Sprinting through the weeks

We enjoyed a walk in Toowoomba's
Japanese garden.

We're starting to get into the swing of things in this home assignment now. It's fast paced and exhausting! Manageable, though, as long as we're mindful that rest is needed. Home assignment is usually tiring, but in the past it's been a much longer and slower affair. This time we're "sprinting," but we can look forward to the "race" being over soon.

And a scone with coffee and chai.

Walking with my parents' lively 
that reminds us so much of the
literary Harry MacLary of
Donaldson's Dairy.

We spent a week in Toowoomba with my parents enjoying catching up with them and others who live in that city. 

We spent Friday afternoon with closer friends and on Saturday we held an open afternoon in my parents' home and five people came, most of whom are in their 80s and 90s. 

On Sunday we shared the microphone for about 40 minutes up the front of my parents' church. It's very rare to be given so much time during a church service to talk about missions and we're grateful. David hadn't had time to write a sermon, so we filled the time with various stories about our lives and ministry as well as the needs in Japan and also challenged the church to pray right then about what we'd been sharing. 

The next challenge we face is how to condense that into just 10 minutes (the time slots we have this coming Saturday and Sunday).

By Monday we really needed some downtime, but ended up spending time with my great aunt in the morning and with another former OMF missionary in the afternoon. On Tuesday we downed tools, stopped looking at email, writing our prayer letter, and other tasks, and just rested—it was very restorative. On Wednesday we headed back to Brisbane and started preparing for this coming weekend of events.

Toowoomba is about 600m above sea level,
it's perched on the edge of the Great Dividing
Range and the climate there is definitely cooler
than down on the plain in Brisbane. It's 
renowned for its fog and we certainly got
some of that.

It's always good to spend time with family when we're in Australia, though we are acutely reminded that there's no making up the time that we haven't been here. It's difficult sometimes not to feel melancholy or guilty. I don't often feel like we've sacrificed much to do what we've done, but time with family can be a reminder of that, and a reminder that they've sacrificed a lot too.