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Most nights, we slept on straw mats, Japanese style, laid out on hardwood floors. We took off our shoes and put on slippers when entering homes. We learned how to eat raw fish, raw shellfish, and raw whale meat with chopsticks. Japan, riveted by earthquakes and tsunami floods last March and then nuclear threats from damaged reactors, was a different world for our six-person team (four men, two women) from First Baptist Church of Brownsville.
From our landing in Japan onward, our companions included Gerald and Brenda Burch and Tony and Marsha Woods, two International Mission Board missionary couples who have served in Japan and Asia for decades. They knew the language, culture, and how to drive on the left side of the road.
We quickly became friends with the church members of the Tokyo, Yoshioka, and the Tatomei Baptist Churches. They were already doing their own disaster relief work, and we were able to join them on some projects and be in their church services that Sunday. Our missionaries and one member of our team who spoke Japanese translated for the rest of us.
For each family devastated by the earthquake and tsunami, the recovery work begins one shovel at a time, sifting through debris that once was a home. Many are trying to figure out how to rebuild without a job and without tsunami insurance. In their grief, we shoveled beside them. We handed them things they might desire to salvage—pictures, dishes, anything remaining of personal value to them. Without saying a word, we saw what still had value in their eyes. Then, in the homes that could be saved, we removed what was damaged and unusable, cleaned out and disinfected what was left, and began replacing floors and walls where possible. We wanted the people to know that they are not alone, that there is help and hope, and that Jesus cares about them.
In Japan, there are constant reminders that the people do not have Jesus as their savior.
Ancestor worship, Buddhism, and Shintoism dominate the Japanese religious culture. In sifting through rubble, we found most homes had their own “god shelves” filled with miniature replicas of the gods they worshiped. We were constantly praying God would overcome these false religious concepts and replace them with his truth. And, we also prayed that God could use the help we were able to give in the name of Jesus to begin that process.
Also, our team also helped clear out rubble from a landslide, cleaned out a nursing home submerged during the tsunami, assisted a Japanese Baptist Convention feeding unit by taking food to displaced persons, sang for a gathering of residents at an emergency housing area, and even toured a crematorium being used as an emergency shelter. We prayed with people who had lost everything—jobs, homes, and family members, and made positive contacts with people who, for the first time, were open to hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ.
One young lady who was open to hearing the gospel was named Emi, a young mother about 25 years old. As the tsunami approached, her husband and father-in-law raced to the waterfront to rescue some of their co-workers. The co-workers survived; the husband and father-in-law did not. With her home destroyed and husband and father-in-law dead, Emi made her way, with her young daughter, to a neighboring village where her mother lived on a hillside.
It was there that we met Emi. We were assigned to remove the rubble around her mother’s home. Emi wanted to know why we cared enough to come and help her. We told her, her mother, and her daughter about Jesus. A few days later, we heard that Emi had called Marsha Woods, the IMB missionary we were working with there, and had promised to continue reading the Bible Marsha had given her when we left.
One night, a town leader came to where we had been staying and said he wanted to learn from us everything we could teach him, because he was amazed that we would come so far to help. He heard the gospel that night.
Another women burst into tears when she heard us singing “Amazing Grace” at a temporary housing center. We were able to pray with her and share the gospel. She agreed to visit the local Japanese Baptist church, if for nothing else, to hear “Amazing Grace” again.
One homeowner, on whose home we were working, refused to pray with us when we invited him. Surprised and saddened, we wondered if our time there would have any spiritual results. Later that day, a pastor from the area shared with us that the homeowner was a friend of his, and though the man was not yet a Christian, he believed he soon would be because of the influence of God’s love shown him by Christians.
That is why we do disaster relief work—that through what people see us doing, they will want to know why we do it. And we will tell them about Jesus.
—Steve Dorman is pastor of First Baptist Church of Brownsville and author of this article.
