THEY'RE BLOOMING AGAIN!

Recently, the associate pastor of a church I fellowshipped with in Tokyo came down to speak in several churches in Okinawa, and I took an online peek at one of his meetings. I recognized the Pastors as some of the young staff members of my first mission school!

On my younger sister's prodding, I'd recently been gathering writing I'd done in Japanese about my own childhood, including many memories at Okinawa Christian School. I didn't write anything about the time OCS was still in only quonset huts in Camp Kue--after all, I was only in kindergarten then--but my sister's teacher, Mrs. Cherry, saw Joyce's potential and had her start reading in kindergarten so that she needed only the 1st semester of 1st grade, the 2nd semester of 2nd grade. This love of reading helped her, I think, do well in Okinawa's Spelling Bee years later. I found something scrapbooked (the old church name and address can be displayed because the place had been torn down since.)

Whew. After several hours' writing, I decided to take a break, and on the way back from the kitchen, I noticed the flowers. It had been something the church folks sent home with Joyce to cheer me up for Mother's Day--a pot of orchids--and Kinya had made sure the plant got water and sun because he knew I would let it die. Even after his heartfelt efforts, all the flowers fell off, I saw sadly, and I'd stopped looking in the direction of the plant...until that moment. THERE WERE THREE FLOWERS BLOOMING AGAIN!

It had been just one year. But I was ecstatic. The memory about OCS and the Spelling Bee had been over 50 years. But they gave me a really warm feeling I can't explain either. No wonder scripture says one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day. God doesn't measure things in the same way either, does He?