About fourteen years ago, when we were living in Okazaki in Aichi Prefecture, and BB (Before Beans), I had to go to the city hall to get my foreigner's card updated. A burly yakuza (Japanese mafia) guy walked in with a group of Filipino teenage girls, and he was holding all their passports. Right away I knew something was wrong. I sat down next to the girls and started talking to them quietly, and the one next to me grabbed my hand. Her name was Laika, and the girl on the other side of her was Sada. (I will never forget their names.) Laika started crying and continued to hold on to my hand, and I tried to think how I could help them. I had never researched human trafficking in Japan, but I could see the evils of it right there in the city hall.
A little while later I slipped away to the bathroom, where I wrote my name and my mobile number on a tiny piece of paper with the intent of slipping it to Laika when the yakuza guy wasn't looking. But when I came out, they had all left. I was bereft, feeling like I had failed and had no clue what to do next. I started researching human trafficking and learned way more than I actually wanted to know--it's heartbreaking. And at the same time, I couldn't find anyone who was fighting it in Japan (there was one group in Tokyo, something with "Asia" in the title--I can't totally remember it, but the human trafficking part of it wasn't their main focus). (A few years later I learned about Lighthouse Japan and now I also know that Not For Sale has a Japan office now too.) From my research, I knew that Human Rights Watch lists Japan up there with some of the worst offenders, with the police and government officials turning a blind eye. The government even encourages it with special "entertainer" visas, and the girls are told that they will enter Japan to marry a Japanese man or to have a proper job, only to find out they are trapped and it's much worse than they thought.
So all these years, I've waited, prayed, cried, asked around, and wondered how I could eventually step in and help in some way.
Recently, through a friend's friend, I've been put in touch with a lady named Bonnie in Tokyo, who is an English teacher, married to a Japanese man, and has been here many years. She's a leader of a group called Salt & Light that raises awareness of and prays against human trafficking in Tokyo. They sometimes pray in the red-light area of Shibuya. Bonnie and I have been emailing back and forth quite a lot, and then she introduced me by email to a man named Willem in South Africa, who used to be part of the Salt and Light group when he lived in Tokyo. He's got some amazingly miraculous stories from his times of prayer walking in the many places he's lived around the world with his diplomatic job.
Both Bonnie and Willem have been extremely encouraging and supportive, and it has confirmed something that I was already feeling in my spirit about possibly walking around Kanazawa and praying and looking and discerning.
Along comes Laila from Norway! I went to Hope House on Sunday, October 14, already feeling a stirring in my spirit about this prayer-walking thing. I knew that there were going to be some visiting Norwegian missionaries, and when Laila gave her testimony of living and working in Pakistan for thirty years as a nurse and midwife, and marrying a Pakistani, I was very touched. But then...THEN...at the end of her talk, Laila looked at all of us and said the Lord had a message for someone there. She didn't know whom it was for, or what it was about, but the exact words he had given her were "Rise up and walk!" I almost jumped out of my seat! I had been living in fear about starting the prayer walking and this was just the jumpstart that I needed.
I practically hopped to the front at the end of the service to tell everyone about what was going on with me, and gave a tiny bit of background about my heart for those trafficked in Japan, then asked if anyone would want to join me in the prayer walking. Sophia, a newly-arrived short-term missionary from Norway, then practically hopped up to me afterwards to excitedly say that YES, she wants to come too! (She told me later that she had goose bumps from the Holy Spirit.)
(The photo below is yours truly, Gunn (a long-term missionary who works at Hope House), Laila in the middle (she was only here for one week), Sophia in the red flowered dress, and Torrell, another lady from Norway who had come with Laila for the week.)
Fast forward four days to October 18, and that morning I was making breakfast and praying that God would give me "God's eyes" for when I started prayer walking. Lo and behold, I looked on Facebook a little bit later and a young missionary friend in the Osaka area, Rachel, had written about prayer walking in a dodgy area of Osaka and was asking for "God-eyes."
That same day, the 18th, I received a letter in the mail from my Japanese grandma's "baby" sister (she's eleven years younger than Yoko san), Izumi san. In it, she had written Matthew 5:13-16 about us being salt and light. Salt and Light! It went right along with what I'd been hearing from Bonnie and Willem.
Last Saturday evening about 8 PM, I was sitting all tucked up on the couch with my lap blanket and a book, and I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me about going out to prayer walk. It was so cold and rainy, and I said no. And then felt like crap the rest of the night because I knew it had been God speaking to me.
So this past week I messaged Sophia and asked her if she'd like to go tonight (Saturday) and she was excited to do so. I picked her up this evening about 7:00 and drove to the biggest entertainment district in Kanazawa, called Katamachi. Of course it's nothing like a big city's, and Katamachi has legitimate family-friendly establishments in between the raunchy stuff, but after walking around a few minutes, I was actually shocked at the amount of dodgy places that there are. I don't usually go out at night, and if I do, it's with our family and we go get a curry at Aashirwad or Nanahoshi, neither of which has creepy stuff right near it. But just walking around Katamachi during the day doesn't give you a sense of the scope of the nightlife because none of the garish lights are turned on. The photos of the girls don't show up as much.
Tonight Sophia and I both felt the heaviness in our spirits from the junk around us.
As we went down one side street, I was praying that God's light would shine through the darkness, and through the darkness of my own heart as well. And just as I said that aloud, we popped out onto a main road and saw this heart window:
Here we are! (Can you tell which one is the Norwegian and doesn't mind cooler temps and which one is the Floridian?)
There was a building on one corner that Sophia said we just couldn't pass by. She felt too heavy to continue. It was windowless and about eight stories high, with a blue light shining up on it. We saw a group of young guys go in, and I saw three young ladies go in wearing high heels, big hair and makeup, short skirts. The ground floor said it was Paradise Bar, but we don't know what's in the rest of the building. We stood kind of behind it on a side street, looking at it and praying for a while. Sophia prayed for freedom for those inside, and as we prayed I saw a vision of the building itself collapsing in a heap of rubble. If it's a dodgy business, or businesses (plural), I hope it does collapse and that everyone inside, captors and captives, can be released into Goodness.
I sang some old praise songs along way, some of them remembered from childhood, and Sophia taught me the lyrics of one that they sing in Norwegian (she kindly translated into English for me).
We both felt the need to say the name of Jesus a lot, and so we did just that. He's really all we need.
I had to stop to use the facilities in a convenience store and while waiting in line for the loo, a tall man dressed in drag and looking very dejected was searching for something to snack on. When I came out of the bathroom, he was just exiting the store and we turned down the same side street as him. I saw him go up into a building that was eight floors high with dodgy bars, and as I saw the elevator close with him in it, I prayed. I hope he meets Jesus--I could sense an overwhelming sadness in him.
On another side street, I saw this bottle discarded on the side of the road and felt God's spirit lead me to pick it up. He spoke to me: To everyone walking by, that empty bottle is trash, useless. To Me, it is just in flux and can be recycled into something even better. Pick it up. Hold it. Take care of it.
Which just reminded me of the folks trapped in trafficking. They're all victims in some way--no matter if they are perpetrating the crimes or are the obvious victims. On the outside looking in, we might judgmentally assume their lives can't get any better, but God is on the inside and knows the full story. He doesn't make any trash.
We got back to the car and a deep deep bubble of joy sprang up in me and I laughed and laughed! It was really not what I was expecting, and it turns out that Sophia and I both expected to cry a lot on this walking journey tonight. We actually didn't cry at all.
We want to continue this prayer walking on a regular basis, so if you feel called, please pray along with us, wherever you are.
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