You may remember Yoshi's husband Seiko as my Dad's cousin who went swimming in the Uken river with him when they were 5th graders. Grampa had sent the family from Canada to Okinawa during the Depression. He asked the relatives on the island to keep them while he worked alone in Canada; he would send notice when he became financially able to care for them. (They were very wealthy and able to do this quite easily.). He wrote letters regularly and sent support.
After 2 years, Grampa called for the family, so Daddy returned and had the rest of his education in Canada, but that's why when he got saved he had such a burden for his relatives in Okinawa: he had lived with and loved them. It was a strong conviction that somebody had to tell them about God’s love! If he didn't do it, who would? And the clearest image of "them" was this "Seiko Oshiro" (no relation of the Seiko watch), the husband of Yoshi.
There is so much to tell about Seiko Ojisan (Uncle). The woman Uncle Seiko married, ended up being summoned by the demons to become a priestess in the island’s ancestor worship system (the spirits actually chose and called those they wanted to be priests, it seems). They terrorized her until she met the God-Man Jesus, and our co-worker Edna Princell encouraged her to cling to Him and command the spirits in His Name to leave her alone. From that day, she was free of them. So Yoshi was gloriously saved—and everyone in the village knew about it. It was unshakable testimony of the power of the Blood!
Uncle Seiko saw this. He was one of the unbelievers who helped build the first Uken church. He let his wife come and bring his children.
But salvation has to be a personal thing: it has to be you, not just your wife and children. Uncle Seiko knew this. He’d heard it so many times. We had prayer meetings in the old wooden house.
This is a detour in memory, but a fellow MK came to a few of these meetings and would catch some insects on the house eaves. He’d press their tummies to get them to buzz, and we’d mischievously keep ourselves occupied that way during some of the adults’ long talks. I remember too when I played the portable organ and the wind kept blowing the hymn page shut, how Uncle Seiko noticed, walked over quietly, and put his lighter against the page to hold it open.
I was still in high school then and determined to pray for Uncle Seiko’s salvation from that day on. He was sitting in church one day when we began singing about heaven. The lyrics talked about looking around and seeing all the faces…and when it hit me Uncle Seiko’s wouldn’t be there, I couldn’t sing anymore but cried the rest of the song.
Why wouldn’t he get saved? It seemed to be one thing after another. Building a house. Taking care of a health problem. A big purchase in the making. An important meeting coming up.
“Uncle, when are you going to believe?”
“Oh, sometime…”
My younger sister took care of Uncle Seiko’s oldest daughter’s child in the U.S. a few years ago. His younger daughter is a hairdresser, and we go to her shop whenever we visit the island. His son however, one day got him in hot water. When under the influence of alcohol. He gambled away family property that had been in the Oshiro name for generations, bringing shame to Seiko Oshiro before the rest of the clan.
However, God’s wisdom is astounding. Being disdained by relatives was, it seemed, what Uncle Seiko needed to shake him up and convince him of God’s unconditional love. He was finally saved.
I found the next time we were in church singing about Heaven, I could sing and cry for a very different reason.UNCLE SEIKO WOULD BE THERE!
And as I mentioned before, Uncle Seiko came faithfully to church every chance he could get after that, even when most of his hearing failed and you had to sit next to him and shout in his ear for him to hear you. He came, he said, to support the preacher and well, just because it seemed the right thing to do.
Uncle Seiko doesn’t need his old lighter anymore. We don’t have meetings in his backyard anymore, and besides, we haven’t used that portable organ in quite a while either.
