St Paul’s, Osaka

12 February 2007

Dear Friends at St. Mary’s,

Thank you very much for your letters. We’ve enjoyed reading them. We’ve also learned what kind of things have been going on at your church.

Let me introduce myself briefly. My name is Miss Kyoko Hino. I have been a member of St. Paul’s for nearly ten years. When I was studying Applied Linguistic at Durham University in your country in 1987, I encountered Jesus through the witness of committed Christian friends. I was baptized on 24th in 1989 in Japan. I’ve been teaching English at university since I came back from England at the end of 1988.

Today I was asked to write to you by Peter Mallett and our vicar, Rev. Narita who as you know came 2 years ago.

It’s been more than one month since a new year, 2007 began. Unlike usual winter, we have been having rather warm winter here in Osaka. According to the weathermen, the weather at this time seems to be like the middle of March, which may be due to global warming.

From this month those who wish to sing started to sing hymns after lunch for about 15 minutes. There are always several members enjoying singing in the chapel. Then those members join other members to talk while having a cup of coffee or tea.

More than half of the people at St. Paul’s are over 60years old and we have a problem. Our building which has five stories does not have an elevator. Our chapel is on the second floor, which makes it difficult for those people to go up and down the stairs. For some of them have knee pains and waist pains on an account of aging. The committee members and our vicar have been talking about this problem in our church committee meeting, but we have not reached any conclusions yet. The point is where we’ll install an elevator since we don’t have enough space. Please pray for our being able to have an elevator and the older people who have wanted to come to church will be able to worship with us.

We have good news to tell you. On Easter Sunday four people (two infants and two adults) are supposed to be baptized. We are looking forward to having a good Easter worship with them and dinner.

The churches of Osaka Diocese are facing one big problem. We are short of vicars. Most vicars in our Diocese are over 60 years old, and also we don’t have enough people to become priests. Therefore the former vicar, John Yamane who visited Great Dunmow with our church members some ten years ago is still visiting some churches and preaching there in our diocese though he retired several years ago. We do appreciate if you pray that we’ll have more people who are called to be ordained.

All of you are always in our prayers. Peace be with you,

Kyoko Hino