29 October 2017
Dear Phyllis,
In
2011 I had one of the strangest missions the Lord ever sent me on. I
had just gotten back to Thailand from a trip to Japan when the historic
Tohoku earthquake/tsunami leveled the Sendai area of Japan. Neil Verwey
knew that I had been involved in relief work when the major earthquake
struck Kobe in 1995 and called me asking how long it would take to get
back to Japan to go to Sendai. Remembering that in Kobe thousands of
people were buried under mountains of rubble I knew that time was
critical and paid double price to get to Ikoma 12 hours early. Tim Cole
was the director of missionary relief. He knew that I had been in Sendai
building a Bible school there and called Neil asking if he knew how he
could get in touch with me. Neil said, “Bill is in the air right now and
will be here in two hours”. Japan Mission prepared a truck for me that
was so overloaded that the tires waddled as I drove out of their
headquarters. Nearly all the main roads from Tokyo to Sendai were
closed. To get there I drove up the west coast of Japan and came down to
Sendai from the northwest. I
pulled out of the Japan Mission headquarters at 2:00 AM and drove
nonstop 21 hours arriving at the Bible school at 11:00 PM Saturday
night.
The
next morning, after worship service at the Bible school, I asked Nagai
sensei, the principal of the school, what he was going to do that
afternoon. He said, “Cut firewood”. “Cut firewood??? Here we have
one of the most historic earthquakes in history and you are going to
cut firewood?” “I don't have any gas for my car.” “Look, I brought half a
dozen jerry cans of gasoline and a truck load of relief supplies.” That
afternoon we put some gasoline in his car and drove 20 K to Sendai. We
went to a church in the center of Sendai to see if there was anything we
could do to help. The pastor told us some believers had suffered a
little but no fatalities. Unlike Kobe, in Sendai there was little visual
evidence of collapsed buildings. Then we drove to the coast. Oh my
goodness! I had never seen anything like it. For nearly two hundred
miles along the east coast of Japan it looked exactly like someone had
taken a giant spatula or putty knife and scraped the surface of the
earth. They had placed everything in a blender, and then re-plastered
that paste back on the earth. The earth was covered with a coating of
trash about waist deep of huge piles of what had been buildings,
refrigerators, cars, trucks, children toys, and what had been towns. The
paste was so even there was no difference between what had been towns
and rice fields. I knew in a moment that there were no survivors. Unlike
an earthquake, in a tsunami there only two types of people – those who
fled and those who didn't. If you are caught in a tsunami your chance of
survival is zero.
The
relief mission was maddening. There were tens of thousands of people
who had lost everything but the civil governments had stepped forward to
handle all the relief work. I met many teams who had come from all over
the world to help and we were all milling around with nothing to do.
Franklin Graham's organization, Samaritan's Purse, had leased a Boeing
747 to fly 97 tons of relief supplies to Japan. I talked to the director
of that mission and he told me that he had been in 37 different
countries on relief missions and the coordination of churches in Japan
was the worst he had ever seen. It looked like my expensive relief
mission had been one colossal waste of time and money.
Before
I had left Ikoma Neil Verwey had given me almost unlimited funds to buy
anything I needed for the mission in Sendai. I had gone to a hardware
store in Ikoma and saw a come-along. A come-along is an unusual devise
of a metal box with a ratchet and handle, where you can crank the handle
back and forth to pull tons of pressure along an unlimited length of
cable. They are a wonderful device, but very expensive – nearly $1,000.
Remembering my experience in Kobe, I thought that is exactly the tool I
will need in Sendai, and bought one. My chain saw was invaluable in Kobe
so I bought a chain saw also.
While
I was sitting at the Bible school day after day with nothing to do, a
sister from the church came over with a desperate problem. An old bath
house was sitting on her property that had tipped over during the
earthquake and was leaning against the house next door. The neighbor was
furious and demanded that she fix the problem. Was there anyone who
could help her? Man howdy, that is a difficult job. You are talking
about an awful lot of money. That could only be done by professionals
with a crane. I was probably one of the very few carpenters in Sendai
with a come-along and that was exactly the tool needed for that job. It
took me three days using the chain saw and come-along, and I was able to
successfully tear the bath house down. The dear sister was speechless
with gratitude that I was able to solve that problem for free. It was a
major miracle that I had exactly the tools needed to do that job. But
that wasn't the main miracle.
While
working over there I noticed that she had a large butsudan. A butsudan
is a large cabinet where they keep idols and worship spirits everyday.
Nearly every house in Japan has one, and when someone gets saved the
butsdan is the first thing to go. If someone gets saved but doesn't get
rid of the butsudan it is like having a speed boat with the propeller
going, but the boat still tied to the pier. The sister had been saved
for many years but had never thrown out the butsudan. I asked, “What in
the world are you doing with that filth thing in your house?”, and
offered to haul it away for her. But she answered, “I don't worship at
it any more, and, yes, I know I should get rid of it, but...” The last
day I pushed the issue to the limit. I did everything short of ringing
blood out of her nose. If anyone doubts the power of the devil it was on
full display that day. She finally wound up crumpled on the floor
crying, but I couldn't move her. With mix emotions of disgust, sorrow,
and frustration I drove away thinking, “I came all this way only to
loose to the devil”. But God's miracle was on the way.
Two
days later she called the school and asked, “Could you have Bill come
back here to get my butsudan?”. I was huge- six feet tall – but oh the
joy to load that thing on my truck and burn it at the Bible school. I
was grateful that I was able to do that job, and the dear sister was
floating with joy to be free from the devil who had kept her in bondage
for years.
In
retrospect it looked like my main mission in Sendai was to burn that
butsudan. I wondered at the wisdom of traveling 12,000 kilometers to
burn a butsudan. But then Jesus had gone on at least two trips to reach
only one person. He had gone to the Gadarenes to free the demonic living
in tombs (Mk. 5:1-20). And His longest trip was to Tyre to help the
Syrophenician woman with the demonized daughter (Mk. 7:24-30). I
thought, “This is amazing, the Lord thought so much of that sister that
He sent me 12,000 kilometers to come from Chiang Mai, Thailand to
Sendai, Japan; and then pay $1,300 to buy the tools I needed to do that
job”. But then again when we consider that God sent His Son from heaven
to this earth to shed His Blood for us, and the horrific price that
Jesus paid to save us; maybe a little extra yen isn't too bad a deal.
Praise the Lord,
bill
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