Answered prayers but the storm prevails
September 2024
I just have to let you know, there was a typhoon in Japan in late August, causing huge rainfall where we lived. We weren’t getting any of the strong winds but other parts of Japan were getting hammered. Possibly due to the typhoon, and also due to being close to the rice harvest (ie, we were at the end of last year’s supply), Japan ended up with a rice shortage.
I don’t know if people were panic buying, or just buying to be prepared. Whatever the case, there was rice in the supermarket on Friday, and when I went on Tuesday the shelves were bare.
Please understand, that the rice section in the Japanese supermarkets aren’t small like the ones in Australia, but more like the cereal isle in an Aussie supermarket - long and loaded! So to see the entire section completely bare was quite a shock.
I felt sorry for the Japanese, but I wasn’t upset for myself in the least! (Have I mentioned I’m so over eating rice??!!)
Instead, like a well experienced Aussie, I went straight to the bathroom/laundry isle and grabbed, you guessed it: toilet paper!
While I carried my pack of toilet paper through the rain across the carpark and over to the car, I was also carrying something else. Burdens. Heavy burdens for the aged-care centre. It appeared God didn’t want the place to close down, but how could it stay open? How could it get out of the financial misery it was in and become financially viable? HOW?
Shujin’s cousin would be stepping in as manager, relieving Shujin of the duties, but somehow we still carried a sense of responsibility, an interest in the place so that we couldn’t just leave it and walk away.
“God, speak to us. Send us a dream or vision. Let us know if there’s anything we can do.”
A few days later, in the quiet of the night after the kids were in bed, Shujin filled me in on his day. It had been a wild weekend, not just weather-wise but also work-wise too. Ideas getting messaged back and forth all weekend between him, his cousin and uncle. By the time Monday rolled around he was exhausted, and the working week had only just begun!
At the staff meeting that day the cousin was introduced as the new manager and the announcement was made that the staff were all going to get sacked due to the financial situation of the aged-care centre. While they were in the meeting, a staff member received an email from a friend. The staff member read it after the meeting.
I’ve just been reading my Bible. I was reading the story about Paul having a vision of a man from Macedonia needing help and pleading for Paul to come help him. Then I had a vision of your manager needing help. God told me, “Shujin is the man from Macedonia. He needs your help. Help him.”
Tell your manager I will send some funds to help him and the aged-care centre.
Wait-up, she had a vision? God didn’t send Shujin or I, or even his cousin a vision, but He sent one to a seemingly random person! Amazing!
The funds weren’t going to permanently provide a solution, but they would sure help to pay the wages and bills for next month! (And the dear elderly resident-come-Board-member who had offered her precious savings could now keep them.)
God was really doing a lot of answering to our prayers!
But this was only the beginning!
In the middle of the night my sleep was interrupted by cold feet and a swollen bladder.
How novel to need a light blanket!
We’d been sleeping with just a sheet for what felt like months.
I got up to get a blanket, draped it over Shujin’s feet (‘cause if I was cold, he would certainly be too) and crept through the dark house to the toilet. After relieving my bladder, I crawled back into bed and I sensed that Shujin was awake. I felt bad for waking him, but soon found out he’d been awake for awhile and was having trouble sleeping. Again.
Carrying the burdens, still, of having to let the staff go, his heart was feeling pained and heavy. So he prayed. Possibly for hours. He lay in bed, praying if it really was the right decision to sack the staff. Was there another way?
While I drifted back to sleep, sleep would not come to Shujin, so pray it was.
The next afternoon Shujin phoned me. His cousin had just decided that it might be good to keep the carer staff after all. If they were willing to work hard, they would be rewarded for getting extra off-site clients with bonuses. If they were slack they might have to forfeit their pay until they can build up the clientele and make money.
They put the idea to the staff. Everyone was onboard, even the ones close to retirement that didn’t want the hard jobs previously and would knock them back (“no, I don’t want to go out to change a nappy.”)
This was an absolute answer to prayer for Shujin who had been feeling so bad to have all the staff laid off. While Shujin was rejoicing in this though, storms were really brewing in other areas.
Shujin had agreed to stay on for 2 months, volunteer unpaid work, as a means of supporting his cousin and giving one last effort to help save the place from closing.
The more he stayed on though, the harder it got.
Miscommunications, misunderstandings, mistreatments, different ways of thinking, different ways of working, different everything! The mental and emotional tolls. There was one almighty storm and Shujin persisted to cling on, to try keep helping out because that’s how he wanted to show his support and that was keeping his word.
Shujin had been willing to work for 2 months unpaid, but could he even last that long?