no casualties there, although a wall in a nearby house collapsed, killing one woman.

The major damage from this terrorist act was sustained by buildings all around the area whose windows were blown out by the force of the explosion. Little more than a stone's throw away, the Ashrafieh Church of God was among these buildings damaged. The broken glass I have packed in my suitcase used to be part of a window in this church.Last night, I gathered at the Ashrafieh Church with a small group of 50 people. We could not meet in the sanctuary. Broken glass is everywhere there, with furniture, Bibles, and song books destroyed by flying windows, window casings, and shards of every size and shape. Instead, we met in a fellowship hall. Even there, small bits of glass crunched under our feet and mosquitoes irritated, undeterred because there are no longer any window panes to keep them out.

Nevertheless, nothing could have dampened our voices of praise to God for his protection and faithful presence in the midst of it all. We met in a show of solidarity with the Ashrafieh congregation and to pray that God will empower them to reach out in his name to meet the needs of the community that has been scarred by this horrific event. We were reminded that even if the Ashrafieh building had been reduced to a mere pile of rubble, it would not have been the end of the church, for the church is not a man-made structure. Rather, it is the people of God, and the people of God were most definitely in that place last evening. At the completion of the worship service, we lit candles and walked silently to the entrance of the yet cordoned off parking lot to pray—in front of armed soldiers—for peace in Beirut and in this nation that teeters on the very edge of civil war.

Despite our prayers, we awoke this morning to news that a second car bomb had exploded in another section of Beirut. Then again, perhaps it was prayer that guided the soldiers who discovered four other car bombs during the night elsewhere in the city. They were diffused before they could add to the tragedy. News reports also tell of bombs exploding in Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city. With tension thick in the air, the talk everywhere is about how precarious life is right now in this nation.

My flight leaves in the early hours of the morning. By the time you read this, I will be safely home again in Tokyo. Despite what my passport says, one thing I know most certainly is that the person who will board that airplane is not the same woman who came to Lebanon one week ago. Now a most important question challenges me: what am I going to do about it?

From Reading the Newspaper

Something’s wrong here. Terribly wrong.

Despite the fact that I’m to be on an airplane in just a few hours, I can’t rescue my mind from what I read in yesterday’s newspaper in order to think about packing. Two items in particular captured my attention and have troubled my heart.

On the front page of The Daily Yoimuri was a photo that, at first glance, seemed so uninspired that I almost skipped the caption. But I didn’t—and I’ve not been the same since. The photo was of two melons in a white box. Nothing extraordinary, except for the price at which they were auctioned at a wholesale market in Sapporo earlier this week. Unbelievably, those two cantaloupes went for a whopping 2 million yen!

I shook my head and read the caption again. Surely I’d misunderstood. Never having been good at mathematics, I used my calculator to translate the figure into dollars. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it had seemed in yen. But it was. In fact, at more than 8,250 dollars a melon, it was even worse than I’d imagined. Nothing could be that delicious.

A few pages later, a headline called to me: “For Poor Women in Rural China, Suicide Is a Bitter Way Out.” Curious, I read the article and learned about the amazingly high suicide rate in impoverished China. These backwater areas of the world’s most populated nation know nothing about the incredible boom China is experiencing as it reinvents itself as a world economic power. Instead, rural households frequently scrape by with a median per capita income of 13 dollars a month, and women often bear the brunt of the fight for survival. Yet somewhere in Japan, people are eating an 825 dollar cantaloupe!

According to a study by the Beijing Suicide Research and Prevention Center, poverty and the growing distance between China’s “haves” and “have nots” is fueling the surge in suicides to a rate more than two times that of the United States. Even more amazing is the fact that “attempted suicides outnumber completed suicides by 10 to 1,” according to the center’s director.

One can fly from Tokyo to China in only about three hours. But right now, China feels galaxies away. It doesn’t take an economist or sociologist to know that something’s terribly wrong in our world. What, I wonder, is my responsibility as a Christian? Surely it’s more than pledging not to eat overpriced melons (if I could afford them) or even praying sincerely for China’s poor (not to mention the 800 million people in the world suffering from hunger and malnutrition, according to the United Nations). Jesus’ words are reverberating loudly in my mind: “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (Matthew 25:45).

I do have to pack my suitcase, but I cannot escape the questions that have been stirred up like a hornet’s nest in my mind.

Call to Prayer: International Day

Bernie shares his precious cowboy hat collection with

Tamagawa Seigakuin students on International Day 2006

It’s hard to believe that anyone in Japan could have been as gullible and uninformed as to believe Bernie. He was only joking when he told the Saga high school girl that American men get pregnant and have babies, not their wives. But more astounding than this image was the fact that she believed him—at least momentarily.

Then there was the group of Japanese university students that joined in a summer camp with participants from an American school. Afterwards, the Japanese were asked to write about what they learned from their experiences. Imagine my shock to read the essay of one of my students who wrote, “Americans have two arms and two legs, just like we do!”

Certainly we’ve had many opportunities in our 28 years as missionaries in this country to help educate Japanese about the world outside their borders. But what we most want to share with them are the truths of the Bible, beginning with John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Unfortunately, a common misconception of Japanese is that Christianity is a western religion. “We Japanese,” as they say in typical group talk, “are Buddhist or Shinto.” (Or both, or neither, I might add.) It is always a challenge to discover how to convey the message that God’s love is for the whole world, including Japan, in ways that will stir interest and kindle a desire for a personal relationship with God among people who, although religious, generally have no concept that this is needed or even possible.

On May 16, we hope to change this for Tamagawa Seigakuin third year junior high school students as they participate in the 4th International Day program on campus. Bernie has helped recruit nearly 40 Christian volunteers from more than 20 nations to come and introduce their countries, cultures, and languages, giving the girls opportunities to practice using their English conversation skills. But what will be highlighted uppermost is the international nature of the church—that the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection is being proclaimed and accepted in countries all around the world. This wonderful day of sharing will begin with a worship service featuring gospel songs in several languages, testimonies, and an evangelistic message.

Please join us in praying for our guests as they prepare for International Day. Pray also that the Holy Spirit will move among the students, touching their hearts to consider their own response to the Gospel message. May it be true that May 16 was “the time of God’s favor” and “the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2) for many at Tamagawa Seigakuin who participate in International Day.