Somehow one way or another, the subject of Japan often comes up in conversations without me being able to remember how it happened. And maybe the question I love most is “How did you know God was calling you to go to Japan?” or some variation of those words.

For some reason this subject has come up more than usual the past few weeks. First, I had a medical massage appointment with someone I’d never met. We were talking about where we’d each lived, I think, and I mentioned that we’d lived in Mercer County for years and years except when we went to Japan as missionaries.

Then I laughed and said, “Not something we’d ever thought we’d do!”

My massage therapist said, “I was just going to ask what made you decide to go to Japan as missionaries?”

And so the story started, “Well, first of all, I pretty much stopped sleeping at night…”

Jenna was a captive audience but her responses to God’s intervention in my life made it obvious that she was interested and captivated by my story. My goal is always that people will realize that we serve a God who speaks if we will listen and obey.

A week or two later, we were visiting our oldest grandson, his sweet wife and our first great grandchild. I don’t remember how the subject of Japan came up, but Lexi wanted to know what a mission trip is like.

We shared about our first mission trip to Japan in 2001 and how I ended up traveling to southern Japan alone at the end of that trip because Donn had to come back to the States for the fall semester where he taught at Penn State. I visited the family of a young Japanese woman who’d done a home stay at our daughter, Angi’s, house in 1998, and then flew back to the U.S. alone!

When I asked Lexi if she was interested in doing a mission trip, she said, “Yes, but Zack would have to come with me. I wouldn’t go alone!”

My most recent opportunity to “tell the story” came when our youngest granddaughter, Sarah, stayed overnight two weeks ago.

When she’s here, Sarah sleeps on a cushy air mattress at the foot of our bed, so at bedtime we read a Bible story, put her to bed and turn out the lights while Donn and I take turns showering. But on this occasion, after I finished showering, Sarah came to tell me she couldn’t sleep.

I turned on my bedside lamp and told her she could get a book to read. She got a book but she was more in the mood to talk than to read. Once again, I have no idea how the subject of Japan came up, but in the midst of the conversation, Sarah said, “God sent you to Japan didn’t He, Grandma?”

Laughing at her wording, I said, “Yes, He did!”

“But Grandma, I want to know how exactly did God tell you He wanted you to go to Japan?”

Sarah wasn’t born until almost six years after we returned from Japan, so her question gave me a wonderful opportunity to tell her “the story.” And so I began again,   “Well, first of all, I pretty much stopped sleeping at night…”

Sarah entertained herself by rolling around on the bed as I talked, but her giggles when I said, “So one night, I went downstairs and said, ‘Okay, God, you have my undivided attention, what do you want?!’” and her occasional questions let me know she was listening.

She gasped when I told her how God had answered my question about whether He was really trying to tell me He wanted us to go to Japan as missionaries by prompting me to look in the front of a book of my mother’s she had given me before she died. In her handwriting, it said, “This book sailed across the ocean to Japan in the fall of 1945 and came back in 1946.”

Later, when I pulled the book off the shelf to show Sarah the message, which was in cursive, she laughed and said, “I can’t read that, Grandma!”

Then I told her how Papa was concerned that he wouldn’t have a job when we came back from our year in Japan, but his boss told him that at Penn State you can take a year’s leave of absence with your CEO’s approval! She said, “Then God told them, ‘You need to let him go, I want them to go to Japan.’”

I laughed and said, “Well, not exactly but Papa’s boss, who was temporarily in the position of CEO, was very willing to let Papa go for a year! Then later, Papa took an early retirement and we went back to Japan for three more years.”

I love “telling the story” no matter who asks the right question, but I especially love talking about it to our grandchildren. I don’t know what plans God has for them, but I want them to be reminded, too, that we serve a God who speaks if we will only listen and obey.

What about you? What stories can you tell your grandchildren and others that remind them that we serve a God who speaks?

Heavenly Father, your Word tells us that you know the plans you have for us, plans not for evil but for good (Jeremiah 29:11). Help us to willingly share our stories about how you guided us to the plans you’ve had for us. Amen.