On the Way to Japan

I am making this posting in the Kansas City airport, where June and I arrived a few minutes ago for the first leg of our trip to Japan. Our flight to Chicago is scheduled to leave at 7:40, and then the 13-hour flight to Tokyo is supposed to leave at 10:50.

This is my third, and June’s second, trip back to Japan since we left there on July 31, 2004. Japan had been our home since September 1966, so it was hard to leave and our trips back have been joyful for the most part. (There have been some pastoral type activities with former Japanese church members that have been rather difficult, and this time will be no different.)

On Friday, we will attend the Founders Day activities of Seinan Gakuin, the educational institution I was affiliated with for thirty-six years. C. K. Dozier, a Baptist missionary from Georgia, was the primary founder of Seinan Gakuin in 1916, so this year marks completion of ninety-four years for the school.

This coming Sunday, I will be preaching at the Hirao Baptist Church, where June and I were members from 1968-1980. That church was started by Baptist missionaries Bob and Kay Culpepper in the early 1950s. The first meeting place was the upstairs of the mission residence where the Culpeppers lived—and where the Seat family lived from 1968 to 1992.

On May 23, the Fukuoka International Church will be having a special worship service commemorating its founding in April 1980. June and I, with the help of two other couples, started that church, and I was the part-time pastor of it from the beginning until July 2004. I am looking forward to preaching (in English and Japanese, as usual) there again on the 23^rd.

On May 30 I will be preaching at the Mejirogaoka Baptist Church in Tokyo. Our first two years in Japan were spent in Tokyo, where we were full time students in the Tokyo School of the Japanese Language (also known as the Naganuma School). During that time we attended the Mejirogaoka church every Sunday morning and have many good memories of that time.

Please pray for us as we make this trip: pray that we will have the physical stamina we need, for travel to Japan is quite tiring; pray that we will have the language ability we need to communicate successfully with the Japanese people we will be in contact with; and pray that my sermons will not only be understood but will be taken to heart by those who hear them.