Planning to do what?

Today is unusual day. My husband stayed home from work, not because he's sick. Actually he planned to stay home today. We've set aside today to start to plan more intensely for our home assignment.

That hasn't quite looked like I wanted it to look as I'm still unwell enough to be lying on the

This is what we looked like when we first started talking
to groups about being missionaries in Japan. Yes, this
is a family photo: pre-children! We've been at this gig
now for more than 15 years! This will be our 3rd home
assignment, but the fourth time we've spent an extended
period going to different groups to talk about mission.

sofa in the middle of the day. However, I can still talk. And operating a laptop from a lounge chair isn't such a hard thing. 

"So, what does planning for home assignment look like? You just book tickets and go, don't you?" 

Ah, no, I don't actually believe you are that naive! It does actually take a lot of thinking and planning, especially when you have five people to think about. We've done quite a lot already to just get to this point. We've weighed up pros and cons of short vs long home assignment, thought about when and where. We've put into motion procedures to have ourselves replaced for our year away. 

It has been a matter of conversation in our family for years, in fact. When we came back to Japan 3 ½ yrs ago, the boys knew we'd probably be going back to Australia after 4 years. So they've known for a long time that this is the rhythm as a family. Thankfully nothing has happened that has disrupted those plans, though one never knows what's around the corner.

However, now a lot of that bigger picture planning needs more flesh put onto it. It's time to get down to business. When I told the boys their Dad wasn't going to school today, but that we'd be planning for home assignment. One of them thought we'd probably start packing boxes! But no, we're not doing that either.

This is what we've done today:

• printed out a blank calendar for the next 18 months
• started to fill it up with "big rocks" like 
• school holidays, 
• conferences that we know about,
• reminders to do certain things
• talked about when it would be good to go to Western Australia for deputation
• brainstormed ideas about what stories we can tell
• talked about getting some testimonials on video for use in deputation
• searched for the list of what we've got stored in Australia, but failed to find it!

While I was napping before lunch, David also wrote a couple of short presentation "modules" (2 minute components of what would make up a presentation) and brainstormed some sermon ideas.

I guess I should have a go at writing a "module" myself, seeing as my claim that I'm not up to writing today is being discredited by actually writing a blog post!