New Japanese missions leader credits Southern Baptists
RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--Seventeen years ago, Virginia Highfill, now a retired Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board missionary, spoke at Hiro Sakamaki's church in Japan.
During that worship service, Sakamaki heard God's call to be a pastor. Seven years ago, after graduating from the Baptist seminary in Japan, Gardena-Torrance Southern Baptist Church in Gardena, Calif., called him to be pastor of its Japanese mission.
In July -- still living out Highfill's impact on his life -- the 35-year-old will leave his pastorate and return to Japan as the first-ever director of Japanese Baptists' foreign missions program.
"I have an interest in foreign missions because Miss Highfill came to my church as a missionary, and it was a good experience to me," said Sakamaki. In mid-April he attended a session at the Missionary Learning Center outside of Richmond, Va., where Foreign Mission Board missionaries prepare for work overseas.
With Sakamaki was Junichiro Naito, Japanese Baptists' general secretary, who appointed Sakamaki to his new post. Naito thanked Southern Baptists for sending missionaries. Not only in Japan, but in other countries where Japanese have worked, Foreign Mission Board missionaries have worked with Japanese Baptists to strengthen their witness, he said.
"The history of our convention being only 50 years old, Japanese Baptists still have little experience sending out missionaries," Naito said. "That is why we are here in Richmond -- to gain a wider vision and receive from the accumulated experience of Southern Baptists in foreign missions."
Japanese Baptists have had missionaries in other countries since 1965, when they sent a family to Brazil. Under assignment now are three missionary couples -- one each in Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore. Another family, scheduled to work in Mongolia, had to withdraw when a child developed bone disease, Naito said.
By the year 2000, the convention plans to grow from 330 missions and churches to 500. And under Sakamaki's direction, Japanese Baptists hope to have five missionary couples and two volunteer missionaries under assignment.
Sakamaki expects his role in arousing interest in foreign missions among Japanese Baptists will come easily. Because of his experience with Highfill, he said, "I realize this is important work."
