Unexpected hospitality opportunity

Yesterday I did something a bit unusual. 

I'm gradually realising that having extra free time gives me the opportunity to say yes to unexpected opportunities to serve and to connect with people. This month I've had coffee on two occasions with two different friends who happened to be in my neck of the woods and had time to spare. Both of them prefaced their invitation with "I've got this crazy idea"...and I was able to say yes both times and have precious time with them.

Then last Wednesday I got a message from a colleague about the five-day workshop she was organising at our OMF Japan headquarters this week. She was urgently trying to make sure the 23 people attending had lunch each day and they'd suddenly found themselves without someone to make lunch one of the days. As it turns out my work this week is pretty slow, so I had the time to go and do this. 

It was a big task, though, because it takes nearly two hours to get to the OMF headquarters on the other side of Tokyo by train (there's currently no car parking onsite due to renovations). So the decisions I had to make as I executed this plan were:

• selecting a meal that I could quickly make with easily accessible ingredients in the kitchen (two microwave-sized ovens, a two-burner stove, but lots of bench/counter space)
• budgeting—using two cheaper stores that I have close to me that I know they also have near JHQ
• figuring out quantities for this number of people
• figuring out timing, which included me buying the ingredients after I got there on the day, using a borrowed bike, and then doing the cooking

And then executing the plan. I couldn't do much prep at home or take much with me because of the train travel (and most of them quite crowded).

I did well on the first two of the above, not so well as the second two:

1. I bought too many ingredients. One of my biggest fears as a mum of teenage boys was not having enough food, so I've learned to cook too much! But because this was just day three of a five-day live-in workshop, there was plenty of scope for using the leftover salad and other things later in the week.

2. I didn't have enough time to do all that I'd planned on my own, but I easily found two wonderful helpers.

Sadly, the only photo I took of the whole event
was of the leftover ingredients at the end!

What did I make? Loaded potatoes: baked/jacket potatoes that you "load up" with various fillings. It was buffet style and I provided bacon, grated cheese, chickpeas, boiled egg, and yoghurt (cheaper substitute to sour cream). I also had a bunch of raw salad options that people could choose from to add to their plate as well as salad dressing, and a platter with the fruit that cheapest right now (apples, bananas and pineapple). It was a healthy, tasty, and economical meal that didn't require too much cooking and could easily be sourced locally.

It was a joy to use my ability to cook (again) to serve others outside of our household. I've been sharing baked goodies at church and mission events, and hosting people at our house for meals even so often, but this was another level of hospitality. Many who live close to JHQ do this all the time, but because of where we live, I haven't been asked to.

And, as I've noted many times in the past, an opportunity to serve practically like this provides many other opportunities to interact meaningfully with my colleagues. I had several good conversations that filled my heart with joy (and with things to take to the Lord in prayer).

A week in the life of Wendy

I'm glad to say that I'm feeling much better. Which is good, because I've had plenty going on. Here are the more interesting bits: 

Friday gathering

On Friday I went to a prayer gathering in a Chinese friend's home. It's a gathering of expat and Japanese mums who have kids with special needs. Our kids range in age from 6 to 36, but it doesn't matter. These ladies understand the unique challenges of being mums to kids who don't match the norms of their peers and who have extra challenges to overcome. We shared, and cried, and prayed, and talked. We only gather six times a year, and it's always special. It was great to be back in person with them, in Australia I joined via Zoom a couple of times, but that was difficult. 

One of the questions that they each carry with them is what will the future look like for my child. It was great to be able to share some of the big successes we've had with our sons over the last year. One of the mums reminded me that last time I was with them in person I was a mess, it was the week we moved out of our old house. I was stressed and tired and was facing a lot of unknowns in the months ahead. I'm in a much better place now and we were able to praise God together.

After I got home I did some quick email checks and then hopped on my bike to get groceries for the weekend.

Saturday fun

Preparing our house for guests. A table cloth
on a folding table makes all the difference!

Saturday morning I hosted an online magazine team meeting with the express purpose of having fun together. It was the first of four meetings we're having this month as part of our annual planning process. And it was fun! I love the energy of these colleagues.

Saturday afternoon was also fun. This year there are four families from our mission living in our little city (12.88 square km). We invited them all over for afternoon tea and games. If everyone had been able to come there would have been 15 in our little place, but we ended up with only 11. And it worked! I feel like our place is a character in our lives and we're just working out how it best works for different scenarios (the previous week we hosted dinner for a family). I'm excited. This is tapping into the extrovert side of me that has been a little repressed in the latter years of our boys years at high school (and the pandemic, of course, had an impact).

Sunday

Church in the morning and video chats and games with our sons in the afternoon. It was a full, but good day.

Mammoth Monday

Monday turned into a 12 hr work day for me. I left in a car full of male colleagues at 7.30 am, we travelled to the other side of Tokyo for the monthly OMF Kanto prayer and fellowship day. All these guys are married, but none of their wives could come (and David had to work at school too). These are the same families we spent Saturday afternoon with.

It took over an hour to get there, and then there was lots of chatting and catching up with people before the meeting began at 10 am. The acoustics in this room are pretty bad which means that when a large group gathers and everyone is mingling, it's really loud. I didn't count, but I'm guessing that there were probably around 50 people there. We had to shout to make ourselves heard!

It was a good time of worship, pondering God's word, sharing, and praying for one another. After the meeting we stayed and ate lunch (again loud). Not long before 2 I left with a good friend to have coffee somewhere else that was much quieter. We spent about two hours together. It's the first time I've seen her in over 12 months, and though we've kept in really regular texting contact, it was wonderful to have the time to sit in person and ask the questions that don't get asked or answered otherwise.

Then I jumped on a train and headed home (the car that came from our city had long left). Four trains later and a 10 minutes walk, I got home around 5.30. David had dinner organised and we ate. At 6.30 we jumped into a Zoom meeting with a group in Australia who pray each month for Japan. We spent the next 45 minutes talking about what we do and answering questions. By around 7.15 I was fading and pleaded for mercy. They prayed and we logged off around 7.30.

Tuesday desk day

It took me some time to get going the next day after waking with a headache and general fatigue lingering from the day before. I did email and other desk work in the morning. After lunch I dashed out for some much needed grocery shopping and then had a two-hour meeting with the OMF Japan social media team. I love their enthusiasm and "youth", so helpful in this particular ministry! After the meeting I dashed off a few more emails pertaining to things we'd discussed or decided in the meeting.

Wednesday more desk work and an outing

I spent Wednesday morning and late afternoon at my desk, but after lunch I did some light cleaning (it takes 15 minutes to vacuum my little apartment) and then took the car to pick up the same friend I had coffee with on Monday. She was on our side of town meeting with other missionaries, and really wanted to see our new place. So I fetched her and we spent another 45 minutes together before she had to head home. So lovely to have friends in our place, especially when they're so pleased with how it looks!

Thursday

This is another desk day. No meetings or shopping. My only outing today will be walking after dinner. I enjoy these quiet home days in the midst of other busy days. It gives me a chance to get some momentum on various work that requires good thinking. I'll also take time over lunch to listen to a church service from home, my long-time habit to help with my nurturing my own faith because I regrettably (still) get little out of a Japanese-language service on Sunday.

It's been a good week. I'm still gathering threads of life after being away for 12 months. It's a significant period and stuff has happened in that time. But in general I'm getting into a good rhythm. Each week looks different. None of the above happen on a weekly basis (except Sunday)! Some weeks are busier than others. Home assignment often felt like we were treading water waiting for things to happen. I'm glad to be back here doing the things...and now I don't know how to describe it. We spent a year in Australia talking about what we're currently doing. It's good to be doing them now, not just talking and thinking about them?

Life this week in-between Christmas and New Year

Life around our place has been very cruisy. Not much getting done beyond the basics. We're sleeping late and going to bed late. And getting a little social again.

On Wednesday we went to see Rogue One with a Finnish family of boys from CAJ. All enjoyed it. I did too...but I was a bit sad nonetheless. I'd tell you why, but don't want to spoil your fun if you haven't seen it yet.

Yesterday we had an English/Finnish family join us for morning tea. The main attraction was for our English guest to enjoy his first Fruit Mince Pies of the season! But we had a good couple of hours just sitting around and chatting. Their two children had a great time playing with our old Duplo and Kitchen toys. It was lovely. In the afternoon David and I ran away for an afternoon tea date at a coffee shop. That was really good too!

Today we've got a Japanese/American family joining us for lunch (I must finish this quickly so that I can get to making the soup I've planned). They've got three young children too, so the toys will be coming out again. We're hoping for some great conversational times with them too.

Tomorrow we're hoping to go for a family bike ride, but the jury is out as to whether we'll be able to motivate all the kids to join us. Then tomorrow night we'll join with more international friends to celebrate the New Year.

It's great to have the time to be more hospitable. It's wonderful to have friends around at a time when we might most miss being with our families.

Though I do have bits and pieces of work that need to be worked on or at least monitored too:

• I've written/desk-top published three newsletters this week
• Believe it or not people still contact OMF Japan via our website at this time of the year (I guess they have more time to think about the future...) So I'm still answering emails.
• Our magazine design/proofreading team is (supposed to) be working on getting the Winter issue done. That inevitably means emails to me with questions. I'm yet to check what our proofreader has been finding.
• Articles for the Spring issue are due in two weeks and some are already dribbling in.
• Never mind the shopping and cooking for the family...that's a given!

But for the most part I've been relaxing. One day I'll get back to vacuuming the house and cleaning the toilet...

What we did

I'm cleaning off my desk and I found some photos from two of our days visiting churches this year. A supporter posted these to us and I thought it was worth putting them up here because they show a little of what we've done this year.

Here we are, showing off some of the things we
had for sale on our display. I'm holding the
magazine I edit and another publication I
produced with OMF Japan.

This is our display. We put this up more than 20 times in the last 12 months. It is very portable. The board itself was made by the father of a good friend, way back in 2000 when we first started doing this. It's covered in carpet, so velcro works very well and the board is easily transformed, though we generally set it up at the start of our home assignment and leave it that way all the way through. It folds in three and our friend made a case to go with it, that is easy to carry. 

The rest is carried around in small boxes that are also easily transported. The most challenging thing about the display is that we're usually setting it up and taking it down at the same time as talking to people. That can be tricky! 

Our boys found a nook this day and kept themselves entertained

by folding origami creations. Often other children would 

join them, but unfortunately there was only one child at this church

that Sunday.

Here are three people we met that day. Relatives of a couple I knew during
my uni days, but haven't seen since. This couple are now missionaries in Europe.

On one of those days we had lunch with friends 

after church. and this photo was taken at the front 

door. Actually a number of local supporters/friends

came for lunch that day. We're so thankful for the 

many instances of hospitality that we've received

this year in Australia.

We go back to Japan with many memories of warm welcomes, of many meals around ordinary tables, as well as time spent at coffee shops and restaurants. Those are memories to cherish. These are people to remember whenever we're wondering if people in Australia remember us. This is the team that has helped us refuel spiritually, emotionally, and socially while we've been in Australia. If you've been a part of that. Thank you!

Scruffy hospitality—great idea

We're experiencing lots of hospitality while in Australia. It is one of the joys (and challenges*) of being on home assignment. 

Last weekend we stayed overnight with an older couple. The wife apologised for her "scruffy" house. But I felt very much at home. They hadn't made a big effort to tidy up for us, but their attitudes were welcoming and open. We didn't end up spending much time with them, because we had dinner at the church on Saturday night and went to bed soon after we came home. But on Sunday morning they cooked up a simple, but yummy breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast, and we had lively conversation.

Teresa, my good friend in Tokyo, is fantastic
at Scruffy Hospitality!

The boys felt welcomed too, not in the least by the announcement that the house included an "armoury". The wife has been very involved in various children's theatrical performances over the years and had a lovely collection of weapon and shield props.

Here's an article about Scruffy Hospitality, that I recommend to you! I certainly am guilty of insisting I make meals from scratch for guests, but then I do that for my own family too and they are generally fairly simple recipes. However I'm not guilty of spending excess amounts of time tidying up prior to having guests. I'm not guilty of making the table look amazing, or providing meals that have taken hours to prepare and include hard-to-get ingredients.

I absolutely agree that authentic conversation is the most important thing. That's something that's not easy to come by, but is on top of my list of what makes a great time together with friends or family.

So, if we end up at your place I won't be judging. If you end up at mine, you won't find it perfect. But let's have a great conversation!

*Challenges, because it means quite a busy schedule, more busy than we're used to at nights and weekends.  It also means a lot of "new" people for our boys to meet. Most of the people we meet are known to us, but the boys don't remember them.

The Commencement, without the ceremony

I wrote back here about getting a new extendable dining room table. We didn't waste too much time trying it out. Here's the group of 10 who gathered around it on Friday night (note the Lazy Susan in the middle).

It was a very fun evening. I was particularly satisfied with my made-from-scratch dessert. Mini cheesecakes with cherry sauce (made from dried cherries). Yum!! And there wasn't a crumb leftover.

If you're wondering about the title of this post, it refers to what American's call Graduation Ceremonies: Commencement Ceremonies. Sounds weird to an Aussie ear. Anyway, I thought it wasn't a bad word to use for the first meal on our extended table.

In a land where houses are small, people don't do hospitality in their homes very much. Certainly our family is rarely invited to anyone's home. No bad feelings, though. Who'd want our rowdy bunch of five? But our place is big enough and now we certainly have a table equal to the task. Additionally our boys love having people over for meals. So I'm hoping to step up a bit on the inviting-people-over-for-a-meal front this year.

An edge-of-the-ordinary kind of day

Yesterday was a fairly ordinary Saturday home day. I pottered around doing gardening, baking and a tiny bit of cleaning (not a lot of gardening, really). I also pondered digitally modifying maps, but that is not quite an ordinary job.

I did do more in the kitchen that I'd usually do, but it was a labour of love. Preparing for an Aussie BBQ with friends in the evening required a bit more work than most Aussies would put into such an ordinary event.

My husband made two batches of bread rolls using the bread maker and oven (bread rolls are pretty rare in the shops here). I pickled some canned beetroot I unexpectedly found six months ago (second time in all the time I've lived in Japan that I've seen it in a shop, but they weren't pickled). I coaxed some eggs and sugar into becoming Pavlovas (meringue with cream and fruit on top, for those who haven't had the fortune to try this Australian dessert). We made potato salad and transformed raw mince (translation - ground beef) into meat patties, also not available in the shops. Then, in the absence of an actual BBQ (translation - grill), my husband cooked them on the gas stove in a fry pan with some onions.

Sorry for all the brackets above. There are so many things which need translation when you are writing across cultures: Australians who don't understand what you can and cannot get in Japan, non-Australians who don't know the Aussie lingo. Do you get the feeling, though, that we had to think out-of-the-box to get this Aussie BBQ going? This form of Aussie BBQ is something we've done periodically since we first came to Japan in 2000. After all, how else can you celebrate Australia Day on Jan 26 when it falls in the middle of winter? Yesterday wasn't Australia Day, obviously, but it was a great way to enjoy our nationality and share with our friends.

They'd never had pickled beetroot on a burger before, though the "dad" had grown up eating "pickled beets", as Philadelphians call them. And the "mum" had an interesting "beet" story, but I won't embarrass her here, only to say it has been a very long time since she's eaten them.

Pavlova was new to them too, though they'd had meringue before as in Lemon Meringue Pie. I was worried they'd be too sticky, but they worked out very well, except that my husband struggled to detach them from the grasp of the baking paper, thankfully he won.

Before our visitors arrived my husband and sons brought down our new hand-me-down card table and chairs from the attic and extended our six-person table to accommodate our five visitors. It is the first time we've done this and it worked really well. I predict more hospitality events for the future, though maybe not Aussie BBQs every time!

Focussing on Japan tonight

We are trying something different. Many of our supporters are individuals spread all over Brisbane and surrounding areas. It is difficult to see everyone and not everyone can invite us to their church or home. So we're trying inviting groups of people to our house. A couple of months ago we sent out invitations to more than twenty people setting out some dates we were available. Times varied from week-day morning teas to a Friday night. Not many people replied, but tonight we have eight people (and one baby) coming for a bring and share dinner and then some relatively informal time to interact with them about our time in Japan. None of them have met before, as far as we know. We're hoping it'll go well. Using our own home makes some things easier, some things harder. It means we have to do some (limited) amount of housework, coordinate food a little and generally try to be good hosts. Integrating our kids into whatever we're doing is an ongoing challenge. At least here we can put them to bed (if they'll settle). Tonight we're going to get them to help us make some Sumo Origami and then hopefully entice them to bed. At least tomorrow is the weekend. Here's a question for you. If a missionary you supported invited you to their home, what would you like the see, hear or do? If we invited you to our home, what would you be interested in? You'd have to bone up on good questions :-)

The joy of hospitality and pondering parking habits

Today we have some friends coming over for dinner - actually it is 'bring and share', but this morning when I dropped into the grocery store, to buy a couple of extra things to help us through the weekend, I realised that I had guests coming (amazing, what you figure out!). That meant that I needed to cook something for them. Now this sounds like an imposition, but actually it has been ages since we've been settled enough to have visitors. The last visitors we had for a meal brought their own food! So, as I happen to love cooking (especially desserts), it was an exciting thought. So, I've made mini Pavlovas (like meringue for those non-Aussies who frequently this blog). And we're anticipating their arrival with joy. The other thing I've been meaning to write about is wide Australian roads and the habit we Aussies have of parking along the side of them. We just take it for granted. I remember my grandfather, who lived his whole working life on the farm, commenting about how inconvenient the town's new shopping centre was - that you couldn't get a park directly outside the exact shop you were patronising!

In Japan you definitely do not take it for granted. Putting your car some place when you go somewhere is something you often have to plan for before hand. One of the questions we answered for people who were coming over for a meal when we lived in Tokyo was, "Where shall we put our car?" (Or "How do we get there on foot from the railway station?") The majority of roads do not have room for a car to be parked as well as for cars to drive. This used to make me feel quite claustrophobic. When I went out driving, I couldn't just put my car wherever, I had to plan. For example, CAJ had a carpark, but occasionally there would be no park available (it is pretty small). What to do then? Park illegally on the side of a nearby road (where there was a little room) or use expensive paid-car park (20 minutes for $1.50)? Below you can see one particular road close to our house in Tokyo. The photo was taken from the passenger seat of our car. It is a two-way road and the car on the other side is as far over as it could be. Somehow we made it through this tight squeeze and many others! Thankfully the speed limits are low. There is no way to drive at more than 10 or 20 km/hr on these skinny roads. Buildings butt straight onto the road and there is no visibility at intersections until you are basically into the intersection unless the council put a useful traffic mirror up (and there are many of these - see the photo below). There are many more things I could write about Japanese roads. Like the lack of roundabouts and therefore many traffic lights. Like having to problem solve your way through situations when several cars meet in a place where only one car can pass at a time. But this post has gone on long enough. I'll save it for anther day.