The Sunday school class that changed my life

Thirty years ago in 1995, Barbara Wolke, a missionary with the German Alliance Mission (GAM) was on home assignment with her husband, Günther, and together they visited churches in Germany to talk about their ministry and God’s work in Japan.

At one particular church, whilst Günther preached to the adults, Barbara came into the Sunday school class. She taught four Japanese greetings: おはようございます (good morning), こんにちは (good day), こんばんは (good evening), and おやすみなさい (good night). Next, she told the story of an ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) patient named Ishikawa-san. He was in his fifties when the illness started. They started to visit him and told him about Jesus. He was saved, prepared for baptism, and baptized in his bed. At that time, he could not talk anymore, and they communicated via a syllable alphabet chart, and he winked his eye when the syllable came he wanted to use.

At least one girl in the class was mesmerized by that story. At the end, Barbara said, “I won’t be able to continue this work forever. The question is, who will continue this kind of work when I retire?” The little girl, age 10 or 11, thought, Maybe that’s me!

After her report, Barbara asked who had remembered the four greetings; somehow, there was only one girl. Barbara gave her a Japanese stand-up doll, saying, “Look, you can play with it when math homework is boring.” She showed that when pushed down, the doll would stand up again by itself.

The girl didn’t follow up any of this and rather forgot about it, but God didn’t forget.

Backstories

Wolkes

The Wolkes traveled to Japan in 1980, studied Japanese at Nanzan University, then worked for two years in a church with a Japanese pastor. After their first home assignment, they went to Oyamada (Mie Prefecture) at the request of the Japanese denominational leadership. For the first five years, they lived in a normal detached house. The largest room became the church. In 1991, they added a chapel to the house, and when that became too small in 2001, they built a large building in Hoshimigaoka. The congregation started with two people, Günther and Barbara, and grew to about 60 members by the time they left in 2012. In 2008 the large church building was already debt-free.

Ishikawa-san

Ishikawa-san, the ALS patient, later got a special PC which was triggered by minimal movement. He was able to write about his life. A reporter from a Christian newspaper came to interview Ishikawa-san, and this led to an agreement to write a book about his life. At first, they planned to do it from his notes, but Ishikawa-san communicated that he wanted to write the manuscript himself. It took him an enormous amount of strength, but the book was finished. It is called Shiawase no Kaze (しあわせの風, Winds of Happiness) and was published by Word of Life Press in 1995. In July 2002, his funeral was held in a large church in Nagoya.

The little girl

And the little girl at that Sunday school class? She became a GAM missionary and came to Japan for the first time in 2013, one year after Barbara had retired. God’s timing is perfect. Since I met Barbara as a child, I’ve moved many times, but the little stand-up doll is still next to my desk.

Photo submitted by author