Ladies Day

October brought with it many opportunities for witnessing God at work. We are so thankful that David was able to return safely to Okinawa after a wonderful trip to West Virginia during the World Mission Offering time. He was able to connect with many churches and speak at the West Virginia Baptist Convention. Many thanks to our Mission Partnership team and to the staff of the WVBC for their continued love and service.

October was also busy here in Okinawa with visits from our colleagues from International Ministries and friends from Tokyo as well as OCSI, at Daiichi Baptist Church and within the Okinawa Baptist Convention.

The Okinawa Baptist Convention ladies had their fall rally called, "Chimu don-don" (Fast Beating Heart) which was not only a wonderful opportunity for the ladies of various churches to meet but also an opportunity to invite their non-Christian friends to enjoy great music and hear the Gospel.

The ladies of Gloria shared a beautiful hymn and another group of ladies who have been working hard on Christian hula dancing shared a lovely dance to the song, "Jerusalem. For those of you wondering about hula in Okinawa, please know that Okinawa and Hawaii share much history. Many Okinawans have made Hawaii their home in the past due to financial hardship and recently the children and grandchildren of these citizens have been returning to Okinawa; many of them to share the Gospel with their extended families here.

Our speaker for the day was pastor Gushiken who is a lively and fun speaker. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt, he shared as many stores in the area are beginning to advertise Christmas, he wanted to speak to the congregation about the way that Mary accepted she would be the mother of the Savior. His talk was one of encouragement about how we can trust in God when we are unsure about the situations in our lives.

As a part of his talk, he also shared about the recent solar eclipse that parts of India, China and Japan experienced. Even though Okinawa wasn't in the area to see 100% of the eclipse, it did get dark enough to feel dusk at 9:00 in the morning. Because of the usual brightness of the sun, it is amazing that anything could possibly blot it out. But during the recent eclipse, we saw that our relatively small moon was able to come between us and the sun and make it disappear. Pastor Gushiken shared that often we are separated from God because of our fixation on our problems and concerns. He compared God to the sun as being so large and bright and bringing light to the universe but because we are only looking at our problems and not trusting God to help us with them, they become like the moon and can completely block God out of our lives.

We pray that each of us may more and more keep our eyes on God as the source of help for our problems and that we can rely on His unchanging care.