Occasionally people who pray with CMS write in and share something of their own story – and it’s like opening a curtain to reveal a window you didn’t know was there.
From Seattle, the Rev Timothy Nakayama emailed with a gentle plea not to forget Japan in our PrayerSpace email bulletin that he and his wife Keiko use every week.
He enjoys telling people how he and Keiko met for the first time 11 days before they got married.
It was 1961, in Canada, where Timothy was born and raised, and Keiko had come from Japan to marry him.
“It was an ‘arranged’ marriage,” he explains; “we were introduced to each other by a Canadian missionary.” They had, though, “become somewhat acquainted” as pen pals ahead of time.
Five years later they were sent as missionaries – to Seattle, to work among Japanese Americans. They carried this work on till retirement, when another adventure beckoned and they moved to Japan for seven years to pastor an English-language congregation in Okinawa.
They are heading back in September, for the 150th anniversary celebrations of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai, the Anglican Church in Japan.
But while working in Okinawa, Timothy learned of another fascinating character in mission history – a Church of England medical missionary who had arrived in 1846, 16 years before the first missionaries from the USA, whose arrival is deemed to mark the birth of the NSKK.
Bernard John Bettelheim was a Hungarian Jew, who trained as a rabbi before becoming a Christian through two Anglican priests he met in Turkey. He was learning Arabic there – one of the 25 languages he learned during his lifetime!
Although he wanted to work in the Holy Land among fellow Jews, he found himself sent by a naval mission to Okinawa in 1846, his wife giving birth to their first child during the voyage.
“With his particular insights into the Hebrew Scriptures, and the Greek New Testament, he prepared translated portions of the Bible in Japanese and the Okinawan dialects to which he was exposed, to aid him in presenting the Christian message in the face of persecution,” says Timothy.
It was forbidden for foreigners to live in Japan at this time, and the local government in Okinawa was certainly unhappy about Bettelheim’s presence.
Nevertheless, says Timothy, “they stayed for eight years until 1854, dispensing Western medicine, and preaching the Gospel. Not only did they offer salvation through faith in Our Lord, but he healed many from death by cholera by instructing people to drink clean water.”
So it’s amazing what you can learn just from being on the end of an email.
Timothy was kind enough to say what that means to him:
“Because of our racial and ethnic background and work in the Church in diverse circumstances, we have been alert to mission opportunities throughout our ministry, and are thankful that you provide us with a glimpse of the world that God loves so much that he gave us His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Redeemer, and Friend.”
And we thank you, Timothy, for another glimpse of that world from a different angle.