October 17, 2009

To our Friends and Supporters:

Autumn greetings from Japan! We had planned to get a newsletter out earlier, but the demands of Tim's new job and Juji's lengthy hospitalization forced this important task to the back burner. As mentioned in our July newsletter, there has been a dramatic change in Tim's ministry, with him being "recruited" as a full professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, a Methodist-related mission school just "up the hill" from where we have been living.

Tim began his duties on September 1, teaching four classes with little time to prepare for them. Three are English language classes in the language center, but when the new school year begins next April, English teaching will only be a minor part of his duties. The chaplain of the Economics Department, Rev. Funaki, will be on a one-year sabbatical, and so Tim will be taking over many of his duties.

An additional reason for being very busy this fall is that another missionary unexpectedly left this summer, and so Tim volunteered to teach the ethics course in the School of Business that was suddenly without a teacher. And so with very little lead-up time to prepare lectures, it has been a struggle getting a weekly 90-minute lecture prepared. Nevertheless, it is a great opportunity to instill in the 53 students registered for the course a sense of what an ethical worldview informed by the biblical worldview is all about.

Last week's lecture focused on the Buraku discrimination issue, particularly as it relates to employment discrimination, and since these students are training for the business world, where one day many of them will be in positions of employment responsibility, it represents a good opportunity to get them thinking about human rights and ethics within that context. Other ethical issues are included in upcoming topics, and each student is to choose a topic of interest concerning ethics, do their own research and write a term paper. It will be interesting to see what positions they argue for (and also a challenge to read and evaluate those papers in Japanese!).

There is a 30-minute chapel service every day at the School of Economics, and each of the other departments likewise has their own chapels, though some are less frequent. Our chapel usually has 30 to 50 people in attendance, and several times a year, we have a joint chapel in the central hall with several hundred in attendance. Coming up with a fresh message twice a week that will resonate with the students will also be a challenge, but it’s also a great opportunity.

As for other news, Juji had a successful series of treatments in the hospital over the summer, though it turned out to be a good bit longer than usual. Fortunately, the prospects of putting a new shunt in her arm to facilitate treatment was deemed  unnecessary, but the process of figuring out a better alternative was one reason that her stay, which began on July 17, extended all the way until September 5—almost twice the usual length. She is doing well now, though, and is continuing her work at the Shin'ai Home, while still being very active in a local Japanese church.

Our housing situation still is not settled, and so we will be investigating various options over the next few months and will likely move after the school year ends in February (and before the new school year begins in April). We will keep you informed as to how that is working out.

We continue to ask for your prayers and support, which is what allows us the privilege of serving the cause of Christ in this land. Some have inquired about whether we still need salary support, given that Tim is now receiving his salary from the university. Obviously, the funding needed on the U.S. side for our continued mission service in Japan has been significantly reduced, but it is still a significant amount. Juji's half of the support package continues to be funded from U.S. churches, and Tim is still receiving pension credit and medical insurance. And since the total income from all of our supporting churches has never been enough to underwrite our entire support package, we hope to maintain our present support base to the extent possible. We understand, of course, that many of our financial supporters have been hurt by the economic downturn, and so a lot of our churches have no doubt been dealing with decreased income. While we pray that our new president and congress will be able to lead a strong recovery, the challenges will be great indeed. The same is true here in Japan, and so as the School of Economics at KGU trains many of Japan's economists of the future, pray that we will be able to instill in them a strong desire to develop a just economic system that shows concern for the poor and that empowers the poor to be able to uplift themselves.

As the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays approach, we pray that each of you will be blessed by God and that He will guide your footsteps into the 2010s!

Blessings in Christ,

Tim and Juji Boyle

The 2009 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 123