Lots to think about

Life has settled down again to a discernible rhythm. It's a bit of a relief, actually—I work better like this. I find it hard to concentrate and make decisions when my day-to-day routine is less stable and predictable. So when I do things like try to work and travel, even though most of my work is done remotely, it gets tricky and I don't do as good a job. But I also get bored if life is too same-same. So I'm glad for a job that always includes new challenges and has a fair amount of variety in it, even if, like last week, I sometimes get overwhelmed by it all.

Magazine matters

I'm glad that the Autumn issue of the magazine I manage has gone to the printer and we get to mail it out next week! I've been working fairly solidly on this since we got back to Tokyo in early August. 

I've been working on this magazine for around 15 years, and I can tell you that some "issues" are harder than others. There are all sorts of reasons for that. It can be team challenges, a difficult issue-theme, unexpected random obstacles, author difficulties, or at times when my own transitions or travel interfere with my ability to concentrate on the work needed. 

This issue was particularly difficult for some of these reasons, and has required "above and beyond" over the last few months. I hope that it was all worth it, and pray that God will take it and use it for his purposes.

This month is our magazine "annual meeting" month. Because our remote team works across several different time zones it's hard to hold meetings. I've never been a fan of meetings, they can easily be a waste of time! I'm in a position to have been able to shape my work in so many ways, both with the magazine and with the social media work, and I've tended towards setting up processes that mean we don't have to meet often, though I have been called out on that!

Our magazine team gets together once a year to talk about team and magazine stuff, to pray, to have fun, and to plan. In the last few years that has been achieved with four 1½ hr meetings. I really enjoy this team. We have fun when we get together, even online. They are passionate about the mission of this magazine and that makes them easy to lead. And the four shorter meetings are actually a lot easier to manage than a single one-day event, like we used to have. (I've written about this meeting/ these meetings before, here's one back in 2016 when it was an in-person meeting: https://mmuser.blogspot.com/2016/08/energising-meeting.html)

What have I been thinking about recently?

Well, if you know me, you know that there's usually a lot going on in my brain! This week I've had time to listen to some podcasts and I've been trying to be disciplined about continuing to gradually (usually a short portion over coffee in the afternoon) work my way through non-fiction books that are on my to-read list.

I listened to John Dickson's Undeceptions (my usual go-to for lunchtime listening), an episode about the boy Jesus. It gave some interesting historical background to the life Jesus lived.

I came across an OMF US podcast interview with a new worker I met last week. She was effusive last week about the social media work I do and how that had been a pivotal part of her coming to Japan, so I was curious about her larger story (if you ever get into the position to ask, find out a missionary's "call story" they are usually fascinating and never the same as any other missionary's). The 45 minute interview was well done and I loved the bit where God led her to look at Instagram, just after she'd surrendered her desire to go to Japan...and she saw a post from OMF Japan!

I also listened to a podcast from Moore Bible College about Neurodiversity and the Christian Life (part 1 of 3). I wasn't so impressed with their format, it's a bit academic, although there were some redeeming interview clips. Yet it's a topic that is close to our hearts, so I'll go back later and hear what they have to say in the next two parts.

I've just finished one non-fiction book (after several months) and have started another. The first I've read before, and will probably read again. Gentle and Lowly is deep and full of many things that will take a lifetime for my heart to absorb. It's about the heart of Christ for us and what small amount I can grasp, even though I've been a Christian since I was a child, it still breathtaking.

The new book I've just picked up, Life interrupted, by Susan Chapman, an OMF colleague, starts out on a similar line: understanding that we are loved by God. It's something that is easy to say, but hard to live. I'm only just starting this short book, but am already challenged by what she says next: "we need to be totally content in being finite". She goes on to quote Ruth Hayley Barton who says:

Living graciously within the boundaries of our life as it has been entrusted to us gives our life substance. Oddly enough, something of the will of God is contained in the very limits that we often try to sidestep or ignore. Living within limits is not in any way an acquiescence that is despairing, passive or fatalistic. Rather it honours the deepest realities of the life God has given us. Life in this body at this age and stage. Life in my family at its age and stage. Life in this personality. Life with this community. Life in the midst of this calling. (Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry), p12 in Life Interrupted. 

It's this that I need to continue to learn as I settle into this phase of my life. What does "life in this body at this stage and age, with the gifts and calling that God's given me?" look like. And how can I be content in that? I think it's something all of us probably need to think about at various ages and stages!

Let's review your life #10

I'd like to get back to this park soon, it's
a good place for reflecting! But the lead-
up to our family holidays the end of next
week continues to fill with new things to do!

I've written before about one way our organisation takes care of us: Two Year Reviews. Having published a blog like I've done, for several years, it's great to be able to look back at earlier things I've written. In 2013 I wrote about the Two Year Review (TYR) process here, giving some examples of questions we have to answer (and then talk about with a leader). I also shared in that blog post about why reviews like this are really important, as well as the things I struggle with about them.

I've added a few of the questions below (it took me a good couple of hours to answer everything, as well as do the goal setting that was required):

Do you have a day of rest each week?

What do you do to maintain your spiritual health?

In what ways has the Lord blessed you since your last two year review?

Here is a list of emotions. From this list choose the emotions that have characterised your life since your last review. Feel free to add any that aren't listed.

What subjects have you thought about or studied since your last review?

In what ways has your marriage been under stress since your last review?

What are your challenges and encouragements concerning your children's education?

What encouragements have you experienced in your relationships with your family at home (meaning your home country)?

Describe significant friendships in your life since your last review.

When I mildly complained this week about the process (mostly that my "head hurt" in trying to answer these broad questions about the last two years), a close friend quietly rebuked me and said that this was a privilege. She's right—most people don't get the opportunity to answer questions like these, let alone have a leader with time to sit down and go through them with you.

There's a few reasons why missions do (or should do) these kinds of reviews:

• Missionaries often carry a load of extra stress, merely because of where they live and what they do.
• They are often more vulnerable because when you live outside your home country your networks are often thin and it can be hard to access appropriate help.
• Missionaries can be lone rangers and stubborn (the flip side of independent and persistent, two valuable character traits for serving overseas). These two factors can mean they don't ask for help till it's too late.
• Missionaries are rare. There really aren't that many of them in the world, that makes them important human resources that make sense to retain in good working order, if possible. (Not to mention the importance Great Commission...)
• And there's probably more...

This is maybe the 10th or 11th time we've done this, so we're a little savvy. Many of the questions I could have written several paragraphs, or even a blog post about. But no one has time to read all that, let alone talk about it. I also think we are being asked regularly enough "how are you really" for lots and lots of detail at this time to be unnecessary, i.e. our line manager is doing a good job of caring for us. This TYR is like a screening test to pick up areas that need closer attention.

I also tend to be a reflective person anyway, and also fairly self-driven, so possibly this process isn't as important for me as it might be for someone else. However, it's still a good process to have in place, even if I feel a bit grumpy about it at times.

I don't think I got any surprises as I went through the questions this time, although the question about "What subjects have you thought about in the last two years?" always flabbergasts me: no one really wants a detailed answer to that! And as for "What emotions characterise your last two years?" Yikes!

Can you think of a question that you wish someone would ask you, but they rarely ever do?

Come, follow me

I've started three blog posts in the last week or so, and they're all circling around the same theme: letting go and trusting God, not just at a head level, but at a heart level. So, I've decided the best thing is to do the work to combine them.

It's been a challenge to trust God with everything in recent weeks and months. Wow, what a confession to make! To trust him with everything we hold dear, though we don't know what he's doing and why; to trust him, though we can't make the plans we wish we could make. I guess that's always a challenge for us humans. And this pandemic hasn't helped. 

This post I wrote only ten weeks ago shows me that our plans, that I admitted were foggy, have become even foggier.

The struggles I've had this year have been mostly circling my kids, my nearly-grown boys. Who thought that parenting could be so hard? (I've been saying that for over 20 years now!) They are no longer my little boys, who were "relatively" easy to keep corralled; whose pain was easier to fix.

If you've got younger kids, you probably don't want to hear me say that the problems get bigger and harder to "fix" as they get older. I'm under no illusions that parenting my little boys was easy. No, I found that really challenging too. So this isn't a "better-worse" thing here. Just saying that parenting older kids has been throwing us some major "googlies" recently (this is a cricket metaphor, others would say "curve ball"). But the problems are such that I can't reveal them to you in the public space of my blog. So I have to settle for metaphors and generalisations, so read between the lines, if you dare!

Mark records Jesus meeting a rich man who had run up to him and asked what he must "do to inherit eternal life?" (10:17 ESV). "And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, '. . . come, follow me'" (v. 21). The story shows the man to be someone who would have been considered good: a rule-keeper. But he gave up his quest for eternal life when Jesus said he should sell everything he had (and give it to the poor) in order to follow Jesus.

One thing it seems we can plan 
is a camping trip...so bring it on 
(in 10 days time)!

In her book Come Closer, Jane Rubietta wrote: "To be really rich, we unclench our fists, open our hands, and reach for Jesus. He promised us life, abundant life, and we create room for that life when we let go. Whatever is in your grip, recognize it. Notice why you hold that person, that role, that ambition, so tightly . . . let [Christ] have you, all of you—your hopes for the future, your pain from the past, your roles and rules and relationships" (p.44).

I certainly recognise some of these things in my own life. My desire to hold onto plans for the future, to keep control over how things pan out. To hold onto how I'd like my sons to live their lives. I like to be in control of some things. Most of us do.

It's not a bad thing to control when you go to bed, or when you get up. Or to seek to control whether you are a responsible employee or student. It's not a bad thing to be passionate about your job. Neither is it a bad thing to strive for a balance of work and rest, or to make plans for when you'll next see your family. But sometimes these things can trip us up, and can hinder us from following Jesus. Sometimes you simply can't control the things you want to, what then? Jesus' statement was to one man, but is also to us. Will we "follow him" wherever he leads us? Though whatever he brings our way?

Last week I read this in Joshua 10: "And the LORD said to Joshua, 'Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands" (v. 8). Note the verb: "given". It's already happened and they hadn't even gone into battle yet!

"We trust in his future plans and purposes through Christ because we know that he has already achieved them, eternally". (A Time to Hope, Naomi Reed)

During prayer and conversations with my husband in the last month, we've pretty much given over to God a number of things that I couldn't have imagined only a few months ago. It's like God has drilled down on us, hemming us in, and been teaching us—"You can't assume anything about the future."

So I'm really fighting to stay in the here-and-now, and as one who likes to plan and dream about the future, it's tough. But I know that the God who already knew the outcome of Joshua's battle with the kings of the Amorites, is the same God who knows the outcome of the various battles we're facing today. What a comfort that it!

If I'm going to be hemmed in, then the safest place to be is with the Lord, after all "The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe" (Prov. 18:10 ESV).

This is part three of my series based "15 invitations by Jesus to come" as written about in Jane Rubietta's book Come Closer.

What do you do and how does that contribute to reaching Japan?

These are essentially the questions that many supporters want to know the answer to. Even more, they want a person such as my self, who works in support ministry, to answer this question for them. For in roles like mine the line between what we do and reaching Japan for Christ is not a clear, easy-to-discern path.

What do I do?

I am an editor, writer, and manager. I actually juggle a number of roles. I'll quickly outline them before I explain how that fits with reaching Japan for Christ.

Managing editor of Japan Harvest: this is a magazine by and for missionaries in Japan. I am involved throughout the process of putting the magazine together: from planning themes, to acquiring articles, editing, and the design/proofreading stage. I also manage the team that works together to produce the magazine.

Social media/website content manager for OMF Japan: I do a number of things in social media for OMF, including coordinating it. That includes acquiring, creating, and editing of content for OMF's Facebook and Instagram pages. I also edit and upload articles written by missionaries to the OMF website. (See below for why we're doing this.) I'm also the one who answers those who click "Contact us" on OMF Japan's website.

Editor: I've been involved as an editor in various publishing projects. The latest one is a prayer booklet for Japan that has 29 contributing authors.

Investing in others: I also seek to encourage others in their writing. This has taken various forms over the years, but this year includes facilitating a writer's retreat and teaching on written communication and social media at an OMF workshop for missionaries. 

Encouraging and helping others: It's not an official role, but I love to encourage and help others whenever I can. So when I can fit it into everything else I do, I get together with others. This happens at sports meets, volunteering at school events, at prayer meetings, at annual women's retreats, hospitality and driving, etc.

How does all that I do contribute to reaching Japan for Christ?

On our last home assignment David and I spent a lot of time explaining we support missionaries and (I in particular) mobilise for mission. I'll break that down according to the roles that I outlined above.

Managing editor: Japan Harvest magazine goes out to over 1,000 missionaries. It contributes to reaching Japan for Christ because it encourages missionaries, it inspires missionaries, and it equips them. 

Japan has a poor retention rate for missionaries. At 19 years of service David and I are well over the average length of stay for a missionary here. For many reasons it is hard to stay here for a long time in mission work. This magazine goes to many missionaries who are alone in their ministry, facing discouragement because they're not seeing results, or needing inspiration. 

It gives a venue for missionaries to share what they are doing and therefore to inspire others to try different things. It provides a place for people to encourage others in their work or to challenge them to keep their eyes focused on Jesus as they labour in this hard place. Through what people write, we learn insights about culture, language, and ways of working, we're challenged to use different methods or technology, or discover more resources (like books and websites) on relevant topics to ministry in Japan. So it is contributing to our professional development also.

Social media: this is plain mobilisation. Mobilising people to be more involved in mission—whatever that looks like for them. We're using these free platforms (Facebook and Instagram, plus our website) to tell people about what OMF is doing in Japan, to show what it's like to live here and what missionaries are like. We're helping people to know how to pray for this land and challenging them to consider serving here or to encourage others to come and serve here or to reach out to Japanese people where they are. Stories are powerful vehicles for our message and it is my joy to be able to get the stories of missionaries out to an audience of thousands! To places that it would be difficult, expensive, or even impossible to get a speaker to. (Can you tell I'm passionate about this?)

Editing: again mobilisation. Providing people with tools to help them pray or to help them help others to pray for this needy nation. By applying a high level of quality to OMF's publications and social media I am also raising the authenticity of OMF. Because we're producing good quality material, others see OMF as a mission worthy of their trust, interest, and involvement.

Investing in others: almost a decade ago God placed on my heart a desire to help missionaries get their stories out to more people. To help them help others see how God uses ordinary people to do his extraordinary work. I see that being played out across almost all of what I do now: editing people's work, helping people with their writing, and using people's stories in our social media. All of these are helping us in Japan tell others about what God is doing in Japan. I trust that God takes all of these things and uses them in ways I couldn't imagine to raise up prayer and workers for his work. Which in turn reaches Japan for Christ, but not in an easy-to-see way that evangelism and church planting does.

Encouraging and helping others: if my small contribution to someone else (be it a word of encouragement, hospitality, or some other way that I've helped them) means that they are encouraged to continue to serve, then I am contributing to reaching Japan for Christ. A number of missionaries I know are involved in church planting and evangelism and are gifted in these areas. Who knows, but perhaps a word or deed that I've done has made a small contribution to them being able to continue to work in Japan reaching Japanese people for Christ. A contribution that I would not have been able to make if I were based in Australia!

This is a bit of a rough piece of passionate writing. Do you hear my heart? I am not on the so-called "front line". I am not a soldier who is in combat. My gifting is not in evangelism or church planting. But I am passionate about supporting those who are. 

Just take a moment to think about what if everyone who was serving in Japan with OMF was a church planter or evangelist, what would that look like? Here are some ideas:

This is one of my colleagues who is also in support ministry. She processes
applicants to serve with OMF Japan as well as works in member care.
One of her previous ministries was running OMF's language school.

• We'd have lots of church plants, but the workers would be frustrated because they couldn't devote all their time to the work. They would also be spending time educating their kids, plus hours working on filling out forms for the government related to their visas, taxes, insurance, banking, rental properties etc.
• We'd have almost no prayer material, because no one would have any time to produce it, therefore we'd have almost no one praying for the work here.
• People would stagnate in their work because there would be no training, no one would have time to think about upgrading their skills, or learning new ways of working. They would be discouraged.
• There would be no one to process new applicants who wanted to come to Japan to work.
• We would have no website telling people about what we're doing in Japan.
• We wouldn't have a short-term program, or if we did it would be much smaller, and potentially cause a lot of frustration to missionaries as they took a lot of time out of their work to do the administration work necessary to get a short term worker to Japan.
• We'd have no direction or goals as a mission because we would have no leaders. Or if we did have leaders, their attention would be very divided because they would be spending most of their time leading church plants. So our work would be very ad-hoc and lacking cohesion.
• We wouldn't have a language program, people would be responsible for finding their own language teachers and program. Again, it would be ad-hoc and potentially ineffective.

Well, it's getting a bit negative. But you can see what happens when support ministries are taken away. There is a lot that needs to be done in order run a local church. The same (or more) in a mission. Of course many people come as independent missionaries or as tent makers, and people make good cases for this way of working. I'm not here to pit independent mission work vs being in a mission, except to say that I appreciate the support that OMF gives and I doubt that we would still be in Japan except for that.

Well, it's time to sign off. I hope that this is a helpful insight into my role and possibly a challenge to think more deeply about the sorts of roles missionaries can legitimately do as part of the greater missionary effort.

What does a young man who grew up in Japan look like?

Our eldest son mentioned to me that he's had some interesting reactions to people in Australia finding out where he grew up. Mostly people don't guess that he grew up outside Australia. For one person, however, it went the other way—she'd been told about him and that he was "from Japan", perhaps even "a missionary kid from Japan", but was surprised to find that he was Australian. I'm not sure what she expected, or for that matter, what anyone expects.

Sometimes when we're in Australia it feels like we're a zoo exhibit. "Come and look at this rare species: the missionary family from Japan." My kids have never said that, but I wonder. People wonder what kind of weird we'll be, they invite their kids over to meet the missionary kids. I've had people wonder why I don't have an accent (to which I point out that I do . . . if I'm speaking Japanese words known to Australians, like "kimono", "karate", or "Kyoto").

I found this at a homeware store yesterday.
We've always said, when we're travelling,
that "home is where your toothbrush is".
But home is especially where
those you love are. This, of course,
is messy when your loved ones are
scattered about.

"From Japan" is a funny label that we get slapped with. Because, just like "home", where we are "from" is complex. Our youngest was introduced as "from Japan" when he first went to kindergarten in Australia. No other parents talked to us for months until he finally got an invite to a party and we had opportunity to explain what "from Japan" meant in our case. They thought that their four-year-olds were telling weird stories and they didn't know what to do with our obviously non-Asian faces.

But it has been interesting to watch our eldest son try to figure out what home means. Up until he left home to go to university last February, it was pretty simple. Home was where we were, though that got stretched a little whenever we were in Australia on home assignment. 

Last year, when we were in Australia for six months, he didn't spend as much time with us as we'd anticipated. The house we were living in didn't represent home to him, but later in the year he realised that "home" was really more about the people he felt most at home with rather than the place. And that even though the context was unfamiliar, he felt more at home with us than anywhere else.

Then he visited us in Japan a few weeks ago. Back in the house and context where he'd lived from 2010 to 2018. That really felt like home. Back in his old bed, old routines. Though there were some key things missing, like most of his friends from those years.

So yes, it's messy. Our lives are messy, if you view them through certain monocultural lenses. But we're actually pretty comfortable with our oddities. Perhaps in Japan it is just normal to be odd, as an expat. It's in Australia that we feel more uncomfortable, especially as we have to go around talking about the oddities of what our lives look like.

Japan family fun night

On Saturday night we ran a Japan-themed family fun night at our home church. Of all the various up-front things we do, it's one of our favourites. Alas not many churches take us up on the offer to do it. Over the years we've done them in about six different churches.

The principle is simple: introduce people to Japan and mission in a fun way, with lots of interaction and activity.

On Saturday, we knew that people would probably wouldn't all arrive at 5pm when it began. So during the first hour we had a variety of individual activities for people to get into the theme: from origami to Japanese-themed colouring-in and worksheets to dress-up in Japanese clothes. The kids really got into the origami, but there were quite a few takers at the photo booth too.

Then we had a bring-and-share dinner, to which we contributed rice balls (onigiri) and coffee jelly.

After dinner the main programme began.

We divided the group into teams by playing "happy families" where people were given a card with a Japanese surname on it and they had to find the rest of their family.

Then we ran a slipper-chopsticks relay (pictured). They had to change out of their shoes into Japanese slippers, run up to the bowls and move five sultanas from one bowl to the next with chopsticks and then reverse the journey back to tag the next team member.

Chopsticks proved harder than the slippers, though David did advise them not to run in the slippers!

The next activity we started moving towards our theme for the evening: support. Each team got a bag with 45 plastic blocks and had to create a tower that would support this "Japanese missionary" (aka wooden doll). They did really well at this!

The main element of the evening is pictured below. One volunteer (a young girl) was our "missionary" who was first given a box representing "ministry". She was then given a lot of other boxes representing other things missionaries have to do, or need in order to function healthily, eg. visa help, language and culture learning, education of their kids, spiritual growth. Needless to say, she looked rather overwhelmed after being loaded with all that.

So we got more volunteers to take some of the load off her (I've blanked out faces for privacy reasons). It was quite a powerful demonstration of how missionaries involved on the "coal face" of evangelism and church planting, can be mightily helped by having others around them to help. It was pretty obvious that without all those other tasks, the missionary would have a lot more time to do ministry.

The analogy was continued when David asked everyone else to form a circle around the kids. We represented those who remain in the sending country and we support the missionaries by praying, giving, etc.

It was a fairly small group but we were hopeful that those who did come would not forget what they learned there. As our home church, it hopefully helped them to understand why we're doing what we're doing as support workers.

Speaking at churches when you're a support worker in mission isn't the easiest thing. People like to hear conversion stories, news about people being baptised. Teaching science and editing a magazine doesn't have quite the same impact. So we've been trying our best to raise awareness of how important what we do is to those who are evangelists and church planters. That what we do will help those who do those things stay longer and be more effective.

We have one other opportunity to present this to a church group this home assignment. Though if you're reading this and would like us to do this in your church (and you are in SE Qld), then do get in contact with us as we've still got some Fri/Sat nights free (or even mid-week nights).

Meet the missionary FAQs

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

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

How long are you in Australia for?

Six months, returning to Japan early January.

How long have you been in Japan?

Since December 2000, coming up on 18 years.

Where are you living while you're here?

In Ipswich, in a rented house.

Where are your kids going to school?

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

Is your eldest living with you?

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

Are your kids fluent in Japanese?

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

Are you fluent in Japanese?

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

Where do you live in Japan?

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

How long will you keep doing this missionary work?

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

How much travelling will you do this home assignment?

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

What do you do during the week?

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

What do you do in Japan?

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

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

Global Hymn Sing 2018

Have you ever participated in a Global Hymn Sing? It is something that OMF and Getty Music have hosted on one Sunday in the past two years. It simply means that churches (and other gatherings) across the world all sing a selected hymn on a designated Sunday. What makes it more interesting is that you can register that your church is doing it, so it appears as a dot on a world map.

Why? The goal is to raise awareness of the many across the world who haven't heard the Gospel, and to "inspire thought, prayer and action towards global evangelism."

Here is the official blurb:

29% of the world's population live in places with little or no access to the Gospel. That's over 2 billion individuals worldwide who need someone to share the good news of Jesus with them.

For two years Getty Music in partnership with OMF International have hosted a Global Hymn Sing, inviting churches to come together in their worship gatherings, in solidarity with brothers and sisters all over the world, and sing a hymn to inspire thought, prayer and action toward global evangelism.  Nearly two-million people in more than one-hundred countries have responded to the call to sing together with one voice, and this year we hope YOUR church will join that chorus!

This year the Global Hymn sing is on February 25 and the hymn is Jesus Shall Reign. 

Jesus Shall Reign has been a famous missionary hymn for generations and was sung by the great missionary and Olympic sprinter Eric Liddell (Chariots of Fire) at the train station in Edinburgh as he embarked on a missionary journey to China. While interned during World War 2, Eric served alongside China Inland Mission (now OMF) workers, along with other organizations. He even gave his running shoes to a CIM mission kid named Steve Metcalfe, who he challenged to become a missionary to the Japanese, which he did! Register your church to sing this great hymn and receive all resources FREE, including sheet music, orchestrations, audio, videos and MORE.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please email us (Global Hymn Sing Team) at globalhymnsing@gettymusic.com. Last year I participated in an unusual way in this hymn sing. I was asked to be the pianist for an OMF missionary choir at a memorial service for a Japanese missionary who passed away last April. The memorial service was held on the Global Hymn Sing date last year and the choir sang the designated hymn. You can see a short montage video of last year's Global Hymn Sing here (but we don't appear). Our Japanese home church is planning to be involved (the hymn is translated into multiple languages), as well as my parent's church in Australia. Maybe you could get your church involved too? The best thing to do is to register your church and they'll send you the resources you need.

Kids newsletter for December

I sent this Kids Newsletter out this week to those on our email list. Feel free to use it. If you'd like a better copy or even to be on the mailing list, drop me a line.

I'm also looking for suggestions for a theme for 2018.

Shouting in the Shrine

The day has run away with me (lots of editing) and I've not gotten to actually completing a post here (I have started two, though, just not finished them). So I'm going to cheat and give you a link to a post I completed earlier for the OMF Japan blog. 

I shared it today on Facebook and it's been well received, I do recommend you check it out. It's about an elderly Shinto priest in Hokkaido who because a Christian after watching various members of his family become Christians. This is a really encouraging story: https://omf.org/blog/2017/08/05/turning-up-the-volume/

Missionary Identity

Here's another thing that I did early in the summer—write three guest blog posts for our UK office about different aspects of identity that missionaries struggle with. 

The OMF office in the UK follows my blog and asked me to write a post on this topic for them. But when I sat down to write, I found there was way too much to say to fit into just one post, so I asked if I could write a series of three, and they agreed. 

These were published over three weeks in July:

Missionary: what's that?

Identity crisis

Where's home?

Delight in retreating

This was my breakfast table on the final morning. I haven't had such a fun
breakfast in quite a long time. The conversation was wonderful (and not
needing to be driven by me, as is often the case in our boy-laden household).

I'm back from the annual women in ministry retreat. It really is always a special time. If anything marks these fellow ladies, it is servant hearts. There is also a vulnerability that comes from the sacrifices of cross-cultural work that means that people dive deep fast.

So hold on to your hat, and I'll tell you a bit about the three days.

On Wednesday I met up with 12 other ladies at the school car park, we piled into two vans, and drove to the far west of Tokyo, out into a narrow valley between mountains. The retreat had began: in our vans. 

The main ladies who made this event happen. The leadership team as well
as some who came to serve us: worship leader, and counsellors.

The early hours of the retreat were a feast of meeting up with people we haven't seen for long or short times and meeting new people. Lots of loud cries of joy and hugs. It was delightful. Like a birthday party, except the presents are other people, for most of us didn't know who else was coming.

This was a retreat marked by laughter. From the ice breaking session to the main teaching sessions. Laughter was a main ingredient. Something appreciated by many, as life and ministry in Japan is not often marked by belly-shaking laughter.

This was our speaker. A well-known author. We just about
died laughing when she did this, trying to take a photo
 of our breakfast table from her seat at the head of the table!

Tears were not uncommon either. When you worship in a language other than your own, worshipping in your heart language can be an emotional experience (though I do need to acknowledge that we did have a number for whom English isn't their native language, but who did speak it very well). Time in prayer in larger and smaller groups produced tears. Being prayed for by others. Simply being in the company of others who share the same life-experience of leaving loved ones to serve in another country, can produce tears.

 

A retreat like this contains many ingredients that combine to make a special experience. 

• Fellowship with other ladies is one of the keys for me and it pervades the whole time. The extrovert part of me laps this up to the extent that I find it hard to wind down at night-time. This was my eighth retreat and I now know many of the women who were there. A great delight! Oh, I talked with so many people.
• Worship (singing and praying): in English. I was pretty tired and struggled early on to get into this with all my heart. But even when you're in a tired place, it was lovely to sit back and sing words that you knew the meaning of.
• Speakers: this is usually an American who comes over especially for the retreat, often someone who is a professional speaker. This year we had a particularly famous author: Liz Curtis Higgs. She's written a lot of books. The tradition is that we ask the speaker to write an article for Japan Harvest, so I get to interact with the speaker a little bit before hand. I have to tell you that I had to put it out of my mind that this lady had published 35 books when I was editing her article and treat it just like any other article that crosses my desk! And yes, if you're wondering, we did change things in it! Not major stuff, but there were fixes that were needed.
• Second speaker: this year we had a second speaker for one short elective about developing a theology of suffering. Interesting and important stuff to ponder.
• Free time: this is an excuse for more fellowship and fun. As it was raining when I'd hoped to go for a walk, I took the time to lie down instead, but despite being exhausted, couldn't drop off.
• Fun time: the ice breaker at the beginning, meals, cooking marshmallows over the fire, doing craft together, drinking coffee/tea and snacking, and watching a movie together on Thursday evening. Really, just enjoying being together for two days. Something that is rare for women serving on the mission field. We're generally so busy doing whatever we do that there isn't often much time to just be with friends.

But most of the above could be written about any retreat, I suspect. Here are a couple of stories from my retreat:

On Wednesday afternoon a friend told me a story about one of my sons and how impressed she'd been with something he'd done. I was impressed too. That there was my first tears of the retreat.

At various times I was able to pray for others specifically. How amazing it is when someone you've never met before confesses a heart-cry like desiring a baby and the sadness that God hasn't provided in that way yet. 

Since we had a famous author in our midst, she was asked to do a short writer's workshop, though it was more teaching about good writing than any workshopping. I was encouraged to find that she wasn't saying anything new to me (except when she briefly spoke about fiction writing).

One story that is about the retreat, but didn't happen there is another friend of mine who had planned and looked forward to coming, but had had to cancel early last week when her disabled son caught chicken pox. She'd organised respite care for him and numerous other things just to free up the time to come, but it was all thwarted.  She lives in an area where there are few missionaries, and this retreat is a once-a-year event. I felt terrible for her, not to mention that I'd been looking forward to seeing her myself.

I think I've run out of words! Here are some photos to tell a bit more of the story.

This lady, Bethany, beautifully led us in worship, without
getting in the way of us interacting with our God. She led
from the piano (which always gets my admiration, I can barely
talk or sing while playing). She came all the way from
California with the money that God provided in order to serve us.
 But more than that, she's a beautiful godly lady who I met last 
year and was delighted to meet again this year. And she remembered me! 

This is the chorus of one of the songs we sang. It was 
written by a missionary in Japan. The words struck home. 
Especially that last line, it hasn't been easy recently to "remain"
 when others around seem to be constantly leaving.

These are some of the ladies I helped get to and from the retreat. What a delight
it was to be together in the van. I'm so thankful for the ability to drive 
and the vehicle God's given us. I just wish I could have recruited
another driver and van, because we had to say no to some because
we didn't have room for everyone from our area and they
took the trains (thankful for the train alternative, though).

I had been looking forward to going for a walk on Thursday during free time,
but it was raining. However on Friday the sun came out again and I managed
to get out and see some beautiful blossoms.

This retreat is part of what keeps me going in Japan. I'm just so thankful for the opportunity to be a part of this. There are hundreds of missionaries who never get a chance like this, and I've been able to be a part of this on eight different occasions now. So thankful.