Yasuhiko and Miyuki Hirota

23 January 2011

Dear Phyllis,

Well I’m, here. I’m back in Japan again. In one sense it is good to be home and in another sense it is sad.

The trip getting here was fairly uneventful, except it was a long one. Sunday night my friend, Dave Moore, took me to the bus terminal in Chiang Mai. Thai buses are as cold as a meat freezer and I always wear a jacket when I take a night bus. In my rush getting out of the door I forgot to take my jacket. I had about 30 minutes before the bus left and asked Dave if he would go back and try to get my jacket for me. It is just about a 15 minute drive from my house to the bus station. I waited until the last minute but Dave didn’t make it in time. Good try anyway. Fortunately the blanket they provide on the bus was adequate to keep me warm, and I was pleasantly surprised to find Bangkok warm enough that most folks there were still in short sleeve shirts.

 I got out to the new Bangkok airport around 7:00 AM, and had a 12 hour wait for the plane that night. I took the Vietnam Airline which went first to Saigon. That was the first time I had been in Vietnam for three years. Then that night I got on a connecting flight to Osaka arriving in Japan around 7:00 Tuesday morning. From there I took trains out to Ikoma, arriving at the Japan Mission headquarter around 10:00 AM. I was excellent to see my dear friend Neil Verwey for a couple of hours. He loaned me a truck to use for a month while in Japan. From there I took the truck to my Japanese family, Miyuki and Yasuhiko Hirota’s home, where I will base out of while here. Altogether it was about a 40 hour trip door to door.

  Yasuhiko and Miyuki Hirota were the first fruit we had when we went to Ikoma in 1982. When we moved to Ikoma, we went to the Sears section of Seiyu Department store to buy a US stove. The department head there was highly enthused with Americans and directed a large number of people out to Ikoma to meet us. The first one was a young man who liked airplanes. Yasuhiko came out to talk to me about airplanes, and was saved within a few weeks. Shortly after that I got a phone call from a career lady who had gotten stung with a bad business deal. The Sears lady, Kajino san, had gone to a fortune teller who told her she was going to die of cancer in three months. She was terrified until the set time passed uneventfully. Then she knew the fortune teller was a phony. Miyuki didn’t want to make a mistake, and knew Kajino san would not direct her to a fortune teller she couldn’t trust. When Miyuki asked Kajino san what fortune teller was reliable, she told her the best one she knew was Bill Cook in Ikoma. Miyuki came out to see me for fortune telling advice.

The first question I asked her was what she wanted. She replied, “I am looking for a partner. I don’t want to get married but I want someone to tell me what decisions to make in life.”

“You have come to the right place. I know the perfect One to lead you.” And I introduced her to Jesus Christ.

Miyuki was unusual. She got saved the first lick off the bat. She had signed a contract to go to New York to be the manager of a Japanese restaurant for six months. When she got back from New York, she had no place to go and wound up living with us for the next eight months. During that time Yasuhiko came out every night to hold her hand while they sat in front of our fireplace. In order to get some sleep, she decided the best thing she could do was to marry him. That was 28 years ago. Yasuhiko and Miyuki are now 60 years old, but, to me, they are still the young couple I knew when we first went to Ikoma.

When my world disintegrated in 1990 I had no place to go; I lived with them for eight months. Since then they have always been my Japanese family. They are as stable, mature, Christians as you will find anywhere.

When we first moved to Ikoma there was something almost like revival for a few years. There were a number of very outstanding Japanese families that got saved. The meetings were fantastic, and the fellowship was like being in heaven. Everyone craved Sunday. Things would start at 9:00 in the morning and go full bore until midnight Sunday night. Everyone hated to quit and go home. It was only the most dire necessity that forced us to close things down to go to bed at midnight. The freshness of salvation, the reality of Christ, the intensity of Christian love was something like you seldom see on this earth. Man howdy, it was fun! Of course, others got saved. How could you stop it? The door to heaven was open and anyone who entered in was intensely anxious to drag their friends in also. That was 25 years ago. Much has changed.

Yasuhiko, Miyuki, and several of the old timers are still hanging in there, but everyone complains of tsukare (fatigue). Christianity has gotten old. It is no longer the exhilaration to go to church it was 25 years ago. As I have traveled around slightly the first few days I have been back in Japan, rather than walking in the warmth of fellowship that once prevailed, there is heaviness in the air. I suspect this is a universal problem that is common anywhere after a pleasant breeze of a moving of the Spirit.

I said, it was good to be home, but yet there is a measure of sadness. As I was riding the train up the hill from Osaka to Ikoma Tuesday morning, there was a sadness that came over my heart. Looking down on that enormous city. I thought to the teeming millions that live there, and only the slightest percentage have any clue about salvation. Jesus left heaven to pay the ultimate price to deliver them from the grip of the devil, and bring them into the Kingdom of God. All has been made ready. There is nothing more to be done. All they have to do is go in.

God gave Japan a unique opening 66 years ago. When the 2^nd WW ended in 1945 Japan had an opportunity like no country has ever had in human history. The very foundation of Japan – emperor worship – was completely wiped out.

 Japan is unique in that for many centuries she had been totally isolated from the rest of the world. In 1859, Admiral Perry sailed up Tokyo bay and opened Japan up at gun point. For the next 50 years the Japanese were surprised to see what the outside world looked like. Around the turn of the century she noticed how the western nations were colonizing other countries and they wanted to get in on the act. In around 1915 they took Korea and parts of Manchuria. In 1917 they got in a war with Russia over Manchuria, where the Russians sent their navy to fight Japan. Admiral Togo was waiting for the Russians in the Sea of Japan and, in a decisive sea battle, sunk the Russian fleet. After that they felt invincible. They continued to expand and pushed all the way down China to the Indochina peninsula.

On December 7^th 1941 they attacked Pearl Harbor and woke up the sleeping giant. Japan had never lost a battle until the Battle of Midway. From that moment on they started being pushed back until Hiroshima terminated their fighting spirit. On August 15^th 1945, Japan unconditionally surrendered, which opened the door to an unprecedented opportunity. For the next seven years Japan was ruled by an absolute potentate in Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur said his ambition was to bring Christian values to Japan, and pleaded for missionaries. At no time in history has any country been so thoroughly prepared for the Gospel. In the early 1950s it was easy to have thousands listen to the Gospel and get a huge response. When I first got to Japan in 1958 you could pass out thousands of tracts and seldom see more than half a dozen being thrown on the ground. But the Gospel has been like water on the back of a duck. There has been much sowing but little fruit.

In the early 1980s we had a bit of a time of refreshment from heaven. In Kobe we saw one fellowship go from 10 to 100 in a year. That was when they craved Sunday. This time, as I have traveled slightly around, the numbers are about half of what they were 10 or 15 years ago.

 Of course this is not the way it is supposed to happen, but in reality this is extremely common. As I have searched my heart for a cause and cure the only thing I can come up with is that there was more of an enjoyment of Christian fellowship that a strong personal walk with Jesus. You can’t blame anyone for enjoying the intense Christian fellowship at that time. There is nothing like it. But the name of the game is Jesus.

As I have listened to several complain of fatigue – they are just wore out – the word that has come to my heart is Matt. 11:28; “Come unto Me all who labored and are heavy laden.” Surely this must be the cure for fatigue. Watchman Nee was imprisoned for the last 18 years of his life. He had no access to Christian fellowship. The last thing he ever wrote was a simple note he was able to send out of prison where he guardedly shared, “I have found how to maintain my joy.” This is the only answer I know. The joy of the Lord is knowing Jesus.

Of the seven churches in Revelation 2 & 3 the one I least like is Laodicea (Rev. 3:14-21). This is the perfect description of the church in America and Japan – very wealth and very dead. But recently I have noticed two unique blessings the Lord offered to believers there. The message is clearly personal. Jesus said, “If any man hears My Voice…” To all seven churches Jesus offered, “To him that overcometh…”; but, uniquely, to those in Laodicea He added, “as I overcame”. This clearly is a word of instruction to all of us. The way to overcome is to do it like Jesus did it. How did He do it? By close fellowship with the Father, and a complete surrender to do the will of God. And the second unique blessing was a promise to have them “sit with Me on My Throne” (ver. 21).

Tragically, Japan is not in the midst of revival at the moment. But this may be a special time of opportunity to walk with Jesus without the support of a warm Christian environment. And maybe for those who do, the Lord might have a special reward.

Tonikaku (anyway) it is good to be here;

                                                                         bill