Hello. My name is Ikuyo Baynes. I live in Sunnyvale, California, with my husband and our two daughters. Today, I would like to share how I have come to understand the importance of time in stillness through my work.

I work in marketing for an American high-tech company in Silicon Valley. My role is to coordinate and arrange meetings between our executives and executives from our customers’ organizations. I handle more than 120 meetings each year.

When a salesperson requests a meeting, I connect them with the appropriate people on our product teams and lead the preparation for the meeting. These meetings can last anywhere from half a day to two full days, and our team carefully works through the content and preparations together.

I have been doing this work for about 30 years. Recently, I was able to consolidate what I had learned over the years and establish a standardized company-wide process for handling meeting requests. I also helped develop an application for submitting meeting requests. After a year of testing, it finally received my manager’s approval, and we recently launched it. We introduced it to approximately 5,600 salespeople and field engineers around the world.

In some ways, this may be the culmination of my work at the company.

So, what do I actually do every day?

My work involves a great deal of detailed and sometimes complicated coordination. Because my role connects me with so many people, I spend a lot of time checking, confirming, and coordinating things through countless emails and meetings. Of course, I make mistakes, too.

To be completely honest, even after doing this work for so many years, when a salesperson sends me a request to set up a meeting, my first reaction is sometimes, “Oh no, this is such a hassle!”

Every request is different. Some are complicated, some are difficult, and some are simply a lot of work.

But then, somehow, I find myself wanting to understand what that person is trying to accomplish and wanting to help them.

And I began to wonder: Why do I want to help?

Some of my colleagues will decline a request or lower its priority if the person has not followed the established procedure. Some enforce the rules very strictly. Others simply pass the request along to someone else because they feel it is outside their area of responsibility.

But when information is missing from a salesperson’s request, I follow up with them. If they have a somewhat unreasonable request, I will often try to accommodate them.

Sometimes my boss even tells me that I am too willing to take care of people.

But even though I created the process myself, I don’t want to make people feel that they must follow it at all costs. I sometimes think, “Why do we have to fight with one another when we are all employees of the same company?”

That salesperson has their own goals and targets, and there are things they need to accomplish in order to reach them. We are all working toward the same goal of contributing to the company’s success. I want us to cooperate and help one another.

I feel this even more strongly when I am working with a new employee who does not yet know how things work, or someone whose request has fallen through the cracks because others have not taken the time to help them.

I think my motivation comes from two things: I want to build a relationship of trust with that person, and I want to create an environment where people can cooperate peacefully across organizational boundaries.

Before I became a Christian, I was also a conscientious worker. But part of my motivation came from wanting to be seen positively by others—a kind of people-pleasing—or from my desire for approval, my salary, or simply the need to keep my job. I may also have told myself that I was working hard because I wanted to contribute to the company.

In other words, I was accomplishing my work through my own effort.

But after I became a Christian, I feel that something gradually changed in my attitude and motivation. I began to care more about being a blessing to the other person and doing things willingly and joyfully for their sake.

I became a Christian after coming to the United States, around the year 2000. Then, around 2016, I learned about something called the Examen, a contemplative exercise that involves entering into stillness before God and reflecting on the day. I have practiced it from time to time ever since.

At the end of the day, I become still before God and look back over the day. I bring to mind the events that come into my heart and ask myself questions such as:

When did I experience consolation today? When did I experience desolation?

The purpose is to become aware of my own inner state in the grace of God, to discern God’s will, and to learn to entrust each thing to God. It is also a way of gradually surrendering myself from being governed by my own need for control into the loving rule of God.

I first learned about this practice through Sachi Nakamura’s blog.

 

As I become still before God and ask myself these questions, I sometimes sense something within me.

 

It is not necessarily as clear as hearing words from God, but there is something I perceive deep within.

For example, when I feel that I have built a good relationship with someone at work that day, I experience a deep sense of accomplishment, joy, and hope. I sense that even this feeling of accomplishment is something God has given me.

Perhaps through that sense of accomplishment, God is letting me know that He, too, is pleased.

I enjoy and feel excited about working with people from many different countries and backgrounds. And when I step back and look at the bigger picture, I have come to feel grateful that God has placed me in this particular company, in this particular place in America, and has intentionally allowed me to work with these particular people.

I begin to sense that there is a purpose in it.

And gratitude rises within me toward God, who gives me these moments of awareness and confirmation.

On the other hand, when I think about the things I did poorly that day, the mistakes I made, or the times when I may have hurt someone because I did not communicate clearly enough, I may feel inner unrest or pain. My energy can be drained, and I am prompted to do better the next time.

I sometimes think of it this way:

Imagine walking into a storage room with no windows and no lights. It is completely dark, and you cannot see anything. But if you enter carrying a candle, suddenly different things in the room are illuminated.

The good things and the bad things are both exposed to the light.

That is what I experience when I spend time in stillness and dialogue with God. My heart is brought into the light of God.

This may sound like an extreme example, but there was one time—not related to my work—when I became deeply aware of my own sin to the point that I felt I could hardly bear it. At that moment, I even experienced a fear of being separated from God. Of course, I repented and changed my actions, and I knew that I did not want to repeat what I had done.

Through these experiences, I believe I have gradually been led, in my everyday work, to choose what pleases God—to consider the other person and to choose the path of love.

By repeatedly experiencing stillness and examining my actions before God, I believe I have slowly changed.

As a result, I have found myself naturally trying to build good relationships and create peace across organizational boundaries.

My work at the company may seem like nothing more than ordinary work, repeated day after day. But recently, I have come to realize that because it involves relationships with other people, it can also be a meaningful offering to God.

My work, too, can be part of what it means to encounter God’s presence and grace in the sacred ordinariness of everyday life. And I believe it is an expression of God’s great love as He continues to transform me.

When I look back over my day, I realize that God meets me not only at work but also at home—in the busyness of everyday life and even in the smallest, most ordinary moments.

I want to continue cherishing these times of stillness, where I can become aware of God’s love, and I hope to continue this practice in the days ahead.

 

Thank you very much for listening.

August 15, 2026

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
examine me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any harmful way within me,
and lead me in the everlasting way.

— Psalm 139:23–24

Hello everyone, my name is Eiro Fukuda. I am grateful for the opportunity to share my testimony with you. Today, rather than focusing on events from the past few months, I would like to talk about how God has been at work in my life over the past several years.

I have lived in Cincinnati, Ohio for 26 years. My family consists of my wife, Chisato, our three children, and one dog. I attended church in Japan for about two years, but I became a Christian here in the United States. Since then, I have been involved for about 25 years in a ministry centered around a once-a-month Japanese-language worship service.

In recent years, even though I have been busy serving in various ways, I began to feel that my faith was not really deepening. My prayers also started to feel like a list of my own wishes and needs. Perhaps I was experiencing a bit of burnout.

Through conversations with my wife, who practices spiritual direction, and through participating in C-WIT recently, I began learning to spend time in silence. At first, I couldn’t even maintain 30 seconds of silence. My mind would immediately start racing with various thoughts, and instead of becoming still, it felt like the noise in my head only grew louder.

However, as I remained quietly present—not even actively praying—within that noise, the volume of those thoughts gradually began to decrease. What initially felt uncomfortable slowly became something more peaceful. Silence has started to feel like a friend to me. If I were to describe it, it’s like becoming acquainted with a classmate you had never spoken to before, but over time, you somehow grow closer. This “friend” of silence is quiet; we don’t talk, but we simply share a sense of presence together.

A few years ago, after our three children left for college, my wife and I began spending more time talking together. One of my daily joys is having conversations with her in the morning over a good cup of coffee. Recently, she told me that I have become a better listener, and that the content of my conversations has changed.

As a spiritual director, my wife likely spends much of her time listening to others. Even in our conversations, she probably speaks about 80% of the time, while I speak about 20%. But I realized that when she was speaking, I wasn’t truly listening—I was simply not talking.

I think this has also been true in my conversations with others. Often, I wasn’t fully attentive. I would listen to the beginning of what someone said, and then start thinking about what I wanted to say next. Even when talking with my children, there were times when I suddenly brought up my own thoughts that had nothing to do with the flow of the conversation, and they would say, “Dad, can we have a proper conversation?”

Living in the United States, I think I developed a habit when speaking in English: while listening, I would prepare what to say next so I wouldn’t miss any pause in the conversation. That subtle silence in one-on-one conversations can feel uncomfortable. But instead of filling it with words just to keep the conversation going, perhaps it is important to experience that silence. To focus on truly listening when the other person is speaking—not only does that deepen our understanding of what is being said, but more importantly, it deepens the relationship itself.

In the same way, I believe my relationship with God had become one where I simply presented my prayer requests and then moved on. Even though God is always near and is trying to speak to me, I may have been passing by without noticing His presence or His voice.

Going forward, through each conversation and through learning to live with silence, I hope to become more attentive to God’s presence near me and to listen more carefully to His voice.

That is all. Thank you very much.

Luke 17:20–21

Jesus answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.”