I Was a Stranger

The following story was written about six years ago:


We must have been a strange-looking pair as we walked into the Wal-Mart store. He was a tall, spiky-haired, slouchy-jeaned, 17-year-old Asian, and I, a portly, 50-ish, very average-looking Amish-Mennonite Caucasian woman. But we were as comfortable together as if we had been mother and son. In fact, in the car a short time before, I had instructed him, in language that might have made a listener blush, how he ought to behave toward his girlfriend. I learned a long time ago that one does not beat around the bush when common language skills are sparse and the subject stakes are high.

We went to our home together after the shopping trip, and the young man ate at our table and slept in his room in our home. For nearly 11 months, this exchange student, Jae Hwang, was the fourth son in our family. Having immigrated to America from Japan 34 years ago, my husband, Hiromi, has a compassionate heart for others who are making the difficult adjustments to living in this country, so we have tried to help such people when we can.

Jae was our second exchange student. Like the first, Jae came from a relatively wealthy family from Japan. However, he was ethnically Korean, and spoke both Korean and Japanese fluently. His family had moved to Japan when Jae was five. Furthermore, Jae was from a Christian family, and stated in his preview packet that he hoped to grow in his Christian life while he was in America.

Earlier, after searching through several preview packets from the agency that coordinated the exchange student program, and praying for direction, we chose to invite Jae to live with us for one month while he attended intensive language and culture classes. After that month, he was to transfer to a place where he would attend school for one full term. He never transferred. Instead he accepted our invitation to stay in our home, and our church’s Christian high school invited him to attend there.

We had some rocky times. Jae had never heard the idea that music could be legitimately labeled as good or bad. In spite of having had to wear a white shirt, suit, and tie as a school uniform in Japan, he chafed at the dress code he encountered in our school. He loved to dance, and learned that we do not go to dances. Also, everyone at our house eats a bit of whatever is served, even when it’s peas–and Jae doesn’t like peas. He was completely oblivious to the passing of time and we often waited for him. Quite regularly, he and Shane left for school twice, once, almost on time, and the second time, late, after Jae retrieved what he had forgotten the first time.

But, over and over, Jae had us laughing with him. He was usually good-natured and full of stories–about his family, his friends, and his past escapades. One day in the yard here he had stumbled across the tines of a garden rake. In disgust at the inconvenience, he stomped on the rake, whereupon the handle rose up and smacked him smartly in the mouth. His exchange-student girlfriend cut his hair once (her first attempt at such a task) with disastrous results. But he merrily recounted the details of both of these mishaps with no sign of anger or shame.

We learned that his father had solemnly vouched for Jae’s suitableness for the exchange program, with Jae listening in astonishment, and fighting the urge to giggle at all the good things his father said about him. His mother had instructed him to write about wanting to grow as a Christian, threatening not to pay his way to America if he didn’t. These and many other glimpses into Jae’s life in Japan would not have been possible without a long-term relationship built on mutual respect and trust.

I cooked vast quantities of food for our 13, 15, 17, and 19 year-old boys, tried to stay on top of what was happening at school, and helped Jae with his homework.

He settled fairly comfortably into our routines, doing his assigned chores without complaint. He set the table for breakfast, although he regularly arrived on the scene with his eyes only partly open and his feet not yet fully cooperating. He grimly helped us restrain our unwilling goat at her first milking. And at our family gatherings he sat cross-legged on the floor and shared a merry time with the little ones.

Sometimes Jae expressed frustration with how people in our community did things. “Why does everyone have to ask their parents before they can do something?” “Young people don’t know what they want to do after they leave school.” “Why do you want your children to stay at home till they’re 21? My mother says I have to learn to take care of myself, so I won’t be allowed to stay at home after high school.”

On the other hand, he looked on in amazement at the fact that our boys knew how to cook and do their own laundry. Our oldest son is a well-paid computer programmer, a job most young people can only dream of unless they are college graduates. He is also a part time college student. Our two younger sons have their own firewood business. I explained that our boys are already learning to take care of themselves, and he ought to be learning some of these things too. So I proceeded to give him instructions in washing dishes, doing his own laundry and ironing, simple cooking, and cleaning bathrooms. Hiromi gave him goat-milking lessons in spite of his evident distaste at the prospect. Jae helped the boys cut wood, and all of us worked together to plant the garden.

In the first telephone call to our home after he returned to Japan, Jae happily informed us that his mother was asking “Is this really my son that knows how to do all this work?”
Jae’s father had grown up on a farm and determined early in life to escape to a “better” life. He walked three hours to school, crossing several mountains along the way, and was able to finish high school. Eventually he established his own successful computer software company.
Jae’s mother, on the other hand, was the daughter of an attorney. During the first five years of Jae’s life, he lived with his mother in her parents’ home in Korea while his father lived in Japan, working hard to establish his business. Jae had absorbed a bias against farmers, possibly from his father’s distaste for farming, and perhaps also from his non-Christian attorney grandfather. Thankfully, he hadn’t absorbed this grandfather’s anti-Japanese sentiments.

Spiritually, Jae reached several milestones during his time here. One morning, after he had stayed awake much of the night thinking about things, he announced that he had promised God that he would do his best to cooperate with us and with his teachers at school. Another time, he offered me his bad CD’s and tapes, after he realized that the trouble he had gotten into at school for being dishonest was related to the fact that he was filling his mind with the angry sounds and filthy lyrics of bad music.

The most significant incident occurred after he had read through the entire gospels in The Living Bible in Japanese in one weekend. Hiromi had insisted that he do Bible reading, but Jae had a problem. The Korean and Japanese Bibles were written in archaic language similar to our King James version. Other English versions were a trial too because of his limited knowledge of the language. The Living Bible in Japanese was our answer to this dilemma. After this exposure, he came to the clothesline where I was working, and asked me questions about Jesus having died for our sins. He seemed to be processing this for the first time.

Later in the week he went away to attend an evening ball game with a Japanese friend. He did not speak of the evening’s events before he left for school the next day. Very shortly, however, a call came from school. Jae wanted to come home. After his teacher observed that he seemed paralyzed when confronted with a Bible test, staring straight ahead without having marked anything on his paper, he asked Jae if he needed help. “I’d like to talk with you,” was his simple request.

“All I can think about is what a nasty person I am,” Jae said when he and his teacher were alone. This thought had occupied much of his thinking the evening before at the ball game. As they talked on, the teacher recognized that Jae was under conviction and yet was either unable or unwilling to do what he knew to do. His teacher concluded that Jae needed to talk to someone who could converse in a language closer to his heart than English.

Jae came home then, asking on the way whether he had to believe that God made the world in six days if he wanted to be a Christian. I can’t remember exactly what I said. I remember only that I recognized that he was struggling with the issue of Lordship, and tried to explain that we have to let God be the boss, and let Him show us what to believe and what to do. The Bible tells us these things.

That evening he and Hiromi talked a long time about what it means to be a Christian. “Do you want to pray?” Hiromi finally asked before leaving Jae’s room..

“Not yet,” Jae answered, but he soon sought out Hiromi and told him he had prayed and decided to be a Christian. He called his mother and told her; then he called his friend (also an exchange student) and told him. “He didn’t have any idea what I was talking about,” he told Hiromi after the call.

Months later now, I’ve readjusted to counting out only five plates for the table, and fixing only five eggs for breakfast. The first while after he left, I found myself sheepishly putting extra dishes back in the cupboard and urging the extra food on Hiromi and the boys. The morning table-setting and bathroom cleaning were reassigned. Jae’s absence was hard to get used to.
Jae is busy now in school in Japan and we haven’t heard from him for a while. We still often think of him and breathe a prayer for him–and laugh, remembering the laughter we shared with him.

The last Sunday Jae was in church, he stood at announcement time and said “God is good,” and by pre-arrangement his friends added in unison “all the time.” “All the time,” Jae continued, “God is good,” his friends answered. He went on to say how thankful he is now to have come here, admitting that it had been very difficult for him sometimes, but he was deeply grateful for his good friends and his good home. He was overcome with emotion, and found it difficult to finish.

Jae’s farewell speech confirmed what we already felt in our hearts. God had been watching over all of us in a very loving way, and His blessing on our time together made it an unforgettably worthwhile experience.