Our friend Tanaka in Kamagasaki
[Adventures in Faith: Japan; 1991] We became friends with a Catholic woman named Tanaka. We esteemed her as a great hero of the faith.
After our emergency retreat, we returned to Kamagasaki. We went slow, gradually getting used to it once again. We followed our routines.
Upon waking in the morning, we’d spend 30 to 60 minutes reading a chapter of the Bible, discussing it and praying.
Then we’d wander around Kamagasaki. Sometimes men would walk up to us and start a conversation.
For us, that was a God-given moment to express concern and love for that person. That was the core of our mission in Kamagasaki.
For these things, Tom was so much better than me. He was far more advanced in his Japanese language acquisition than me.
Plus Tom was good at chatting with strangers, whereas I was not.
Our wanderings often took us back to Triangle Park. The men in Triangle Park had no limit to their curiosity about us.
The questions they asked gave us opportunities to tell them they were important, that God loves them, that Jesus loves them.
And we gradually discovered Christian organizations in Kamagasaki. We were told there were nine. Eight were Catholic, and one was Lutheran.
To our chagrin, there were no Evangelical outreaches in Kamagasaki.
That was deeply disappointing to us. Both Tom and I were Evangelicals. Famously, Evangelicals are are all about the Bible.
Yet our own Evangelical movement seems to have never read what the Bible says about poor people. Or how Jesus Christ loves poor people.
Similarly, not one of Christian agency in Kamagasaki was Pentecostal. This too was deeply disappointing to us.
Both Tom and I admired the Pentecostals we knew, such as my friend Latoya. When we were in the United States, we even went to her storefront Pentecostal church in Chicago and had a Pentecostal baptism in the Holy Spirit.
And it was back when I was searching for a Pentecostal church in Osaka that I met a homeless man. He offered me food and drink. He may have been an angel of God.
So there were nine Christian outreaches in Kamagasaki. Over the course of time, we became familiar with four.
Our friend Tanaka
One of those four Christian outreaches was called Tabiji no Sato. That means “Traveler’s Village.” It was a Jesuit Center for Homeless Workers.
Earlier, I wrote about it and two of the people there. But we also knew a third person associated with Tabiji no Sato.
This third person was a Japanese woman named Tanaka.
At Tabiji no Sato we knew three people:
- A priest
- A lay man
- A lay woman
I sometimes thought of them as:
- A Father
- A Son
- A Holy Spirited person
We became friends with Tanaka. She was prayerful and holy and courageous.
She had no qualms about walking right into the most dangerous of situations.
Alone.
She was quiet and humble, yet fearless. She was marked by joy. She had a great smile. And she had a great sense of humor.
Tanaka was quite slender when compared with the average Japanese woman, who in turn are quite slender compared with most women in the U.S.
I never asked Tanaka about her slenderness. But I gathered that she probably spent a lot of time in prayer and fasting.
Tanaka took a keen interest in Tom and me. Whenever the three of us saw each other, we ended up chatting.
Eventually, Tanaka shared her dream with us. She spoke of a place in The Republic of the Philippines called Smokey Mountain.
Smokey Mountain was a huge landfill outside of Manila. It was Manila’s dump.
There, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people, the poorest of the poor, lived in shanties, underneath overpasses and along railroad tracks.
They waded through the garbage, day and night, picking out food to eat and trinkets to sell.
We people from the Developed World could hardly fathom the misery of the people there.
We understood that Tanaka was going to move there. She was going to give up everything and go live with the garbage-pickers at Smokey Mountain.
She would live as one of them. She would share with them the love of Jesus Christ.
Whatever the Real Thing is, that was our friend Tanaka.
Tanaka was a genuine hero of the faith. Even now, decades later, I marvel at the privilege of having known her.
RESOURCES
At Wikipedia:
The Republic of the Philippines
ADVENTURES IN FAITH
NOTE. Names, dates, and locations may have been changed.
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