For the Joy of Japan

It’s a typical Monday morning in Nagoya, Japan. I’m getting ready to leave for work while my daughter begins her English lesson with my wife. Then I hear her read an example sentence that stirs painful memories: “The speeding truck caused a terrible crash.”

As my daughter starts diagramming the sentence, I exit our apartment in a daze. That simple sentence transports me to a painful phone call I received ten years prior from a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, breaking terrible news: The Pals family, who were weeks away from joining our mission team, had been killed. A semi ran into their van while they were in traffic.

Jamison, the father, had prayed, waited, and worked for years, seeking an opportunity to serve in Japan. His wife, Kathryne, had waited faithfully along with him, enduring the delivery of a third child and cancer surgery during their preparations to begin service. They had just finished raising support and were on their way to Colorado for their last required training before Japan — finally. They hoped for a long tenure of service.

A picture of the family, taken shortly before their passing, still hangs in my office: Jamison and Kathryne seated on a porch, smiling, their arms filled with three precious, small children — Ezra, Violet, and Calvin. When I arrive at work and see the photo, I feel their loss afresh, ten years later.

Ten Years of Ministry

The Pals family did not pass from this world unnoticed. Their story deeply impacted many, and God has used it to establish a legacy of ministry over the past decade. New missionaries were motivated and mobilized after hearing their story. Many mission-goers and mission-senders have been blessed reading the thoughtful reflections on missions that Jamison wrote on their blog, “Joy of Japan.” The blog has been translated into Japanese, inspiring believers from other cultures. A new ministry for church planting and revitalization — the Joy of Japan Center for Church Planting and Development — was founded in Japan in their honor. The center serves to train new church planters and strengthen existing pastors across Japan.

The Pals’s extended families have supported many of these endeavors significantly; the investment of the Pals family in Japanese missions continues ten years later. Yet the impact of the Pals’s story is not just one of ministry — it has also been very personal. God has used them to strengthen my own calling as a missionary and a follower of Christ in important ways.

Great Glory, Great Mystery

One key truth the Lord has impressed on my heart through the Pals’s story is that Christians live for eternity, and the work of global missions is truly worthwhile. Jamison captures this in a “second proposal” he wrote to Kathryne, inviting her to pursue missions in Japan together:

Kathryne, I am asking you to go with me. Let’s go . . . or at least let us do everything in our power to go. The Lord may see fit to keep us here, but if he does not, let’s go. It may cost us much, but would you have it any other way? Whatever we lose will be worth it if we gain more of Christ.

Jamison is exactly right. There is no greater gain than gaining Christ. Confident of this, their family gave away or sold their belongings, gathered their small children close, and set out on a journey of faith knowing it would eventually end in eternity. Jamison closed his letter to Kathryne with a quote from his favorite Puritan, Samuel Rutherford:

How soon will some few years pass away, and then when the day is ended, and this life’s lease expired, what have men of the world’s glory, but dreams and thoughts? O happy soul forevermore, who can rightly compare this life with that long-lasting life to come, and can balance the weighty glory of the one with the light golden vanity of the other.

The Pals family demonstrated the calling each missionary shares, whether we articulate it this way or not. Eyes fixed on the beauty of Christ, we measure eternal glory as greater than temporary vanity in hopes of seeing his gospel proclaimed to the nations.

“Eyes fixed on the beauty of Christ, we measure eternal glory as greater than temporary vanity.”

However, the weightiness of this glory coincides with a heaviness in this world that should not be overlooked. Ten years later, I am still grieved by the news that a speeding truck caused a terrible crash. Why did God choose to call the Pals family home in such a way? Why did he call them home and leave others like me to remain? I have (sinfully) sought to pry answers to God’s mysteries from his hand, but he reminds me that there are things in this world I am not permitted to know.

Meanwhile, he has reminded me that amid the mystery there are “precious and very great promises” we do get to know (2 Peter 1:4), and he rejoices to proclaim them to us through his word. He delivers new mercies every morning that demonstrate his steadfast love and faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22–23); he assures us that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). But the details of our particular sufferings and his particular mercies are not for us to choose. In the mystery, I am both kindly invited and firmly reminded to take God at his word — to trust.

For Japan’s Joy and Mine

Several months after I received the call about the Pals family, I realized somewhat suddenly that I was having a nervous breakdown. My nerves were literally malfunctioning due to stress, and I developed a slew of physical symptoms. The symptoms had already started to manifest before the Pals family was taken home, but things accelerated after I returned from their memorial service. I remember looking at my hands one day in August, watching them tremble uncontrollably.

Looking back ten years later, I can see that the Pals’s sudden passing served to expose my greatest fears. My children’s lives are not in my hands, my wife’s life is not in my hands, the fruitfulness of my ministry is not in my hands, and my own life is not in my hands. God lovingly exposed my fears — and showed me that they were not irrational (“That would never happen”). Rather, they were hyper-rational (“Anything can happen”). Then he invited me to trust him anyway, as he had patiently proven himself to be trustworthy over and over again. I praise God for how he has used one family’s story to shape my own life and calling for the glory of God and the joy of Japan.