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	A letter from Andy and Judy Carrick in Japan

	September 30, 2005 Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, The summer trip with the 25 young women from Kinjo Gakuin University went great. My goal for the conference was to introduce the young women to the best foundation for marriage—Jesus Christ. The first day, I gave a testimony. I talked about how I had become a Christian to be happy. Since I still was not happy, I married Judy to be happy. But happiness is a foundation of sand. We were not happy. After nine and a half years I divorced Judy to find happiness elsewhere. During our half a year apart, God communicated His unconditional love to me in a unique way. I decided to make this unconditional love the new foundation of my life. At the time, I had little concept how radically this would change my life. This led to Judy and me getting back together again. The next ten years we worked on exchanging bad patterns of relating for good ones. And the past nine years (of our 29 years of marriage) have been wonderful.

	On the summer trip with the 25 young women from Kinjo Gakuin University. Andy Carrick in green shirt (bottom center). The staff are Miss Saeko Kawamoto and Mr. Ryoichi Hattori (top left), Dr. Masahiko Yokote ((top right), and the Reverend Shin’ichi Takeda (bottom right). Rev. Takeda has organized these retreats for the past ten years.

	The second day, I spoke of the three stages of marriage, then went through the Beatitudes, other Scripture, and counseling principles to give them a handle on how to build the foundation of Jesus Christ into their lives. My closing illustration was about David Lieber (sp?), a U.S. soldier in Vietnam who had been burned over 75 percent of his body when a grenade exploded by his head. His roommate in the hospital was recovering from similar injuries. He managed to look in a mirror and came face to face with a hideous monster. He tried suicide but couldn’t finish the job. Both he and his roommate were engaged to be married. One day, his roommate’s fiancee came and gave back her engagement ring. “It just won’t work.” That night his roommate died. Later his own fiancee came. He expected that after this meeting he, too, would die. But she said, “David, we’re in this together. We’ll work it out.” She was a Christian who understood God’s unconditional love—which is so different from that of the world.

	Following each talk we formed three discussion groups. This one was led by Dr. Masahiko Yokote, the chief chaplain of Kinjo Gakuin University. Yokote sensei is the one whowelcomed me with open arms to evangelize on the campus any way I like. Such an open invitation is extremely rare in Japan.

	I have four or five good contacts from this September 1st through 3rd retreat. This gives me the opportunity to bring Judy into the picture by inviting them over to our house to dinner. When both of us get involved with them, this paves the way to deeper discussions about Christ. The only things that really work are through Christ, who strengthens us—so thank you so much for praying! With love in Christ, Andy and Judy Carrick The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 251

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