Great gw's in Okinawa
Our last stop on our Asian adventure mission was Okinawa. We visited Jeffery and Akiko Sonnenberg who have been doing mission with Asian Access and PAOC for 15 years. They are involved in coming alongside church plants and coaching/consulting the leaders. It is a really cool interdenom concept and we had the joy of connecting with a couple of the planters. The value in going long term into a culture was definitely seen in what Jeffery and Akiko are doing here.
Okinawa was in my head as a WWII battleground heard about in History 12. Being on the ground there was sobering as the impact of that battle is seen everywhere, and felt everywhere. 250,000 died over a couple of months and most of them were civilians caught in the crossfire, or Okinawans used as pawns by the Japanese army. Needless to say, Okinawans don’t all love the Americans OR trust mainland Japanese. 30% of the island was taken permanently by the Americans after the war and they are using it today for their bases. We were hearing and seeing jets and helicopters take off constantly from the many airfields. My understanding was that Japan pays the US to ‘defend’ them and are not constitutionally able to have an army of their own.
Spiritually, Okinawans are different than the Japanese. They believe in the ‘spirit realm’ and are lead by female spiritual leaders called uta’s. These ladies don’t advertise in the phone book, or wear a badge, but the community definitely know who they are. The island is filled with worship shrines and they are not well signed, but are in all kinds of places – neighborhood parks, caves, springs etc. We were walking down a city street and on our left were some stairs. Down the stairs we walked into an unmarked cave beside an office building, next to a freeway. There was a shrine in the cave. Nobody was around so we did some worship songs and prayed. The acoustics were great! Most of the buildings in Okinawa are guarded by a ‘lion dog’ to keep the demons out. The people believe that demons only fly in straight lines, and so buildings on corners will have protective kanji inscribed to deflect the demons off of their buildings. Once we knew about the guards and the kanji we could see it everywhere.
The churches we hung out with are small and in their first year of the planting cycle. We did a prayer walk with Pastor Nemma – and got introduced to the spiritual underbelly of Okinawa. A few days later we helped Jeffery with an English class and that was awesome – sharing our story, and hearing about the lives of the Okinawans present. We loved the people (and the food was amazing).
Pastor Nemma - pastor, poet, and a great guy!
Speaking of food – in the pics you’ll see Leanne’s Japanese birthday cake. She had a ‘double birthday all the way’ in Japan as we celebrated for as long as her birthday was on in Japan and then in Canada… gotta love the international date line. The other pic is of a bento box prepared for a child’s lunch. A couple of days each week is bento day and moms (or dads) prep a bento box for their child’s lunch. It has to be beautiful and no junk food. If it is not up to par, parents will be spoken to! So check out the box – pretty awesome!
It was Wednesday, and therefore it was Bento day!
Double birthday all the way
So much to write – and from friends I understand that shorter posts are better… so I should stop – but if you want to hear more – just yell…. D