Monster weekend

I can't avoid it any longer. Today we head south for our monster weekend. This has been in the planning for several months, at least the logistics of it has. 

Here are the bones:

Tonight 8pm we fly to Sydney and will stay in an inner city hotel tonight (and tomorrow night) and the following events are also inner-city Sydney. A new experience for these Queenslanders.

Two of our speaking props.

On Friday we're attending a series of meetings with other OMF members and associates. A rare occasion when we get to connect with OMFers working in (or home assignees from) other parts of Australia.

Saturday is OMF's Australian national conference, which is open to whoever wants to come, so we're guessing we'll see people from the wider Sydney area, if not further afield. The keynote speaker is OMF International's General Director.

Saturday night we're catching a bus to Canberra—three and a half hours. Hopefully we can nap a little on this journey because after two big days, Sunday is also big.

On Sunday we're speaking at a church that has been supporting us since before we first went out in 2000. David's also speaking at the church in the evening. But I'm guessing that the main work of the three days will be in the one-on-one conversations. Staring down some exhaustion at the end!

We fly back to Queensland on Monday at noon where we'll try to regroup. I think it is these things that mess with me most on home assignment: our new and fragile routines are thrown out the window again. I do look forward to being with the wider OMF Australian family and also meeting people in Canberra, but it won't be easy.

Now I need to pack! The weather will be colder: high teens in Sydney (though we'll be on foot and walking during the colder parts of the day/evening) and not even making the teens in Canberra. I'm glad I brought a couple of pieces of my Tokyo winter wardrobe—long underwear! Though I'll be missing my winter jacket, scarf, and gloves! And my warm winter boots.

Medical matters

I feel as though medical/paramedical stuff has taken a significant chunk out of our last two months in Australia. Looking back at the diary, we've had at least one thing almost every week, sometimes more than one. Some of it is routine, others...not so much.

Here's much of what we've had:

• two year medicals (OMF requirement and has resulted in some of the below)
• psychological debrief
• blood tests
• mammogram and PAP smear
• iron infusion for me
• several physio appointments for two of us for various minor injuries or niggles
• immunisation (catch-up for the boys)
• skin infection necessitating antibiotics
• three x-rays
• optometrist (two of us thus far)
• dentist (just our eldest, the rest of us did this before we left Japan)

Still to come:

• another blood test for me following up on the iron infusion and who knows if that might lead to more appointments
• more physio appointments
• wisdom teeth removal
• more psychologist appointments
• and who knows how many more injuries/illnesses that will need attending to, our youngest is on quite a run at present.

It takes time. I have to admit to being a bit over all the driving. Yes, driving in Brisbane/Ipswich is much easier than Tokyo, however there's so much of it. Most of the above has meant at least 20 minutes drive each way (some more than double that).

And for the most part we've not been significantly unwell. I'd hate to see the list if we were!

It is nice to be doing this in Australia, though. Much of the above would look quite different in Japan, even if you take away the language barrier. For example:

• Mammograms and PAP smears only happen once every two years. To get it you have to be a certain age and go in a certain month. For example, in our local area ladies in their odd years ( eg. 41, 43) who are born Jan to March can get these tests done in June, if you are born April to June you can have them in July. (These details may or may not be exactly right, but they give you the idea). If you miss that month of that year, you have to wait two more years unless you have a symptom that needs investigating! This means that people like us who aren't necessarily in the country on the right year or in the right month can fall through the cracks.
• You can't just walk into a physio (PT for Americans), it is much more medically focused, though I've heard that in Tokyo that there are therapy places you can go, I'm not sure if you don't need a doctor's referral. Thankfully we've never desperately needed that, except for the one time I had a very stiff neck and saw an orthopedic doctor at a local hospital who referred me to a physio in the hospital.
• The immunisation schedule is very different. The shots our boys are having aren't regularly available in Japan.

Does it sound like I'm whinging? I hope not. I'm really glad that we have such ready access to good medical care. I'm just tired of it taking up so much time. But really, compared to what some people deal with on a daily basis, this is nothing. It's good to stay in touch with my friends who have significant disability in their families, it helps me to stay grounded. 

But when people say, "What are you doing while you're in Australia?" It's hard not to think about how much time we've had to spend doing these self-care things, things that aren't really considered "work", but are taking up significant time and energy. 

And of course we're still adjusting to having one car, two people working from home, having a school run to do twice a day, and a fifth person who occasionally needs use of the car (and a parent) but who lives 30 minutes away! This afternoon, as we tried to coordinate our schedule to accommodate one car, a doctor's visit, an optometrist's visit, an x-ray, school run, and a simple trim, I exclaimed, "I just want to go 'home'!" Where there is no school run, the doctor and x-ray, would have been within 1 km from home, and I can independently ride to the hairdresser.

Limiting our focus

Whoops, looks like I accidentally published this as a very spare draft last week (note to self—change the settings on my phone-to-Blogger interface). I'm back now to pay it some serious writing attention.
____________________

A view from the weekend when we went for a stroll.

I've realized there's some things I don't have energy for right now. Both mental and physical. In order to stay afloat we're very focused. Focused on our family's needs, and the demands of our various jobs. Focused on extended family and key friends. Focused on getting done what needs to be done these six months. A lot doesn't fit these categories.

For example:

• Finding all the deals, at the moment I'm lucky if I get a sale or a good financial deal, but it's not something that I have the energy to wholeheartedly spend time on finding.
• Staying on top of what's going on in both Japan and Australia (though I've been able to drop into see headlines about the dramas in Australian politics today, I'm not particularly interested in finding out much more because I don't have the mental energy).

Probably lots is falling by the wayside. I know that there are people I'm not going to be able to see. We've already had to painfully express this to some who don't live in south-east Queensland. Next weekend is a complex one that I'll explain in another post, but it involves a fair bit of interstate travel and we will scoot past people who we would love to see...but won't.

Another way to look at it is the Spoon Theory that I wrote about several years ago here. At the moment, due to a number of factors, I simply don't have as many spoons as I usually have.

I'm fine juggling lots of things. It's actually my preferred way to operate, otherwise I have a tendency to get bored. But I'm juggling a bit more diversely than usual just now. Here's an idea of what's going on in my weeks:

• preparing for various public speaking opportunities (both the close ones, i.e. in two days, and further away)
• sorting out practical details of such events, such as transport, food, where all the family members will be etc. This includes emails to and from contacts at the various churches/groups
• actually doing the events
• taking care of my family: the usual physical stuff of driving to and from school, groceries, cooking, cleaning (though minimal that it may be), washing, and medical appointments (another blog post, really). The usual psychological aspects of parenting teens. And some less usual psychological aspects of parenting that I've written here about as well as some things I can't tell you on this public platform.
• taking care of myself: including exercise, medical appointments, time with friends, and squeezing in rest time
• Japanese study (yes, I'm still studying)
• editing work from Japan: managing the Japan Harvest magazine and editing for the OMF Japan blog.

Does that cover it all? Mostly. Really, at the moment I'm fighting the urge to curl up on the bed and read my book (or play an addictive game on my phone). But like most of you, there's other stuff that needs doing...it's just hard sometimes to know when to draw the line.

People do wonder what we do when we're on home assignment. It's hard to say what fills up our days. At times I feel like we work part-time. We aren't being paid by the hour and have no idea how many hours per week we work. I have no idea, sometimes, what to call "work" and what to call "rest". 

Yesterday I had an early medical appointment for a routine checkup. The technician asked what I was going to be doing the rest of the day and I was at a bit of a loss for words (seems to be happening a lot recently). I said I had a couple of other medical appointments (which was true), and she countered with, "So, a day off work." I just agreed with her, though for a missionary, getting medical stuff done while on home assignment has a tinge of "work" to it, because without ticking those boxes we cannot go back to our work overseas. So it is work, or is it not work?

I did spend time wandering around a shopping centre in-between appointments yesterday, so I guess that was time-off. Some of it was "work" (e.g. Besides the medical appointments, I sat in a coffee shop and did Japanese study, as well as brainstormed with David and someone else via Messenger about a speaking opportunity next week). So our work looks very different to most of our peers.

But I think I've wandered off topic here. Good thing I don't have an editor looking over my shoulder. 

Focus. During transition (and I think we will be in transition this whole year and a few months into next year) our focus needs to be quite narrow, which means that we pretty much march to a different drum to most of those around us. On the edge of ordinary . . . as usual.

Sport and transition

A fun option at the gym are these trampolines. Our youngest, particularly,
has enjoyed them. My neck is currently giving me some stick, but I'm
hoping I'll be able to give the trampolines a go soon.

Supporting our teens through this transition has been harder than perhaps we expected or you might realise.

One big thing we continue to struggle with is finding an appropriate outlet for our sporty boys. In Japan through the school it's built into the school year. Actually school-based sport there is quite intense, with practises most afternoons and competitions most Saturdays. When we take them out of that and into Australia it's a big misfit. Most sport seems to be private clubs, with only a little bit at school, but generally not starting in July and finishing in December! And of course as teenagers they are quite opinionated about what sport they'll do. We can't just throw them into cricket or rugby. They have no experience in either, and no interest in being newbies either.

And of course we've got one boy homeschooling, which includes no sport at all. The deal we agreed on with him when we said he could do homeschooling was that he got out and did some exercise. He's found that that was a harder thing to do than he anticipated.

Last time we were in Australia we tried to solve this sporting dilemma by having them all join a community wrestling club. It worked well for one or two of our boys, but not so well for the third. This time they are much more opinionated about what they want to do. 

We first tried an athletics club, which started out promisingly, but was a significant commitment as it was from 6.30-8 two nights a week about 20 minute drive from here. This was significant as I needed to work our meals around it and at least one of us needed to be plan to spend that time driving and being present. We were prepared to do all this. But we had a lot of trouble with this plan: especially with boy/s bailing at the last minute—either at home before we left, or once we got there. Some families might cope with this, but we didn't. It was upsetting and stressful for us all. We were prepared to go with the plan, but not if they couldn't make a solid commitment to doing it and the following through with that.

Plan B was to go to a local gym that is much closer to us, in fact we pass it on the drive to school. Not perfect, as it doesn't include much running, and that is really what our guys like to do, but it's flexible and we can do it at times that are much easier to manage (straight after school). David and I can also get involved here and get exercise ourselves.

So this is what we've been working with the last three weeks. Most days it's working, but not every time. We're paying per visit, rather than being locked in to a period of time.

Things will probably move up another level from October as our youngest plans to rejoin the wrestling club in preparation for joining the CAJ wrestling team in January when we return.

The stress of dealing with this is not something you might think about when thinking about the life of a missionary. It's been an element of this transition that's made it hard to feel settled as our lives are pretty lacking in routine anyway, and struggling to get a routine going for exercise has only added to the challenge.

Challenging encounters

Coming back into Australia often feels like a cross cultural encounter. Beyond the obvious cultural differences, it's the deeper stuff that is more challenging, especially because others don't usually expect that we have a different perspective on things because we look and sound (mostly) Australian. 

These trees on my parents block remind me it's been a
long time since I grew up here. As a young adult on holidays
from uni I used to mow around these two
big trees—they were saplings.

This is a strange cross-cultural challenge, though, because some things remain the same others change. New ones appear and old things get an unexpected twist on them. Each time we come back for an extended period we tiptoe around a bit, trying to figure out what's changed. We try to spend time asking questions and listening. Sometimes that's hard because some people want to hear all about what we've been doing, but every now and then we can get people to talk about what's going on in Australia and get a feel for the lay of the land.

Topical hotspots
We've discovered that Australia has a number of topical hotspots at present. At the risk of opening some pandora boxes, they include:

• Plastic bags
• Gender
• Gay marriage
• Drought and farmer assistance (Australia's in the midst of a significant drought and metro areas have just realised, resulting in a lot of "save the farmers" type campaigns and includes blame casting.)
• Abortion (which is situated in a different political/religious climate to the US, it is nowhere near the political hotspot here as it is there)
• Refugees (this has been around longer)
• Anti-vax (which has also been around longer, but has had a financial impact on us as it's now a requirement by the government for our kids to have certain vaccinations that are hard or impossible to get in Japan, if they don't we lose out on some financial benefits that could be ours as low-income earners)

There are more, including a bunch of political issues. I'm also sure that I'm not keen to try to figure it all out. Not because I'm an irresponsible citizen, but I have to acknowledge that we have our limits and dealing with all that we have on our plates at present is plenty. It's also usually enough to seek to weather the conversations our own situation dredges up. 

Here are some real examples from recent weeks:

Japan and cars
Yesterday someone taking our money at the gym wanted to know if we wanted membership and we declined citing that we were moving at the end of the year. "Where to?" he asked.
We sighed, we'd been trying to avoid this.
"Japan"
"Oh cool...they have great cars there."
I have to say I've never had a conversation about the great cars of Japan . . . it's surely not my area of strength. But we heard plenty from him . . . before we finally got to go and work out.

Japan and bikes
When I came back in February and accompanied my son as he bought a bike for commuting to uni, we had a conversation about bikes with one of the staff. He was fascinated with hearing our experiences of using bikes in Japan. His knowledge had been much more of a serious cyclist, but we gave him an insight into daily life with bikes as a "commoner".

"Oh, you've lived in Japan . . . I've been to... (read here an unrecognisable name) what an amazing place!"
This is a more common conversation with a stranger when they discover where we spend most our time. The place name we often have to strain to recognise because we really don't have the Australian accent on Japanese words down pat yet. Japanese has only five vowel sounds and typically Australian mangle these, making many words very difficult to recognise without context. Needless to say, we try to go with the flow on a conversation that starts like this. Usually they aren't too hard to make it through, although if we stay at this point in a conversation too long I'll be cringing inside because I know that people have only seen the surface of Japan: the beautiful front that this nation puts up for visitors.

"Japs"
Believe it or not, I had a conversation with a very earnest young Christian man the other day who used this word as casually and neutrally as he might say "postie" (or postman for non-Aussie readers). I was shocked as I'd consider this an insult, but thankfully he moved on quickly.

Language changes
This relates to words we don't use in our family, words we consider crass or dishonouring to God. Some of these words have made it into polite conversation while we were gone. Our kids brace themselves at school because the language there is often cruder than they are used to hearing.

Odd conversations
There's the odd conversation that leaves me speechless. Something, if you've ever met me after breakfast, will find hard to believe. I can usually dredge up something!

I'm still staggered by an awkward conversation I had with a community nurse a few weeks back. As part of our routine medicals we have to have fasting blood tests. These I hate. A breakfast meeting is not something I volunteer for because I really can't make decisions before I eat (hence I eat pretty much the same thing for breakfast every day) and good conversation is really not  on the cards.

It all started off badly when the nurse asked, "So how are you this morning?"

I responded with an attempt of realistic humour: "I've not had breakfast or coffee yet..." 

She had no response to that at all. We fenced back and forth without finding any traction at all, on any topic. Towards the end of our encounter I tried again:

"It's a bit cloudy today."

She grabbed hold with both hands on this one and went, in almost one breath, from, 
"I wonder if it will rain." 
to
"The Chinese are going to take over our country because the farmers are selling out."

Quickly followed by, "What's your opinion?"

I was speechless. 

In my fragile, pre-breakfast state I was not about to step on this landmine. (Did I have an opinion?). I had the presence of mind to just mumble, "It's a complicated issue." And escape as fast as I could to get some food and coffee.

Conversations is what we mostly do
Conversations are the mainstay of what we do here. You might think it is up-front meetings, but that's just the most visible bits. But in fact, if you add up how much time we spend standing up in front of a large group vs one-on-one conversations with people you'll find the ratio is very much in favour of the latter. In the last six weeks we've spent less than 45 minutes in front of a congregation at worship services on Sunday mornings. We've already spent many hours talking to people—about mission, Japan, and our lives—before and after such events, as well as over coffee or meals or other occasions.

But obviously, from what I've written above, conversations that aren't even missions-related, conversations that are just part of our everyday interactions with the society around us can be treacherous. 

Do pray that we'd be wise. That we'd gain something of an understanding about this land that used to be so familiar to us, but has changed, and continues to change. Pray for our boys too. Australia is even more foreign to them. They've not grown up here and, at times, aren't sure how Aussie they are at all as they observe everyone around them.

Our local area

This is Six Mile Creek, still running despite how dry everything is. We've
had short, light showers only a couple of times since we arrived six weeks ago.

We've landed in a delightful area that I didn't know existed, though we've driven past many times. We're in basically in the same area as last time, just 6 km west in a neighbouring suburb. This suburb, Collingwood Park, is about 30 km south-west from Brisbane CBD in the neighbouring city of Ipswich and about 11 km east of Ipswich's CBD. 

It used to be a mining area, though I can only find information about one mine in the actual suburb. The area has a reputation from an incident of subsiding land that happened ten years ago and resulted in a group suing the government.

In any case, there isn't any mining happening here now, but there is nearby bushland to roam about in. In researching a little for this post I discovered the suburb has only a bit more than six thousand people living here. Population density is distinctly lower than what we're used to. Where we live in Tokyo there are more people per square kilometre than there is in this whole suburb. 

We're still close enough to major roads, though, so it's a convenient spot to be located for these months. The Ipswich motorway, a major east-west road, is only six minutes from our front door. School for our youngest is only six kilometres or 10 minutes away. Yesterday I drove to a doctor's clinic 27 kilometres away and it took me well under an hour. Granted I wasn't driving at peak commuting times, but it still surprises me how easy it is to get around in this spacious city. The roads are wide too, driving on them isn't so much a "dodge-em" exercise as it can be on the tiny roads in Tokyo. It's a good thing that driving isn't nearly so stressful as driving can be in Tokyo as we're doing whole heap more than we usually do. We can reach several decent shopping centres within 20 minutes by car, including a large grocery store just down the road (1.5km, which in Australian terms is very close).

Below is the view from our front door. The road seems a long way away! We can't quite see the horizon, but there's plenty of sky. Out behind our house is scrubland. So from our windows we can see gum trees in most directions.

Below is a Jacaranda tree in the car park of our home church (located just five minutes drive from our house). Church does have a car park, something we don't have in Tokyo.

A beautiful "mackerel sky" spotted last week at our local gym, where we're all exercising at least once, if not twice a week—it's between our house and the school.

I just love the blue skies (even though I know that means no rain). That blue is so common here that you can take it for granted...unless you've lived overseas. In Tokyo we rarely see such blue sky. 

This is a eucalyptus tree (colloquially known as "gum trees" in Australia) in the scrub behind our house.

Continuing to do the impossible

I'm freshly home from having an iron infusion at a doctor's clinic. 

I found out last week that I'm seriously deficient in iron and therefore anaemic. I didn't guess I was low in energy—the result came through a routine blood test required for our two-yearly OMF medical—I don't actually feel as whacked as everyone thinks I should be. This morning I sat in on the bed at the clinic while the nurse injected iron into my vein at 1ml a minute and had a doctor, nurse, and medical student exclaiming over my test results. It's hard to know how to react to that. 

I stopped very briefly at this park for a bite of lunch
on my way home. I just can't get enough of the
juxtaposition of Australian bush on the
amazing blue sky.

The thing is, I'm nowhere near as exhausted as I was throughout each of my three pregnancies. It's probable that my iron has been dropping slowly for some time and I no longer know what "normal" energy is. So I'm looking forward to seeing what that feels and looks like in a week or two. Or maybe it will be a little bit scary!

I'll also need to be making some adjustments to our diet, I"m not sure yet if I'll need to take supplements, though I'm guessing I will. I've got another blood test in a month to see how well today's infusion has lifted me out of the danger zone. And we'll see where we go from there.

I could milk this situation nicely! I don't need to feel guilty that I've been a bit slack recently: at both writing and editing. Truth is, it's not just my body that's made me a bit weary. An international move will do that too, especially with a teenager who is struggling to find his feet here.

Answered prayer

But I do have to give credit where credit is due. Lots of people are praying for us (though not specifically about anaemia, but in general) and God has enabled us through yet another tough period. I'm sure that without God's enabling I'd be in a much worse state.

I had an interesting encounter with a lady a couple of weeks ago that, I suspect, is having a lasting impact. She herself is a relatively new expat in Australia (from the UK). She came here with her family, primary-aged kids, for her husband's ministry. A major change for all. We only spoke twice, for a few minutes, but connected deeply on the various issues and challenges that such moves and a ministry-lifestyle produce. 

As we parted, she said she'd pray that I would be divinely guided to people who would ask great questions and be life-givers for me during this six-months. I think I can say I've seen that prayer already being answered. 

Here's a glimpse of some of the conversations I've had recently (as best I can remember...I should have written more down soon after they happened...that's what happens when I get slack about blogging).

Yesterday I had a conversation with an older lady in our home church about how God's built her "faith muscle" over the years, especially in regards to safety. I came away so encouraged!

Over the weekend we had no ministry engagements, we were therefore free to get involved in our local/home church's events, which included a working bee, a bring-and-share African night, and worship on Sunday morning. That in itself was encouraging. 

At the working bee I worked with a young lady who's interested in youth ministry. She asked some great questions, including, "What do you do during the week?", "Where does OMF work?" and "What sort of medical conditions would stop you from going back to Japan?"

We also were able to host a BBQ here with some friends. I fielded some interesting questions, including, "Where do you plan to retire? Do any Japanese houses have ensuites (bathroom attached to the main bedroom in a house)?" Even—what's it like to live in a snow?

I've had a lot of conversations about whether it's good to be back in Australia. Thankfully most times people have had the patience to listen to some of the joys and the challenges that we experience at such a time and have grown in their understanding that it isn't so simple as they might imagine.

I've had a number of people say they love this blog, love following my journey. One person I met only this year in Japan wrote: "You ... challenge and inspire me in what you write and your passion for God and others around you. I have found myself writing much much more lately and I know that is in part thanks to you ... and so I just wanted to say thank you!"

I was encouraged to hear about the faith of the physio treating my son on Friday (just a bit of re-tuning for this sporty kid). The physio was super excited about us being missionaries and told us about his short-term missions trip to Fiji when he was 18. 

People continue to observe that "I couldn't do what you do", that we look like we're doing the impossible. I've had conversations where I've been able to point out that though what we're doing looks impossibly difficult (especially moving cultures with teenagers), God has enabled us to do it without serious disaster. Indeed our eldest son endured a year here when he was 15/16. It wasn't a fun year, but I think that it helped set him up for a future of living here. The year didn't totally derail him (he settled back into Tokyo really quickly), and he's been successful at both graduating from high school as well as moving to Australia and settling here. All this undergirded with much prayer and God's enabling.

I hope that as we continue to "do the impossible" God will be glorified, for there seems no earthly explanation for why things might have gone so well in many cases. It's not that we're perfectly amazing parents with perfectly amazing kids. Things get ugly (often at home, out of the public's view). Our bodies give way (hence my infusion today). We struggle not to be self centred. Our boys criticise our choices, though we try very hard to be as fair to everyone as our work allows. Some days it feels as though I can do nothing right. There's no way that we're doing all this in our own strength. We're doing God's work with his resources. Praise him!

Isaiah 40:28-31 seems very appropriate:

Do you not know?
    Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
    and his understanding no one can fathom. 

He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
    and young men stumble and fall;
 but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint. (NIV)

A day off

It's been a crazy-busy week. Or should I say month or year? 

When people ask what we've been doing recently, they usually wonder if we're getting any rest. We've been working hard to get ourselves all set-up for ministry and life here, that always takes a lot more time and emotional energy than you expect. And last week I really didn't get much of a break, and it was followed by a weekend away at my parents and speaking at a church in their city—a very people-filled weekend. Then yesterday I had a five-hour Skype meeting with my magazine team in Japan. All good, important stuff, but tiring.

This morning I woke up feeling blurry.

The range of emotions I've been experiencing also include: inadequate, out of control, and off balance. Some of that is related to the busyness, some is related to parenting, and some is just trying (and at times failing) to find new rhythms that work for these six months. It's not really surprising that this extrovert-with-a-strong-introvert shadow, who's had little "me" time (or reflection time) recently is feeling this way.

Today there was nothing on the schedule, and with no designated ministry opportunities for nearly two weeks, we've got a small breathing space. 

So today, I stopped. 

I stopped answering email—though that in itself is a stress, knowing that there are emails to answer, people who are waiting to hear from me. 

I stopped doing Japanese study—yes, I'm still working on that and it is a definite stressor as it doesn't end. I can have no reviews left when I go to bed and find 100 waiting for me when I get up. I'm also still catching up from the break I took for a month while we relocated.

I stopped. And lay on my bed for the morning, reading and playing addictive phone games. As it was a school day I didn't get to sleep-in, but I did get that on Saturday.

This afternoon I got up again and "went". We went to a local gym. Getting some kind of exercise routine going for our family, especially for our home-schooling 15 year old, has been a stressor that we've despaired at solving. It was good to get him out and good for David and I to work out too. Maybe this is the light at the end of that tunnel! We went to the library too, so hopefully I'm fuelled up with some more reality-escaping fiction to relax with at nights.

I like coming back to this convenient kitchen
appliance. In Japan I use a hand-held mixer,
it is fun to have this here to use when we're back.

When we got home I baked. I'm continuing a challenge I gave myself in our last home assignment: that is, to bake my way through a small Australian recipe book I picked up in 2014. It's theme is chocolate and most recipes use at least one ingredient that is hard to get in Japan, so it's fun to do this here. So I baked a Hazelnut Mud Cake. 

I also baked an old favourite: Honey Biscuits (aka Stamp Biscuits), as one boy was complaining about the snacks he'd been receiving in his lunchbox and hankering after some good-old home cooking by mum. Baking takes energy, but is also relaxation for me, so it was good to have the time and energy to do it.

Now I'm writing, processing it all.

All that adds up to a pretty good day off. I'm definitely feeling better than I have for a few days.

Here's hoping that, for a few months at least, I'll be able to balance my weeks a bit better!

Thankful for today

Not taken today, but I'm enjoying sharing a Queensland
"bloom" with you from our local area.

Very short post to record my thankfulness for today. We're going away for the weekend (for work plus visiting family) starting in a couple of hours and I know that if I don't write now, this day will be forgotten.

On recommendation from our mission's state ministry leader, today I went to a women's event at a local theological college. Basically it was several hours of teaching and Bible study, which in itself was fantastic and refreshing (not to mention not having any expectations of me, aside from being a Christian woman who loves the Bible).

I was a bit nervous, walking into an event like this, not knowing if I'd know anyone. But thankfully there were three ladies who I knew from various arenas in the past, and another who made a point of meeting me (she was "staff" who knew that I was a missionary) and totally "got" where I am. Conversations with all four women were fantastic. They asked some of the FAQ, but went deep quite quickly and expressed something of an understanding of the challenges of what we're doing. I feel blessed, encouraged, and thankful.

Meet the missionary FAQs

I really want to write something other than "we're struggling to settle", but I'm struggling to say anything else. I could write about my kids and the challenge we've had parenting them these last weeks, but I'm not sure they'd appreciate that exposure. So, what can I write about?

I was "dumping" on a friend last night about parenting as well as the no-so-much-joys of deputation. One thing she suggested was writing a FAQ to give people. I don't think it would work, because the questions people ask at the starts of conversations are the small-talk that gives some solid ground for further conversation. However, I can entertain you with some FAQs! Here are questions we're answering often:

How long are you in Australia for?

Six months, returning to Japan early January.

How long have you been in Japan?

Since December 2000, coming up on 18 years.

Where are you living while you're here?

In Ipswich, in a rented house.

Where are your kids going to school?

Our youngest is at a local Christian school, our middle son is doing online schooling at home using an American curriculum. Our eldest is at university studying maths and science.

Is your eldest living with you?

No, he's stayed at the house he's been living in since February.

Are your kids fluent in Japanese?

No, not really. Once they were, but now they're not. Maybe they will be again sometime in the future, if they choose to go that direction.

Are you fluent in Japanese?

Not as much as you might think. We both work in English environments, but we get by in Japanese and continue to learn it as much as we can amidst our work and life responsibilities.

Where do you live in Japan?

In Tokyo, about 25km west-north-west of the main city centre.

How long will you keep doing this missionary work?

As long as God continues to call us to Japan, maybe until we retire.

How much travelling will you do this home assignment?

We're visiting 16 different churches on Sundays and a number of other groups also. We're going to visit a church in Canberra, and also several in Perth. The rest are in south-east Queensland. Wendy's also attending a conference in Singapore for a week. We'll be visiting family in Toowoomba (about an hour from here) and also central Queensland (about 800km from where we're based).

What do you do during the week?

We are both still doing small amounts of work from our roles in Japan, all computer-based. Other than that we have various mid-week and weekend meetings that we're speaking at as well as the preparation for them. We also spend time with supporters, as well as catching up with friends and family. We're also spending as much time as we can with our sending/home church. It's surprising how much our kids need us during this time, Australia is a foreign land to them and so we spend what time we need to help them make it through. One of the goals of home assignment is renewal, so we take time for relaxation, as well as spiritual feeding (for example I'm going to a Theological College's Women Enrichment Day tomorrow).

What do you do in Japan?

David is a teacher at a school for missionary kids, he teaches maths and science in English as well as being the Director for Teaching and Learning. Wendy is an editor who works with a magazine for and by missionaries as well as in social media with OMF.

What do you think? Any other "meet a new missionary" questions you can think of that I could include?