We had great plans for a December outreach. We invited couples whose weddings I’d officiated in 2008 to our home in Sapporo to experience American Christmas.
It was a big stretch, inviting people we didn’t know well. But that was OK. We had 25 couples to invite and wanted just three or four to visit our space-impaired apartment. And we thought it would encourage people to come since we, like them, were celebrating our “first married Christmas.”
But then the date of the party drew close and not even one couple had RSVP’d. We had bought turkey and all the fixings, no small investment in Japan! We just needed a few guests.
We prayed and decided to try Plan B. . .
Just five days before the party we began inviting a new set of friends, hoping somebody would show up.
The day of the party arrived and nine friends came.
It seems our “Plan B” was God’s first choice all along. We had a great time celebrating Christmas with new Christians and their family members, like Koichiro, a 38 year-old construction foreman whose wife, Yukari, recently believed and decided to get baptized.
At the party I asked Koichiro what he thought of Yukari’s upcoming baptism. “I don’t like it,” he responded bluntly. Toshie, a friend whose husband got baptized a year ago quickly joined the conversation. “I didn’t really like it when my husband decided to get baptized,” she told Koichiro, making the understatement of the year. She threatened her husband with divorce when he decided to get baptized.
“But now it’s not so bad,” Toshie told Koichiro. “I go to worship so I can go shopping with my husband afterward. Sometimes I think maybe the worship is good for me psychologically, too.”
“You sound like you’re almost Christian!” Koichiro said, half joking, half accusing.
“No! No! No!!” Toshie countered. “I’m non-religious. REALLY!!”
It was fun to listen to their conversation, and to see others, including Toshie’s mom and Yasuko, a friend from English class last summer, intrigued by Toshie’s endorsement of the church and faith she used to dislike. It was good to see God at work in a way that was very different from what Wakako and I had originally planned for this party.
Just after Christmas Koichiro came to church to see Yukari’s baptism. He listened intently as Yukari and two others shared how Jesus Christ has blessed their lives with healing, hope and salvation.
When things don’t go as planned in the year ahead I want to remember our December party. I want to remember that sometimes our Plan A is merely a step in discovering God’s much better plans.
