A week of training in Sapporo

This photo is of the inside of the front doors of OMF's
Hokkaido Centre (language and culture school
plus admin centre) which was built after we
graduated from langauge school.

I'm in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido—the northernmost main island of Japan. For me, Hokkaido is the place where I started my life in Japan, not the mysterious frozen island in the north that everyone in Japan "would like to visit one day". 

We spent our first 3½ years in Japan here, had our second son here, experienced four winters, and numerous other challenges, including having our son twice hospitalised in his first 14 months of life. So it's a place that can dredge up old, not-so-nice memories. 

But we have also attended numerous OMF conferences here. And have the great memory of doing our first camping-tour on this island (see one of my posts about that trip in 2013 here as we travelled in the northernmost part of the island). This is my second week-long training event up here. The other, though, was six years ago (feels like a life-time ago).

The training event I'm at is an OMF-developed training course called Project Timothy. It is part of a series of four designed to help people learn and grow in themselves and their ministry. This one is especially about gifting and looking at how God has working in and through our past to bring us to where we are now. Today we've been working on a very specific form of a life timeline. It's been rather challenging, but hopefully helpful. (I previously went on one of these courses in February 2016, in Bangkok, the one that focuses on Teams.)

The journey

On Saturday afternoon we finished Thrift Shop and I packed for my Hokkaido trip that evening. I really didn't feel like coming away, but as this was decided months ago, I went ahead, trusting that it was the right thing.

I left soon after church, catching the requisite three trains to get to the airport on the other side of the city. The photo above was the platform at my final change and quite confusing. Thankfully the station has made quite an effort to make sure people got on the right train! And yes, there was some English, or at least romaji rendering here (romaji being the use of roman alphabet to write Japanese).

The journey through the airport and the 1½ hr flight went well and then I met an OMF colleague and we travelled to the Hokkaido OMF guest home together on a bus. All very smooth and not as tiring as I'd expected. And I slept well Sunday night too, though I was a bit twitchy in the evening, being a bit people-worn and sharing a "flat" with three other ladies.

A luxury?

It's always a measure of hard and good to be away from home. I worked very hard the week before last to make sure that I was freed up to work at Thrift Shop last week and then come to this training. It was challenging, but feels good now to know that it's okay that I'm not attending to my usual responsibilities.

This week is a bit of a luxury, really. But possibly a very helpful luxury, to take time away from the usual daily grind to reflect on 40+ years of God working in my life to lead me to where I am today. I'm a reflector by nature, so this just plays to what I enjoy doing anyway!

During lunchtime I took a walk in the neighbourhood and snapped some iPhone photos. Tomorrow my post will be those photos, showing you a snapshot of now in this suburb of Sapporo, as well as some unique things about this city that has a climate unlike anything you find in any Australian city.