Moving From Tokyo to Sapporo

Not knowing what to expect, but with a great deal of prayer and hope, Debbie and I made the move to Sapporo city, the largest city north of Tokyo.  We drove north to Hachinohe where we loaded our car onto a ferry bound for Tomakomai, a port city on Hokkaido island.  Trying to save a little money, we stayed in the general passengers section with our new baby girl for the eight hour ferry ride.  One funny thing on the ride was that Marcia started crying either because she was tired or wanted to be fed and would not stop no matter what we tried.  The passengers were beginning to get a little irritated at her crying and some of the crew members were especially frustrated, wondering what they could do with the "gaijin" (foreigners) and their crying baby.  As a result, they quickly decided to give us a private room away from the general deck, if we would just move her out of there so things could quiet down.  Everything calmed down again and we were back to normal.  We never could convince our friends that we didn't try to "pinch" our little baby to make her cry on purpose.  But we did count it a great blessing to have a room to rest in.

    In Sapporo, one of our first challenges was finding a place to live.  We found a small house in Nishioka where we lived for one year as we adjusted to the new city, got to know our co-workers, the Steve Hasbrouck family and the Billy Smith family, and met other church members as well as our new neighbors.

   That first year in Sapporo, a young Japanese Christian man and his Christian fiancee we had met in Tokyo, called to ask me to perform their wedding in Sapporo.  It was actually the first and only wedding I've ever performed as an evangelist.  But I was especially happy about Bro. Kuwabayashi's wedding because he was the son of a Buddhist priest who had become a Christian and wanted to have a Christian wedding.  So I did my best to brush up on my Japanese marriage vocabulary so that things would go smoothly.  We were happy that they were able to establish a home in the Lord.
   We also got to experience our first big snow during the winter in Sapporo, something which was to become normal for us for the next nine years.  The Hasbroucks decided to go on furlough the following year and asked if we could move into their house in Kitano in October of 1981.  We didn't know at the time that this would become the place we would live the longest during our stay in Sapporo.

Thoughts After 33 Years in Japan

Bill Carrell family -about 1957

Thinking back over the past 33 years as missionaries in Japan, I'm reminded of what great hopes we had upon our arrival and how little we knew of what lay ahead for us.  I believe the Lord guided us from the beginning of our adventure to find sponsors all along the way, support from various sources just when it was needed, friends to help and care for us as we traveled from place to place, and guidance from His word as we tried to spread His message in Japan.
    We began our adventure at the Tachikawa Church of Christ in western Tokyo.  It was the congregation where I had been baptized as a boy at the age of 12.  Learning Kanji (the Japanese written language) and spoken adult Japanese (since I had grown up learning some as a boy) were my first priorities.  That first year in 1979, both Debbie and I tried to find out what was needed in Japan and had a wonderful opportunity to have 3 other missionaries and their families to help us get started. Bro. Lee Bulls had arrived in 1973 and the Albright and McMillen families had arrived in 1977 before our arrival.  Dwight Albright and Darrel McMillen had just finished language study and Lee Bulls was the "senior missionary" upon our arrival in March, 1979.

CAJ Steve's 2nd Grade 1958

    We chose to live in Hachioji while we worked with the Tachikawa church, also commuting to Iidabashi in downtown Tokyo for Japanese language study at the Lutheran Center.  Those were the only formal language study classes Debbie and I have had in Japan.  At Christmas time that year, we were invited to Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido to visit the Hasbrouck family.  In my childhood, I had attended Christian Academy in Japan (a school for missionary children) from first grade through ninth grade.  Steve Hasbrouck's wife, Marcia (Smith) had also gone to CAJ, so her family and mine had been friends from long ago.  The Hasbroucks had asked if we might consider moving to Hokkaido to work with them.  After much prayer and discussion, we decided that it would be good to do so.
    Our daughter was born in July, 1980 in Higashi Murayama (Tokyo) and was only 3 months old when we packed up to move to Hokkaido in October of that year.  We ended up spending the next 10 years in Hokkaido.  Later 2 years in Ibaraki, a year in the States, then 14 years at Tachikawa, and we're into our 5th year now in Matsudo.  But that's it for this edition of our adventure.  We'll save the "rest of the story" for another time.