Marsha's Blog

 Good morning friends, Thank all of you who follow me.  I noticed an increased number of readers over the last couple of weeks, so I hope I can find some more exciting stories of God's faithfulness to share. On that note, God has certainly continued to be faithful this week, but it's pretty mundane.  For those of you who have ever moved, you can imagine how non-exciting that is. We were apart from our possessions for almost two years and the end result is that we lived quite happily without all that 'frip frap'.   But on the other hand, it's a nostalgic joy to see a few things that we love.  We decided the things we love are things that elicit happy memories, for example, ramen bowls given to me from a favorite group of ladies in Japan, or a grandson's first artwork.....We had a laugh about those well-off Egyptians who got to carry a lot of their favorite 'stuff' into the tomb to be with them (Sadly, we see how that worked out). But in the effort to embr

 Hello all, Last week you'll remember that I told you the story of my friend Tatsuo, and his interesting family. You’ll remember that the fire bombings in Tokyo had wiped out just about his entire family along with the Hagiwara family business, which was huge. Today we'll see more of the Hand of God, and less of death and destruction. But first, I need to let you in on another story as well, and that concerns Tatsuo's mother.   At the time of the fire bombing, she was a little girl of 6.  She had 11 brothers and sisters; again a prosperous family with a big house. Her first name was pretty, but the Japanese characters in the name carried the meaning, "enough". As I understand, that was apparently how the family felt about her. When the bombs came, her family lived in a different section of the city and so was evacuated to another elementary school than the one guarded by Tatsuo's grandfather in last weeks story.  When she got there, the school was already comp

 Good Morning,   While we were in Hawaii, we met an amazing man named Tatsuo Hagiwara.  His story was so compelling, I had to hear it a couple of times to get all the facts straight.  The day before we left, we had the privilege of meeting his mother who is now in her 80's.  She'd come to visit a couple of her kids, including Tatsuo.  She mentioned to someone in the room that her husband (significant in this story) was "getting older and didn't like to travel as much".  I think he's in his 90's. And so, here's what I've understood.  We encouraged him to write a book, like the one we wrote about our pastor and friend Naoki Noguchi, "Sacrificed: Given to an Empire, Saved by God".  They said they'll "think about it." So, come with me to March 10th, 1945. The war is in the final stages, but the atom bombs won't be dropped until August 6th and 8th of that same year, bringing everything to an end on August 15th.   But back to

Good Morning,  I’d like to share a thought-provoking story I heard just before we left Hawaii. Tony was preaching at the Chinese Baptist Church, and afterwards, we were visiting with the Sunday School teacher. This is the story he told:   He had gone to a popular electronics shop to buy at TV.  The shopkeeper promised that they would remove any old TV when they delivered the new one. The new TV was delivered, and when they saw the his pre-21st century monster TV, they tucked and ran, saying there was no way they could wrangle such a monster. After some discussion of the situation with his wife, she reminded him of those newlywed days of poverty when he worked in a call Center.   "What was your advice on handling upset customers?" she asked. "Oh," he recalled after a moment, "I was told to ASK the customer what he wanted." So, he pulled up his socks, as the Aussies say, and went into the store and found the manager.  The conversation went something like thi