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| Travelogue #9 October 2009 |
Dateline: Incheon International Airport, Seoul, South Korea, October 8, 2009—And tonight I will be in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The last two weeks have been a bit intense and I have not been able to communicate much. The last week plus in Japan was dawn to dusk preparation and presentation, but it was a good time.
This is my sixth year in a row of coming to Japan; five of those years have been devoted to conducting a three phase lifestyle education school. The last week of September we had a Phase 1 class of well educated and motivated students from all over Japan. Making the experience even more gratifying is the fact that a former student has joined the teaching staff thereby relieving some of my load, but even more importantly, getting nationals involved in their own country. It was a great class. We had an Osteopath as one of the students. A non-Christian, he knew we espoused Christian principles and made the Bible a central part of the course. He had no problem with that. Even more amazingly, he saw that we had the real way to health, a philosophy he had been looking for and not been able to find. He had spent some time studying Edgar Cayce, the spiritualist, but found a better way in his days with us. The last day the students all gave a report as to what they had gained during their days with us. Eleven bright and motivated people gave encouraging reports. One woman, a city councilwoman, because of her government involvement, was interested in how to contain health costs. She saw how expensive it was to supply health care to a population who seems bent on making themselves sick by their lifestyles. Welcome to the world. She went home with the mission to “Carry out reform in my city,” were her own words.
A number of the students were attached in one way or another with the Kobe SDA hospital. It is always amazing to see how many people in mainline health are discovering the futility of drugs. They go home to study and promote the better way.
One woman came from Kobe not as a student but as a patient. No, we don’t work with patients in the class, but she wanted counsel and direction. She has stage four lung cancer but to look at her, you would never know it. The cancer was first discovered 11 years ago. Wisely, she has rejected all attempts by the medical community to have her submit to chemo or radiation. The abysmal record of those procedures (normally less than 3% success) is hidden by the tooting of the few who do survive the horrendous things such procedures do to the body. The others are left to suffer their last miserable days, not because of the disease, but because of the treatment. The woman is 72 but doesn’t look a day over 50. She is remarkable; a lovely Christian woman who spends her life in humanitarian pursuits. It is her desire to go to Uchee Pines, not so much for healing, although that would be great, but for the encouraging, Christian environment that would help her, if necessary, become completely ready to end this life.
The school ended at lunch on Friday, October 2. By 2:10 PM I was on a train speeding toward a weekend appointment way south of Tokyo. Actually it was three trains, a slow train, a bullet train and an express train. One of the young men accompanied me and we arrived at our destination, Fujieda, in a pouring rain. It was bordering on miserable and we had a long drive to the meeting hall where I was to speak that evening. So basically I had to crawl out of a suitcase and stand in a beautiful public hall which would have held 500 people easily. We had maybe 100 people. It would have been hard to convince me to venture out in such weather. When the meetings were all over Sunday night, the woman taking us to her home two hours away was also carrying to women from the Philippines to the train station in her city. One took a train two stops further, one six stops further. We are talking about sacrifice.
The meeting went well and we were taken a long way to a couple’s home for the night. They lived about 300 meters from the ocean and all night I could hear the restless roar of the waves. Sabbath broke gray and drizzly. After a great breakfast and picking up four young woman, we threaded our way through the painfully narrow Japanese streets to the meeting place. I had the sermon in the morning and two long lectures in the afternoon and evening. By the time the first service was over, the sky was completely clear and it was a sterling afternoon. Oh, what a day. But the people had come to learn and I admire them so much.
Most of the people in the audience were not from Japan. Brazilian and Filipinos made up the bulk of the gathering. Japan is an aging population and their few young people are not willing to do the work these people are willing to do. And Japan is suffering a recession so these workers are not much more than slaves of their bosses. Work or walk, there is always someone else waiting for the job. But they want to learn. My traveling companion translated into Japanese over radio and a young Japanese Brazilian translated into Portuguese. The Filipinos could understand English. It was quite a weekend.
I will have to finish this in Malaysia as it will be time to board soon. The Inchon airport has free Wi-Fi so I am taking advantage. So, until next time…
God bless
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Posted by WorldMighty on 2009-10-28 13:35:14 | Rating: | Views: 7
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