June 2007

To our Friends and Supporters:

Greetings from the “Land of the Rising Sun” and the Risen Son! With our upcoming move to Nishinomiya (near Osaka) at the beginning of October, we are already sorting through 21 years of accumulation and packing things we want to keep in boxes so that we don’t have all that to do in September.

Tim translating Hugh Ross’ presentation to a standing-room only audience at Yodogawa Christian Hospital.

There is much that we could report in this newsletter, but we want to lift up the recent speaking tour of astronomer Hugh Ross, founder of Reasons To Believe, which Tim put together. Of the six times Dr. Ross has been in Japan, this was the longest and most successful of his trips. We spoke at 16 venues to over 1,500 people, using PowerPoint presentations to help with communication. With the help of Rev. Matsuzaki, a pastor in Fukuoka, I prepared Japanese and bilingual versions of the PowerPoint presentations Dr. Ross had sent. This greatly improved our ability to get concepts across, and it certainly made my job of translating the presentations into Japanese much easier.

The tour began in Osaka on May 19, where fellow missionary Paul Clark and I picked Dr. Ross up at the airport. The Clarks’ home in Osaka served as our base in western Japan. After speaking at the Osaka International Church on Sunday morning, Hugh and I went to Fukuoka, the largest city on Kyushu, the westernmost of the Japan’s four main islands, for an evening presentation. After another seminar the next morning, we returned to Osaka for two more speaking engagements on Tuesday, one at Osaka Bible Seminary (where Paul Clark serves), and one at Yodogawa Christian Hospital, where I serve on the Board of Regents. That was really a special time. Hugh thought it was the most successful and important event of the whole tour. You can hear his report as a Web cast on the June 5 “Creation Update." His report occurs three or four minutes into the program.

The chapel was filled with doctors and nurses, and even a few patients were in the lecture hall (chapel), with several others in the lobby watching on closed circuit TV. The presentation was also available in all patients’ rooms and was announced over the PA system. In addition, flyers were handed out beforehand. The 75-minute presentation was followed by an open discussion time around food for interested hospital staff. Quite a few came to ask questions and to dialog with us for an hour or so. The hospital evangelism staff (three chaplains and support personnel) were thrilled with the turnout and the spirited discussion, and they wrote a glowing report.

On Wednesday we went to Tokyo, and on Thursday we made several presentations at the two campuses of Aoyama Gakuin University (originally founded by Methodist missionaries), a presentation at Tokyo University, and one at a student outreach facility operated by Campus Crusade for Christ. A conservative Christian newspaper, The Christian, sponsored an event on Friday night where the head of the Japanese “Creation Science” organization stated their case for “young earth creationism” (i.e. that God created the earth in six literal days about 6,000 years ago and that Noah’s flood was global), while we presented the case for an ancient earth from both the record of nature and the Bible. The newspaper devoted two pages to a review of the two presentations in their June 24 issue.

The final Sunday (May 27) featured three presentations at two churches, with the final affair being an English-only presentation for the missionary community on the campus of the Christian Academy in Japan, where our daughters went to school.

Speaking of daughters, Lisa just finished her licensing process for acupuncture, and is now actively looking for a position to start her career. She is looking into several possibilities and hopes to choose within the next couple of months where to go. Jennifer is still teaching English in Tokyo, saving up to fund a program in art that she wants to pursue. She is particularly interested in a one-year program in Florence, Italy, and she hopes to develop her art skills to use them in mission work here in Japan.

Juji will be entering the hospital in late June for her scheduled treatment and expects to be hospitalized much of July. There has been no significant change in her condition, and this is simply a repeat of the specialized treatment she periodically needs to keep her symptoms under control. As always, we appreciate your prayers in her behalf, and also as we prepare to move to our new assignment and location, we ask you to remember us in prayer—that our move will go smoothly and we’ll be able to quickly enter our new roles and be able to effectively serve the cause of Christ in our new location.

Grace and Peace,

Tim and Yuko (Juji) Boyle

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 249