The Rev. Tsuyako Yoda

1925 - 2011

On December 27, 2011, Rev. Tsuyako Yoda completed her earthly journey and peacefully entered her eternal home. We are thankful that she had a productive adventurous life dedicated to Christian ministry in Japan as well as in the United States.
She was born to Sensaku and Yai Takahashi of Nagano, Japan on October 17, 1925. She was the eldest of five children. Her childhood years were spent on a family farm where they cultivated the Japanese staple foods of rice and her favorite fruit, apples.
During WWII she worked as a member of a nursing staff in a convalescing facility, and met her husband, the late Rev. Terry Tatsuo Yoda. He and her future mother-in-law, Eiko Kishinami Yoda led her to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Terry and Tsuyako were married in Tokyo, Japan in 1948. In 1950, their first and only daughter Mimi, was born. At the same time, Gen. Douglas MacArthur for whom her husband, Terry, worked as a translator granted Terry a special visa for his academic endeavors in US. Though he was a graduate of a Japanese University, he entered a United States college and seminary achieving degrees at both Northwest Nazarene College, and the Nazarene Theological Seminary. During his eight-year pursuit of higher education, Tsuyako attended the Japanese Nazarene Seminary in Tokyo while Mimi was cared for by her paternal grandparents in Kumamoto, Japan. For three years, the members of the family were separated by many miles. Tsuyako completed her seminary training in the spring of 1956, and Terry returned to Japan in November 1957. Once again, the family was united in Tokyo, Japan.
Immediately after Terry's return he and Tsuyako engaged in planting a church in the eastern part of Tokyo, Koiwa. She served the Lord as a pastor's wife, and after Terry's death became associate pastor and eventually senior pastor until her retirement in 1996. In March 1976 she celebrated her milestone achievement by being a member of the first class of women ministers to be ordained in the Japanese Church of the Nazarene. During her tenure at Koiwa Church she oversaw four building projects and one expansion. She served the Lord, the Church of the Nazarene and the Koiwa church for thirty-eight years in an official capacity.
After her retirement from full-time ministry she joined her daughter's family in Nampa, Idaho. At the age of seventy she was granted a driver's license. For six years she taught a Japanese Sunday school class at Ontario Community church. She also attended BSU's ESL (English as second language) classes, joined a quilting club and made many Japanese friends in the greater Boise area. She spent her spring through fall months in her vegetable garden and attended her fruit trees.
While her granddaughter, Joy and her husband, Joe, were deployed in Iraq, Tsuyako and Mimi cared for her 13 month old great-grandchild, Houston Young. Great Grandmother, GG, and Houston developed a very special relationship. They developed their own language and expressions of communication. To this day, some of those words and expressions are used by Houston and his younger brother EJ.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Rev. Terry Yoda, her parents and a sister, Kiyoko of Japan. She is survived by her only daughter, M. Mimi Yoda-Eshelman and her husband, Brett Eshelman of Nampa; two brothers and a sister in Japan; grandchildren, Brettin (Wife - Louella) Eshelman of Discovery Bay, CA and Joy (Husband - Joe) Young of Savannah, GA. She is also survived by four great-grandchildren, Malea and Keoni Eshelman and Houston and Everett Young.
In accordance with her request her ashes will be interred in Tokyo, Japan. The family will be hosting a drop-in afternoon tea in honor of her memory at her residence, 611 N. Horton St., Nampa, ID on Saturday, January 14th, 2012 between the hours of two o'clock and five o'clock in the afternoon.