Celebrating Milestones

“Milestone,” as most words, can be defined/described in various ways, but I am using that word here to indicate a significant point in a person’s life. In particular, I am using “milestone” to refer to wedding anniversaries and birthdays that are divisible by the number five. 

Celebrating anniversary milestones

Recently there have been three milestone wedding anniversaries in my immediate family.

65th anniversary photo

June and I celebrated our 65^th anniversary on May 26. Today (June 4) is our son Keith’s and his wife Brenda’s 45^th anniversary. Then, May 26 was also the 20^th anniversary of our daughter Karen and her husband Rob Daoust.

We didn’t do much to celebrate our milestone anniversary this year, unlike the previous three. 

With the encouragement of our children, we made a trip to Europe for our 50^th anniversary, celebrating the very day on Mt. Planalp near Brienz, Switzerland, near where some of my ancestors had been born.

Five years later we had an extended car trip, mostly in the Dakotas, and it was on that trip I was finally able to visit the last of the 50 states (N.D.). Then in 2017, June and Kathy, our oldest daughter, organized a family cruise in celebration of our 60^th anniversary (and June’s 80^th birthday).

Celebrating birthday milestones

Yesterday and today were milestone birthdays for two dear family members. Ken, our fourth and last child, celebrated his 50^th birthday! (You realize you must be getting up in years when your youngest child turns fifty!) 

And then today is the 25^th birthday of David Laffoon, our oldest grandson (and fourth grandchild).

Yesterday evening we had a family birthday party by Zoom, mainly in celebration of Ken's big 5 0.

And then on the last day of this month, June will be celebrating a notable milestone, her 85^th birthday.

June’s milestone birthday fundraiser

Institutions celebrate milestones as well as individuals. In May 2016, Seinan Gakuin, where I served as a professor from 1968~2004 and as chancellor from 1996~2004, celebrated its centennial. June and I made a trip back to Japan for that joyous occasion.

The speaker at the main celebration service was Dr. Tetsu Nakamura, who had gone to Seinan Gakuin Junior High School. After becoming a medical doctor, he spent decades helping people in Afghanistan. (See my blog post mostly about him here.)

In December 2019, Dr. Nakamura (b. 1946) was assassinated near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, as he was going to work. That was less than two months after he had been granted honorary Afghan citizenship.

Early in 2020 through posts about Dr. Nakamura, June became Facebook friends with Musa Anwari, a young man (b. 1999) who lives in Jalalabad, the fifth largest city in Afghanistan. Musa was a great admirer of Dr. Nakamura.

June and Musa have interacted repeatedly on Facebook during these past two and a half years.

Musa is now starting free, four-month schools around Afghanistan for the children who have become orphans because of the wars and for girls and other students whose schools were closed by the Taliban after they came to power again last year.

Each new school costs US$300, and June and I have sent him that amount, which he soon put to use. You can read about what he did with our donation and see the pictures he posted by clicking on his Facebook account (here) and scrolling down to May 21.

For her (milestone) birthday fundraiser this year, June has set up a GoFundMe site to raise money for Musa’s schools. Please read about her “Let’s Start an Afghan Class” project here—and both she and I would be delighted if you would click on the “Donate now” button there.

Across the Pacific, and Asia, with Love

May 2006 was a special time for my wife June and me. We made our first visit back to Japan, where we had lived from 1966 to 2004. One of the many special events that month was the release of a new book planned and published by Japanese friends in our honor. It was a wonderful tribute.

Across the Pacific with Love

Kimura Koichi was a former seminary student of mine and my successor as pastor of Fukuoka International Church. After our retirement as missionaries in Japan for 38 years, it was his idea to produce a sort of bilingual Festschrift for me. It was financed largely by a very beneficent church member.

Fourteen Japanese colleagues, former students, friends, and scholarly acquaintances wrote essays for the book. One was by Murasaka Masatoshi (Japanese names are written with the family name first), my long-time friend and colleague at Seinan Gakuin.

Murasaka-sensei’s essay was titled “A Man Who Crossed the Pacific Ocean with Love.” The title of the book, Across the Pacific with Love, was adapted from the title of that essay.

In addition to Kimura-sensei, two of my good friends served as co-editors: Yamanaka Sakiyo, a professor at Seinan Gakuin University with whom I had worked closely in the Department of Religious Activities, and Kanamaru Eiko, one of my outstanding former students.

The book was completely bilingual. The Japanese part, printed from right to left, was 201 pages long and the English part was 182 pages. The essays were all written in Japanese. Several Japanese friends translated them into English, which was polished up by some ex-pat American friends.

The first two essays in the book were by the last two people on my chronological list of “top ten” influential personal acquaintances: Kaneko Sumio, our former pastor and friend since 1968, and Otsuka Kumiko, also our friend since 1968 and for several years my Japanese teacher and translator, office assistant, and advisor.

There are also essays by Hoshuyama Teruto, a university student of mine in 1974 who became a leader of the Toishikai, a discussion group I had started a couple of years earlier, and by Fukuoka Kikuko, who in 1985 was the first person I baptized as pastor of Fukuoka International Church.

I wish I could tell you more about these friends and the others who kindly wrote essays for Across the Pacific with Love.

Across Asia with Love

In May 2016, June and I made our last trip to Japan. That visit was one anticipated for decades. Long before retiring from Seinan Gakuin, I had said several times that if at all possible, I would come back for the centennial celebration in 2016. I was delighted we were able to do that.

Here is a picture of former Toishikai members that June and I had a delightful time with during our visit in Fukuoka. Next to me on the right is Hoshuyama-san, whom I mentioned above. 

During that time in Japan, I posted a blog article about Seinan Gakuin’s centennial Founder’s Day ceremonies on May 14. It was largely about Nakamura Tetsu, the featured speaker at that festive occasion.

Nakamura-sensei was a 1962 Seinan Gakuin Junior High School graduate, who years later after finishing medical school spent decades as a doctor and humanitarian aid worker in and around Peshawar, Pakistan, and then mostly across the border in Afghanistan.

As June and I had gone across the Pacific with love for the people of Japan, Nakamura-sensei flew across Asia with love for the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Tragically, Nakamura-sensei was killed by terrorists in December 2019. Earlier this year, Afghanistan issued a postage stamp honoring him. (Click here to see a short video clip about that.)

Nakamura-sensei became a Christian largely because prior to June and me, other missionaries had also gone across the Pacific with love, taught at Seinan Gakuin and witnessed to Christ’s love there.

Please join me in prayer for Seinan Gakuin as on this Saturday it celebrates its 105th Founder’s Day. 

100 Years Old and Going Strong

Yesterday (May 14) was a big day for Seinan Gakuin, the school complex that was founded in 1916. Following the on-campus Founders Day ceremonies on Friday, there were elaborate centennial activities at large downtown facilities on Saturday afternoon and evening.

It was a joy to be back in Japan and to participate in Seinan Gakuin’s centennial celebration—just as twenty years, and longer, ago I had told people here several times that I would.

After my last two visits here (in 2013 and 2010) I posted blog articles about Seinan Gakuin, so for background information please see here and here.

The first part of the centennial celebration yesterday included a public lecture by Dr. Tetsu Nakamura, a 1962 graduate of Seinan Gakuin Junior High School.

Dr. Nakamura, who will celebrate his 70^th birthday in September of this year, has lived and worked in Pakistan and Afghanistan since 1984.

He is a quiet, unassuming man whom I have met and talked with several times through the years. It was a pleasure to hear him speak again—along with about 1,500 other people who gathered in the International Congress Center of Fukuoka for the occasion.

Dr. Nakamura became a Christian partly because of the influence of Baptist missionary Charlie Fenner, one of his Jr. High teachers. Although he does not say a lot about being a Christian, Dr. Nakamura’s life and indefatigable work in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been a very positive Christian testimony.

For years much of his work in Pakistan was largely with patients suffering from Hansen’s disease (formerly called leprosy). He has also devoted much time and effort working with refugees in the Afghanistan/Pakistan borderlands.

In 2003 Dr. Nakamura was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding.

The Magsaysay Awards are often called the Asian Nobel Prizes. As the recipient of such a high honor, Dr. Nakamura is perhaps the most prominent among the nearly 147,000 students who have graduated from one (or more) of the Seinan Gakuin schools.

Dr. Nakamura was also awarded the Grand Prize at the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize ceremony in 2013. (See here for a good English summary of his life and work that was read then.)

For the past 15 years, Dr. Nakamura has worked extensively supervising the digging of wells and in land reclamation. He said he realized it was more important to make food and clean water available to people, keeping them from starving or getting sick, than in helping cure those who were ill.

Dr. Nakamura closed his talk with a brief reference to his current slogan: Reconciliation and Grace.

Baptist missionary C. K. Dozier was the primary founder of Seinan Gakuin, and just before he died in 1933 (at the very young age of 54) he said to his wife, “Tell Seinan, be true to Christ.” For many decades, and still, that has been Seinan Gakuin’s motto.

On April 1 the Trustees of Seinan Gakuin issued a peace declaration, partly confessing that in cooperating with the Japan’s war activities in the 1930s and early 1940s the school had not been true to Christ. It was a fine statement of repentance for past mistakes and a re-commitment to the teachings of Jesus.

The evening celebration yesterday was from 6 p.m. until well after the planned ending time of 8:30. Most of the 4,000 people who attended that gala event were SG graduates, and I hope most of them gave serious thought again to the meaning and significance of the motto of Seinan Gakuin, now 100 years old and still going strong.