Episode 31: More Dreams

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Was this the end of my mission to Japan or just the beginning?

Our ten-day mission trip ended on March 27, 2011. I accompanied the rest of the team to Narita Airport to send them off on their flight back to Los Angeles. My plan was to fly to Seoul the next morning, as my wife and kids were waiting for me there during my 10 days in Japan, and join them to celebrate our youngest son’s first birthday with my in-laws.

I had to spend one more night in Tokyo, so I booked a room at budget hotel one train stop away from the airport. Little did I know how tiny hotel rooms in Tokyo could be: it was just big enough to fit a single bed and a bathroom that was slightly larger than an airplane restroom. I shoehorned my suitcase into the storage area, shimmied through a tight, 8-inch space between the bed and the wall (I should have just crawled over the bed), and opened the curtains for a peek outside.

As I gazed out at the storefront signs and billboards, all in a language I was then completely unfamiliar with, it hit me that I was alone in Japan, just weeks after the March 11th disaster. The occasional aftershocks didn’t help assuage my anxiety. If something were to happen, I had no one else to turn to but God.

I prayed that I’d make it through the night and be reunited with Soo and the boys.

By God’s grace, I managed to get to the airport and board my flight the next morning. The plane was so full of people trying to get out of Japan that they bumped me up to first class, where I got one of those pod-seats that allow you to fully recline and sleep. Too bad it was only for a two-hour flight.

I made it to Seoul, spent about a week there with my family, and returned to Los Angeles with them. I tried to settle back into my normal routines, but I just couldn’t shake Japan from my thoughts. Every moment I spent away from there felt off– I was like one of the Oceanic 6 from Lost, obsessed with going back to the island that I had just escaped from. Was this just some deep-seated personal desire to return to Japan, or was this part of God’s calling?

Meanwhile, my church was restructuring the staff and asked me what role I’d like to pursue. This caused me some confusion: was God calling me to be faithful with what was already in front of me– my role and community at Newsong– or was He calling me to pursue missions to Japan? I prayed for greater discernment, and over the next few weeks, I’d start to have more dreams.

In one dream, I heard the word Tohoku repeated over and over. Tohoku literally means “East-North,” referring to the northeastern region of Japan’s main island of Honshu, the area most affected by the March 11th disaster.

In another dream, a voice was encouraging me to get involved in disaster relief along the coast of Tohoku. We hadn’t done any relief work during our missions trip, other than to deliver laptops and pray for volunteers who were, but in this dream, relief work involved actually going up into the devastated areas.

In a third dream, I found myself running around Japan with an expired boarding pass and all the other members of the team had left, except for Mark and his family, who were still with me– we had stayed beyond the dates of our 10-day trip.

The most striking dream was one in which I saw a vision of a map labeled “Iwate,” with borders forming a distinct shape with jagged edges. The right side of the map was blue, indicating water, and towards the southeast, on the coastline, was a blinking red bulls-eye symbol, next to a name that began with an O.

I searched the word Iwate online when I woke up the next morning and found a map of Iwate Prefecture– it was remarkably similar to the map I had seen in my dream, and I wasn’t even familiar with the geography of Japan outside of the areas we passed between Tokyo and Kyoto. I zoomed in on the area of the map where I had seen the letter O in my dream.

There it was. A city called Ofunato.

Was God calling my family to a place I only knew from a dream and a Google search? I asked some Japanese friends if they knew anything about Ofunato.

None of them had ever heard of it.

I knew from the Book of Acts that God can call someone to a specific place through a dream:

During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. (Acts 16: 9-10 NIV)

The signs I was receiving seemed to lean heavily towards calling my family to doing disaster relief in Japan, but this wouldn’t be an easy decision to make: the concerns over radiation leaking in Fukushima were ever-increasing, and we had two young children. Did God really want us to move to Tohoku as a family? I prayed and asked, “God, if You’re really calling our family to go overseas, I’ll need clear confirmation, like Gideon.” As I prayed this with my eyes closed, a vivid image of a duck crossing the street from left to right, followed by some ducklings, seared itself into my mind.

I said, “O.K. God, if I see these ducks, I’ll take it as confirmation that you want us to go to Japan.” For the next several days, I looked everywhere for this image of a family of ducks– in magazines, on posters, on household decor at my home, at other people’s homes, at the doctor’s office– but I found nothing, so I forgot all about this for the next few months and dove back into work, embracing my new responsibilities at Newsong.

Everything would change on June 12th.

(To be continued)