Looking back at 2020

It's time for my end-of-year blog post. 

Last year on this day I used some interesting questions to reflect on the year: http://mmuser.blogspot.com/2019/12/looking-back-at-2019.html They were good questions, so I'm going to use them again.

1. What makes this year unforgetable? 

Sunset late in 2020 near our house.

• Well that's easy for 2020. But, unusually, probably similar to most of you: it's experiencing a pandemic, something we've only ever glanced over in the history books.
• For the first time I can remember in my life, I've been encouraged to stay home! All of us working from home during March-June was quite a challenge (though David did spend a good portion of that working at school, seeing as he has his own office only 300m walk from our house).

2. What did I enjoy doing this year?

• Baking. I've always enjoyed baking, but often it's been something that's squeezed in between other commitments on weekends. This year, with everything cancelled mid-year and not much to look forward to, baking was something I could not just plan for, but look forward to, and control. It even enabled me to give some small pockets of joy to others outside our family, in a safe way. This year, I also inherited a stand mixer. First time I've had one in Japan. That was also mostly due to COVID (the owners suddenly decided to go back to Australia when they discovered they were expecting twins).
• Camping. As always. But amazingly, despite the restrictions, we were able to go camping three times, with a couple of firsts: the first time in Gunma prefecture and the first to camp on our own without kids (we were camping with friends).
• Watching God work in unexpected ways. 
• One of those was related to camping. In April/May I had a short conversation with a colleague/friend whose teenage boys had had to suddenly evacuate from their international school in India when borders closed. Her boys were lacking connections in Tokyo, never having lived here. They are around the age of our our youngest son and I was pretty sure that, given the chance, they would be good friends. So, in a God-inspired moved, we invited them to come camping with us in July and they hit it off, not just with our son, but with his group of friends. Despite living on opposite sides of this great metropolis, they've managed to get together quite often. Amazing. 
• And that's just one example. I've heard other stories—one just the other day about a Japanese couple coming to faith this year, despite how hard it's been to meet together.
• A third is this story from March, when I sent a pair of earrings to a friend, and they arrived the day after her son died!

3. What/who is one thing/person you're grateful for?

• I'm grateful to my two friends with whom I formed a trio over two years ago now. We've helped each other stay afloat with daily messaging through what has been a horrid year. 
• Technology, without which much of the above wouldn't be possible and we'd be a whole lot more isolated from one another. We attended church online from mid-March to mid-August this year. Without technology that period would have been much more difficult.

4. What did you read/watch/listen to that made the most impact this year?

• Hmmm, a hard question, as it was last year.
• For the first time I've used an app called Goodreads to track my reading. So I know that this year I've read 108 (maybe 109 books, if I get my current book finished today). It tells me that that's 37,00+ pages with an average book length of 348 pages! Many of those have been crime/mystery type novels. I've always loved this genre and this year found reading to be especially calming when life around about us was in a turmoil. Last Christmas I received a Kindle Fire and I've used it extensively to borrow ebooks from the library, it's been a lifesaver.
• I enjoyed participating in a book club for the first time in my life. Naomi Reed spontaneously started a somewhat random Facebook-based book club to read through some of her books. We started with My Seventh Monsoon, then No Ordinary View, and Heading Home. I think she's done more, but I didn't own those books. The first two were especially interesting to do during the depths of the State of Emergency in Japan (April and May), providing some outside interaction that wasn't work-based.
• I read some books on first-person experiences of mental illness that were helpful in my understanding.
• It's interesting to note that the verse I cited this time last year has stuck with my through this year also: Ps 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God."

5. What did you worry about most and how did it turn out?

• Figuring out how to live with this new infectious threat has been a huge challenge. Just going out to get groceries (which was almost the only reason I left the house from mid-March onwards for several months) was stressful. Watching other people's reactions on social media was also stressful: for example seeing people go out and then ranting about how many people were out and seeing people declare that they won't get the new vaccine was also worrying. However, we've made it to the end of the year without dying, or contracting this new disease!
• I really didn't want the Olympics cancelled, ironically! We amazingly had tickets. But it did. We've still got tickets for the Paralympics, if they happen in September next year!
• Learning to wear a mask every time I was out was challenging, and I still haven't found one that I can wear for many hours at a time without ending up in pain.
• Unrelated to the global pandemic has been my concern for my older two boys. They are both on the verge of new things as their current studies come to an end in 2021. Neither knows what they want to do next. Our middle son is on the verge of adulthood and transitioning to life in Australia. There are many things that concern us about that transition. This has been a big worry for me that I've tried had to hand over to God regularly, with varying success. It remains to be seen how all this pans out, we probably won't know for several years!

6. What's my biggest regret and why?

• Hmm. Possibly, not being able to be with my friend in Australia when her son was dying. I think that was far harder than I'd anticipated.

7. What's something that has changed about me?

• I've enjoyed a new habit formed with David: walking three times a week in the evening. That's a new way for both of us to get exercise. It's been a good time to debrief from the day too.
• To think deeper than that...I'm not sure. This year we passed the 20-years mark, 20 years since we left Australia as missionaries for the first time. It's also 10 years since our youngest started school full-time and I started work in the publishing industry more intently. 2010 was a big year. It's been good to reflect on that journey during the year and see how far I've come. I'm gradually being called on more often to teach others about writing, editing, and other communication skills, rather than just doing it myself. I guess that's been something of a change of mindset over the last 12 months, or longer.

8. What surprise you the most this year?

• I think I was surprised by how much I need to have concrete things to look forward to. Having so much cancelled in March and April (and ongoing cancellations since then) was really hard. I was reduced to looking forward to small things, like looking forward to watching a favourite TV show in the evening, and baking on a Saturday.

So, after that focused reflection, here are some highlights from the year (some have been mentioned above):

• Our three camping trips and two family holidays in the mountains.
• Reading large quantities of books!
• Seeing the new prayer book for Japan published after 18 months of work.
• Successfully leading a series of three, online meetings that comprised our magazine's annual planning time.
• Good conversations with friends.
• Deepening friendships with some friends who were more like acquaintances before.
• More Saturday sleep-ins due to sports events cancelled.
• Finding the capacity to write some poetry/song verses to express deep emotions.
• Leading a writer's retreat weekend in March. 

Actually I think this year is more marked by what wasn't, rather than what was! So many things that usually make up the fabric of our year just didn't happen. Some we missed acutely, others not so much. On Jan. 4 this year, I wrote a hopeful list of things that I was looking forward to for the year. Three of the six things on that list never happened. I am thankful that three did!

Some lowlights of the year:

• My friend's son dying in March.
• In-person school being cancelled from March to June.
• Not being able to see our eldest son at all this year in person.
• Losing a few more friends in my expat "colander" life!

Today is the end of a remarkable year, one that will be a bookmark for the rest of our lives! 

I'm thankful that, through it all, I've been comforted by the one thing that never changes: our God. I reflected on this in April here, and verses like 

"We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Heb. 6:19) 

and 

"The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe" (Proverbs 18:10).

As I mentioned earlier, "Be still and know that I am God" has been especially important to me this year. A real sense that though I have little influence in this world, God knows what's going on and my role is largely to stop and trust him in the midst of the chaos. So, as the old year ends and the new year begins, I want to remind myself to do this:

"In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly" (Psalms 5:3 NIV).

My next blog post is going to be an interesting one, as I ponder the year ahead. It seems even more uncertain than a usual year, so how does one even do that? The first post I wrote this year I suggested that 2020 would be a quiet year (primarily with the thought that we might not engage in any international travel). I had no idea just how quiet it would be!

Lamenting this Christmas-time

This topic of lament has come up for me multiple times this year. More often than usual. Possibly because collectively we've experienced more losses than any time in recent decades. I think I'm probably not too far off the mark to say that this disaster has been far more global than anything this world has seen since WW2.

So, I've been pondering lament recently, but also noticing a trend in myself. I've been struggling to see other people experience joy at being reunited with family. Yes, failing to do Romans 12:15: "Rejoice with those who rejoice" (NIV). Probably I haven't been great at the second part of that verse either "Mourn with those who mourn". Compassion fatigue? Or just plain selfishness?

The reality is that this week is probably around when our eldest son would have arrived from Australia to spend Christmas with us, had COVID-19 not derailed international travel (it's been 18 months since we've seen him). It's one of many losses this year has brought, so it's been kind of buried in our thoughts as something not so important. But maybe it's a bigger loss than I thought.

But, after pondering "lament" during the last couple of days, last night it occurred to me that this was also something I needed to bring God, complain to him, and then to leave at his feet. And repeat, as needed.

I recommend watching this 22:48 talk by Elizabeth Lewis Hall, a professor of psychology at Biola University, for some deeper thoughts on lament. I realised that, while she talked about the "anatomy" of lament, by dissecting one psalm of lament, she also talks about some of the short phrases that Jesus used on the cross (see Matt. 27:46 and Luke 23:16) as "laments". 

So a lament doesn't have to be in the form of poetry or song, with clearly thought out phrasing. It can simply be a line, even a thought, directed to God. That's encouraging for I am not especially poetic and certainly there isn't time for writing poetry every time thoughts like these overwhelm us. Writing prose, like a blog post, has helped me process my pain many a time.

Dr. Hall also talks about how putting words to our experience helps to shape our experience. When we express our sadness to God, it's changing our relationship with God, it's increasing our intimacy with him, so that's a great reason to dive into lament:

It’s important that nothing seems to be off limits in terms of what we can bring to God in our suffering. This expression of suffering in lament is a crucial element because what happens then is that our suffering is not denied and our suffering is not minimized. Suffering is not dealt with by explaining it away or by distracting ourselves from it. It’s recognized.

And when it’s recognized, that means that our suffering is legitimated. Research suggests that processing our suffering cognitively and emotionally is necessary in order for growth to occur. 

Biblical laments in psalms almost always include praise, so as we can, it's important to turn to God in praise too. I think, somehow though, in Western Christianity these days we skip the lament, and move too quickly into praise. When I've asked colleagues recently about the worst things about this year, most often they've told me of silver-linings, as if to dwell on the ugly is wrong somehow. But then, I'm not God, so perhaps they're expressing their frustration to him in the privacy of their own prayers, I don't know.

In addition to sadness that our son can't be with us this Christmas, I am also frustrated at the moment by all the people saying that they will refuse to take  COVID-19 vaccine when it is available. What they don't realise is that the more people who do that, the longer this crisis is going to go on. And the harder it's going to be for people like us, who don't live in our home country and whose immediate family is separated by an international plane flight. At the moment, the cost for us to visit Australia for a short time, is not just the cost of a flight, it would mean a total of four weeks of quarantine (two each end), and around AU$5,000 to pay for quarantine in a hotel, as is required by the Australian government, not to mention whatever costs involved in getting the required tests to just let us on a plane.

Australia is (mostly) fine at the moment because they're basically not letting people in or out. I can't see restrictions on international travel being lifted until vaccination (or a pretty darn good treatment option) is found. When I say Australia is mostly okay, I mean that there are industries and sections of the community who are hurting. For example, the education sector that relies on a large number of international students, and the travel, tourism, and hospitality sectors, obviously, plus industries that rely on backpackers, like fruit farmers.

But university students are also hurting. Our son's university did most of the entire year online, and it while it kept things moving through, our son found it a really difficult year. Yes, there is little COVID-19 infection in the community, but health isn't the only thing at stake here.

But that's enough of my ranting . . . to you. I need to go and take my frustrations to God. To quote the Bible: 

"How long, oh Lord?"

What sadness do you need to bring to God? How do you do that best?

Festive Fudge Fundraiser!

Last week on social media I posted about one of the things I love to do at Christmas time: make chocolate fudge and give it to each of our boys' teachers. As an aside I pondered what I would do after our youngest has left school (only two more Christmases after this one until that happens). A few people comments that they'd happily receive fudge from us! 

That got me thinking . . . maybe I could sell them. Then, while walking together last Wednesday night, David commented that a couple of other people we know in the school community are using their skills at making things to raise money for the current fundraiser at school Impact 75 to raise money for an artificial turf field at school (it's currently gravel).

So I impulsively decided to set up our own mini fundraiser by volunteering to make fudge for anyone who could pick them up from us or from school, and pay 100 yen a piece. So far we've sold 100 pieces! I made 3.5 kg of fudge on the weekend and David cut them up, packaged them, and has delivered them this morning to (mostly) staff at school.

It's been a fun venture (and diversion), but I don't think I'll be going into commercial cookery anytime soon. Too much pressure to make things "perfect" and "regular". David had quite a bit of fun trying to cut the pieces into as regular sizes as he could.

David working with the fudge pieces and scales.
His cutting wasn't as accurate as he'd hoped!

If there's anyone else in the local community who'd like to buy fudge from us, I can make 30 more pieces. Please put your order in here by Tuesday 5pm: Fudge fundraiser. It needs to be picked up at school on Wednesday or from us by Thursday night because we go away on holidays on Friday.

Choc-chip shortbread

On Saturday morning over breakfast I indulged in some cookbook browsing. I was tired, but had high aspirations of getting some seasonal baking done. I came across a recipe in my collection that I'd never tried, but looked easy enough for a tired Saturday's baking. It's garnered high praise at home, and one of my Facebook friends asked for the recipe, so without further ado, here it is:

Ingredients

250g butter, softened

½ cup icing sugar, sifted

½ cup brown sugar

2 ¼ cups plain flour

¼ cup rice flour

150g choc bits

1. Beat butter and sugars.
2. Stir in the flours and choc-bits into butter-sugar mixture.
3. If it's hot, you can wrap the dough in plastic wrap and rest it in the fridge for 30 minutes, I didn't need to do that with the room temperature around 18˚C.
4. Shape spoonfuls of mixture into balls and place on tray. They didn't flatten in the oven, so I'd recommend squishing them a little.
5. Bake at 180˚C for 12-15 minutes or until golden. My oven is "hot" so I used 170˚C for 12 minutes.
6. Cool on the tray for a few minutes before transferring off the tray.

December update from the Marshalls

 Here is a generic version of the first page of our prayer letter that I've sent out this morning (no mention of our boy's names or our address). Let me know if you'd like the full version, complete with family news.

Managing my time

This is a lifelong challenge for most of us. I see my kids struggle with it, my friends and colleagues, and of course myself.

Coffee is one of my routines. I look
forward to coffee at about 9.30 and
3.30 each day. The other day I was
out at 3.30 and in a rush, so I bought
a coffee from a convenience store.
Not bad, either!

Last week a friend called me about our Saturday plans. She asked how I was and I told her I was in the midst of a crazy week where some bigger things had all landed on my desk at once. I had several Zoom meetings, for two of them I had to spend significant time preparing information to present. On top of that the prayer booklet that I've been working on was finally printed and there was a flurry of activity surrounding that, including a trip into town to sign thank you cards for contributors. In the same week we were doing final proofreading for the Winter issue of the magazine, something that only happens four times a year, but last week it collided with these other things.

My friend said, "Wow Wendy, that's quite a bit of juggling!"

I said, "I usually juggle quite a lot, and manage it fairly well, even enjoy it; but this week is a bit over the top." 

I have several job titles, including OMF Japan Social Media manager, Japan Harvest Managing Editor, and Website responder. Now added to that is Pre Home Assignment Workshop facilitator. Most of the time I love it. I love variety and hate boredom, this collection of jobs suits me well and most of time I can make them fit well with one another.

What do I use to keep me organised?

• Asana.com (see my post about that here). This keeps me on track with deadlines in my publishing work (I usually have dozens of deadlines  in any given month).
• A running list on my phone where I tick off (US=check off) the items as they're done through the day, this saves me when I remember I need to do something later and because I nearly always have my phone nearby, it's brilliant. I used to use PostIt notes, but they aren't nearly so convenient.
• A calendar next to my computer and one in my handbag. Yes, I'm a physical calendar kind of girl. Not so good for keeping track of Zoom meeting links, but I haven't had many of those to deal with on a regular basis.

This next list is not so much tools for time management, but more helping with organising multiple bits in projects: when it comes to organising publishing work, I use a variety of other tools, including: 

• Trello (a collaboration tool for organising projects, particularly useful for working in a remote team, we use it for social media planning)
• Google docs: sheets is a particularly helpful way to lay out content such as a publishing schedule or a list of articles for a magazine, in a way that is easy to understand and for others to access.
• Dropbox: I use this extensively when working with files that others need to access, such as other magazine team members.
• Social media scheduling tools (yes there are such things, and I only use them for work, not my personal account): Buffer, Hootsuite, and just today I'm starting to try out a new one called "Later". But I'm still searching for the "perfect" one, any suggestions welcome!

Yes, it's complicated, but I wouldn't be able to do these jobs efficiently without these tools to help me stay on top of things. These tools also help me to relax when I'm not working: I know that I don't have to hold everything in my head, that I'm probably not going to forget important things, because they are recorded in a place that will remind me.

Routines also help me, though my weeks aren't tightly scheduled because I dislike being over-regulated.

What do you use to help you stay organised? Everyone has different responsibilities and a different style. Mine certainly has changed over the years as my boys have needed me less. Different people tolerate different levels of disorganisation and some thrive on being last-minute people. Others, like me, like a certain level of unpredictability, but don't enjoy being panicked.

Not able to make plans yet

This year has been one filled with pain for many. One particular struggle has been the uncertainty and difficulty in making plans. We've had it relatively easy compared to some other cross-cultural workers (we know some who've been stuck in countries where they'd rather not be), we had no "big" plans for the year. That is:

• we'd not planned to go on home assignment, or return to the field
• none of our boys have been in the middle of a major educational transition
• we were settled in a good location and had work we could do regardless of the conditions around us
• we had no major travel plans disrupted 
• we got to take our annual summer holidays as planned in July

Of course there have been many disappointments: 

• our son in Australia has not been able to visit us as he'd planned
• school was online for several months 
• lots of other things have been cancelled or radically changed

This blog post in 2015 was answering questions we were dealing with back then about how our eldest son would be transitioning to Australia. We had big, bold, audacious plans! Surprisingly, most of them came to be.

Somewhat random photo, taken during my time in the park
on Friday as I pondered some of the things I've written in 
this post.

This time round, with our middle son graduating (Lord willing) in June of next year, we've got a clearer idea of some things, and, for a couple of reasons, a much foggier idea of others. Who said it gets easier?

Five years ago I wrote that blog post while we were on home assignment, partly out of frustration at having to repeatedly explain things (but I’m not sure it helped much as most of those who asked weren’t reading this blog). 

The challenge we have is that Australians don’t understand the American schooling system our boys are in and most people we encounter in Japan don’t understand the Australian schooling system. Add to that the challenge of having to negotiate the journey of your kids transitioning to adult lives when you’re not working in your passport country. Plus the fact that these kids have lived most of their lives overseas and have almost no friends in their passport country.

All these things add extra layers to such a time in life. The natural result is lots of discussion and plans. David and I love a real-life puzzle and we love planning, but this puzzle has too many pieces that aren’t even in the box yet.

One thing I’ve been struggling with is that the natural question to ask people at this stage of life is about those plans. The thing I’ve found is that most people would like to hear a neat, ABC plan. But what if you don’t have a neat “ABC” plan? What if your “plan” looks like a bunch of squiggles that don’t make much sense? What if your plans look more like a bunch of possibilities and maybes, than anything concrete? That makes for awkward conversation. It also leads to worry. At the moment, my challenge it is to trust God in all this. To “be still and know that he is God”.

I’m reading Sword Fighting: Applying God's word to win the battle for our mind by Christine Dillon, a friend of mine. She’s asked me to write a review when I’m done, but I’m not finished the book yet. However, the other day it was good to read the chapter about worry. Thinking about the story of Abraham and Sarah—God had promised them they would have children, but they’d had none thus far and were getting older. So Sarah came up with a plan, which turned out to be a bad plan, not God’s plan. 

I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to “help God out” by coming up with a plan that isn’t in line with his plans. But sitting still and trusting God is hard. And talking to people who enquire about the plans of our son who is in year 12 just highlights how many ifs and buts there are. It also seems that for people of our age, suggesting post-school plans for teenagers is a particularly enjoyable/tempting thing to do? We've been on the receiving end of so much well-meaning advice and suggestions, but . . . it hasn't necessarily helped me in waiting on God.

I’m reminded of the passage in Ecclesiastes 3 that begins “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven.” I reckon this fits (though there's no actual verse that says this): “There’s a time to make plans and there’s a time to wait.” Right now, for us, it’s time to wait, and trust in the Lord with all our hearts, leaning not on our own understanding and God will direct our paths (paraphrase from Proverbs 3:5-6).

This is getting to be a long post. But as I've thought about this over the last few days, God has been working in me. Yesterday I looked up "wait" in the Bible. It occurs many times, but here are a couple that are relevant to our current situation:

"In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly" (Psalm 5:3 NIV).

Indeed, we've been laying our requests before the Lord many, many mornings. We also need to wait expectantly for his answers (which may not come quickly).

"I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, in his word I put my hope" (Psalm 130:5).

Yesterday we also were privileged to hear a Japanese missionary from Wycliffe speak on Psalm 13. 

How long, Lord? Will you forget me for ever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’

and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;

my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing the Lord’s praise,

for he has been good to me. 

He pointed out that this was probably written later in David's life, as he reflected on the many struggles he'd had in his life. Verse 3 is David's prayer: that he would have "light" or understanding, that he would be able to see God in the midst of the struggles. 

The preacher also took a little detour to talk about the phrase "it came to pass". It's a common phrase in older versions of the English Bible. In modern translations it is often translated as "after that" or "one day". But he pondered what God might be saying to us through this Hebrew phrase and thought it might be a reminder that these things haven't come to stay. That no matter what you're going through it will pass—keep your eyes on heaven.

I'm praying that I'll have wisdom to deal with conversations that encourage me to worry, and more conversations that point me to trusting and waiting on God. And that God will enable us to sit with these current uncertainties and trust him to work it all out. 

Hundreds and Thousands Slice

Most of us have favourite food memories from childhood. It's amazing how those memories stick with you. I love it that many of the sweet recipes I make have connections to various people who've been in my life over the years.

This is a recipe that my mum frequently made. I haven't made it so often over the years because coconut isn't the easiest product to source in Japan, but I've got some at the moment (thanks to iHerb), so I made these on the weekend. Yum!

Ingredients

½ cup (120g) butter

1 cup (210g) brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup (130g) SR flour (For non-Aussies, this is self raising flour and has baking powder included in it, very convenient!) If you arent' in Australia, just add a teaspoon of baking powder as well as the flour. For my Japan-based friends, I used "medium flour" or 中力小麦粉.

½ cup (50g) desiccated coconut

2 tablespoons of cocoa (20 ml spoons)

dash of vanilla essence

Icing

2 tablespoons cocoa

1 cup (130g) icing sugar 

3 (15g) teaspoons butter

1 tablespoon boiling water

hundreds and thousands

Method

1. Cream butter and sugar.

2. Add egg.

3. Add flour, coconut, cocoa, and vanilla.

4. Mix well (semi-dry mixture).

5. Spread evenly into a greased/baking paper-lined tin. I used a 23cm x 23cm tin.

6. Cook in a moderate oven for 20 minutes (about 170 or 180˚C depending on how fast your oven is).

7. Just before it finishes baking, mix icing ingredients together (except hundreds and thousands).

8. Ice while hot. Sprinkle hundreds and thousands on top.

9. Cut into squares when cold.

Curve-ball kind of week

 After a slow week at work last week, the burners were turned up this week. (You can often tell by how many blog posts I’ve written...in a slow week I write more, busy week, I don’t often get to write at all).

My working week ended with a pretty
cool sunset. This was the best I could
get from my balcony.

Last weekend the first curve ball landed of my week landed when two siblings at school were diagnosed with COVID. None of our family had close contact with either student while not wearing a mask (the main thing they consider in Japan), however they did “shut down” the two grades those students were in for the week and that meant one of our boys was back to online schooling. As my husband is on the leadership team at school I also heard a few bits and pieces as the week went on, as various circles of contact were tested and eventually cleared (that’s right, no one at school caught the virus from these two students). I’m pretty impressed—Japanese contact testing is thorough and well organized.

I spent Monday on the other side of Tokyo with some of my Kanto OMF colleagues. David got to come too, which was a lovely treat (although we tried not to talk on the 2.5 hrs we spent on trains...that’s one of the COVID guidelines here). 

As usual, it was great to spend time with colleagues. We even got to stay an extra hour and play games. That was both challenging and fun. I ended up being drawn into a Japanese language game that’s a bit like Taboo and surprised myself by not doing too bad. Actually “guessing” is a big part of my survival strategy in Japanese language, so I suppose it shouldn’t be such a surprise that I did alright. But I still ended up the day with a bad headache, traveling on public transport and being with people all day while wearing masks is not as  easy as it used to be.

When I got back to my desk on Tuesday I found a pile of work bigger than I’d expected, that was the next cluster of curve-balls. We’re into the design-phase of the Winter issue of the magazine and I thought I’d finished the hard-lifting editing last Friday. However one article came back from an author with some major changes. I also had to do some fast writing to extend one article I’d written, to better fill the space we had available (we had less content than we’d needed to fill the 40-page magazine).

Managing a magazine has lots of behind-the-scenes stuff that I never imagined. The most surprising to me is how tricky it can be to get just the right amount of content. That involves juggling many things, from word count and images, to actually where articles are placed in the magazine, not to mention ads.

So Tuesday was a busy day at the office. 

On Wednesday the next curve ball arrived, and it was in the form of a request to create a PowerPoint presentation for the content I’d be helping present on Friday morning for an orientation for new missionaries. The pressure mounted as I’d already agreed to help out an expat friend all Wednesday afternoon, and Thursday was fully booked with parent-teacher conferences, at school and other errands that needed doing.

By Thursday morning I was feeling pretty exhausted. I ended up having to reschedule an appointment (not because I was tired), but that gave me some extra wriggle room for getting things done. After dinner on Thursday night David had to go back to school to see more parents for conferences and I nearly fell asleep at 7.30 in my chair!

Friday was more sane. We did the orientation session just before lunch and it seemed to go well, despite our lack of experience at delivering training via Zoom (they were all in one room, but my colleague and I were in our own homes). That gave me Friday afternoon to tidy up a lot of the loose ends from earlier in the week. I got to the end of yesterday feeling both exhausted and satisfied. And very thankful for a quiet weekend coming up and that no further curve balls arrived on Friday!

How was your week? I’m still learning to go with the flow—to enjoy the times when the demands of my job and time and energy available are about equal. The difficulty I have is to not get too stressed when the demands exceed the time and energy I have available and not to overthink when I’ve got more time and energy available than the job demands.

Fiddling at work

As a child I was overflowing with energy, ideas, and words. It drove my parents crazy at times. The energy has slowed over the years, but you can still see the restlessness in me if you look closely. I need to be physically comfortable and have a tendency to wriggle. I also fiddle. A lot. I do it in a way that most people don't notice: with a pencil, a seam on my clothes, a fold in a piece of paper. As I just re-read this paragraph, my left hand slipped off the keyboard and over to a nearby black pen and tried to balance it on its plastic clip.

My desk, with fiddle objects in plain sight.

I have never been one to tolerate long periods of sitting still, unless my attention is riveted on a book, the conversation, or the task that I'm doing, but even then I fiddle. I find it difficult to pay close attention to meetings that I don't have deep involvement in. I have been known to occasionally take cross-stitch to meetings.

On my desk are several things that I use for fiddling. Most are usual desk equipment, but one is a bit more unusual, my twelve-sided fidget toy. I've found it helpful this year during Zoom meetings when my fingers long to be busy and my attention is flagging. I believe it used to belong to one of my boys, who was given it during the "fidget spinner" craze a few years back.

I know I'm not the only one who fiddles. I am experienced at using small objects to help my boys in a quiet situation to settle or distract them from whatever is bothering them (yes, as teenagers). I carry a couple of small things in my handbag for just that purpose and have occasionally used them myself. There is even research out there about fiddling! In the process of writing this blog post I found a Youtube video rating various items people fiddle with in 2020 in the office.

Do you fiddle compulsively? What is your preferred go-to object?

Camping food

If you’re new here, please don’t think we camp all the time, we’ve only managed three camping trips in 2020, That’s about our average. However, we’ve been doing it since 2011, so we’ve got a bit of camping-in-Japan experience.

A friend recently asked for camp food advice/recipes. So I thought I’d write a blog post just about that.

Our philosophy for camping has always been: keep it as simple as possible. That means it’s not hard to pack up and go camping. That’s essential if it’s going to be a relaxing experience for us. This extends to the food side of things.

The menu is simple. I almost never pre-prepare any main meal, unless it’s going to be late before we get camp set up on the first night, or it’s going to be very cold that first night. That meant it was not hard to do a couple of “camping tours”, where we camped for two weeks (using several different campsites). We bought food as we needed it—usually every couple of days.

We have a standard camp packing list that we rely on heavily, I also plan the meals and write a food list. This makes packing easy and eases anxiety.

Here are some standard camping meals we have (understanding these are easy-to-buy foods in Japan, so aren’t all suitable to other places):

Things we eat for breakfast
Bacon, sausages, and eggs (or variations of that combo)

Pancakes

English muffins or sometimes bread

Above usually supplemented by tinned peaches

Sometimes yoghurt, fruit, and cereal (this was mostly for a fast pack up on our camping tours, without starting a fire, it was easier to pack up and move on)

Things we’ve eaten for dinner

Yakisoba (Japanese stir fried pork and noodles)
BBQ meat and foil-wrapped veggies

Wraps (tortillas with salad and cooked meat)

Rice (cooked on the fire with Japanese campfire rice cookers!)

Japanese curry rice

I’ve even made Tuna Mornay

This is Yakisoba: Japanese stir-fried pork and noodles. So yummy and so easy if you’ve got a large group to cater for.

Lunch

This is generally a low-profile affair. We’ll have sandwiches, or two-minute ramen, or tinned soup.

Dessert

In my opinion this is the most fun part of camping. Cooking with the fire after the main meal is done is usually pretty fun. My favourite is the Chocolate, banana, marshmallow boats (two layers of greased foil loaded up with a banana, chocolate pieces and two or three marshmallows, and cooked over the fire).

We’ve also made damper: and Australian non-yeast bread, something like a scone and eaten with butter, syrup, jam or honey. Very yummy! 

Of course there’s always marshmallows to cook, and when our American friends come they bring the fixings for S’mores.

We don’t use bread much, mostly because it takes up a lot of room. Rice or noodles fill up hungry boys and are more compact for packing. Larger sized savoury bread rolls are also not super common in most Japanese supermarkets.

And of course snacks and hot drinks are important. I’ve often made brownies to take on our shorter camps: again they are compact and filling, but also hold together well and are very popular. Nothing quite like a brownie snack after setting up camp for raising the mood and filling the gap while dinner is prepared. Hot chocolate, coffee, peppermint and ordinary tea bags are also always in our camping “larder”.

We take two cooking options: a single table-top gas ring (fueled by easily available small gas canisters) and a simple folding campfire stove (because most campsites you have to bring your own and can’t make a fire on the ground). The gas ring is great for heating water for drinks and washing up water, and as a backup to the fire. The fire obviously takes more work, but it’s also more fun. I don’t see the joy in just cooking by gas like you do at home when you could light a fire!

Food is one of the things I love most about camping. Cooking and eating outdoors is really very relaxing most of the time and you’re completely focused on what you’re doing. That focus is what means that camping is so relaxing. Because you’re so zoned in on taking care of basics like food and shelter, you forget about the pressures that you’ve left behind at home and the office.

Do you have a favourite camping meal? Or a favourite camping food memory?

Fixing my eyes on Jesus

Yesterday I read a chapter in a book that's been sitting on my bedside table for a few months now: Enjoying God: Experience the power and love of God, by Tim Chester. The chapter mentioned fixing our eyes on Jesus. It's a concept that I return to time and time again in my life, so it was good to think about it again with some concrete ideas on how to do it. Simply: remembering what God has done, what he continues to do in us and around us, and what he's got planned:

You can look back to his work on the cross; you can look up to his presence in heaven for you; and you can look forward to the day when he returns for his people. (Chester, p 84)

I'd completely forgotten my 2014 goal of blogging once a month on one of my favourite Bible passages: Hebrews 12:1-3, but it came up when I did a search of my blog before I started writing a new blog post today. In June that year, 2014, we went on our third home assignment. At the start of the year I knew it was going to be a challenging year, so the challenge of focussing my thoughts and words on this passage, was important. I ended up only writing six times (though I've blogged about or mentioned this passage numerous other times through the years, for example here).

2014 blogging on Heb. 12:1-3:

February: pushing through, remembering Jesus and others who have gone before us

March: who is Jesus?

April: heavenly perspective

May: setting goals

June: the stuff we see now is temporary

September: fixing our eyes on Jesus despite the hardships

Today was a difficult day. I had goals for the day—a long To Do list for work, on which very little got done because a couple of other urgent matters arose that I had no control over. So when I rode in the rain to get some groceries, it was good to remember that chapter I read yesterday and ask myself some questions:

• What's unchanging here? God! He's God whether or not I do what I'd intended to do. He's God even when things don't go the way I want them to, when the future looks murky.
• What's my ultimate goal? That I serve God wherever I am. If that means doing something other than what I'd planned, then that is okay too.
• What is my hope based on? God, it all comes back to him. No one else is the Rock on which I can base my hope (Psalm 18:2,31).

While I rode my bike along a familiar route and peered through the raindrops on my glasses, it was good to remind myself of these foundational things that my faith is based on. And that is "fixing my eyes on Jesus". Do you have a recent story where you deliberately focused your eyes on Jesus?

Gunma Prefecture camp

On Sunday we went on another camping trip, our third and final one for 2020. From here on it gets too cold to comfortably camp without more expensive gear, so even though we've camped in November in the past, we've decided those days are over...and our kids are older and not so interested!

So, we left with our camping buddies around 11.30, after we'd been to church, and got to the campsite around mid afternoon. We drove about 55 km on the expressway, and then over an hour was spent on slow roads, many of them "spaghetti" roads (on the map, looks like someone's thrown noodles down).

Monday we got up late and meandered through the day. The chief theme of our camping is "low key". We generally have no major agenda on the "whole days" we are at a campsite. 

I was talking with Japanese friends about our trip the other day and said that for the days we were away we didn't wear masks (except when buying lunch on the way there and back) and didn't really have to think about COVID at all—although of course it came up in conversation sometimes. My friends were amazed. Camping in more remote places during non-Japanese school-holiday weeks is indeed a great way to escape this pandemic in Japan.

Our house is the blue dot. The green flag in the top left corner is where we've been for longer holidays in the last couple of years (and will be heading there just before Christmas). The yellow star near the middle is where we camped the other two times in 2020. It's only about 50km from the Noguri campsite, but on mountain roads would take at least an hour.

This was our first time to camp in Gunma Prefecture. Our 15th prefecture (see our big camping goal here). The writing down the side of this photo says "Gunma Visitor Toilet". The campsite was very cheap (cost us ¥2,500 for two of us for two nights). The campsite had toilets but no shower. The toilets were in reasonable shape (if a bit smelly on the male side!).

We camped next to a fast-flowing stream called the Nogurisawa River. Not far downstream it merges into the Kanna River, which eventually joins the Tone River which is the second longest river in Japan (322 km, for those who want to know).

I've uploaded the photos straight from my phone and they've appeared randomly! So I'm "going with the flow". A big advantage of this campsite was very cheap wood that we could use in an open fire on the ground. Both of these elements are rare in Japan. The wood was a little damp, however, so a good deal of fire-tending was needed. But later I realised that while playing around with a fire like this, you aren't really thinking about other things. Camping in general is a great way to shut off from the world. We come back from a camping trip feeling like we've taken a true break from the mental load that we carry on a daily basis.

The banks of the stream were steep, so we looked down on it, more than saw it up-close.

The view from behind the fire: very easy on the eyes! This large tarp functions as the "living area" for our camps: it's where we cook and hang out.

Beautiful trees everywhere!

Our camp as we set it up (not much under the tarp at this point). Our spot was a "dead end" so we had no close neighbours, yet it was not a long walk to a tap with running water or the toilets.

Thankful our camping buddies insisted on taking this photo. Good memories! It was the first time we've gone camping without any of our kids. The two we have in Japan decided to stay home/visit with a friend instead of coming. This is the foreshadowing of many more couples-only camping!

Tatsugamino Falls. This is only about a minute walk from our campsite and so it was quite
loud at night!

Moss, moss, everywhere!

Landslide prevention is everywhere in the Japanese countryside. When typhoons come through, the two greatest risks are flooding and landslides.

Sometimes people ask us if we see wild animals while camping. Generally we don't, though this time we saw a lot of domestic cats (or maybe multiple appearances of the same cat?). On the first night we heard a deer "scream" three times. It was eerie. We also had some small critters in camp. Our friends accidentally left two loaves of bread out and they were found. Maybe by something like a squirrel or weasel? There were muddy footprints over a lot of our stuff the next morning.

Fern growing out between two stone steps down to the stream.

We went for a short hike up the mountain. It was a pine forest with very little undergrowth, and steep. Hikes in Japan are rarely moderate affairs, you have to have a bit of mountain goat in you.

A poor attempt to show the mountain rising up behind our tent. Not easy to capture. We truly were in a small valley.

Another couple of photos of Tatsugamino Falls. It isn't a huge tourist site. In fact it's rather remote. For anyone who's been to Japan, saying that we were about an hour from the nearest convenience store will help you understand how relatively remote this is. Interestingly, there was no shrine or other religious elements in evidence. That is also pretty rare at a place like this.

I pulled out my fancy camera for almost the first time since this pandemic began. Found me accessing memories about information like "shutter speed" and "aperture". I didn't end up taking too many photos with it, though—it is still far easier to whip out my iPhone from my  pocket! Still, I think I should make more of an effort to put that fancy camera to work in the months to come!

To add to the flowing water noise, this weir was just downstream from us! If you look carefully, in some of these photos you can see evidence that autumn is on its way. It's a bit more obvious in this next photo.

On our way home, as we wound our way through the mountain valleys, we drove alongside this artificial lake, Kanna Lake, for some time. The green colour was amazing. Alas, because I get travel sick, I was driving, so I didn't get to do much looking!

Part of my view while eating breakfast on the last morning. The sun finally broke through and made the trees even prettier.

Cooking rice and chicken shoulders on the fire. The food/fire/cooking challenge of camping remains one of my favourite parts.

Our "blue" ambient light. This is our plate/utensil camping cupboard. I put an LED light on top and it produced quite a nice effect!

Looking away from the waterfall towards our camp (tents hiding up on the righthand side).

One-man tents! We had quite a number of bikers and others who camped in tiny tents like these.

So, it's a wrap for 2020 and camping. We're now starting to think about our spring camp for next year. We're looking at Ibaraki, which is another prefecture we haven't visited. It is north-east of here and borders the Pacific Ocean just above Chiba Prefecture.