Tomoku

After Bud went to the University of Tennessee, he became best friends with a young man Named Tomoku. Tomoku san was Japanese. After Bud was helping Tomoku with his English, Tomoku san began teaching Bud Japanese. Tomoku came from a Samurai family. His family name was Shimazu. His family had a long line of “Hidden Christians” that date back to the time Xavier and the Jesuits came to Japan. When Shogun Tokugawa forced conversion to Buddhism, he began to systematically kill Christians. The Shimazu family taught the farmers, who had converted to Christianity, Samurai skills, Kendo, Budo, and stealth. They became known as the Red Ninja. His family still practiced this art today. While in school, Tomiko taught Bud the way of the Red Ninja.

After …show more content…
His father and mother had a deep faith in the Lord, and his father taught him that if you were faithful God would bless you. After the Civil war, many people began to move into the Tennessee valley. Due to a lack of trained Clergy, the Methodist circuit riders would hold Brush Arbors and Camp Meetings. The Singing and the dramatic delivery style of the Preachers would bring people from far and near. Many of the Cherokee would join these celebrations and dance and sing. Some of the more prudish traditional religious people would look down upon this. In one night, this all …show more content…
Their messages were very similar, although they formed different groups. Their preaching involved several concepts. One concept was that we were in the last days and God would show signs in the heavens and the earth. Preaching from the Book of the Revelation, Daniel, and Ezekiel were commonplace. The other concepts dealt with God restoring the Church to be more like the early church which was described in the book of Acts. Now you may wonder where the change came? How did these people break from a strict calvinist orderly type of christianity, into a progressive exciting form of worship?

Around the turn of the century, my Grandfather would take me up on a mountain in the woods near the appalachians. On one of these nights we saw a meteor shower. The show seemed to get closer and closer, until suddenly a comet streaked through the sky, hit the earth below us and plowed a huge crater in the valley. My grandfather ran down to the valley, I could hardly catch up. He ran to this huge smoking ball of rock and touched it. When he did, he fell to the ground. After an hour had passed, he got up and began to tell me of visions that he