We drove six hours from Hakuba (after the conference ended) to Marumori where there is an amazing community of believers. Their story is truly inspirational, not only for the amount of dedication that these Christians have shown for over 50 years to the Lord and His work, but because of the opportunities that the Lord has opened to these faithful Christians. I’ll tell just a bit of their story here, and let you see a few very special pictures of their school’s field day.

It all started in World War II, when two American brothers, Paul and David Broman, came as military personnel from the northern Midwest to Japan. These two young men (about 22 and 23 at the time, I believe) were committed Christians who believed that the Japanese needed the gospel. (A few years later, their younger brother, Phil, also joined them, when he turned 18.) They did not speak Japanese, did not have any formal missions training, and did not have any financial backing. I do not remember the details of how they determined that they would remain in Japan after their tour of duty ended, but they did. They are now ending their long and fruitful lives in Japan.

Marcia, Charity, and Scott with Paul Broman and his wife, Setsuko

Since they did not speak the language, the Broman brothers used printed materials (tracts or Bibles) and pre-recorded messages to attempt to reach Japanese people. They slept in tents in all weather, living in primitive conditions and often hand to mouth. Their one, consuming passion was to attempt to give the gospel to Japanese people. They handed out tracts for awhile, but then realized that loud speakers were common in Japan for announcing paddlers’ wares in the crowded streets. They contrived to obtain loud speakers and got native speakers to prerecord gospel messages. Then they strapped these speakers onto backpacks and systematically wandered streets, blaring their message and handing out tracts. Their goal became to deliver a tract to every door in Japan while broadcasting the gospel message. Eventually, when money allowed, they graduated to mounting their speakers on bicycles.

As the Broman brothers worked, they encountered serious opposition. They were often cold and hungry, and increasingly grew ragged. Sad to say, they were also given a cold shoulder by existing, well funded missionary groups who were also in Japan. A few like-minded Americans joined the brothers, though. There were about four core families in the little group that then began to live and work together. However, the early slights from established churches and mission groups did result in a lasting isolationism that continues to this day.

The Broman brothers and the other missionary families who joined them (the Crawfords, Fangers and others) kept on blaring their speakers and handing out tracts. By the 1960′s, the missionaries realized that they needed to find some way of supporting themselves, because there was much work to be done and the tracts and loudspeaker equipment wasn’t cheap. They needed housing and food and necessities, of course, but they were also starting to have families and needed stability and more financial support. There was a demand for English classes in Japan, and there is no public Kindergarten offered there, so the group decided that they could make money as teachers. Some quit evangelizing so that they could support the group as teachers. After a bit, in 1967, the group decided to start their own private Kindergarten. That year, they opened MeySen Kindergarten in nearby and more populous Sendai, offering private Christian Kindergarten instruction and after-school English lessons.

The Kindergarten was blessed. It proved to be enough of a money maker that the other full-time missionaries in the group could continue to work and even expand their work. Eventually, the group bought additional land and started a second kindergarten. Today, these are two of the most premier kindergartens in Japan.Because there were nothing but fields around when the first campus was established, and because the missionaries had a deep appreciation for God’s world, they established trails and surrounded the children with nature. Today, it’s no different. The school’s buildings are beautifully designed with light and grace. The grounds include huge slides, playgrounds with landscapes that include waterfalls, and even a red barn that houses ponies and burros. An English sheepdog roams each campus.  Here are some pictures of these fantasy kindergartens.

Some of the men decided to get married, and soon children started to come. The group decided to live in community so that the wives and children would have mutual support when the men were in the field, and so that they could live less expensively. At one point, there was a fairly desperate need for accommodations. The group purchased a condemned hospital in Marumori, and the wives and children lived there for a season. In all this, the men kept right on sharing the gospel using tracts and loudspeakers; however, now the loudspeakers were mounted on small vans in which the men could sleep and house their tracts. This meant that they were often away for a month or more at a time.During the years when these families were having children, they not only had their own, but they adopted other people’s children. Times were desperate in Japan after World War II, and people begged the missionaries to take and raise their children. The men realized that, without their care, many of these children would die, either physically or spiritually, or both. The core four families adopted an amazing number of children. Paul’s wife, Setsuko, eventually raised 22 children. I believe that 8-10 of those were hers, and the rest were adopted. Other families had 16, 18, or 20 children over the years.

Essentially, the group’s children were homeschooled. As they were growing up, their parents gave them adult opportunities, and experience in running businesses. For instance, Paul Broman, who emerged as the leader in the group, was interested in personal computers that were just coming on the scene worldwide. He purchased some books on BASIC and some kind of rudimentary computer, because the MeySen Kindergarten needed to have some kind of system developed for keeping financial and academic records. Paul’s teen-aged sons were gifted with minds that quickly comprehended computer programing and made good, working program for the kindergarten. The group then ended up selling the program to other private schools. Thus was the real money-maker for the group founded: Grape City, a software development company that eventually partnered with Microsoft to become huge in Asia. This company has grown to be a multi-million dollar entity. Grape City reaps millions of dollars year after year, and most of that money goes to fund the ongoing work of delivering tracts to people’s doors. In the past 50 years, the group has canvassed each door in Japan 7 times. They have also reached all of Mongolia.

Most of the many biological and adopted children who grew up on the Marumori compound found useful avenues of service in the many ways that the group has found to serve the Lord over the last 50 years. Some work as teachers or administrators in the schools. (There are now two MeySen Kindergarten campuses in Sendai; if your son or daughter is looking for a chance to work and live in a foreign country, MeySen hires college students for 1-2 year stints as English teachers in Sendai.)  Some became computer programmers, graphic designers, or full-time evangelists handing out tracts door to door in Japan. Others became video engineers or film directors, and thus Grape City spawned Wine Studios, where local Japanese businesses go to film commercials. (Wine Studios is now involved in gathering funding for a new, 3-D, evangelistic film that will use today’s special effects technologies to retell the gospel story from Genesis to Revelation. It will be done in the epic style of Lord of the Rings. In fact, Dean Wright has agreed to direct the film! If you would like information on how to contribute to this amazing project, please contact me via email and I’ll put you in touch with Grape City executives.)

The Lord continues to bless this group with new workers and with more family members as the years go on. Currently, the millions of dollars that the Lord sends their way through their software company fund such projects as Bible translation into Hindi and Chinese (as well as about seven other Asian languages) the development of a deluxe ESL curriculum to be used in school or home settings, and ongoing door to door evangelism in countries like Mongolia, Burma, India, and Indonesia. The scope of the group’s influence is staggering; the purity of their focus on God’s call to missionary work is inspiring.

We were privileged to attend (for the second time in six years) the Marumori community’s Field Day. The community has long since built basic, clean, and modern housing for their families. In that old, condemned hospital, the community has been conducting school for the kids of the missionary families that live there. The school usually has about forty kids, and all of them are taught three languages: Japanese, English, and Chinese so that they will be equipped for full-time Christian service in Asia in the future. Once a year, they have their Field Day, where there are many fun games, fellowship, and a big cookout. The pictures below are a select few from the beautiful day that God gave us:

After we finished with the Field Day, towards 3:30 PM, we piled into a car and drove the 1.5 hours to Sendai. More on touring in Sendai on my next installment.

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