September 2006

Greetings from Japan in the name of Jesus.

In our July Newsletter, we shared with you a report on the June conference organized by the “Buraku Liberation Center,” a ministry of the United Church (Kyodan), which we work with here in Japan. In that report, we mentioned that the General Secretary of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries, the Rev. Randy Day, climaxed his presentation with a promise that the United Methodist Church would soon respond to the long-standing request of the Japanese church to send a missionary to work with the center.

He would have liked to announce who that person would be right there at the conference, but as the preparations had not yet been completed, it was a bit too soon for that. You can probably guess already who that person is. We are to move down to the Osaka area early next year, where Tim will begin working directly with the BLC. It will be quite a change for us, and we are sad to have to leave our friends here in Tsukuba and at the local ministries we have been involved in for the last 20 years. On the other hand, we look forward to being able to make a positive contribution to an important ministry of the Church in Japan in helping to put an end to the injustice of Buraku discrimination.

This will, of course, continue to be a joint appointment with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). As we’ve reported before, Tim has been serving as the field representative for the “Southern Presbyterian Mission in Japan” for the last couple of years, and since their offices are in Kobe, this new location will make it much easier to serve in that capacity and to be more involved with the Yodogawa Christian Hospital, which operates under its legal status.

Juji’s new assignment is still being worked out, but it will likely involve a similar ministry to what she is most involved with here in Tsukuba—namely counseling with patients and their families. We expect to be able to announce that in the near future as well. The exact timing of our move has not been decided yet, but it will be sometime within the first months of next year. Likewise, we don’t know yet where we will be living.

Needless to say, we do kind of “dread” the thought of having to pack up 20 years worth of stuff from our life in Tsukuba. This is especially since we know we’ll need to cut back on a lot of the things we have now. But this is likely to be a “blessing in disguise,” as it will force us to cut back on our possessions. And it will no doubt make it easier to make our next move a few years down the pike when retirement age arrives (only another seven or eight years). We imagine that many of you have faced that before and can identify with us in that.

We’ll keep you up-to-date, as the details of our new assignments become clearer over the next few months. We ask for your prayer support as the various decisions that still need to be made concerning our housing and the specifics of what we’ll be doing are worked out.

In Christ,

Tim and Juji Boyle