Little events in my life last week:
The typhoon blew thru Monday, so most of my English lessons were cancelled, but I should get paid for the ones at the school. There wasn’t much to the typhoon, only about 2 inches of rain and a little wind.
On Tuesday I was eating lunch along a stream/big ditch down in the town, and a woman walking her dog stopped and talked with me for a while, and after hearing i was vegetarian, told me to wait while got something. Well, she came back with around a dozen apples, dozen oriental pears, and two dozen super-nice tomatoes! Wow!
Thursday, somebody’s dog came to our house and stayed around 6 hours until we could find the owner. It is very rare to see a dog not on a leash in the town or in the subdivision here, so it was quite interesting.
Then Friday, while stopped at a stop light on my bicycle, a biggish, youngish man holding a cup of coffee and some papers called out to me in a loud voice: “gaijin!” (furreigner). I thot he might be mentally unstable, so kind of backed up. He started coming closer and still calling out loudly and asking where i was from. I got off my bike and backed it up quickly. He started coming towards me quicker, and just then the light changed, and i got on my bike and made a wide berth around him while he was shouting at me to obey traffic rules. Weird.
On the Sabbath i went to see my best SDA friend in Japan. I’ve known her for around 18 years. We worked closely to help the homeless, and she is the one who put a lot of energy and effort into helping me spread the 5,000 Japanese editions of the 1858 Great Controversy book. She has always been very powerful and active, so it was a shock to see her barely able to walk or hold a dish this Sabbath. She said she can’t grasp dishes etc., and her left leg has shooting pains. She had her husband call the ambulance two nites prior, and they couldn’t get a reading on her pulse. They called around to a few hospitals to take her to, but since the ER people didn’t have a good grip on her condition, all the hospitals refused to take her. She got upset with that, and just had them drive her back home. It is getting close to my time too, i’m afraid. No, not really afraid of going downhill, just that i recognize where i am in life, and see myself going down too.
What was nice, was that her husband (non-christian) seems to have his heart softened by all this, and he studied Mark 9 with us where we read “Help increase my faith”. He has mentioned he wants to become Christian, but i think he is afraid of what his father would say, so is holding off. I just hope he makes up his mind before it’s too late.
Seems like the 1% in America is trying to muzzle pastors now (lesbian mayor of Houston is). Persecution shouldn’t be too far off now.