Hita Update 2022
By: Steve Headland
Back in the summer of 1992, during our first few days in Hita, Japan, I knelt on the woven straw floor of our apartment with my Bible open to 1 Corinthians 2:1-5:
“When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”
In the margin of my Bible I wrote, “This is what we need in Hita!”. And then I prayed, “God if we are going to reach the people of Hita, it’s going to have to happen through a demonstration of your Spirit’s power. Please would you use us somehow to demonstrate your power to these people.”
Over the past 30 years, as Ruth and I have continued to pray this prayer, we have also done what we can, year after year, sharing Jesus with so many people, knowing that none of our words would fail to have an effect. And so we have seen results—sometimes small, and sometimes not so small, always knowing that God’s word never fails to do its work.
Over the past 3 years, as Covid closures prevented us from traveling to Japan, we continued to wonder and pray what would happen to all those seeds we’d planted. So when Japan opened its borders 3 months ago, my son Kael and I immediately bought tickets.
“What would happen?” I wondered. “Would we be received back warmly? Would the seeds we’ve planted still be growing?” What we found was that more than ever before, people wanted to meet with us to hear about spiritual things. What’s more, because so many of them had heard of the health problem I’d faced, they all wanted to know how I’d gotten through it. And so I shared with person after person, the testimony of the goodness of the Lord to me during that entire health ordeal. And so, once again I got to see God’s sovereignty in using all things to work together for good (Romans 8:28). In fact, although I was only able to be there for one week, that week was the most effective seven-day period I’ve had in the 30 years we’ve been working there.
AND WHAT’S NEXT?
One of my reasons for this trip was to see if our Japanese team still wants to continue our summer program. As I talked with so many of them about it, they not only said they want us to continue, but I was told more than once, “Hita needs it!”.
You can find out more about our summer camps in Japan at www.hitacamp.com .
