By ANDREW MCCHESNEY, Adventist Mission
Li Fengyan’s cellphone rang sharply.
“Mom, I am miserable,” said the voice on the other end. It was Fengyan’s daughter-in-law, Yang-yang. She was crying hysterically. “My life is so hard. I don’t know what to do.”
Worried, Fengyan brought Yang-yang to her home, and the two began to talk. Yang-yang spoke of hearing voices that commanded her to act violently. “I want to beat people. I want to kill people,” Yang-yang said. “Hide your knives. If I just see a knife, I will kill someone.”
Fengyan called her pastor at the Tokyo Chinese Seventh-day Adventist Church. Pastor Yu Chuanfu was leading the evening prayer meeting, but he came to her home and prayed and read the Bible with Yang-yang.
Yang-yang liked the prayers and the Bible, and she began to read the Bible regularly as she stayed with her mother-in-law for a while. She also read books by Ellen G. White. The voices ceased, and she started to smile. She started to attend Sabbath services at the Tokyo Chinese church.
Yang-yang’s husband was amazed at the change in his wife. He started going to church with her and his mother. A year later, they were baptized.
Then Yang-yang’s own mother fell ill, and doctors didn’t know what to do. Yang-yang asked church members to pray. She told her mother to throw away the family’s Buddhist idol and trust God instead. As the church members prayed, her mother made a miraculous recovery.
“Before the prayers, her mother did not believe in Jesus,” Fengyan said. “But after the prayers, she believes in God.”
The mother got rid of the idol and, several months later, she and her husband were baptized. And that’s not all. Yang-yang and Fengyan have been telling relatives back in China about God, and several have started attending Adventist churches there.
Fengyan, 53, credits God and the Tokyo Chinese church for the transformation of her family. “Every Sabbath we have a place to worship,” she said. Eight people have been baptized into the Tokyo Chinese church because of her influence.
The Tokyo Chinese church, the only Chinese-speaking Adventist church in Japan, opened with about five members in 2012 through the support of a Thirteenth Sabbath Offering. Today, the church is overflowing with 50 members and is planning to double the size of its sanctuary.
“Pray for us as we grow,” Pastor Yu said.