October 2002

Dear Friends:

We are thoroughly enjoying our ministry here in Nagoya. After moving here the first of July, I asked the officials of RCJ's ["RCJ" means "Reformed Church of Japan"] Chubu ["Chubu" means "central", referring to the central part of Japan] Presbytery if I could have, as my first assignment, the chance to make a round-robin visit of all the 26 churches and evangelistic outposts of the Chubu Presbytery. With their enthusiastic agreement, I began with the last three Sundays of July, took off to Nojiri for an August vacation, then began visiting churches again from the beginning of September. I am thoroughly enjoying getting to know the pastors and many elders, deacons, members, and youth. Taking my digital camera with me, I take photos of the pastors, other people, and the church buildings. Back home, I try (for September I had limited success because of the work of moving into and setting up our new home) to get to the time-consuming but important work of making a composite of several photos on a letter-size page for my future reference so I can go over the names of people I meet. While each church has its own style and feeling, I have been amazed at how seriously every single church takes the training up of the children—not only do they have active Sunday schools, but virtually every church has mentioned something during the announcement time about the importance of raising the church's children in Christ. About half the churches have been asking me to preach. My round-robin of all of Chubu's 26 churches will take until the end of February. Please pray for me to have the gift of memory so I can remember the many names constantly coming my way.\

By February, the presbytery officials will have decided where I will fit in best as to the Sunday part of my ministry. There are two vacant evangelistic outposts—one in Hamamatsu (where I grew up) and one in Nagoya (near several colleges). While I am drawn to developing a working relationship with the evangelistic outpost in Nagoya, since it is close to several campuses (and since my purpose for coming was to work with youth), that church has had some problems recently (which may not be so good for a non-Japanese to attempt to pastor); thus, the presbytery officials and I will be working together between now and February as to where I would best fit in. Please pray for guidance in this process.

Meanwhile, I have a "shimon"—the oral exam before the presbytery—in December to get ready for. Thankfully, Rev. Ono (pastor of the Tajimi Church and moderator of RCJ's General Assembly [for three years now]) will be working with me over the next few months to prepare me for the "shimon." Please pray for me to be on top of the important issues as I prepare.

A couple weeks ago, I went to Chubu's presbytery-wide training event (Sunday evening through Monday), attended by 398 people (pastors, elders, deacons, members, kids) from throughout Chubu Presbytery. Since the organizers had me play a hymn on my classical guitar, I am starting to get requests to play hymns on my guitar at churches I will be visiting since then. Please pray for me to play only for God's glory (and against my temptation to show how much I can do).

The Chubu Presbytery kindly allowed me the fifth Sunday of September to preach at Agape Kabutoyama Church, where, since just after the earthquake, I have preached every fifth Sunday for the four-months-a-year that have one—over a period of seven years now. Since the Chubu pastors and I felt that four times a year would keep me from Chubu commitments, I made my last pilgrimage to Agape Kabutoyama on Sunday, September 29, 2002 (just a week or so ago). Twenty years ago, my father, Rev. Malcolm R. Carrick, was instrumental in helping organize this truly ecumenical congregation (ministered to by both Protestant pastors and Catholic priests); he also preached there often until he and my mother retired in 1990. My ministry there has consisted of preaching at the fifth-Sunday morning 10:30 worship service, then visiting at the Agape Kabutoyama Nursing Home where I would play a hymn for (classical guitar) and pray for the bed-ridden Christian patients who were not able to make it to the worship service. Please pray for this ongoing ecumenical ministry to nursing home patients and their families.

Our most recent challenge of trying to get into our immediate community where we live has been solved in a curious way:

For the first two weeks of September, our kids would come home from the nearby park bearing reports of a kind woman who told them (in English) about a strange, balding man who has been furtively photographing little girls at the parks in the neighborhood. A couple weeks later, an outgoing young married woman (with two children the ages of Joseph and Sarah) appeared at our doorstep telling us those very things in person. The mystery woman's name is Junko Sugiyama. She invited Joseph and Sarah to accompany her to a "twilight school" after-school program she had volunteered to teach at the local elementary school. She has been helping the neighborhood children see our kids as "insiders" rather than "outsiders." What a gift from God! Please pray that we will have a "natural" (i.e., supernatural!) inroad for sharing the gospel to her.

At noon on September 10th, Nathanael and Joseph had a real scare on their way home from the park. The park is only a full block away from our home and usually has many kids playing there, so we have felt comfortable sending our kids there by themselves. However, on this particular day, Nathanael rode home from the park on his bicycle and Joseph rode home on his skateboard—both keeping to the left as much as possible (since this is Japan). Starting down the block, Nathanael went around a parked car on the left, went fifty yards further, and got ready to go around the only other parked car on the block. Meanwhile, Joseph was just going around the first car. At that moment, both Nathanael and Joseph saw a white sedan careening fast through the stop light—100 yards ahead of Joseph, 50 yards ahead of Nahanael. Nat stopped behind the second car and looked back to see if Joseph was going to be safe. At the same time, Joseph saw the quickly moving car and skedaddled over to the left and all the way onto the sidewalk. What happened next has appalled our entire neighborhood, for the driver zoomed his car past where Nat was, veered all the way across the street to where Joseph was—watching Joseph the whole time, according to Nathanael—and tried to take Joseph out. The right front fender barely grazed Joseph's right leg, but it was the mirror that knocked Joseph backwards off his skateboard (which, as you remember, he had all the way on the sidewalk!). Then he zoomed off, veering back across the road to miss the car Joseph had just gone around, careening out of sight down the street. Fortunately, Joseph had no bruises from the incident and was okay emotionally. We told our new friend Junko Sugiyama about this, and she called the police to come and take a report. The officer refused to believe that anyone would do something like that and kept trying to set up possible scenarios of supposing that our boys making it up, or supposing that Joseph was really in the middle of the street and got knocked over to the edge, or supposing that, from the diagram he had drawn of the block with two oversized cars it looked like the cars were too close together for such a scenario to really be believable (even though we had measured the street with the policemen and found that there were 50 yards between the two parked cars). I explained to the policeman that our absolutely straightest arrow is Joseph, who we have never found to tell fibs of any sort. His matter-of-fact reporting, coupled with corroboration from older brother Nathanael, unswayed by the policeman's rude interruptions and misleading interpretations throughout, left the policeman at a loss. Finally, even though the entire interview had been in every-day Japanese that I operate fine in, he called Junko Sugiyama to join us because of the "language barrier." When Junko joined us, he spoke to her, just as he had spoken to me. And when she struggled to put his words into English, I finished the sentences for her and told her the same thing I had told the policeman. When she had trouble translating it into Japanese, I finished those sentences for her, as well. The policeman went over every single thing, just as he had with me, trying to make us take one of his interpretations if we really wanted him to make the report. Junko Sugiyama was livid at the policeman's lack of desire to take a report. As a result, after he left, she introduced us to over a dozen people in the neighborhood, explaining what had just happened and leading the community to circle its wagons around us. One man, who owns his own security company, loaned us a video camera to place in the ivy on our wall so as to see if the boys could recognize the same car, but with so many white sedans coming down the road every day at noon, it became an exercise in futility. A few days later, Junko took us to meet the head of our community's neighborhood watch group. (It turns out that he is also the owner of the company three doors up from our home, and is also the top bonsai artist in our entire prefecture.)

While we all praise God that this incident has providentially gotten us into the community far deeper than if it had never happened, Judy is still feeling particularly violated by the ability for some crazy person out there to potentially do so much damage to our family. Please pray for the safety of our family.

We continue our home-schooling in order to save the PC(USA) budget the high price of international school (Canadian Academy in Kobe would have cost $14,000 for each of our three children per year—still $40,000 for the three even with family discounting). Judy teaches Sarah (6) first grade skills in the morning, and teaches the boys spelling and math in the afternoons. I limit my teaching to mornings, when I teach Nathanael (12) and Joseph (9) together. I work together with the boys on U.S. history and writing, apart on Nat's 6th grade science and Joseph's 4th grade biology, and have them work on an interactive typing CD by themselves. Since our kids' Japanese skills are extremely limited (a fact, though, that has not kept them from making many friends), we have just ordered a Japanese program on interactive computer CDs. Please pray for our kids to absorb Japanese and, since our kids have lost so many days because of unavoidable circumstances (moving, organizing the new house, ministry), please pray for us to be able to make the most of our time when we do teach them.

I keep my afternoons blocked off for church work, for which I have been balancing the jobs of unpacking boxes, setting up my office for efficient work, working on contacts with pastors of churches where I will be visiting and/or preaching, organizing photos of churches, and other office-related tasks. I also take full days to go to things like the monthly pastors' meeting, presbytery meetings, general assembly (a week in October), board meetings (went to Shizuoka in July), and other called meetings (such as our presbytery's committee on cooperation). Other days I do things like attempting (as I did unsuccessfully) to visit a pastor hospitalized with an aneurysm (he happened to be out on a regulated day trip the very afternoon I took the two-hour trip to visit), and preparing (and translating) a new sermon on Psalm 121 and Matthew 6B (which I preached for Agape Kabutoyama last week). Now that we are about 70 percent settled, it is high time for me to add getting my address list up for Peter Kemmerle at our denominational headquarters, getting our first newsletter off to him, and getting ready for my oral examination before the Chubu Presbytery in December. Please pray for me to be able to maximize my time for ministry.

Sincerely in His service,

Andy (& Judy) Carrick
"Evangelistic" PC(USA) Missionaries

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 185