NAKANDAKARIS, NORIMI, TWO SPECIAL SUNDAYS

I wonder if Daddy would've been allowed to peer over the battlements of Heaven to see 8/24's baptism?

Because of some sensationalism and dramatization on TV, a lot of people have gotten  desensitized to the exceptional even when it happens in real life. What happened here...what's the big deal, they might say. But when you think about it, it's incredible.

That's probably why I've found myself talking about it several times. It's NOT just a fun fairy tale to relate. Over 60 years ago, young ladies by the last name of Nakandakari left the Uken village where there was no church to fellowship for the young people. They came to a tiny church started in a former public bathhouse in Shuri, about an hour south.

Started by missionaries Roy and Kimiko Oshiro, the ones who had come to their village with the Gospel in answer to the earnest prayer of a converted leper. In continued answer to that prayer, several years later, God used the U.S. military to donate a quonset hut so the believers there would have a church (sketched from memory above) there a few years later as well.

The Nakandakari sisters got married and ended up leading their children to salvation. When her oldest daughter Norimi came to visit Daddy in the hospital, she was a mother herself and had led her sons to Christ. Of course Daddy had no idea who she was, but she considered him the family's "lifesaver" since it was missionary Oshiro who was instrumental in getting spiritual life to her mother, who taught about it to her, who then relayed it to her sons.

I still remember when Daddy was sick and weak, He just wanted to go to Heaven. But God seemed to have a little more work for him to do, because He kept him around for just a little longer.

After Norimi's visit to the hospital, Daddy went to a nursing home, and Norimi came to visit again, this time with the mother who'd been saved about 60 years ago as well as her father. At that time, the father was not a Christian.

The next time I heard about this family, Norimi's recurring cancer gave cause for concern, but her father found Christ, giving us cause to rejoice! Also, one of Norimi's sons, Sammy, who'd been in his teens when she visited Daddy in the hospital, finished his training in the U.S.  and came to preach for us at  Gushikawa Baptist Church last month.

Then to top it all off, it seemed we were losing Norimi's father to senility, but recently, he pulled back mentally. So Norimi's parents were baptized Sunday, Aug. 24!

...which means Norimi's mom waited and prayed over half a century after she found salvation for her husband to become a Christian too before she could get baptized?!