Off to conference

Today we head off to our mission's annual conference. Two out of three years is it a regional conference and on the other year it is a national field conference. We missed the national one last year and so this year it is the East Japan Conference. 

Yes, that is the name that OMF gives the region that we work in. Before I came here I always thought that Japan was kind-of north-south. How do you get "east" out of that? But if you look at a map, you'll see that it is actually diagonal. So OMF has two regions - Hokkaido and East Japan. We don't work any further south or west of Yokohama.

Anyway, enough geography. Conference is always great. The kids get next to no sleep. They hang out with other missionary kids. We get to hang out with like-minded folk. As strange a mob as they are, we find that these missionaries in Japan are those whom we find ourselves most similar to, I guess that makes us strange too. Probably it is that all of us are living in Japan and somewhat "molded" by the culture. Or at least we've learned to live here. Plus we have the other culture that inevitably you get in an organisation. We're all OMFers, that adds unity. So, even though we're an international, strong-willed, individual bunch, we hang together pretty well. Make any sense? There is a unity that we find hard to locate when we're in Australia.

The big challenge for the kids this year is that there are a number of German speaking families with us. Six kids, I think. They all speak German and Japanese, from what I understand, not English. Our kids speak mostly English and a little bit of Japanese. It will be interesting to see what eventuates.

We'll be back on Thursday. Both exhausted and refreshed! 

Meanwhile I've scheduled some daily posts, which I hope work okay.