ベサニー・キリスト教会
大阪府堺市のはずれにある、泉北ニュータウンのそのまたはずれにある村の小さな教会。
でもそこに一歩踏み入れたら暖かい家庭的な雰囲気にあなたの心もなごむことでしょう。
聖書の中にある、一世紀当時の教会の姿がここにはあります。
まだ一度も教会に行ったことのない方､以前教会に行っていたけど今は行っていない方､どなたでもどうぞご遠慮なくお出で下さい。
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On Sunday the 21st we will be holding a special English Service here at 4 pm. Our special speaker will be STEVE KNUDTSEN who is Bethany's Asian Director. Steve now lives and works in the Philippines. Mr. Tsuchiya will be traslating so even if you do not know a lot of English, please feel free to join us for this service. After the service we will have a time of fellowship with coffee and cookies-that should be a lot of fun also !
Steve will also be speaking at our regular morning church service at 10:30 am. Normally, our service is all in Japanese but Steve will be speaking in English with Paul Sunde translating so even if you do not know Japanese this might be a good chance to attend a Japanese church.
All of us at Bethany Christian Church welcome your attendance. Looking forward to seeing you then.
Reiko and I just got back from three days in Nagasaki. I found it to be one of the most unique Japanese cities that I have ever been in. The main reason is that one of the major attractions of the city is the city's churches. In fact, the first place that many tourists first visit would be the Oura Tenshudo Church which was constructed in 1864 to honor the 26 martyrs of Nagasaki. These 26 Christians were arrested for their faith in Kyoto and then marched to Nagasaki in the middle of the winter for the express purpose of seeing them all die on 26 crosses waiting for them there. The youngest was only 12 while the oldest believer was 61 years old.
Another place that a tourist might decide to make the first place to visit is the monument that stands in honor of these 26 believers. In fact, throughout the city of Nagasaki these 26 martyrs seemed to either follow us or be waiting for us.
The last church that we visited was the Urakami Tenshudo Church-another spot that most tourists visit. Our first reaction was very negative-it just seemed like a large modern church. However, things are often not what they seem on the surface. The Christians of the Urakami area went underground for 200 years while Christianity was banned. When they were free to surface the first thing that they did was to build the largest Catholic Church in East Asia.with their own hands. This was their way of expressing their faith. All the persecution in the world could not stop them from believing in and following the true God. However, on August 9, 1945 the A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and totally destroyed the church. Again, the first thing that the Urakami believers did after the war was to rebuild their beloved church. Their message was that neither persecution nor A-bombs could destroy their faith in God ! And so, even though it is a modern building, it is a church with great meaning
And of course besides the famous 26 martyrs were many many others who gave thier life for their faith. In each case, the message was the same. Believing in and following Jesus was more important than life itself. The confession, "I believe in Jesus Christ" was the road to physical death while the confession, "I renounce Jesus Christ" was the way to physical life. I am now fighting cancer but it is simply a sickness that has come upon me which I need to accept while the believers of Nagasaki of their own free will chose suffering and death. This was a great challenge to me.
On our last evening in Nagasaki, Reiko and I visited the church next to the Oura Tenshudo. This was a church built for prayer here and now rather than looking back to the past. We enjoyed a time of prayer and meditation there. Again, I was amazed at the city of Nagasaki. A Japanese city with a unique message-To die for Christ is the way to Eternal Life. I am sure that all the students and young people who visit this city are forced to think about what is most important to them. Is there anything that they believe in that is worth giving up their life for? And of course those most basic questions of all-Does God really exist? and Who is Jesus Christ? Is He really the Son of God and our Savior from sin?
On our last day in Nagasaki we got into our taxi to go to the train station and found out that our taxi driver was a Christian. In his taxi he has a book that listed every one of the churches in the city and we spent most of our time talking about Christianity and faith. Only in Nagasaki would such a thing happen! I trust that God will use this city to challenge people about the importance of faith in God and the importance of Eternal Values.
After nearly a year I have finally been able to solve a major problem at the Mt. Makio rock climbing area.
Mountain climbers and rock climbers have different goals. A mountain climber has the goal of climbing a certain peak. A rock climber, on the other hand, often has the goal of solving a certain climbing problem. This problem may involve only a few feet of rock or it may involve hundreds of feet. At any rate, the rock climber has to figure out how to get up that certain section of rock. Interestinly, many mathematicians are also rock climbers. They seem to use the same brain cells for thier mathematics as they do in figuring out moves on rock. As I am not a mathematician maybe that is why this particular problem has taken me so long to solve !
The problem I set out to solve about a year ago is a rock formation called the Chimney. The name needs no explanation-the climb involves climbing a tube of rock shaped like a chimney. However, this formation is located way at the top of the rock climbing area and so getting used to the hight alone took some time. Then I had to figure out the moves involved in actually climbing this route. About once a month, starting about a year ago, I have working on this section of rock. Overall it is about 120 (40 meters) feet of climbing. The first section was quite easy and the second section was just a mattter of getting used to the hight. However, the last two sections were a real bear. The moves were few and far apart and a lot of time it seemed that the only thing that would work would be basic friction rather than actual holds-not a happy propect when you are way up high ! However, I finally was able to figure it all out and have now climbed the entire route several times. There is something very exciting about climbing a route that has taken that long to figure out. The hight is always the same so it is always scary but of course that is what make is special.
I suppose in time I will start working on other even harder problems but for now I am just happy to have solved the problem of the Mt. Makio Chimney and plan on enjoying climbing it for some time to come.
On Friday the 22nd I checked into the Kindai Hospital. It was the same old problem, my colon just decided to quit working. One good thing was that my main doctor, Dr. Sato, was on duty that morning and arranged for me to be hospitalized. My bad condition had started at about 10pm on Thursday night and continued on till about 4pm on Friday. At noon, on Friday, they put me on an IV and I was ordered to not eat or drink anything-this continued till noon on Monday. However, around 4pm on Friday my colon started to move again on its own and my doctor said that I was over the hump. However, it would take time to really get my colon moving again as it should so I needed to continue the IV treatment.
Things went smoothly and so at noon on Monday the 25th I was able to eat my first meal since noon of the 21st. I continued to improve and so I was able to come home on Wednesday the 27th.
It will take some time for my colon to recover and for me to gain back my strength and so my next chemotherapy treatment will not be till the 16th of September.
I want to thank all of you who have been praying for me and would also like to request that you continue to pray that God will give me the grace and the strength to do all that I am to do here in Japan.
I did not enjoy the IV treatment at all but I did enjoy lots of good fellowship with Christians who came to visit me and I also was able to do a lot of enjoyable reading. PTL
Please continue to pray for me-thanks. Paul
"I have often said that the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room." Blaise Pascal
It was 55 years ago that I first came to Japan with my parents and settled on the east coast of the largest lake in Japan-Lake Biwa.I grew up wondering what was on the other side of the lake. Well, now I know.
For two days the four Bethany churches in Japan got together on the west coast of Lake Biwa for our annual summer camp. Last year I was in the States and was not able to attend but by God's grace this year I was able to attend and had a wonderful time. Looking out across the lake I thought about the fact that it was pretty amazing that 55 years after coming to Japan with my parents I should be here by Lake Biwa with a group of Japanese Christians.
With the small churches in Japan it is important at times to get together with other churches and other Christians for a fime of fellowship. At our annual camp, we always have the singer/sonwriter Noboru Morishige come and present the message that God has given him through both his songs and his sharing. Our main theme this year was Belief while the small group that I was in had as their theme, Who do you believe? What do you believe? and When do you believe? The answers to Who do you believe were very interesting ranging from Jesus and God to My Mom and Myself!
Camp is also a time to really get to know people as there is ample time to talk. Japan is a busy country and finding the time to really relax and just talk is really quite hard. And of course to really get to know people you need that kind of time and I thought it was wonderful to see people using the camp to do just that-though it seems some people talked all night long which is overdoing a good thing!
At any rate we had a good camp with no accidents and everyone who attended was really blessed. The high gas prices were even a blessing as the roads were much less crowded this year as a result !
Last year everyone at the camp prayed for me in the States that my operation might go smoothly but many people thought I would not be able to make it back to Japan much less attend camp again. And as a result many many people came up to me and told me how happy they were to see me there and that they could hardly believe it. For me personally, one of the highlights was to have everyone lay hands on me and pray for me. As a pastor I am used to praying for people but through my sickness I am learning also how to be prayed for.
Please remember the four Bethany churches in prayer-the Sakai and Suzuka Bethany Churches and the Kawachinagano and Kyoto New Life Churches. All four are Bethany churches but Kawachinagano and Kyoto have decided to use the name, New Life, rather than the name Bethany for their individual churches.
Reiko and I were able once again to attend the annual Takarazuka Bluegrass Festival. This is a four day day festival held in the mountains of Hyogo Prefecture and features non-stop bluegrass music from early morning on into the wee hours of the next day. What is interesting is that a majority of the music is basic Gospel music. Typical themes are sin, salvation, Heaven, prayer, Jesus, and church.Every other song or so is of this type. Most of the songs are sung in English and so it is possible to be blessed by a whole lot of Gospel music in a short time. Of course the question that a Christian asks is, "Are the singers Christians?". And the answer is no. However, it is significant that hundreds of people have decided that it is better to spend their time singing about Jesus than it is to sing rock or folk or popular songs. They have found something in this music that touches their hearts.
However, usually there are at least two musicians at the festiva who are born again Christains. They are the Singer/Songwriter Morishige San and the banjo player Inaida San. Morishige San writes original songs in Japanese and is a real "messenger" of the gospel of Jesus. Christ. His songs always really speak to the people and leave them something to think about. Plus, on Sunday morning, the festival allows him to be in charge of what they call Gospel Time. It is not exactly church but it does mean that on Sunday morning there is a spot of time set aside to sing praises to Jesus.
Inaida San sings and plays traditional bluegrass music. However, he has a great burden that the message of the songs gets out and so he translates traditional bluegrass gospel music into Japanese and presents these songs at the festival. There are a lot of wonderful songs that most people at the festival know but do not understand the words or the message. It is these songs that Iaida San translates so that people know not only the tunes but also the message of the songs.
My favorite song to hear this year was "Are you Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?" This song was sung with deep feeling-my prayer is that the singers will in time go beyond the feeling to touch the message of this great old song. May the message get out!
