For the Establishment of Zion in Hiroshima

In summer 2018, western Japan had a series of disasters. There were lots of victims caused by earthquakes, volcano eruptions, scorching heat, and so on. Particularly, Hiroshima suffered a huge damage by the unprecedented heavy rain.

Hiroshima is the largest city in the Chugoku and Shikoku regions in western Japan. As we know, it is also the very first place where an atomic bomb was dropped. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, which was the only building left among the buildings damaged by the atomic bomb, still has traces of black fallout and radioactivity rain on its outer wall and plainly shows the horrors of the war even after seventy years.

In order to establish the kingdom of God in Hiroshima as soon as possible, the members in western Japan became one. By the support of the members from the Osaka, the Kyoto, and the Fukuoka Churches, a short-term mission team of twenty-two members was formed and preached God’s message for four days.

On the first day of the short-term mission, Heavenly Mother gave us the words of abundant blessing, which was definitely needed for the gospel work in Hiroshima. The members who were filled with the Holy Spirit were so eager to find all our lost heavenly family members and to establish Zion; they went out to preach before they even unpacked their baggage.

Actually, in the back of our faith that everything will go well since we’ve received the blessing of God, we were a bit worried, not only because of the short period of time given to us, but also because of our past memories about the slow speed of the gospel work in Japan. Furthermore, the choking heat and extremely high humidity tried to break our eagerness from the first day. We were sweating so much even when we were just standing in the cloudless weather. But the members became even stronger under the difficult conditions.

“If we bear fruit by overcoming hardships, it feels more valuable. We feel thankful for this weather because we can keenly realize the sacrifice and love of our Father and Mother.”

There was a good result when we took a step of preaching with a thankful mind. God allowed us to bear fruit from the first day. It is difficult to meet someone who receives the truth right away because most Japanese do not believe in God. We could feel God’s blessing was with us.

Also on the second day, we diligently went out to deliver the gospel. The extreme heat seemed like nothing to us. Meanwhile, we met a young male adult near the lodging. When we delivered the news about the Passover, he showed interest about how to be protected by God, saying that he was scared of disasters that were recently occurring in Japan. The next day, he studied the words of God more and participated in the Third-day service. The brother was amazed at the prophecies of the Bible. He even prepared the Bible himself and showed his fervor to study continually.

When the short-term mission was about to end, one young female adult postponed an appointment with her friend to receive the blessing of a new life.

Thanks to God’s prayer and support, we shared happiness, thinking God granted fruits to all of us, instead of thinking whose fruit it was. That way, the short-term mission in Hiroshima ended. We were happy but at the same time it was not easy for us to leave the new brothers and sisters alone in Hiroshima. We could understand why the Korean members who came to Japan for the short-term mission said, “We will surely come back,” whenever they were leaving.

The short-term mission participants in Hiroshima had realized the same thing. It was that preaching wakes up not only other souls but ours, too. We’ve realized the love of God, who granted the preaching mission to us in order to save His children one by one, and we keep preaching fervently even after returning to our churches. The fervor is going to spread throughout Hiroshima again. It is because the number of members, who want to receive the blessing by establishing the Hiroshima Zion, is increasing gradually. We look forward to the future gospel work in Hiroshima. We are praying hard and waiting to hear the news from the Hiroshima Church soon.