From My Autobiography: Sensei

When I was a first classman at the Academy, I read an article in PC, the British Officers’ Christian Union Magazine. It was written by Irene Webster-Smith, an Irish Quaker missionary to Japan with the Japan Evangelistic Band. The article was about how God used her in leading Japanese war criminals to the LORD in Sugamo prison.

At the end of WWII, Miss Webster-Smith was ministering with Inter School Fellowship. Before the war, she had run the Sunrise Home, a girls’ orphanage in Kobe, Japan. When she returned to Japan, there was no orphanage. Miss Webster-Smith had led to Christ a very bitter woman whose husband was on death row in Sugamo Prison for war crimes. The woman asked Sensei (Japanese for “teacher”), as Irene was known, to take her place and visit her husband. Sensei gave him a gospel of John and introduced him to the Father through the Son. She also told him that Jesus was named “Jesus” by God before Jesus was born, because He would save people from their sin.

When his wife went to see him again, she found she had a new husband. He led his cellmate to Christ. The prison kept changing cell mates, so the Gospel went through the prison. Sensei continued to visit new prisoners.

I decided then that if I ever got to Japan, I would find Sensei...

Read the rest of the story in Grace upon Grace: The Autobiography of Jim Wilson, coming early spring 2020!

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