Welcome to our First Blog!

   We are finally on-line, thanks to this new free (!) blog account. Eventually we hope to have our own homepage, but this simple blog will help us get started in that direction. Our basic goal for now is to simply help keep our friends and prayer supporters more up to date with the latest news about our ministry in Japan, especially the "Toa Ministries" Bible studies aspect. Via the net we will be able to share much more basic and current information week by week than is possible in our printed news letters or even our e-mails. 

   We hope you will not be bored if, like today, January 13, 2009 (Japan time), the biggest news may be merely that we got 14" of snow last evening and so spent an hour shoveling. News like this, actually, may be important because (1) I certainly can use the exercise and (2) thankfully, the snow did not come on Sunday morning when I was traveling to a meeting at a distant church. (There was only 3" last Sunday. This time of year it often snows every night of the week.) 

     We also will be sharing some more important personal prayer requests. Probably our "biggest" one this week is for Yumi who will be taking the first round of college entrance exams next Saturday and Sunday, January 17th and 18th, (yes, two whole days, and that is just the first round). As we shared in our recent printed letter the exams in Japan are very competitive, especially for her as she is trying to get into med. school to study to become a doctor. 

    The up-to-the-minute Toa Ministries news today is that Mitsy just mailed the very first direct-mail advertisement for the new "Women of the Word" Bible study text. There will be hundreds more such going out to churches all over Japan in the next couple weeks. Although in English there are various Bible study texts on the women in the Bible, until now there has been nothing else like this in Japanese. 

     This mailing also includes a Japanese "Toa Update" news letter. In this, our current project on questions in the Gospel of John is mentioned for the first time.  Please pray that we will be able to finish this by summer 2009. 

      Thanks for prayerfully "blogging" with us!  By the way, any advertising included with this blog is placed by Google, over which we have no control.