Marsha's Blog

Dear Friends,  This morning as you’re opening this, we are in Barcelona, Spain. For most of you, you will know that this is where the famous architect Gaudi started building his famous basilica, "Sagrada Família" 144 years ago. If you’re like me and don’t know what a ‘basilica’ is, it’s kinda like a church building with no congregation.  We went inside it a few years ago, and I have to say it’s probably the most beautiful place of (not) worship I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to go inside today because Tony’s busy leading the worship service on board the ship! (in a room with no permanent congregation as well), but that’s another story, hopefully for next week!!  Please enjoy this following article I came across and remember that God is still honoured in the world:   …..Sagrada Família has almost touched the sky. In Barcelona, something happened for which the world had been waiting for 144 years.! The Basilica of the Sagrada Família — one of the ...

 I won't lie when I say I was pretty confused about God when our son died.  We'd tried everything, promised everything, threatened even more.  I even told God I wouldn't believe in Him if He let my son die.  I had to stop right there in the hospital corridor and chuckle when His immediate answer came to my mind, "Oh great, lose your son and your God at the same time”. Fortunately, I lost neither, but now my son was in Heaven and my God felt far away.  I had nothing to say. We left the States on our way back to Japan, planning to bury his ashes at the church where he had grown up. At the insistence of our mission, we had a stopover in Australia for some time of rest and reflection. We were reminded that we still had an 11-year-old son, Nathan, who had been largely ignored for the last eight months. “Don’t make him a victim, too,” we were told.  I had a book (back before the internet) and we found a 'Farm Stay’ near the airport in Brisbane.  We'd go ther...

Good Morning Friends, Thank you again for keeping up with us during this travel-time. And I hope you’ve been able to follow my “thought trains” as I’ve rambled along, trying to craft this wonderful language we call English. I am so grateful to have been born in a country where necessity had decreed that everything I undertake, from mealtime to worship has to be in English if I am to survive. Otherwise, I’m afraid life would have turned out much differently than it has. I say this because lately as we find ourselves in a new country almost every other day, I’ve gained a greater respect for those who have had to learn the challenges of speaking to people like me. And as a tribute to those intrepid interpreters, I’d like to remind them that from time to time, we native English speakers don’t do much better. What better place to find examples than in our own daily diatribes?  Here are a few illustrations taken from letters sent to various government offices over the years.  So her...

 Good Morning All, Well, you may not know it, but you’ve been reading a pre-programmed blog for the last four weeks. I didn’t mean to abandon you, but wasn’t sure if I’d have internet, so I set it up before we left to make sure we’d be covered. Now it really is the 31st of May (at least where we are, in transit from South Africa to Armenia). I think we were a little ‘weirder’ than we thought when we started this trip a month ago. We have been battling with some issues (not bad but sort of confusing and draining), and I think we needed some help. When we got onboard the Oceana cruise ship Regatta, we were immediately hit with the opportunity to lead both the sea-day Bible studies along with the Sunday services.  Tony even got to help in some of the Catholic gatherings and has had some real “heart to hearts” with folks from the Jewish community here. He was in heaven, doing what he loves to do among ‘like-minded’ people; but for both of us, it’s been a real healing experience. A...

 With Memorial Day just around the corner, I'd like to tell you a story about someone most of us would have considered 'the enemy'. His name was Kojima and he was a Japanese soldier.  He was rough and brutish, the perfect stereotype of those killing machines we knew either from actual experience or the war campaigns that were popular at the time. He had a wife.  It had been an arranged marriage, and he pretty much hated her.  But the feeling was mutual, and as she stayed behind in the home of her in-laws, she was forced to gather with them every morning before the family shrine and pray for his safety. On the outside, she was the obedient wife, but in her heart as they prayed, she always murmured under her breath, “Let him be killed, and make it painful.” But we didn't know Kojima then.  We only met him as he and his wife were volunteer custodians at our first church in Yokohama. He was sitting with MY father, also a veteran, eating watermelon and praising God t...

 Way back in 1981, we had settled into our new career in Japan and had finally finished our requisite two years of language school. With great fanfare, we were deemed “fit to do life and ministry in a Japanese world".  I have to confess that to this day, I haven’t been able to fully understand all the big words on my graduation certificate, but I don’t want to talk about that. We moved north, out of Tokyo and up to a nice little town of one million people.  Keep in mind that we were moving from Tokyo, population about 40 million, so to us it was like a quaint village by comparison. It's about halfway to the top of the main island of Honshu, and it goes by the name of Sendai.   We had been assigned to start student ministries, so with thirteen major colleges and universities, Sendai was the natural choice.  Our sons Trevor and Nathan came with us, of course, and that set the course of their lives.  Five-year-old Trevor was enrolled into preschool, and e...