福音咖哩饭

撒拉每个安息日都会去日本的一间复临教会。她的家人都不是复临信徒，家里没有任何人是基督徒。

撒拉去教会的原因其实是为了去到教堂的儿童餐厅用餐。

这位十四岁的少女非常爱吃寿司，但她更喜欢的是这间餐厅每个安息日所提供的咖哩饭。这是许多日本孩子非常喜欢的料理。她吃完午餐后，就会留下来与其他孩子一同聆听圣经故事、唱歌及玩游戏。

她的单亲妈妈在撒拉六岁时就开始把她送到教会来，为的是能让孩子吃到一顿健康的餐。

你可能会认为撒拉和她的妈妈并不贫穷，因为日本向来被视为富有的国家。但是日本政府的经济政策以及全球化影响导致贫富之间的差距越来越大。虽然不见得会出现孩童饿死这类明显贫穷的现象，但是普通儿童生活水平是低于平均生活水平，并且严重落后于富裕家庭儿童生活水平。目前在日本每七位孩子中就有一位正面临这样的问题，这种相对贫困情况严重打击了像撒拉母亲这种单亲家庭。这些家庭不能提供给孩子体面的餐食，或者让孩子参加如球类运动或音乐课等课外活动。而父母也没有时间可以督促孩子的课业，或像富裕家庭用额外的钱请一位家教。

复临教会的教友们发现教会所处的社区有很多这样的家庭，因此便开始在安息日提供免费的食物，并在其他时间给这些孩子提供免费的课后补习。后来日本首都圈（Greater Tokyo area）的柏市（Kashiwa）市政府决定为这些贫穷家庭提供经济支援时，教会成功地申请到了政府定期的拨款及协助。目前每个安息日有大约十至三十个孩子来教堂享用由教友和其他志工准备的健康午餐。

撒拉第一次去到教会吃午餐和其他小孩互动时还会表现地比较害羞。但是她很喜欢这里的食物和关于圣经的活动。她也享受教友们给她的关注，之后她每个安息日都会来。长大之后，她慢慢地开始协助下午的各种活动。直到有一次她参加了教会举办的暑期营后，决定要受洗加入教会。

她回到家就很兴奋地告诉了母亲关于受洗的事情，但是母亲对此并不开心。

母亲说：“你要等长大后才可以自己做决定！”

这代表撒拉必须再等四年才可以受洗。日本小孩在十八岁以前都属于未成年，必须经父母同意才可以受洗，而撒拉今年才14岁。虽然教友们为撒拉感到伤心，但他们对母亲的反应一点也不意外。在日本，没有信仰的父母在面对孩子要受洗时都会很抗拒。

请各位继续为撒拉的信仰以及她的母亲祷告，也为那些每周来到柏市复临教会用餐和参加活动的孩童祷告，愿这间位于日本东边这所具有中心影响力的城市的教会可以分散上帝的爱。

来源：本文译自《圣工消息》（社会青年季刊）2021年第四季

Curried Rice Gospel

Sara goes to a Seventh-day Adventist church in Japan every Sabbath. She is not an Adventist. Her family is not Adventist. No one in her family is even a Christian.

The reason that Sara goes to church every Sabbath is to eat at a children’s restaurant that operates on its premises.

The 14-year-old teenager enjoys eating sushi, but she especially likes the Sabbaths when the restaurant serves curried rice, which is a popular dish among Japanese schoolchildren. After lunch, she joins other children in listening to Bible stories, singing songs, and playing games.

Sara started coming to the church when she was 6. Her single mother sent her to the church for a healthy meal.

Sara and her mother may not seem poor. Japan is viewed widely as an affluent country. But the government’s economic policies and the effects of globalization have created a growing gap between those who have and those who do not have. The result is not absolute poverty, where children starve to death, but rather relative poverty, where children live well below the average standard of living and get left behind the children who live in more affluent families. One in seven Japanese children now lives in this condition. Relative poverty has hit hard the homes of single parents like Sara’s mother. These parents cannot afford to provide decent meals for their children or to send them to after-school activities such as music lessons or sports. The parents have little time to help children with homework and no extra money to hire a tutor like more affluent families do.

Members of a Seventh-day Adventist church noticed the relative poverty in their community and began to provide free lunches on Sabbaths and tutoring on other days of the week. When the city government in Kashiwa, a city of about 410,000 people in the greater Tokyo area, decided to offer financial assistance to organizations that feed the impoverished children, the church applied for and received an ongoing grant. Ten to thirty children began to regularly show up at the church every Sabbath for a healthy lunch served by church members and other volunteers.

Sara was shy when she first arrived at the church to eat lunch and to play with the other children. But she loved the food and the Bible activities. She enjoyed the attention that church members showered on her, and she returned Sabbath after Sabbath. As she grew older, she began to help lead the afternoon program for the younger children. Then she was invited to a church summer camp. At the camp, she decided to give her heart to Jesus.

She broke the news to her mother when she returned home, but her mother was not pleased.

 “You’ll have to wait until you are old enough to make up your own mind,” Mother said.

That meant Sara had to wait four more years to get baptized. Under Japanese law, a child cannot make such a decision without parental consent before the age of 18. Sara is 14. Church members were saddened when Sara told them about Mother’s response, but they were not surprised. It was a typical reaction from a Japanese mother who was not a Christian.

Please pray for Sara, her faith, and her mother. Please pray for the other children who eat, play, and learn about Jesus every Sabbath at Kashiwa Seventh-day Adventist Church, an urban center of influence that seeks to share Jesus’ love in the East Japan Conference.

Please find the original article at: https://am.adventistmission.org/mqa21q4-14