June 19, 2022: Worship Service Testimony Series No.10 The Lord's Blessing Abroad(2)- Switzerland (Zurich) (3) "Prayer"

The picture above is the Nursery where our 3 sons were taken care of.

Bible:

Prelude:

In the first installment of my testimony in Switzerland, I told about the many blessings I received from the Wednesday Bible study and prayer with members of the Korean church.

Since we met every week for a year, I cannot tell you about all of them, and unfortunately, many of the blessings are not remembered. I'd like to share with you two of those events.

A girl who belonged to the Unification Church.

Mrs. Lee's niece (17 years old), who supported Pastor Lee as the axis of the church, came from Korea and stayed at her house for a while.

She was married to a Swiss-born husband but had no children of her own. The girl had been a member of a Korean art troupe called Little Angels and had a great talent. 

In high school, she entered a famous music and art high school and majored in "Kayagum," an instrument similar to the Japanese harp. In Switzerland, she wanted to study the harp.

I was inspired to study at a medical school in Korea by the Unification Church. I had been at the doctors' dormitory in Tokyo for two months.

I was very much impressed with the purity of the people and their personalities, but the only thing I could not accept was that Moon Song Myung claimed to be the resurrected Jesus, so I said goodbye to them. I have already told you that I was able to study in Korea after meeting Mrs. Cha-Yun-Soon.

If you once become a believer, you will eventually be matched with a marriage partner by Moon Song Myung and encouraged to get married as a group. You will finally be brainwashed into believing that Moon Song Myung is the Jesus of the Second Coming..

We all wondered how to deal with this specific situation in a foreign country, Switzerland, but we could not find a solution. We did not have the expertise to persuade her with theory, and even if we had tried to reason with her, we could not imagine how difficult it would be. We had no choice but to continue to pray together. It seemed as if nothing would happen. However, a few weeks before we left for Brazil, we received the good news that she had decided not to become a member of the Unification Church, and she began to come to the Korean church for weekly services. We could do nothing but pray, but we knew that the Holy Spirit had worked wonderfully directly on her soul and guided her at such a time.

“Unforeseen accident of my second son, Yoshiyuki”

In the newspaper, I saw the headline, "Are there any Japanese families willing to offer free Japanese group lessons to Swiss youth?"

I contacted them immediately and opened my home every Saturday.

Michio and I taught Japanese to foreigners for the first time. We had never had a chance to meet the local people, so we had a great time every week. The children seemed to enjoy playing with the young men and women.

On Saturday, after the lesson was over, we were all relaxing. 

Michio lifted our second son high above his head to play with him when his hand accidentally slipped and Yoshiyuki fell head-first to the floor.

Blood was dripping from my son's mouth as he cried loudly. 

His front teeth seemed to be broken. The young men from Switzerland immediately sent a car to take us to the emergency room of a hospital in the city. Fortunately, our son was conscious and he didn’t develop acute epidural hematoma, which could have occurred a few days later.

However, his mouth gradually became worse. It seemed that he had developed a bacterial infection. I immediately took him to the dentist, who prescribed antibiotics. The effect was remarkable and the odor was completely gone. The dentist advised, "Since the front teeth are baby teeth, you should feed him hard apples so that his teeth will fall out." 

However, I read in a book that even if it is a baby tooth, if it is removed too early, a gap will form and the teeth will become misaligned, so it is better to preserve it as long as possible.

We asked people at the prayer meeting to pray for us. Our prayer request was that the tooth could hold on as long as possible before extracting it. Some people thought that it would be better if we didn't pray so much because it was a baby tooth, but we decided to wait a little longer and ask for a second opinion. If they said it would be better to take out the wobbly front tooth, then we decided to pull it. Until then, we asked for united prayers for protection.

Two months later, we took him to another pediatric dentist and he said, "You can preserve this one. Please take good care of it". 

We were grateful that God had healed him so much.

We gave glory to the Lord.

God always answers our prayers. 

What a blessing it is that we can speak out our thoughts, wishes, worries, anxieties, and even complaints without hesitation. 

We should never forget to give thanks to God who has done so much for us.

However, prayer does not mean magic, nor does it mean achieving one's wishes. 

I have often said that prayer is a dialogue with God. 

I would keep in mind that there are times when I had to change direction.  God has reminded me that I am not praying correctly.

As Christmas approached, at our usual Japanese lesson with the group of young people, two of them were absent for some reason.

After a while, the bell rang and we opened the door to find a red and black Santa Claus standing there with a big sack. 

Needless to say, the children were excited and cheered with joy. Anyway, we asked them to come inside. It was the young men who had told us they would be absent who surprised us with their disguises. They gave us this memory to express their gratitude. It was truly the best Christmas gift we had in Switzerland.

God sometimes puts a stop to our plans. But that doesn't mean denial, nor do we give up because it is impossible.

We will eventually learn that God's "time" is always right.

Let us go forward trusting in God!