Miss Yoshida (click here)

Miss Yoshida, a 25-year-old schoolteacher, was on a train speeding towards the famous honeymoon resort, called White Beaches. Alongside her sat a honeymoon couple, very much engrossed in each other’s company. A few weeks ago, she herself had happily contemplated marriage and a honeymoon trip to the same destination. Now, she found it hard to control the tears!

Her family had arranged a marriage for her with a fellow schoolteacher, when suddenly a medical check-up revealed that she had tuberculosis. A diet of mainly corn and grass during the bitter war years had unknowingly made inroads on her health. As a result, her destination suddenly changed from a happy honeymoon at White Beaches to a nearby tuberculosis sanatorium.

In those days, there was no medicine for tuberculosis. The doctors just told her to lie quietly and get lots of rest. As she lay there on her hospital bed, Miss Yoshida saw so many people die around her that she was often in the depths of despair. Then, one day she unexpectedly received a gift – a copy of the New Testament.

Miss Yoshida read it from cover to cover and found that, in a remarkable way, its contents reached down to the deepest need of her greatly troubled mind.

“Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” (Mt. 6:34) were the most comforting words she has ever heard! She read them over and over again! It was somehow easy for her to commit her life to the Author of such amazing words. She was then 28 years old.

After twelve years in hospital, she gradually gained back her health, but did not consider going back to teaching! She knew that God had healed her for another purpose.

Still quite weak, she recuperated at home for a while and then applied to serve the Lord in the ranks of the Japan Mission, where she ministered for the next thirty-nine years. She became our office manager and the key liaison between us and the Japanese.

As the years passed by, her body became weaker and weaker, but she never thought of retirement. Her strong spirit helped her to report for duty in the office every morning at 8.30 a.m. and she asked us to let her serve God, until the day He saw fit to take her home. Every day she trusted God to give her strength for her duties and leaned hard on the Promise, “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities … for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”(2 Cor. 12:10)

Then on March 11th, 2001, while waiting for a simple cataract operation in a local hospital, her heart suddenly stopped beating and she went to be with the Lord at the age of 78.

Her journey on earth completed, she went into the presence of her Lord. She will be greatly missed in the Japan Mission office for a long time, but we all rejoice that she is now in heaven where there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. (Rev. 21:4)