Chapter 7 - Levites That Minister

“There will be a meeting of the “Vine-Branches” tonight. Won’t you please come?”

The stranqe invitation greeted us soon after our return to Furuichi, from Shigeo Masuda, the young man who had carried on our ministry at Habikino Hospital. We were amazed to discover all he had accomplished in winning patients to the Lord and encouraging new Christians during our absence. He had also begun an early morning prayer meeting in the hospital each day which other Christian patients continued after he was discharged.

After two years in the hospital, Mr. Masuda had returned to his former job as a salesman in a large wholesale camera business. Once again he was exposed to the attractive women, drinking and gambling parties that had led him into trouble and illness before. Although he remained true to the Lord, witnessing to his family and all with whom he came in contact, his situation made him keenly aware of the strong pressures on new converts recently discharged from the hospital.

Tuberculosis victims are virtual outcasts from society while they are in the hospital. It takes considerable time for them to live down this reputation and find their way back into a viciously competitive business world, struggling at the same time with a body weakened by disease. In addition, they are returned to a heathen environment with all its pressures to conform to old habits of dissipation and false worship.

Mr. Masuda had been helping ex-patients find churches to attend, but because of their special needs he soon formed a monthly fellowship called Budonokikai, “Branches of the Vine Association.” Twenty-seven recently discharged patients were already gathering each month to conduct their own special fellowship, in addition to attending their own churches. We were greatly encouraged that night, as we joined the “Vine-Branches” for their own meeting.

But discouragements soon came also. A prominent Japanese Christian leader warned us, “You wonÅft find Japanese going into tuberculosis hospitals! They are afraid of this disease. So where are you going to find workers? I don’t believe your work can be a success.”

“And another thing,” this man continued, “if they go into a hospital and contract the illness, what about your reputation? What are they going to think about you?” His advice was not meant to be unkind, but realistic, and he advised, “if you go into TB hospitals you”ll have to do it on your own. Don’t expect to get the Japanese involved.”

This unpleasant advice seemed confirmed when we took a Japanese woman from another mission on hospital rounds with us one day. We were horrified to discover that she would not venture closer than to the doorway to speak to the patients lying on their beds. She was too afraid of the disease to come nearer.

If we were to find workers, obviously God would have to send them in answer to believing prayer. We were hopeful that Miss Konishi (Little West) could help us. We had told the story of her two miraculous healings while on furlough in South Africa, and someone who heard it offered to support her through Bible College.

On our return we had told her of this offer, only to discover that during our absence her brother had arranged her marriage to a handsome young man. Because he was unsaved we were against it. At that stage we still did not realize the powerful hold of the family on its own members, but as the three of us prayed together she gained the courage to explain the situation to her brother and refuse the marriage. She entered Bible college to prepare herself for ministry among the tuberculosis patients.

But we needed more than just Miss Kunishi, who would be visiting women primarily. We also needed a man who could spend time evangelizing among the men patients. One day I shared this prayer burden with the little group of Christians in Furuichi and then asked, “Do any of you feel God may he calling you to this ministry?” There was silence for a moment and then Minoru Sato raised his hand.

But his family was against him. He was now 46 years old, and although his family of five children, his wife and father lived in only a two-room house due to the acute housing shortage, he had a good job and was due for a raise. In another seven years he would be eligible for a pension.

Had Sato san gone out of his mind? His father thought so. His wife did not understand, nor his children. What if he got TB from working in the hospitals day after day? What would the family do then? Why didn’t he go on working until he got his pension they argued and than he could serve the Lord in any way he wanted. At least then they would be assured of an adequate income. It was impossible for him to join the Mission.

But in spite of this discouragement we were not forsaken by the Lord, for He soon began to send us workers. Mr. Tanabe was the first, coming within a month after our return to Japan. He had just completed his training at the Kansai Bible College and was not afraid of visiting patients, for he had heen ill with TB for five years himself. Though still physically weak from his long illness, he had a passionate desire to reach the sick for Christ.

We were able to find two small rooms For Mr. Tanabe near a large hospital, But we had still not been able to find a suitable house for ourselves. Temporarily we were staying in the Bees’ old home in Furuichi. As we prayed about the matter, we felt led to build one, although we had brought only a limited amount of money with us from South Africa, not enough to pay the entire cost. We knew that if we had our own home, it could also serve as a headquarters for the work we were trying to do so. Trusting the Lord to supply the rest of the funds needed, we began looking for property.

Soon we were able to purchase a piece of ground conveniently located near four TB hospitals, for only $472. This was an unbelievably low price for property in Japan. The same property today is worth $25,000.

By July of 1958 construction on the house had begun and a carpenter was busy with the preliminary work on the wood, for at that time no bricks were used in Japan. It was to be a typical Japanese-style two-storeyed home.

By this time Miss Konishi thought of us as her own parents and we in turn thought of her as our daughter. In building our home we gave special attention to a room which would be for her own use.

Often while the house was being built for Miss Konishi, Peggy and I would go to see it together and talk about the future. We would go up to the second storey of the half completed structure and look out at the Big Habikino Hospital with its 1000 patients, rejoicing together over the many patients who would be able to find the Lord, because we could build a home so near it for visitation.

Within four months the house was completed, and October 30th planned as the moving day – a glorious prospect! But we awakened on that morning to the sound of downpouring rain and it is impossible to move in Japan on a rainy day! We were certain this was the day God had chosen, and had made all plans to move in advance.

Once again we humbled ourselves before the Heavenly Father, to ask His intervention. Before long the clouds parted, and although the weather forecasts were ominous, the sun shone from the moment we began until the last piece was carried into our new home.

Just as the job was finished and the last piece carried in, the rain poured down once again. The God of Elijah had held back the rain until exactly the right moment! We held a praise meeting right there among the suitcases, books, pots and pans, as the rain pounded on the roof overhead.

Sato San and Mr. Tanabe had helped us move, and left for home as soon as the rain

slackened. Miss Konishi, Peggy and I were busy straightening out our things. Miss

Konishi did not have much with her. Her bedding was in one big bundle and she quickly

put that away in a special cupboard for bedding.

Then she began unpacking her suitcases. Suddenly the door was flung open and there stood her brothers to claim her back for the family! I was determined not to give in just to please them. I noticed that Miss Konishi was trembling with fright as I discussed her future with her brothers.

They insisted that she come back to the family and obey those who were responsible for her. I pointed out that she was an adult and should be able to make her own decisions. Everyone seemed to agree about this and then we all turned to Miss Konishi to make her choice.

I was shocked beyond words when she said, “I must go back with my brother.” She went to her room and packed her things while her brothers smiled as if they had known all along that disobedience to those in charge of family affairs was not possible. They took her away and we did not see her for ten years! That night in our new home her room stood empty, and for the first time in our ministry for hospital evangelism, we wept in disappointment before the Lord.

Gomen kudasai, “I’m an honorable nuisance,” a guest called at the front door of our new home. When I reached the door I was astonished to find a young man standing there with all his luggage.

“I’ve come,” the young man announced.

“Come for what?” I asked, astounded.

“I’ve come to work with you,” the stranger announced, “as a hospital evangelist. The Lord has called me.”

“But I can’t just take you on like that!” I exclaimed. “I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you!”

“I’ll wait,” the young man replied, and proceeded to wait right there on the doorstep.

“For goodness sake, now what can I do with you!” I puzzled. But then after thinking a moment I said, “Well, all right, let’s do this. I’ll arrange for you to stay with Mr. Tanabe, and I’ll give you my answer in three days.”

Yutaka Karasawa, for that was his name, gladly went to stay with Mr. Tanabe, eager to qet into the work. He had been a TB patient for years, and wanted to do something to help them. He was so sure of his call that when he heard of our work he had left his wife and child temporarily at home and had travelled over 300 miles, bringing almost all of his belongings with him.

I hurried to my room and fell on my knees. “Lord,” I cried, “here’s this man I’ve never seen before and he says he has such a burden for TB Patients he wants to work for us. I know we have been desperately praying for workers. Could this be an answer to prayer? Did You really send him to us?”

I remembered that I had promised to give an answer to the young man within three days, so I added, “If this man is truly sent from You, then You’ve got to provide housing and expenses for both him and his family, and show us what work he is to do for us. Lord, if You open up another hospital for us within three days, I’ll take it as a sign that You’ve sent him.”

Before the three days were over a request had come from Toneyama Hospital, which had over a thousand TB patients, for us to send an evangelist. Mr. Karasawa was God’s man:

Although I had never heard of him until the moment he landed on the doorstep, Mr. Karasawa knew all about us. He had become a Christian in 1948 under the ministry of Evangelist Honda, had been in Bible College as a classmate of Mr. Tanabe, andhad been profoundly affected when his friend contracted tuberculosis. Then in 1953 he had become ill himself. The following year, in an extensive operation, six ribs were cut away and most of the top half of his left lung removed. He was so ill that blood transfusions were required from fifteen people to keep him alive. Finally he recovered enough to be released from the hospital.

For three years he sold life insurance, and then in 1958 began helping Evangelist Honda. But when he heard of our program of hospital evangelism, he saw its potential and came to offer his services. We immediately began searching for housing in the Toneyama area, so that Mr. Karasawa’s wife and child could join him.

God was good to us that first year. He supplied all the funds needed for ourselves and our workers, and had made the new headquarters possible. Regular visitation and tract distribution was being carried out in seven hospitals. Local Christians such as Sato San and Pastor Umehara continued helping on a voluntary basis, as did several Christian nurses at Habikino Hospital. Christian patients continued to witness faithfully.

We were deeply grateful, but not satisfied, and wrote in our newsletter near the end of 1958:

We believe this is just the beginning and we are trusting the Lord for a hundred workers of His choice in His time. May all the prayer and effort we are capable of be sacrificially thrown into this tremendous task of reaching the hospitals of Japan for Jesus…

The wonderful thing is that when God calls, He promises to provide, and this fact enabled us to get our eyes off our circumstances and on to Himself. “As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, AND THE LEVITES THAT MINISTER TO ME.” (Jer. 33:22) was God’s Word to our hearts.

Sato San could not escape the call of God to full-time hospital evangelism. Day after day it lay heavily on his heart, and his thoughts went back through the years to his commitment to God in those anquished moments in which he had held the dying Chiyo in his arms. Although he had done all he could in his spare time during the twenty years since that time, he had never before had an opportunity to carry out God’s call like the one that now lay before him. And the door was blocked!

As he pled with the Lord to open the way, he searched the Scriptures for a key to overcoming his Family’s hostility to his becoming a full-time hospital evangelist. Finding that Christ had made himself a servant, Sato San diligently set about doing the menial tasks of the family, helping with humble chores of the household each morning before leaving for work, making breakfast, cleaning shoes. This was unheard of for a Japanese man.

He also initiated a daily morning prayer meeting between 6 and 7 with some of the Furuichi believers, to pray especially for our ministry among the sick, and for the Savior to become known throughout their community and nation.

In the meantime, Peggy and I had also been interceding before the Lord in his behalf, encouraged by a promise the Lord had given me from Mark 11:2,3 concerning him: “Loose him… for the Lord has need of him.”

One day as Sato San sat in the barber’s chair he was astonished to hear the barber say, “Your father’s been telling we you’re really different than you used to be.”

In Japan no decision in made by a younger member contrary to the wishes of his elders, so that Sato San had not even considered resigning his position to join our work of hospital evangelism when his father had objected. But hearing this from the barber encouraged him to approach his father again. To his great surprise his father replied immediately, “If you’re so keen on it, why don’t you go ahead?”

His wife was still opposed, but I went to talk with her, telling her of the verse, “The Lord has need of him…” and showing it to her. Seeing that Father Sato now sided with her husband, grudgingly she agreed.

When Sato San went to his office and handed in his resignation the staff were astounded and tried to persuade him not to do such a foolish thing.

“My mind is quite made up,” he said firmly. With great reluctance they accepted his resignation.

Thus it was that in February, 1959, nearly a year after he had first stated his willingness to join our Mission, God answered prayer and he became Sato Sensei, the senior evangelist of the staff of workers. This meant a great drop in salary for his family in addition to the loss of the pension later on. But his wife began making Japanese kimonos in her spare time to help with their living expenses. Gradually she became, interested in the work herself.

Although Father Sato was 70 years old, for the first time in many years he began to do a bit of work, earning money for his own sake by working as a landbroker. And although he kept the god shelf in its prominent place in the home and did not open his heart to the Lord, he had a desire to help his son and even seemed secretly pleased with Minoru’s sacrificial decision.

One day Sato Sensei went out to a nearby hospital and explained the way of salvation to a very needy, suffering man. This man accepted the Lord, confessed his sin and is far as Sato Sensei could tell seemed to be truly converted.

Then the man took out his purse and asked Sato Sensei, “How much would it be for this?”

It was pathetic to think that he felt this was a service he had to pay for. How wonderful it was in moments like that to be able to say that this wonderful salvation is free!

One of Sato Sensei’s first major responsibilities was to spend more time in the “Suicide Hospital” — the Aihara Clinic — a hospital for the outcast which was a horrible place. Those who must be hospitalized in its dreary, dirty rooms are mainly prostitutes and outcasts picked up off the streets, penniless and ill beyond hope of recovery. Almost every day would-be suicides are brought here, only to awaken to find to their horror that the life they longed to be rid of was still with them.

“Every time I visit that place I lost my appetite,” I said on my return. But Sato Sensei did not flinch from this unpleasantness. Often he comforted a ruined young life with the tears streaming down his face.

One of his first converts in this suffering place was a young man paralyzed from the waist down by a rare, painful spine disease. He was crowded into a dingy room with three other men, while his wife and child slept under his bed, for they had no other place to go. When Sato Sensei found them, they had been living in this way for two and a half years!

“What kind of a car should I buy, Lord? A Toyota? A Datsun? A Subaru?” When we first returned from South Africa, I had brought enough money to buy a new car. On this day I was walking the streets of Osaka with the money in my pocket, wondering what model to buy.

The motorbike which I had sold before furlough had been temporarily replaced with an old bicycle on our return, for I expected to buy a car soon. When the house was built for our headquarters, I had had a garage for a car built beside it. As I had ridden my old bicycle to and from the hospitals in which we were now ministering, I had looked forward to the time when I would have a car to put in my new garage, and now the time had come to make my choice.

Suddenly the Lord spoke to me. “You expect the workers to go out on bicycles through rain and mud or snow to do My work. You’re thinking only of your own convenience. When it rains or snows you want to go out in a car!”

I was ashamed, as I realized how wrong it would be for me to have a car. The Lord showed me that if I could buy a car for each of my workers who had to travel to and from the hospitals, only then should I have one for myself.

The Lord impressed upon me in those moments a very important principal for our work in Japan – that it was not wrong to have things, but that it was wrong not to share whatever we had. If Peggy and I had a refrigerator, which we did, and kept it only for our exclusive use, then it would be wrong. Even if our Japanese workers wanted to come put raw fish and smelly sea foods into our refrigerator, which they did! – we must never stop them. We must freely share with our workers whatever God gave us, including our means of transportation.

So Peggy and I continued riding bicycles, and saw to it that our workers also had bicycles, making sure that the evangelists got the best ones. Later, when we had a whole fleet of bicycles, I was still using the oldest one of them all. And all this time the garage I had built next to the headquarters stood empty, as a mute rebuke to me that I had built something without first consulting God.

I prayed very earnestly that God would show me what to do with the money I had planned to use for a car. The Lord soon showed me that I could use it to buy a little piece of ground near one of the hospitals and build a house on it for some of the workers.

There was a desperate need for housing, for our home, which had seemed almost too large at first, already seemed pitifully too small. Two of the workers were sharing living quarters in a room only six by nine feet, and it would soon be necessary to add more rooms there. In addition, many little homes would be needed for workers located near large hospitals.

The money I had saved by not buying myself a car was used to make this first such home possible, called the Ishibashi Center, near the Toneyama Hospital. Mr. Karasawa was now able to move into his home with his wife and baby, and two single workers also made their home with them.

The increasing need for expansion led us to form the Japan Mission Trust, a committee of Christian men who were responsible for matters relating to property, finances, organization, etc., as the need arose. Sato Sensei was appointed Treasurer.

Soon we had 22 people to support by faith, including the wives and children of our married workers. The work began reaching into 18 hospitals, and it was obvious that a turning point had come.

At this stage we formally registered our group of workers as a Mission and the Japan Mission officially came into being. From this time on our new title appeared on all our circulars, with the promise underneath from Jeremiah 33:3 which God had given us: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee!” God’s promise became the official motto of the Japan Mission.