Dear Christian friends,
Hope this will find you well. In last report, I described how responsive people are to my home page. I would like to continue to report about this same topic. God has used my secret home page to reach out to people. Almost every week a new individual responds to the page. At the present time, I correspond with 12 people. All of them are non-Christians, but they are interested in the Bible and Christ. Five of them are taking a correspondence course prepared by Jim McGuigan. Two out of the twelve are waiting for the correspondence course for beginners for which I have been preparing. The others continue to have a dialogue with me about Christianity. One of them actually began to come to church. His name is Hiroshi Hayakawa. Remember his name and pray for him. (I am not asking you to pronounce it!) He comes to church both Sunday morning and evening. His attendance is better than those of some members. He came to me with a personal problem. Although he said that he was not particularly interested in the Bible, he opened my page and responded to it. That indicates that he has a little interest in the Bible and Christianity. Yokota members have been friends with him, for which I am very grateful because friendship is what he needed. One day he wrote me through e-mail, "I am going to visit a friend of mine who lost his seven year old son. I don't know what to say to him. Would you give me some advice from the Bible?" Wow, I was surprised at his comment. Is it real? Yes! I told Hiroshi to let his friend cry because this is a grieving process. I shared my faith in Christ with him by reading John 11. Also I told him that death is always sad even for Christians. This is not the will of God, but brought by the sin of Adam through the work of Satan. I would really appreciate your prayers for him and me.

Let me share with you another exciting response. Tomomi Oohasi has been taking the correspondence course since the end of October. She is the first person to take the course. She is a student in a graduate school and studies "the cultural exchanges and influences between the West and Japan in 16 -th and 17-th centuries." About a month ago, she wrote me back as follows, "I have begun to understand what Christianity is. On the New Year day, I went to a temple/shrine to pray for the fortune of this year. But I began to think how odd to pray to idols, stones and woods. I still do not understand many things about the teachings of the Bible, please continue to teach me." Yesterday (Feb 8) she wrote me the following response, "I gradually understand Christianity and the teachings of Jesus, but many questions have come to my mind. In my research, my main focus is on the Catholicism. As much as I study the Catholicism, I feel odd about it and especially the Pope. The Pope almost acts as if he were God. I wonder how the Protestant churches and other churches think about the Catholicism." I did not want to appear I just criticize the Catholicism. (I think how to answer this kind of question needs wisdom. I need to receive it a lot from the above.) Therefore, I gave her my paper prepared for Questions and Answers concerning Denominationalism. In this paper, I explain the evil of denominationalism and the differences between the Catholics and the Protestants.

I received a letter from John Clayton, who is well known for working and writing concerning creation vs. science. I plan to put Japanese translations of his articles in the next updated page. Bro. Clayton is very happy to know his articles can be used in this way and gave me permission. Creation vs. science arouses the interest of many Japanese. They have many questions about it. I pray that God will use Bro. Clayton's articles in this capacity.