Ray Report Sept 22, ’08

Hi,

Summer vacation (with its camps, retreats, one day VBS, catching up on yard work, playing tour guide for several visitors, calling to invite LST readers to join our classes) is over and we are off and running. We just came through a typhoon that came in the night and left before morning. All we felt was a little wind and rain. The hardest part hit south of us for which we are thankful. We feel sorry for the people in southern Japan who got so much rain and wind. Besides a few tree branches down, we could see no damage here, and a little better than my family in Texas. They were spared, also, of great damage; mostly trees and branches down, fences blown away and no power. We finally got word from them a couple of days ago. I have other relatives that live closer to Galveston, who, I am sure, have lost a lot. Some have yet to return to their homes. We also learned that Mellany, Marlin’s sister-in-law just had an operation to remove 5 tumors from one of her kidneys and is expected to have the other kidney removed soon. Marlin’s sister, Carolyn Lewis,  is also scheduled for surgery, soon. Please keep them in your prayers.

On the 11th of September, as scheduled, Caeden Andresen was born. He was born to Marc and Elissa Andresen, who have been staying with us for the past year. He weighed 3050 grams (6 lbs 11ozs). If you wish to see him, check his space at
http://caedenleonardandresen.blogspot.com/
As you can imagine, His parents were very happy to see him. His two grandmothers came to see him come into the world. They left on the 17th to go back to Oregon. Marc and Elissa will stay until all the paper work gets taken care of and Caeden gets his American passport, probably until the end of Oct. At that time, we will have an empty nest again, but probably not for long. There is always someone coming and going.

October 4-5, we will have our fall retreat. Dwight Albright will come and give us some messages on the Holy Spirit and we will have discussions. We enjoy having Dwight and Josephine here and always have some good discussions.

This has been a little bit of a slow time for us after the busy summer. But next month we become busier again. The preachers have a two-day one night meeting and camp has two meetings this month. We have a special meeting once a year in Oct. besides our regular planning meeting. Winter camp is at the end of December, so we must start planning that. We will have a Thanksgiving evangelistic meeting, as well as School of Life year-end programs. Everything we are involved in requires extra meetings. Won’t it be grand when we get to heaven and there are no meetings! We just see people and enjoy being with them: no planning up-coming events.

We thank you all for the privilege of working in Japan. It is where God chose for us and we are happy to be here. I pray for more workers, more Christians and more time. I have a vision of a large church in Tomobe. We are averaging over 30 on Sunday mornings. I pray for over a hundred and that is still a small fraction of the people in Tomobe. Numbers don’t mean anything, except that is talking about souls saved. We see funerals almost every day and we know that that is one more soul lost to the devil. If only as many were coming to Christ. Thank you.

Serving Him in Japan,
Marlin and Jean Ray

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