Hi,
It was a beautiful day today. A couple of days ago we had a heavy snow, about 9 inches. It was nearly gone by the next day and today, there is nothing left. We could walk outside with only a sweater. At night it gets colder. I looked across the pond near our house and saw 23 blue herons. We have had 8, but this is the first time to see so many.
For those of you following my operation, I am doing fine. I went into the hospital on Feb. 2nd and was operated on the 3rd. The operation itself was uneventful to me. I woke up after it was all over. It lasted some 7 hours! I thought it was a simple job. They put a wire in from my groin and one from my chest. One wire went into the heart and through the center wall to the other side. The other wire went into the heart and they met somewhere. They raised the temperature of part of the heart to destroy some nerves. The doctor said he is not certain if it worked or not. I am on medication for about a month. After that, they will take me off the medicine and see what happens. If I have no problems, I will be free. If I have problems, I will undergo another operation of the same sort. I pray that the first one worked. I am doing well. Thank you so much for all the prayers I received. I received word of so many people praying for me. I wish I knew how to say thank you to all of you. I will keep you posted of any developments.
I will preach at Ochanomizu church in Tokyo on the 28th of February. They have just rebuilt their building. It is a beautiful 8 story building. The City of Chiyoda helped them and will be using part of the building. Building costs are so high in Tokyo, it would have been almost impossible to do it themselves.
This is a time of waiting in Japan. School is almost finished, which means many students are taking exams for junior high, high school or college. Our School of Life children’s classes have been small. We will put an advertisement in the newspaper this year for first time in a long time. We have had enough students from other students telling their friends.
The church is in the planning stage for the year. Our year follows the school year in Japan. Our all day church retreat will be March 13th. We do some planning about the next year and talk about our verse for the year, Acts 17:28. Our LST team is still in the planning stage. One team will be coming in May for 3 weeks. That is all we are sure on now. The camp committee is planning spring and summer camps. We will build another cabin this year. The foundation is finished, but we must do the rest. My problem has caused a slow down on that. I hope to be back in the swing of things soon.
I am working on starting some small groups in Tomobe. We have not done anything physically, yet but hope to start some planning soon. I am convinced that this is the way of evangelism in Japan. When we get to 30 or so members, we lose some. There are many different reasons, but I think it is because we lose the small church feeling. If we can transfer that to small groups, we can still have the large group feeling in worship. I will keep you posted on that.
Thank you all for helping us to be here. We want to develop the Tomobe church into a growing group that will be here until the Lord comes again. We love you all.
Serving Him in Japan,
Marlin and Jean Ray