Transition reflections

We are inching closer and closer to home assignment. It's less than five weeks till we fly out of Japan and while I know there is a lot yet to be done, I'm also getting impatient for it all to be over! I feel a bit overwhelmed by all the anticipation! 

This week I've been slowed up considerably by the miserable cold I mentioned last post, complicated as usual by my chronic asthma. I've gotten a lot less done than I'd expected, but nonetheless, I don't appear to be terribly behind, which is a great relief.

Yesterday morning I had my last "handover" planning meeting. Gradually the puzzle that I've been working on is being solved. The question that's been heavily on my mind for months now was how I was going to take leave from my various roles in Japan for 12 months without having those ministries collapse (not because I'm indispensable, but because I have been a key leader of both my main ministry teams). 

The goal I've been working towards is officially finishing most of my roles next Friday. After that we have our OMF field conference for a week in Hokkaido and then three and a half weeks to pack up our house, pack our bags, move, go to final medical appointments, say farewells, dispose of stuff, and hop on an aeroplane.

Forgive my unbelief

One of the stresses of moves like this one are all the unknowns compounded by many, many decisions. Most of the unknowns for us now are problems to be solved in Australia: like where we're going to live and how we're going to get around. 

We sent out our June prayer letter this week and in that we made an appeal to borrow furniture. We don't know where we'll live, but chances are that it will be unfurnished. We have only a very small amount stored in Australia and almost none of that is furniture, so each time we've got back for home assignment, we've asked our network to help us out. They've never failed in 20 years and I can't remember ever having to buy any larger (or even medium) household goods. God's provided in the past. But I still succumb to anxiety, which, I realise, is basically rooted in not believing that God will supply our needs (despite what I say with my words). In the case of the furniture, only an hour or two after I sent out that prayer letter, a good friend messaged me with news that she can supply most of those needs! Wow. Thank you Lord, but please forgive my unbelief! And help me to apply that faith to the other needs we have!

Quietly rebelling

What most people don't realise is that we really do like what we do in Japan. The essence of home assignment is that we have to give up what we really like doing here to become public speakers in Australia. And neither of us really enjoys public speaking.

I find myself quietly wanting to rebel against what we’re required to do over the next twelve months. Most of what we do in Japan is usually in the background. Neither of us feel comfortable being in the limelight. But home assignment puts us firmly there. We morph into speakers, workshop leaders, and Japan experts. My quiet rebellion is because I don't really want to be considered an extraordinary human being, one that needs to be pointed out as something special, someone who we invite to speak about their amazing experiences. That sub-text is contrary to what I want to communicate: that we are just ordinary humans, doing pretty ordinary stuff (just in an extraordinary place). We appear "special" because not many people do this, but it's not because we are inherently special. All we have and are is from God. It's because we serve an extraordinary God that we can do this, and keep doing it.

Translators?

I'm reading a book at the moment called Uncommon Ground, a collection of essays brought together by Tim Keller and John Inazu with perspectives from people thinking deeply and working daily to live with these times. What I didn't expect was to gain some perspective on what our role is during home assignment.One of the authors, John Inazu, calls himself a translator, though he is a lawyer and teacher. He says each of us is called to the task of translation: making words and ideas accessible to audiences unfamiliar with them. He describes his role as translating for and to each of the two worlds he occupies: the church and the university (he teaches law). "My vocation of translation means translating the university to some of my church friends and translating the church to some of my university friends." (p. 115)

In the case of a missionary on home assignment, we have to "translate" overseas mission and Japan to Australians. In general people we encounter there don't clearly understand what we do or where we do it. If you've followed my blog for a long time, you'll know that our work in Australia is composed of answering a lot of questions.

Much patience and diligence is required in translation. Much attention to detail as well as sensitivity to the wider picture. My work as an editor is also translation to some degree. I have to ensure that the writer's intent is accurately and appealingly translated into words that the audience will understand and not stumble over. And of course, as a writer who writes about cross-cultural life, I am translating my experience, life in Japan, and missionary life, into words so that others can understand. Pretty similar, in a way, to what we do on HA, except that as a writer and editor, I can hide behind my screen, rather than have to engage people face to face, or stand up in front of an audience with no time to edit my answers.

This is an interesting, helpful new thought for me. The author's thoughts on how we all need more humility, patience, and tolerance, are challenging, but helpful as we head into a different season of translation.

Unexpected story of an editor, a 12 y.o. boy, and Japan

A sermon I recently heard at our church introduced me to an editor-missionary who I'd never heard of before. But really, who knows the names of famous editors? It really isn't our thing; we generally prefer to remain in the background.

The man, Luís Fróis, was a Jesuit missionary from Portugal in the 1500s. He worked in Japan from 1563 until he died in 1597. Much of his ministry was as the clerk and editor of letters and periodicals that the missionaries sent to Rome about their work. A missionary who is an editor! (Not someone I come across every day; it's more common to come across missionaries who are writers.) I'm particularly amused by this quote: 

"[Father] Valignano had discovered that many of the letters and reports, especially those written by young missionaries not yet familiar with Japanese conditions, gave a false impression of the country to the readers. He therefore gave orders that the reports concerning the various missions should be collected by an experienced missionary and should be read and, if need be, corrected under the orders of the Provincial as an official Annual Report." (From here)

An editor's brief!

He was also commissioned to write a history of the Catholic church's work in Japan, but ended up writing a very large work that included much observation of Japan of the day, as well as some history of the country.

He was also a witness, in 1597, of the execution of the now famous 26 martyrs in Nagasaki, Japan. It is mostly because of Fróis that we know so much about this event. He wrote a detailed report of this event and sent it to his superiors, only months before he himself died.

But what especially caught my attention during the sermon is the connection that the preacher made between Fróis and a more recent missionary, who died a couple of years ago. Alfons Deeken, another Catholic missionary, was just 12 during WW2 in Germany when he was selected for the Nazi teacher training academy, a great honour at the time. However, he refused this opportunity because he disagreed with what the Nazis were doing because it went against his faith. This decision would have even been viewed by some as anti-German. Alfons had read Fróis' account of the 26 Martyrs. In that he read about another 12 year old boy called Luis Ibaraki, who was among those being marched to Nagasaki in 1597 for crucifixion. This boy's steadfast faith in the face of death inspired Alfons Deeken to go to Japan as a missionary. He's quoted as saying "I felt a great desire to visit the country that had produced such a courageous boy."

Neither Luis Ibaraki, nor Luís Fróis would have anticipated that their actions would inspire someone to do what Alfons did: reject the social pressures of the times and go even further to become a missionary in Japan.

I'm a writer and editor who works in mobilisation. My team and I work to produce social media content that will hopefully mobilise people around the world to be more involved in mission, however that looks. But we rarely hear how our work has directly influenced people to do what we're aiming for. This story excites me because it was a writer/editor who simply wrote what he saw, that ultimately was the vehicle to getting someone 400 years later to make a life-changing decision. He didn't plan to mobilise anyone by writing that report. There are actually a whole lot of unsung heroes here: this was originally a letter in Portuguese. Someone published it, someone translated it into German, and published it again. And someone got this book(let) into Alfons' hand.

This makes me excited about what I do. Writing down things, editing, and publishing them is a sacred task. You don't know where they will end up or what change they will cause in other people. Or even when that will occur. If something I do or write or edit makes a difference to someone in 400 year’s time I would be very surprised. However, I can hope that my words make a difference, even in the here-and-now.

Creativity and Christianity

I came across a couple of articles about creativity ages ago and have just dragged them back out of my bulging "draft blog post" folder.

I love the work I do, I've got the freedom to use my gifts to be creative as well as to build others up. So these short articles are very encouraging to me.

The first article I found has an enormous title: Why Christians should paint, dance, quilt, act, compose music, write writes, decorate cookies, and participate in the arts. It lists eight reasons why Christians should be creative. I bet you can think of more, though I wouldn't have thought of these eight if I'd made the list, for example, "beauty reminds us of the Beautiful One" and "when we use our gifts it reminds us (and others) of the Giver of every good and perfect gift". 

Here are some of the creative things I like to do, and why:

• I love to bake as it gives to others, but I also find it very satisfying to work through a series of steps and get a defined result. I actually find it relaxing if I'm not rushed. 
• I love enjoying nature (with and without a camera) because it reminds me of the Creator and lifts my eyes and heart up beyond my current problems. When I share my photos (and blog posts too, I guess) it give pleasure to others and takes them to a place of admiring the work of the Creator too.
• I love to write because it's a gift I have and I can use it to encourage or challenge or inform others. A bit like baking, I like to have ideas and work to get them written down in a way that others can appreciate and enjoy. Editing writing is similar, whether it is my work or someone else's, taking the "raw ingredients" and forming them into something that will benefit others is very satisfying.
• I loved doing cross stitch, it was a relaxing pastime. But also something that I found easy and could create things that I could give to others to give them pleasure. I've taken a break from it in the last year or so, but unfortunately haven't found a viable replacement yet.

This second article (Three things I know about creativity) is by a writer and editor (sounds like someone I know...). She writes about three things that creativity needs:

• to live life: so we have fuel for stuff to create as well as to create space for creative thoughts to form and arrange themselves
• solitude: peace for our souls to be able to commune with God
• community: for refinement, feedback that improves whatever it is that we've created.

I've only just scratched the surface here, I know there's lots more to this topic than I'm seeing or could cover in one tiny blog post. For example this fascinating article from Relevant magazine asking "Is there a place for creative Christians?" with answers by a variety of creative Christians.

It's something I'd like to keep thinking about. As a writer and an editor and an individual who enjoys a variety of creative endeavours.

What do creative things do you enjoy? Why?

Flying and writing

Coffee and editing at the airport
(with the ever present cup of water).

I'm in Bangkok at the OMF guest home and, though it is only 7.40pm here and 9.40 on my body clock, I feel as though my eyes are about to fall out of they sockets. It's been a long day of tiring travel. I don't know how people do 20+hrs on a plane; I'm not sure I could! My bottom was really tired of sitting by the end of my not quite six-hour flight (but I am a restless person).


In any case, I tried to pretend I was one of those travelling writers today! In a coffee shop at the airport I pulled out a couple of articles I'm editing, and then sometime in the middle of my flight I pulled out my computer and did some more editing as well as writing a blog post. Sounds pretty glamorous, doesn't it? Well it wasn't. It was just using what time I had to do things I needed to do (the editing, that is).

Here's what I wrote, it's a bit raw but I'm too tired to do much about that now.

Here’s something I’ve never done before: written a blog post . . . or really anything, while high in the sky over international waters. I’ve flown on many planes (we have counted, it’s more than 60, I think), but the vast majority of those have been with young children. I have only flown on my own internationally three times before. From Indonesia to Australia via Singapore as a 20 year-old and from Japan to Hong Kong and back in 2010.

Today I’m flying to Bangkok to do some training with our mission, training related to teams: participating and leading them. It is a small group, only 12, plus the trainers. I’m looking forward to meeting new people, learning more about leadership and teams, and growing. I have to admit I’m also looking forward to time away from parenting (don’t tell the boys) and a break from wearing my winter clothes, including long-johns!

After so much flying as a family, it is strange to fly alone. No one to look after my luggage while I use the ladies at the airport. No one to keep an eye on my valuables in the plane while I do the same thing. No one to talk to, or sit next to. No one to be entertained. No one to correct or help. No one to lean on when things don’t make sense or I don’t have enough information. It is both fun and a little intimidating and lonely.

On Thursday I met with my language exchange partners. They’re always interested to hear about my latest adventures. And it often seems that I have more "adventures" than they do. They asked, “How many countries have you been to?” I counted them up, “Only seven, all of them in Asia [except Australia which isn't really Asia]. If you count airport layovers it is nine.” Not that many, really. It looks like we have a very international lifestyle, but in truth most of our journeys have been between Japan and Australia.

The other countries were for a short term mission study trip (Indonesia), training (Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore), and a conference (Thailand). No overseas holidays except for the two Japanese summers that we’ve flown back to Australia to visit family. Those were technically holidays, though we often felt more tired afterwards than we would have if we’d holidayed closer to home. Other than those we’ve never left the country we were living in at the time to go on a holiday. Since we’ve been married the only airplane we’ve caught for a holiday was our honeymoon.

I guess to most people we look well-travelled. Last year in Australia I got the same reaction from members of our home church. Compared to most of them, we travel a lot. But most of it is for work, not pleasure. Therefore it is in our budget, our work budget.

Other travel that’s looks beyond-usual to our friends has been our motorhome trip to the centre of Australia and our camping trip around the top of Japan. Our motorhome trip was by far the most expensive of holidays we’ve taken.

One of these days, after our boys have flown the coop, we’d love to take a holiday somewhere else. Maybe even get out of Asia. Our lives have intersected with many people from other countries, I’m sure we could find someone to go and visit!

But in general I haven’t found travel to be a relaxing occupation. I’d rather go somewhere fairly local (and I’m Australian used to driving country roads, so you know that that means within a few hours drive) and hang-out for a week or two with books and other relaxing things to do. I get overtired by the constant movement and noise involved in travel. I’m also not terribly adventurous with new food, which puts a damper on international travel.

And there it petered out. I got a start on another article for a magazine, but I'd really run out of steam by then. So I went back to watching episodes of Forever.

Now I've totally run out of steam and I'm heading to bed. Good night!

Published a couple more times

UPDATE: the link on number two was broken, fixed now.

While I've been busy with other things this month, a couple of short articles I "wrote earlier" were published. It's a funny thing, writing. People talk to you about something you've written as if you've just written it, but chances are it was something you wrote six months ago, or even, as I note below, more than two years ago. Same with editing. I'm about 1 ½ issues ahead of everyone else. What my audience is reading now, I was reading well before Christmas last year.

Anyway, here are the two things that I know about that were published:

1. I was featured in an online magazine this month. Connection, the online magazine of Thrive, a community of Global Women. I've had a few other things published by them and they asked if they could include me in their "Global Woman Highlight" this issue. If you want to hop across to have a look, this is the link. 

2. A meditation I wrote more than two years ago was finally published last week in The Upper Room magazine, in the paper edition as well as online.

Plus:

3. This article about teaching Third Culture Kids was written by my husband, but edited and submitted by me.

Assumptions editors make about writers

I've been ear-lobe deep in editing in the last couple of weeks. You know how it goes: seemingly unrelated things collide in your schedule and next thing you know you're drowning a little in busyness. At least that is the way it happens in my life. Though I try hard to keep things spaced out and well-paced sometimes you have to dig deep to get through.

Well, as I've mentioned here before Japan Harvest, the magazine I'm managing editor of, is running late. Next week our "summer" issue comes out (it's mid-autumn here). The magazine is run by people who have other significant ministries and responsibilities and over the last three years has become later and later. Now, finally, we have a plan and the people in place to catch-up, but that, of course, requires more intense work. 

So, the upshot of it is that I've been working on three issues at the same time in the last few weeks! Phew! It's coming together and our goal is that the autumn issue will come out before Christmas (only five weeks after the summer issue).

Thankfully I haven't been having difficult author-relationship issues recently but when I saw a blog post by a highly respected Christian writer about what editors assume about writers, it resonated. Here are a couple of quotes:

Here's a sentence I tell new authors to memorize and repeat regularly: "I am a professional and I respond professionally."

 Editors assume that the best writers welcome them as guides and helpers to bring in a different-and-improved perspective.

I try my best to be a "professional" editor (my son even called me that this morning, so perhaps I'm getting there...). I never know what I'm going to encounter when I start interacting with a missionary who's never written "for me" before. Most writers I will interact with only via email, occasionally I meet them later on at an event, but usually after I've worked on their writing. That can be tricky.

I've had enough difficult experiences with authors to know that I don't know how they're going to react, especially when I have some hard things to say about their work. One person recently said I'd made his work look "vanilla"! Thankfully that was as far as he went. But every time I've got something hard to say, it isn't easy to press that "Send" button. I'd like authors to know that I don't say hard things lightly.

In case you're interested, I wrote a couple of years ago here about how the relationship between an editor and writer doesn't have to be adversarial.

So here's to good relationships between authors and editors. At least between this editor and the authors she encounters (many of whom don't consider themselves authors, but who send me their "babies" anyway).

Advice for writers about editors

Some advice for writers and want-to-be writers about editors from a well-published author (he was writing about book publishing, but the same applies to magazines):

"Unless you sell a manuscript for a flat fee, any reputable publishing house will send you the changes they make on your manuscript. 

That also means it's truly a mutual arrangement. The editor suggests changes and you, as the author, have the right to reject or respond with a different wording.  

A word of caution here. Editors aren't your adversaries and they try to make it the best product possible. Try not to be defensive. Read the changes and ask yourself, "Does this improve the manuscript?" 

Remind yourself that once the book is printed, readers will think everything is your work."

From Cec Murphy's blog.

Published writer, yes I am

Available from au.books@omfmail.com
forA$15, from us or another OMF centre.

Yes, I AM a writer! I've discovered yesterday that I've had a second story published in a compilation, God's Faithfulness.

Project Story is the other book that has a story of mine in it, it was published last year and is a compilation of stories mostly set in East Asia,and put together by OMF Australia. Most of the authors are Australian.

Available for A$10 from here or us,
plus postage

Another books that has two very short stories by me is Growing up Among Worlds, but I am not credited as OMF wished to keep the identity of all the children confidential.

Available for A$4 from us, or from here,
plus postage.

Very satisfying and definitely spurring me on to further writing.