My writing journey

And to demonstrate how fried my brain is, I'm also
sharing a photo that is completely unrelated to this
post. But it is my most favourite sunrise experience.
Photo taken when we were camping on the banks of
the largest lake in Japan several years ago. It was
an accidental sunrise sighting: I'd merely gotten up to
use the toilet facilities (at 4am) and found this outside
our tent!

This is the second week that I'm helping facilitate a workshop for our organisation. It helps workers prepare to go back to their home country to connect up with those who've supported them and, very often, report back about the work they've been doing. This week we're focusing on spoken communication, in particular, a modular system of putting a presentation together that involves telling two-minute stories. I've had the privilege of sharing some examples of stories from my own life with the participants. Here's one I shared today, and I thought you might be interested to read and a portion of my journey:

Do you enjoy hearing people’s stories? Most people do. I have the privilege of working with people to share their stories.

Early in 2007, I was questioning my calling as a missionary. I spent most of my days at home with three kids under 8. Not just that, but I barely knew anyone locally besides the Japanese mums at my son’s kindergarten. We’d moved to Tokyo less than 3 years earlier so that my husband could follow his calling to teach missionary kids. I was happy for him, but I found myself without the capacity to do much—not only was I busy with three young boys, but my Japanese was pretty terrible.

I asked God: why did you bring me to Japan and yet I can’t do anything like what I imagined a missionary could do? That was a turning point.

That year David gave me a CD from a guest speaker at the school, one of the songs called “Seize the Day”, spoke to my heart: I should be seeking what God had for me to do that was in line with my gifting, limitations, and life stage. A colleague volunteered to take care of our kids so I could go to a three-day missionary women’s retreat where the theme was writing your story. By mid-year I‘d started exploring the writing world. I’d joined a small international writing group, entered a writing competition, and wrote an article about one of our experiences in Japan. Later that same year I did a one-on-one online writing course with an experienced Christian writer.

Three years later, in 2010, I went to an OMF writing workshop in Hong Kong. There I realised that my heart’s desire was not to write a book, but to tell the stories of ordinary people who happen to be missionaries. Someone prayed at that time that God would bring people across my path whose stories I could tell. Forward twelve years to now, and I spend most of my time working on missionaries’ stories as an editor. As a magazine editor and OMF Japan’s social media manager I’ve helped get hundreds of stories out to thousands of people. I’m so thankful that God has led me to serve him in this unique way.

Some Australian photos from July

 I haven't had my big camera out much in the last month, but when I took a look at the SD card this week, I found some nice photos. Parts of our journey that you haven't seen. So here's a selected slide show for you.

This was a sunset from where we stayed in Sydney, our first few nights back in Australia.

One day in Sydney we played tourists and did a tour of the iconic Opera House. Truly a remarkable building, with a possibly even more remarkable story.

 So photogenic! It's hard not to be awed by the amazing skies they have in Australia!

This tree overlooks the Opera house in the nearby Royal Botanical Gardens. We only walked on the edge of it, but the abundance of space this close to a city centre is always impressive. 

 We rushed around in Sydney centre. During our day there we did the above mentioned tour, met friends headed to Taiwan with OMF, and hung out in OfficeWorks! The latter was a frustrating couple of hours trying to use their equipment to download our lease to sign it (we got the manager of the store to witness it), then upload, and send to the real estate agency, so that the keys could be picked up the next day. It was a difficult afternoon that we didn't particularly enjoy. The internet was poor and progress so slow that it looked like we were setting up home there, as our three boys sat around in the aisles!

Here's one of the historical buildings in downtown Sydney. Don't ask me which one!

Yes, this is my family, doing our best to be tourists.

After a few days in Sydney, it was great to get out of the city. We drove two hours south to meet good friends who live much further south. We spent the weekend together with eight of our nine kids!

Love gum trees (otherwise known as eucalyptus trees).

We had a BBQ at a nearby dam for lunch on the Saturday. Got to see a little bit of wildlife. Our middle son got very close to this very bold Willy Wagtail.

Barbecuing lamb! The windchill factor here was pretty significant.

More wildlife. This is a wallaby, I think.

And a large goanna. It would have been at least a metre and was enjoying sunning itself on this bank.

Gorgeous escarpments.

Another gorgeous tree/sky backround.

Fungi!

This was below the dam wall. Obviously been water through here pretty regularly.

The boys (and seven of the eight kids were boys) enjoyed throwing rocks in here. If you look carefully, to the right of the centre is a splash.

Picturesque roots.

This is the 12-bed "cabin" we stayed in. it was perfect for our needs, with a huge living area where everyone could have their own individual lounge chair. The orange reflection in the window is the sky behind me at sunset (see photo below).

We looked across the valley to this escarpment.

Pretty flowers. Anyone know what they are?

This was particularly to show you the car someone lent us. It's a story on its own. On a Australian ministry-families Facebook page I connected up with a former missionary couple who were willing to lend us their second car for the weekend! They'd never met us. It was a bit mind blowing to just drive away with their car a few minutes after meeting them (and their house was just five minutes walk from where we were staying in the large city of Sydney).

Moving on to our own backyard. Our the back of our house is scrub. Actually it is a high power line corridor. But a nice place to go for a walk. In places it looks like much of non-urban Australia. It's lovely to be so close to this, it feels like we're not quite so much in the city, even though we're only about seven minutes from an expressway!

One more gum tree/sky shot.

Today's adventures

I have a bunch of blog post ideas running around in my head but things are starting to crowd in on my time and alas my blog is one of the first things to get crowded out.

But I've got a few moments now, so I'll see what I can churn out.

Park ride

Today I went for my last park/coffee shop ride. It was a gorgeous day in the midst of a bunch of gloomy, cool days. I'm so glad I seized the opportunity.

Here are some photos. Such a sparkly day!

Then I rode to a favourite coffee shop and enjoyed a light lunch with a street-view.

I did some shopping (coffee to last till we leave, plus a couple of other needs).

Orthodontist adventure

Then I went back to the orthodontist that we visited last Friday to pay the balance of a bill. 

This was a classic culture-confusion problem. Kids in Japan get extra health coverage until they start high school, yes, even non-citizens. The "start high school" thing is, of course, linked into the Japanese system, not the international school system. So we didn't register that our middle son's coverage ran out on March 31 this year. Apparently, the dentist didn't either. I tried to present the now-expired card, and she pointed out that it had expired. She didn't realise why it had expired and neither did I. So I paid the mere 200 yen for the checkup (about $2.50) and promised to email a photo of the new card.

But when I got home David realised what had gone on and we had to 'fess up to having not paid the whole bill. He called them Friday afternoon and said I could come back this week. They said "call us before you do so we can have the bill ready." The orthodontist is quite close to this coffee shop, so it was natural to just do it when I rode down there, rather than taking an extra hour's round trip in the car. 

David rang them this morning. No worries. Except that after he left to do the car-parking paperwork chasing, they rang back on my phone and I missed the call. I stiffened my upper lip and called them back (I'm not fond of phone calls and even less in Japanese). I'm actually not really sure of what happened in that conversation, except that they ended with "matte imasu" (we're waiting for you). So I left.

I didn't get to the orthodontist until just after 1pm. Here, many medical/dental places have about two hours closed in the early afternoon and I walked into a waiting room that had the lights off and the door to the "surgery" closed. So I sat and waited a while to see what would happen (and save myself another hour's journey later in the week). After about 15 minutes someone came into the reception area and from there we quickly sorted things out. I paid the outstanding 2,170 yen (about $AU27).\

Back to my ride

I rode back to the park, via this intersection where I've been fascinated by this little shrine for many months. I've driven past it many times as we've gone back and forth from the orthodontist. 

I rode back through the park, took a few more photos.

And said "sayonara". This is the little path I use to enter the park (and exit today too). Can you see it? It's hard not to feel a little envious of the people living in these houses abutting the park!

On the way home I stopped at one set of lights. I was startled to see my image reflected back at me by a little roadside mirror placed to help someone get out of their driveway.

After I got home and had a shower, I coached the person taking over my blog-posting job to get an OMF Japan blog post up, at the same time as worked with David on speaking material for Australia. 

Phew! It's been quite a day.

And now I've run out of time. My next blog post might be about "God's amazing economy" in us being so dependent on others. It was one of the themes in an unusual sermon on Sunday and has come up in other conversations recently too. So stay tuned.

Random (interesting) photos from recent days

Here are a few somewhat random phone-photos from my life recently. Yes, a bit of cheat-post, but they are about my "on the edge of ordinary" life!

Here is a place I'd like to ride to next year. It's the park we were in on Saturday (see this post) farewelling friends. It's only a bit over 7km from here, so quite doable ride (if I can get my navigation working well enough). It's called Shakuji Park and has a long-thin lake as a main feature.

The streets near the park are a bit upper-class looking. It's typical in Tokyo to see people walking on the road.

Random! This is looking through our front gate. It's been a bit damp here these last few days.

Outside my local grocery store this morning. I'll miss riding here twice a week when we're in Australia. It's a peaceful place to shop and very often there's more bikes than cars outside.

The escape route at the gym I've been frequenting. Makes you almost want to create an emergency, just so you can try it out! Though I imagine it it quite dirty.

It's hydrangea season in Japan. This was the view from our second floor down to the garden behind our house a couple of weeks ago. I love the colours! i love it that I can see them from my work-station, dining, and lounge rooms. (Close-up photo on this post.)

Continuing with the random photos, I met a couple of ladies for Bible study about 10 days ago at Krispy Kreme in Shibuya. We were fascinated by this sight as we waited in line.

This is close to the above mentioned grocery store. A path along one of our local rivers. A gazebo here has fallen into disrepair and the solution was not to fix it, but to encase it in a green fence. I guess it's awaiting funds to fix or demolish it?

Our creative youngest found a cute bookmark like this in a book a few weeks ago and set about figuring out how to copy it. He then went on to make 30 of them for a fundraiser at school last week.

Before that, I scored my own personalised bookmark. Isn't it cute?

Strangely, there has been mangoes in our local grocery store. This isn't common—the store is small and a no-frills shop, so fancy fruit isn't common. David bought me one as he knows they are my favourite fruit, but alas it was quite crunchy, even after being left for many days. I'm looking forward to splurging on mangoes in Australia!

Our weekend away Part 2

I have way too many Mt Fuji photos from the weekend! It really is a photogenic mountain. Much like when we were at Uluru (Ayers Rock, the enormous rock in the middle of Australia), it was hard not to keep snapping photos as the light changed.

We saw two sunsets from different vantage points and I saw one sunrise also. Here are my best shots:

Sunset on the first night

Sunrise the next morning. There were a lot of cars in the carpark, but not so many people at this viewing point 80m or so from our cabin. I'm thinking most of the viewers climbed the nearby peak in the dark and watched from there. We climbed the peak too, but quite a bit later in the morning.

The path up the nearby peak. It wasn't all as wide and smooth as this, but as far as mountain climbing goes, we had it pretty easy. It was about 30 minutes up and 30 minutes back.

With amazing views from the top! Australians are used to wide blue skies, but it isn't so common when you live in Japan. The horizon is something we rarely see from ground level in Tokyo and certainly not "wide skies".

This is the little bay and town (Heda) that we drove down to and had a delicious seafood lunch at. We watched the sun set from the other side of that little peninsula (the one with the beach). The next photos are from that vantage point.

Looking back at the mountains and Heda town.

This one is one of my favourites, I think.