okinawa (cancelled), bursting heart

My friend’s mansion (Japanese-style! – meaning “small apt.”) is so very clean and quiet, very different from most of where i’ve been in the last 9 months. She likes to study the 1858 Great Controversy book, and we are spending good time going over the questions, and answering other questions raised by other church members around here. Her husband is non-christian, but doesn’t mind that i’m here. It is sad to see that while most all of the SDA church members are very compromised with the world, the few strong ones are a bit wacko.

Is it God’s leading? I believe so – a friend has given me a free ticket to go to Okinawa tomorrow for a camp-meeting to which the General Conference President himself will be attending!!! The problem is – it is the International Missionary Society Reform Seventh-day Adventist Church campmeeting

Please pray for me.

The main man who invited me to come loves this 1858gc book, and wants me to give a testimony about my work in spreading it. I really am happy that someone is interested in the book here in my beloved Japan, but afraid that the “Reform” label will somehow get attached to it, so am a bit wary. It is really too bad, because this man and the others in the group that my friend has met are really sincere, strong, faithful, loving Adventists, just not in the right Adventist camp. May God use me to bring them back into his body. Anyone with Bible or SOP quotes for them? When i visited him last year, i gave my personal testimony about my own mother leaving the SDA church over the gold medal to the pope scandal, but that i don’t agree with what she did. I also showed from Revelation 3:14-21 and Ezekiel chapter 9 how we MUST be in the SDA church. It is God’s last church, defective as it may be, he still loves it, and not those churches that draw people away from it.

updated 4/15 4:40pm — I went to the airport this morning, and was told by the ANA staff that as the ticket was purchased under a different person’s name, i cannot fly using that ticket. Well, maybe this is the best? I often wonder EXACTLY what is God’s will for me to do? I want to follow perfectly like Jesus did, and while i know for sure i fall many times, much of the time i just wonder what it is EXACTLY that i am to do every day…….

Then i went to see a formerly-homeless friend. I’ve known him for around 11 years, helped him with a tent, gave him food and money when he had no friends sleeping under a blue tarp by the river, helped him get into govt. welfare and get his own apt, and even tho we have studied a lot of the Bible together, he shows absolutely no interest. To tell the truth, he even told me today in a nice manner that i should stop trying to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, because many people don’t care to hear it. And he is about to die it seems. He cannot even hardly walk the 100m to the supermarket to buy his food. And he is telling me this…. I makes my heart almost burst with grief at my friend’s hard heart and his choice of eternal death. Nearly every country i travel to people say “our country is the most difficult for evangelism”, but like recently when i told them the story of this formerly-homeless friend, they just couldn’t believe it.