January 26, 2004

Greetings from the Land of the Rising Sun!

The sun does rise a bit late these cold mornings, but it is coming up a bit earlier with each passing day. From what we hear of the news, it sounds like those of you in the eastern United States have been suffering through some pretty cold weather. It’s typically in the 40’s here in the daytime and in the 20’s overnight, and so it’s not exactly balmy here either.

We have several prayer requests we’d like to share with you all. In previous email newsletters, we have mentioned the concern about getting a visa for Vilmar Martinez from the Philippines, who previously served under the United Methodist board in Bolivia, to work with us here in Japan. The general information we were told was that it would take about three months, and now we are approaching six months with no word. It was to be a dual position (two part-time positions) for her and the school in Tokyo has to start looking for other options, as they need someone to start in April. We found out that another person from the Philippines who applied just before Vilmar received a visa just last week, and so we still have hope. Apparently immigration is particularly slow in giving out work visas to people from the Philippines. So please do pray that a positive answer will come through this week or the next before the school has to commit to another candidate.

Another concern we have is an upcoming tour Tim is planning for in May. Three times in the past, Tim has taken a group of Japanese Christians around part of the United States to visit supporting churches and to see the sights. This time is to be a bit more lengthy than previous ones with a full two weeks touring through parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Colorado. The “special feature” of this trip is a three-day trip with “River Runners” into the Grand Canyon. The tour in 2000 did the same thing, and it was wonderful. As it is so popular, reservations have to be made well in advance, and so we were able to get ten spots for May 13-15. The trip involves a flight in a chartered two-engine plane to the Bar-Ten Ranch on the North Rim and a day and night there, a short helicopter flight down to the river the next morning, where we get on powered rubber rafts and go with the flow through the lower third of the canyon. After camping on the beach one night, we go to Lake Mead and catch a speedboat to take us to a bus for the trip back to Las Vegas.

I’m mentioning the details of the trip because I am having trouble getting the full slate of people to fill the ten reservations. It looks like we’ll probably have four or so slots unfilled by the time (March 14) we have to pay the full amount. If we have to cancel any, we loose $75 per cancellation. And as things stand right now, we don’t have even half. Thus, we’d like your prayers for that as well as to see if anyone might be interested in accompanying us on the trip. This could be for just the three days (May 13-15) or if anyone is interested in accompanying the group in a rental van for other parts of the trip, that too would be a possibility. Anyway, let me know if anybody is interested in that possibility and I can provide details.

One other request we have involves a request from one of our Japanese pastors. Rev. Yoshida has headed up the local committee that overseas our work here at the Tsukuba Christian Center since before we arrived in 1986. He became blind as an adult and for the last 25 years or so had been active in raising seeing-eye dogs at his church. He is active in the seeing-eye dog association here in Japan and one problem they face is a lack of new blood in the Labrador retriever breed dogs. He is very keen to form a relationship with a private breeder in the United States from which he could periodically buy a good breed dog for the program. It would particularly be good if someone in the Christian community would be interested in forming such a relationship. And so, we’re putting out an appeal to see if someone who reads this might know of any such possibilities. Please contact us if you do.

Grace and Peace,

Tim and Juji Boyle

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 92