Hanna takes a long road into mission to Japan

By Tim Allan | Japan in East Asia

Hanna with Mayu, not yet a believer but loves to be around Christians

Born into a Catholic family in the Philippines, God has used natural disasters, deep unhappiness and long delays to lead her to the Japanese city of Yamagata.

Hanna’s faith in Jesus has been formed and strengthened by

• · her response to the turmoil and devastation caused by super typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines
• · an internship programme at a wonderful church in Singapore
• · a period of depression and heartache in the Middle East, where material wealth and comfort could not satisfy
• · a growing conviction that God wanted her to love the people of Japan and show them who he really is.

Hanna was brought up in the coastal town of Palompon and attended Catholic Church dutifully every week, knowing that her pocket money would be stopped if she did not. Her bedroom was filled with icons and her mother, a tailor by profession, made dresses for the many statues of Mary in the church.

But when the super typhoon struck in 2013, she admits their faith was severely shaken.

She says: “I saw the destruction first hand, both in our immediate neighbourhood and in the surrounding villages. Our house was spared but I saw families who had literally lost everything.

“I didn’t know how to pray. We tried praying to all the saints and we used the rosary but we couldn’t finish the prayers. We felt so hopeless.”

Almost immediately, her extended family rallied round to help the relief effort. Her cousins and aunts, members of an evangelical church in Manila, came down and told Hanna they had been praying to Jesus for her and her close family to be spared, even as the typhoon battered down.

Hanna said: “Suddenly, it all made sense. They had been praying to Jesus, not to the saints or anyone else, and he had saved us. Now we knew how to pray and who to pray to.”

Within weeks, Hanna and her mum had set up a small church in the garden of their house. That same church now has a building and is home to a thriving congregation of around 50 people. 

Hanna at Joy Kids, outreach event at church 

Within a month of the church starting, a large evangelical church in Singapore, Cornerstone, offered to help support them. Hanna, who was just 18 at the time, played a key role in galvanising the new church and organising relief aid.

Over the next couple of years, Hanna’s ministry grew and grew, first on an internship in Manila, and then by reaching out to young people, including drug addicts, in Palompon.

She was then offered an internship with Cornerstone in Singapore and during a missions meeting there the pastor asked who she wanted to pray for. Instantly, she said, ‘Japan’.

“I don’t know where that came from or how it had formed in my heart,” she said. “I had never even thought about going to Japan until then. It can only have been God.”

Hanna’s life since then has taken her back to her home and then, when she was 24, to the Middle East, where she arrived to join a cousin and start a secular job after years of church-based ministry.

She said: “I really did not like the job at all. I was working with non-Christians and it was a very tough time indeed. I joined a Filipino church, but didn’t really enjoy that, so I moved to an international church.

“But God was preparing me for something, putting me through difficult situations to make me stronger and more resilient.”

She then took missions course at her church which opened her eyes to the reality of how many people live and die without hearing of Jesus. She said: “I cried for three days when I realised how many there were. My heart was heavy.”

More and more, Japan was playing on her heart but she resisted God’s apparent call. She felt God was telling her that while she liked the idea of Japan and liked the idea of mission, she did not really like the Japanese people.

“I had been praying for Japan, but I had not been praying for the Japanese people.”

As God continued to work in her life, she at first told him there were better people to go to Japan; then that if he allowed her not to go to Japan she would donate half her salary to mission; and, finally, she begged God not to send her.

By then, in the middle of 2020, she found herself crying for no apparent reason – in the office, on the way home from work, in bed at night, first thing in the morning. Her health was suffering and she found herself struggling to breathe, but doctors could find nothing wrong.

She said: “One night, when I was barely able to breathe, I spoke again to God, saying, ‘Yes, Yes, send me to Japan.’ I was scared when I said that because I knew that being a missionary would entail giving up my future plans and that I had to let go of those plans, but suddenly I was able to breathe. It was clear to me that God wanted me to go to Japan.”

From there, the connection was made with SIM and Hanna went through the lengthy process of membership, support-raising and orientation. Even then, right at the last minute, there was another hitch with her visa which meant her arrival in Japan was delayed by a couple of months.

She said: “I admit I struggled with the idea of letting go of my life but I read a book called The Insanity of God, b. I realised then that if you took Jesus out of my life, I was not Hanna. Jesus was and is worth giving up everything for.

“Letting go of my plans meant holding on to Jesus and I knew he was worth it.”

It is that kind of faith Hanna knows she will need as she begins serving in a church in Yamagata, a rural city in northern Japan. It is a place with few non-Japanese so she is on a steep culture and language learning curve.

Hanna with Youth Fellowship Chocolate Fondue party

She has a heart for children and young people and can see a time when she will be doing ministry among orphans. But God has shown her enough in her life for her to know that his purposes are always for her good. She knows he will direct her steps and place her where he wants her.

“I know God has a way of working all things out for his good purposes, rather than the desires of my heart,” she said.

Pray

• - Thank God for Hanna’s faith in Jesus and her trust in his unfailing goodness as he directs her steps into mission in Japan
• - For the church in Yamagata, that Hanna would help it have an impact in the wider community and introduce more people to Jesus
• - For the non-Christians in Japan, that they might hear of Jesus and be eager to learn more from people like Hanna