Marsha's Blog

As most of you know, you can't say anything to me that doesn't remind me of a personal story that I just HAVE to share.  I think there are words for people like me, but I’m not sure they're always nice.  Take for instance that great story about Elijah and Elisha (from 1 Kings 19). Elijah was about to be taken up into Heaven.  We know that, because people kept asking the young man Elisha if he knew this was happening soon.  His answer was, “Yes”. But Elisha didn't want to let him go, so he kept following him around ........ until Elijah stops and says the equivalent of "WHAT??" Then Elisha asked for his blessing, which he received. Now, fast forward thru history to 1968.  It was winter, Tony and I had fallen in love and naturally we wanted to get engaged.  But these were the days when the guy (if he’s decent) gets the girl's parents’ permission before he moves forward. I’m thrilled to mention that both my son and my son-in-law honoured that age old practice...

This morning I'll tell you another story about those interesting, exciting and Spirit-filled days in the small 700-year-old town of Yoshioka. As I mentioned last time, a big part of our week was spent at a small country church built there by a true man of faith, Dr. Abe (pronounced "Ah - Beh"). By the time we arrived, the small medical centre he had built had added a preschool that attracted just about every family in the community, along with a church that offered Sunday services and weekly Bible studies.  As with all things old and traditional, Yoshioka was changing into a bedroom community for Sendai, and along with the changing nature of the population, we were seeing new convenience stores, a gas station, revitalised government offices and the beginnings of a new preschool.  Not unexpectedly, Dr. Abe’s  clinic/preschool/church was starting to slip.  But it was not going to go silently. The people were still filled with enthusiasm, and every local festival day in...

I’ve shared with many of you the wild experiences Tony and I had in the months before our son, Trevor got sick and died. Looking back, I’m convinced that it was a time of preparation, while God systematically removed any traces of doubt we may have had about His existence and His love for us. We would be needing all the faith and hope we could muster, and God was there to give it.  In particular were those 'interesting' experiences with both the Holy Spirit and with demons during those years we were living in Sendai, Japan. I remember one precious Japanese family.  He was a soldier, on assignment to a little town north of us, close to where we had a church.  Mrs and I became good friends. She came to church asking about salvation, and within a few weeks she prayed to receive Christ. Then the 'fun' began.  She had a good, loving relationship with her husband, which was sometimes rare in a country like Japan, where in the previous generation, around 90% of all marriage...

Good Morning America! If you're reading this in the land of my birth, you're probably too busy to be reading it.  I can picture you wiping off the BBQ sauce with your elbow as you scroll down the page.  How we miss America, especially this time of year! We have a little pack of cousins in North Texas and “The Fourth” (as it should be) is enjoyed to the eyeballs … or elbows, if you will.  There is red, white and blue bunting everywhere, a football game on the lawn complete with resplendent water sprinklers, or as in the case a few years back, a stock tank filled with fresh water for a baptism, followed by a quick dip by every kid in the yard for a nice cool down.  Some of my happiest memories have been there. And the reason?  Because we live in a FREE country.  We celebrate what we want, worship Who we want ......... all with the freedoms allowed us, thanks to the blood of our ancestors and their quest for freedom. (and we can say the same for our other coun...

 Heard an interesting sermon the other day.  It was based on Psalms 124, where David is recalling all the ‘incidents’ in his life that have made him feel like he's living in unresolvable chaos. But even in everything, he can still sing, “If God had not been on our side …” The pastor then shared a bit of his life story about when he was 18, was a baker's apprentice, lived at home, had a fast car ....... and a girlfriend. He was a believer, active in his church’s youth programs. He seemed to have all the things we call “good” to his credit, but …… He came home one day and his mother said, almost cheerfully, he remembers, "There's something on your bed for you." "Oh goodie! he thought, my life couldn't get better" as he rushed up to his room. There, spread out on his bedspread, were SEVEN overdue speeding tickets.  They had been held up because he'd 'forgotten' to change the address on his licence.  For an 18 yr old, that was HIS end of the ...

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...

Many years ago, Tony bought a hat. It was 1991, the year we spent in Colorado while our son Trevor was being treated for leukemia. After several weeks sitting by his bedside, a friend came and 'kidnapped' Tony, taking him up to the mountains to go skiing. Tony protested, insisting that he couldn’t be away that long, and besides, what father would do something like that while his son suffered?  He ended up going, and by evening, he told me that it probably saved his life. What a blessing, to step away from reality, if only for a few hours. Every time we see our friend (whose name is Mark), we thank him for the way God used him that day.  At the ski lodge that day, Tony bought a hat, similar to what he used to wear all the time when he lived in Texas. He and Mark agreed that it was good to look back at those days once in awhile.  Years passed. Many years. After eight months in hell, we said goodbye to Trevor, took his ashes back to Japan as per his wish, and tried to carry ...

 I'd like to talk about siblings for a moment.  I have one sister and Tony has none. But actually, he did have “siblings”, in a way, because Tony's folks had a love for young people and always had a few 'strays' living with them.  As a result, I've never seen any aspects of him being an only child, but I'll let him tell you about all that. I have a sister, Sherry, just 6 years older than me. Sometimes blessing, sometime pain, but always part of our loving family, as I’d like to think you would agree when thinking about your own siblings. I have lots of memories of wanting to be 'big' and get to do 'big girl things' like she did.  She got to go to movies with friends, sometimes spend whole summers with the cousins etc.  One year she even 'got' to go to boarding school, although in thinking back, I’m not sure it was a mutually agreed decision at the time.   But it turned out to be a good thing, with the result that when I got to go 4 years ...

 I still remember sitting cross legged on our bed for weeks and weeks counting up $20 bills.  We were fairly newlyweds, still in college, but we had decided that we would take off and 'see the world' when we had enough saved up.   That was about 55 years ago and believe me, our definition of “the world” back then did NOT go beyond the borders of the United States. Our world was much smaller then, and so it wasn’t entirely unreasonable that we just might be able to pack up the car and see just a bit of it.  And that’s what we did in the summer of 1971. We looked over our ’64 Ford convertible, took a deep breath and decided it could still handle the road. It had done okay for our honeymoon (Ask us about the bear in the tent that trip if you haven’t already heard it); it could do it again.  Finally with a fist full of $20 bills, we packed up and headed for Vancouver, where we planned, if possible, to head in the direction of Alaska.  We had neither the ti...

  I happened across an old familiar parable the other day. It’s the one about seeds and the different kinds of soil it falls into when it’s sown. It shows up in three of the four Gospels.  You know how it goes.  There was a farmer, and he broadcast some seeds.  Some fell on good soil, some on rocky, some on bad.  Some sprouted and grew, but with lack of water and nourishment they were soon taken out.   After this morning, I would like to add my own “Australian version” of that parable.  ALL of my beautiful little green tomatoes, showing so much potential for harvest, were just getting ready to turn a nice rich red when something, most likely a possum, came under the cloak of darkness and wiped out my entire crop.  To say I was angry is an understatement. It’s not just the tomatoes; it’s the injustice! I bought the seedlings. I prepared the pots. I watered faithfully every morning. It’s just not fair!  And the rage doesn’t stop at the gar...

 Today I'd like to tell you the tale.  It could go something like the line by Charles Dickens in the Tale of Two Cities' and start off with: "It was the best of times and it was the worst of times." Yoshioka is a small village a few miles north of Sendai, Japan, where we lived most of our career.  The thing that struck us every time we went out there was the sense of history.  It was over 700 years old, and that was back in the ‘80s.  We came to know the place because a doctor by the name of Abe Sensei, ran a clinic there. By God’s grace, he became a Christian sometime in the ‘50s, and that changed the course of the land.  Because of his concern for the town and society, and wanting to share Christ in the community, he started a preschool with a church attached.  It sailed along with great success for over 40 years.  We got involved when Tony was asked to come play his guitar for the children once or twice a week.  It became a real bright spo...

 He is Risen!! I'll keep it simple today as I'm sure you're all getting your bonnets and gloves together for church!  Those words are enough to bring up a whole pack of memories. I’ll always remember the excitement of “dressing up” for Easter Sunday. It’s a tradition that sadly seems to be losing ground in the face of the Me Generation’s “Comfort is Everything” way of thinking these days, but I’ll leave that soap box alone for now.  In my home, Easter was a day for lace and hats and shiny white shoes. Never mind that where we lived in the Rockies west of Denver, snow was a very real possibility, and spring snows (like around Easter time) could be particularly wet and sloppy. But nothing could stop us from trying our best to look our best, even when the weather outside was, well, less than best.  We persevered because Easter spoke of New Life. And what better way to celebrate than by dressing up for the occasion? Why don’t you give it a try, Young Folks? You’ll love i...

 Hello All, As we are heading into the Easter Run Up, I had an interesting thought put to me the other day.  Maybe you've heard it too. It was the night before His Crucifixion. Jesus and His disciples were in the Garden of Gethsemane. You'll remember the fracas when soldiers, led by Judas, showed up to arrest Him. With the “Kiss of Death” by Judas, things got crazy.   Peter, entrenched in moment, whipped out his sword and removed the ear of one of the perpetrators.  Scripture puts it this way:  “And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear. And Jesus answered and said, ‘Suffer ye thus far’. And he touched his ear, and healed him.” I’m trying to imagine this as a stage play. How would I choreograph it? Right there in all the confusion, Jesus stopped what He was doing and healed the servant. And I’m thinking to myself, why didn't that MIRACLE stop everything in its tracks? Wouldn't the soldiers have been impressed?  Wou...

The other day I came across another of my favourite stories in the Bible. This one (again) involves King David. But first let me tell you a story, which may explain my point, at least I hope so. So there was a church bake sale and one of the mothers was running late.  She baked an angel food cake but in her haste, she opened the oven door too soon and it fell. There was nothing she could do because time was running out, so she grabbed a roll of toilet paper, put it in the crater of the cake and put an impressive amount of beautiful icing on it before jettisoning out the door for the church. As she and her daughter hurried for the church, daughter was given specific instructions,  "You run the cake into the back, I'll park the car and get to the table before it does and buy it!  Then, I will have paid my participation dues and no one will know what a disaster it was!" They agreed and the daughter hopped out with the beautiful cake.  But as the mom was heading into the...

Well, here we are at the three-week before Easter mark.  If you're like me, it’s a time when things seem to be moving more quickly than normal.  Around my house, there’s a sense of changing seasons, and the work that needs to be done as we’ll be going into winter soon, but unlike you folks in the northern hemisphere, that doesn’t mean putting up the storm shutters and tuning up the snow blower … more like exchanging the short-sleeved shirts in the closet for long sleeves and packing away the snake discouragers from around the trash bins and water taps.  The snakes are still around, but they move a lot slower when the temperature drops below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  Some of my friends at this time of year are talking about “Lent” and what they’re planning to give up for it. In a way, it’s reminiscent of New Years and the lists of resolutions we like to make in January.  I grew up in a Baptist home that eschewed any and everything that hinted of “Catholicism"....