Mixed thoughts on home assignment

It was a lovely weekend. Without an athletics meet to spend all day at on Saturday, we were left with a much slower-paced weekend than we've had since early April. I did some guilt-free relaxing. I started this email, but never got to finish it. Watched two movies and another episode of Downton Abbey. Slept in! Finished a book, started another. Did a little bit of baking. Played games on my phone. Chatted with our eldest son. Tried a little bit of paper craft (but didn't finish).

But with extra time comes time to think. Especially, in our case, time to think about what needs to be done in preparation for leaving for Australia.

Home assignments
I'm working at finishing up things or finding people to hand work tasks over to. I've got a meeting tomorrow that will hopefully sort out some of my OMF social media responsibilities. But work-wise, I'm not yet quite at a place that I've got much spare time for the preparation of materials we'll need only a couple of weeks after we arrive when we start speaking at meetings and churches. However, that extra time is close, especially when our weekends are much free-er from now on.

This is the fourth time we've gone on home assignment. We're getting a little bit of experience under our belts!

The first time we moved from Hokkaido to Tokyo, via a year in Brisbane (2004-2005). That was a huge move as it involved starting over again: new city, new friends, new colleagues, new job, new baby (our youngest was born two months before we moved back to Japan). Moving out of Sapporo we had boys aged 2 and 4). We stored our goods in Hokkaido and it came down via ship to Tokyo when we arrived there a year later.

The second time (2009-2010) we also moved cities, but within the prefecture (yes, Tokyo is a prefecture, not a city). We had boys aged 4, 6, and 9) when we left for Australia. We had to store all our household goods for those 12 months.

The third time (2014-2015) was most similar to what we're doing this time. We were coming back to the same house. But we had full-time sub-letters coming for 12 months, which meant we had to reorganise our house and try to do a very deep clean. Here's a blog post from May 12, 2014. Our boys were 9, 11, and 15.

So this is the fourth time. We have only two boys again (13 and 15) and I'm feeling more relaxed than previous times. Possibly also because it's only for six months, which seems more like an extended trip than a whole year. If we don't get a deep clean done, no one will notice: as far as we know we don't have anyone coming for any length of time to stay. That also means not much packing and reorganising is needed.

But it is still a big thing: to uproot for a while, change many of the routines, and settle in another place, even if we don't really put our roots down there. I can't believe that it's six weeks today that we'll be landing in Australia!

Bits and pieces to organise
We don't have a house or car yet on the other side, but a house will be searched for by a precious friend in June. The spreadsheet about our household stuff is filling up with promises from our home church and others. And we continue to pray for a car.

Give me a home among the gumtrees.

We're working on school enrolment for both our boys (not so easy as it might sound). Also on lining up the "big rocks", for example, a trip to Singapore for professional development for me and then onto meet the guys in Perth for 10 days of visiting supporting churches on the West coast. My flights are booked...the guys, not yet.

Most of our church visits are booked and a variety of other speaking appointments are also in the schedule. We've still got lots of room for mid-week and Saturday events.

One thing, that might seem a minor issue, but I have been thinking about a bit is that I have committed to not taking as much of my wardrobe previous times. It just doesn't seem necessary for only six months. But that leaves me with, eventually, deciding exactly what I will take. Thankfully I can lay aside all my super warm clothes (clothes for day time temps below 10/15C). Queensland is a warm place, with winter equating to a nice mid-spring day in Tokyo.

If you're a missionary  this is an interesting article with practical ideas of ways to prepare for home assignment (or leaving more permanently), some of which you many not have thought of before.

Not to many emotions going on yet. Part of me is not happy about the upheaval and disruption, part of me isn't happy to say goodbye to our friends here. Another part is looking forward to seeing friends and family in Australia, and the freedom for me that comes with living in an English-speaking country. Part of me isn't looking forward to doing a lot of driving. Part is looking forward to the variety of things we get to do while away from Japan, including working much more closely with my husband. And of course a big part of me is looking forward to seeing our son again more often!

So there we are. No, we're not packing, but we're doing lots of other small and not-so-small things to prepare to leave.