Dear Family,
It is hot and humid here in southern Japan - some say it’s the most uncomfortable weather they’ve ever seen here. Yesterday was a record high at 37.9C. In the last week we have had two stark reminders that we live on the Ring of Fire, the seismic belt, skirting the far reaches of the Pacific. Though miles away, our Portland friends are geological kin, for they are seismic-belt people too. Sakurajima volcano just 10 kilometers across the bay from the city of Kagoshima erupts 500 times a year, and Sunday last it spewed forth molten lava, debris and smoke rising high into the sky and covering the city and everything in it with ashes. We are 150 miles north of Kagoshima, so it didn’t darken our skies, but we recall visiting there 5 months ago and staring with some apprehension across the bay at the smoldering volcano.
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| Sakurajima erupting |
The other reminder was when both our cell phones went berserk at once with an earthquake warning – a false alarm as it happened, but a bit jarring to the uninitiated. It reminded us of the old Japanese axiom: “In a land where everybody expects three times in a lifetime to be made homeless by earthquake, fire, flood, typhoon, or volcano, a common expression heard is Shikata ga nai, meaning it can’t be helped. A counter expression often used is Doka koka dekimasho, meaning somehow or other let’s manage it.”[i]
We are in the midst of delightful process of enrolling all foreign missionaries, including ourselves, in the Japanese National Health Insurance program. I say delightful, because it brings us into intimate contact with an historic relic of the old Japanese Empire - Nipponese bureaucracy. It has all the essential elements of traditional bureaucracies the world over – rules and procedures, indifference to customers, inflexibility, long and forbidding counters, stuffy waiting rooms, stamps and signatures – but in Japan it is delivered up with great courtesy and closed with a bow. Or, I should say, never closed, but “…come back tomorrow and we’ll see.” There is a sweet Japanese sister in the PBO office on Tokyo who is helping me through the financial portion of this maze, and recently she sent me a file with this helpful note: “The attached files are the status, before is today morning and after is now.” You see what we are having to deal with.
Meanwhile, in more meaningful work, Pat is zeroing in on final preparations to receive 32 new missionaries next week. Even as Sakurajima was doing its worst, we were attending stake conference and listening to young Epia, a convert of 6 months and a freshly-ordained elder, teach the gospel of Christ and bear a wonderful testimony. His is a transformation of great import and a treasure beyond price, for yet another son of God has found his Father, an occurrence all too rare in this precious land.
We love reading the letters from Spencer and Matthew. Their missions are much more exciting than ours. With one ear tuned to earthquakes and one eye on the lookout for volcanic fallout, we remain your faithful far-eastern correspondents, Mom and Dad
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