Despite the language barrier, Melba Barry started a Bible study on her first day of field service in Kobe, late in 1949. Two new publishers resulted from the study, and one of these, Miyo Takagi, pioneered for several decades. She told Melba later that she had been impressed at seeing two missionary sisters come through a muddy field to visit her. Now, 48 years later, a wheelchair carries Miyo from house to house as she continues in her ministry. In less than three years, before being reassigned to missionary service in Tokyo, Melba helped some seven persons to accept the truth. These have endured over the years, and happily, they also survived the great Kobe earthquake of 1995.

Brother Barry reports: “Each missionary had to take three or four of the newly interested ones to the doors, and since the missionaries were not as yet fluent in the language, the householders would turn to our Japanese companions and converse with them. What these newly interested people told the householders, we never did learn.”