No Greater Happiness Than a Visit with a Friend from a Faraway Place

In April 2011, I went to Fukushima, Japan, alone from Vancouver, Canada to line up at the immigration in Narita Airport where there were very few foreigners entering the country. Most foreigners had already left the country due to the safety alert coming from the uncertainty following the meltdown of the reactors in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant.

Six years have passed and a lot has happened outside Fukushima. Most of the disaster recovery work has long been completed in Iwate and Miyagi since disaster recovery is one thing Japan has been known for her expertise and tenacity. But the situation in Fukushima is quite different. Year by year, we saw very little progress in Fukushima. Though the effect of the earthquake and tsunami was not as devastating as in the other two prefectures mentioned above, due to continued uncertainty around the nuclear plant and rising long term challenges associated with it, progress in Fukushima has been very slow.

Over the next few days six friends from Vancouver are visiting the local churches in Fukushima to learn from their stories of faithfulness, to encourage them that we stand alongside them, and to worship together in Christ. This is a huge answer to prayers. Last Sunday afternoon during the congregational worship at Church of All Nations, we were prayed for and sent out by the loving congregation. I am no longer a lone-ranger visiting Fukushima! In fact, a-dream-come-true kind of thing.

A long time ago a Chinese wise man, Confucious said in his famous writing, the Analects, that one of the three great joys in human life is friend’s visit:

有朋自遠方來、不亦樂乎

 It means, “Isn't it also great when friends visit from distant places?”

It has already been a great joy to the six of us that God chose us to send together. Six of us now all live in the Metro Vancouver, but we come from five different nations: Japan, Korea, Malaysia, USA and Canada. It is a truly global friendship. We go to offer ourselves and our prayers to friends in Fukushima.

Ministry of friendship and ministry of presence

Right from the first year of my work in Fukushima in 2011, I had a hunch that the key to sustainability in Fukushima will be relationships. The local churches which we witnessed to be effective in such a challenging context all had one common: People who are called by God to stay in Fukushima. To be present is to minister. To be friends is an end of mission, not a means to mission. This is only possible through

relationship that is bound by voluntary commitments rather than monetary, project-terms or contracts. We now offer ourselves to this voluntary commitment of being present in Fukushima from afar. It is a true joy to visit friends in a faraway place!