Our Turtle Who Art in Heaven

Missionaries wonder why they can’t make more inroads into Japan, get more followers, build up the number of church goers and such.

I knew a missionary who was, how shall we say it, language challenged, you know like the walking blimp is gravity challenged. That sort of thing. Try as he might, he couldn’t get the finer points of the language down. Shucks, he couldn’t even get the basics down.

One  particular missionary figured he try a prayer. Everybody usually closes their eyes when people pray so he reckoned he could write how his prayer and just read it and nobody would know the difference.

Good strategy except, he, still had to get the pronunciation right.

Some prayers start out with “God in Heaven” = “Ten ni irrasharu kami-sama.”

Sad to say, my missionary friend couldn’t distinguish between kami and kame. Kami is the word for God. Kame is Japanese for turtle.

Instead of “God in Heaven” he said, “Ten ni irrasharu kame-sama” = “Our Turtle Who Art in Heaven.” And, then wondered why he couldn’t get any ‘Amens’ at the end. Go figure.And, we wonder no more why missionaries, at least some of them, aren’t able to make inroads into Japan, get more followers, build the number of church goers and such, do we?