A bit of couple fun

Every time we go to Australia for home assignment we have a debrief with a psychologist/counsellor. A few years ago they told us we were obviously good at working together, but probably needed to rediscover fun. Missionaries having fun?!? Yes, we need to!

And it was true that we'd fallen out of the habit of having fun as a couple. When the boys were younger we rarely went on dates. We first moved to Japan when we'd been married just three years, and we had a very busy toddler. In Japan we had no family and it was just too much stress to find a babysitter, so we learned to stay home and enjoy what we could do there, like watching a TV episode from a DVD or play Scrabble. We’ve turned into home-bods, even more than we previously were. As our guys got older David and I have slowly gotten out a little more, but still often found going out too tiring when we were already tired from work and parenting. Much of our fun was as a family: supporting our guys at their sporting events as well as camping and holidaying together.

The last 18 months, and especially the last nine (since our younger two moved out), things have been changing. David and I went to several cricket matches in Australia (our shared love). Obviously (if you've been reading my blog this year) we went away for two months! Living on a budget, though, we rarely ate out in Australia—though it’s easier to do so now that we don’t have to cater to enormous sporty teenage boy appetites.

This is the first time we've ever been to a live
match of any sport between our two countries.
Japan and Australia just don't have many team sports
in common. One day we might find a Rugby Sevens
match to go to!

Last night we did something that felt like "playing hooky". We went to an international sports event: Australia played Japan in wheelchair rugby, a sport we’ve come to appreciate via the Paralympics. We actually had tickets to go to a session of this sport for the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021…but Covid…'

It was a lot of fun. I just wish I could have cheered louder…there didn’t seem to be many true Aussie fans around (they handed out Australian flags to Japanese people at the door, in a valiant attempt to support the guests).

Time out for a quick team meeting with the players on the court.

It's called the Shibuya Cup and the teams are playing four matches. Last night was the first. They gave us a booklet that showed the teams, and explained the game and the rules.
If you'd like to take a look at some of the action, it's here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JWRF/streams

Japanese publications are so cute!

 

We also were given these free cartons of coffee milk as we entered!

This little trip yesterday was fairly spontaneous, I only heard about this free event last Monday because I follow the Australian Paralympic Facebook page. I wonder what our next adventure will look like? David's got Christmas holidays coming up...and we have no family to hang out with this year, for only the second time in our lives. We'll see what turns up and what fun we can find.

 

It's still messy, but I think I am growing

I took time out of the house yesterday, mostly with the intention of making more progress in reading the book Awe and intentionally following up on thinking about some of things I wrote about in this blog post in September "It's messier than I like to admit". In that post I wrote that I was planning a followup...I've not managed that till now (and I'm just pondering where the last seven weeks have gone!).

Autumn colours in the park

I've been trying to come to terms with a less busy life. A life without boys at home is less busy. Both the ministry roles I've returned to this year are less intense now. A lot of what I've done in the past has been spread out amongst others, which is a good thing, but leaves me with wondering how to best use my time. But I'm also aware that, though I am not "old" yet, I am "less young" than I was 25 years ago when I started having the responsibility of children, and the reality of that is that I have less energy and take longer to recover.

So yesterday I rode to my favourite large park, but was very distracted by how chilly it was (around 18C). I'd neglected to put on appropriately warm clothing as the day before had been quite warm (25C inside). The weather and the seasons are messing with me! Last Friday I had a conversation with some American friends and it became clear how messed up I was. 

This calendar year started with a Queensland summer. We accelerated our descent into winter by heading south in mid-March and our month (April) in Tasmania in an unheated motorhome was quite chilly. Then we drove back north to a more moderate Queensland winter! In July we accelerated into summer by flying north, going from around 2 degrees Celsius to 30 C in just one day. The next two months were full-on summer and since mid September we've gradually been descending into winter again. 

Add to that that we're just still figuring out how to weather the seasons in our new apartment, which has both more sunlight and more insulation than our previous abode. So we often have difficulty accurately judging how outside will feel before we get there. This is made worse by the structure of a Japanese home: in that, to properly go outside, you have to put shoes on, at which point the inside of the house (and clothing) is no longer accessible to you...unless you take your shoes off (or take other measures, that you might have seen illustrated in OMF Japan's social media post a few weeks back, if not, then I recommend checking it out here). 

But I digress. The problem with my conversation was that if I started using seasons to anchor my story, I was instantly in trouble. For example, "We came back [to Tokyo] in the summer, but will be heading back [to Australia] to a summer wedding in January." followed by "We're also planning to go back to Australia next summer (but it will be winter there)." Americans tend to call the middle of the year "the summer" as an overall term for "long school holidays", whereas Australias call our long summer holiday period "Christmas" or "Chrissy holidays" or "Christmas and New Year" or "End of the year." And so it's all a confused mess. So, in the conversation, I started using calendar anchors, rather than seasons!

Anyway, back to trying to read my book in the park: I spent ages trying to make up my mind about what I'd do about feeling too cold. I ended up eating lunch and riding to a coffee shop in a familiar shopping centre on my way back home. It wasn't ideal as it was much noisier than the park, but at least it wasn't home where there are so many other distractions.

I tend to process things better when I write (or talk), but I didn't take my computer or any people with me. Only the book, my phone, and a pencil and notebook. So I'm going to do some processing here.

The book is full of thought provoking stuff. It's key point is that human beings are hardwired for "awe". The problem is we were created to be in awe of God, but because of sin find it impossible, and the awe of God is very quickly replaced by awe of self. He's saying that "awe lies at the bottom of a whole range of human struggles". Nothing else satisfies our awe-wired existence, and thus we end up angry, lonely, disappointed, addicted, bitter, etc. We are self-centred, feel entitled, or experience relational dysfunction, seek to control people, live in fear or envy or drivenness or exhaustion. Tripp traces all these things back to our "awe problem".

In relation to the purpose of my ministry now that life is running at a slower pace, I was struck (in September) by: "Ministry is meant to be something bigger than completing a list of tasks" (p. 49. Ouch. He continues, "You have been called to the high position of making the invisible glory of God visible to people who quickly lose sight of God's glory and begin to look for glories elsewhere (Psalm 145:4).

In many ways he's writing to himself, but also to us all. All Christians are "in ministry" whether paid or not. We are all called to point others to God's glory. If we were all doing this for each other, we would be a more effective community.

It's easy to get very discouraged by all of this, because Tripp goes to great lengths to tell us that we can't help ourselves. On our own we can't fix this. However, God can.

Only when the awe of God rules your heart will you have joy even when people disappoint you and life gets hard. Awe means your heart will be filled more with a sense of blessing than with a sense of want. . . remember that he [God] is so rich in grace that he will never turn a deaf ear to your cries (p 105-106).

We all question God's character, and, despite the theology that we say we believe, we struggle to live that way "at street level". We wonder if God is good, if he is in control, does he have the power to help us, does he even care? Yep, I have these thoughts too (witness it in this blog post from this time last year). Therefore it was reassuring to read this:

God alone will never leave you...he never sends you without going with you. He is your protector, guide, defender, teacher, savior, and healer. He never mocks your weakness but gives you strength...His care is so awesome and so complete that nothing in your life's experience in any way compares." p 105

None of this is new to me. But I keep forgetting, so it is good to be reading a book that reminds me (and of course the Bible is riddled with such reassurances). Not remembering these things leads to discontent and complaints. And it's so easy for complaints to slip into our thoughts and conversation.

You can't do that work of awe reclamation on your own. You desperately need grace—but you and I are called to treasure that work and to pursue and participate in it any way we can. And we are called to humbly admit our need and again and again run to the grace that stands as our only hope of personal growth and change. (p. 129)

So I guess yesterday was partly about me running back to my saviour and admitting my need for his help. Help to grow, to know how to walk with him in this new season, and to fix eyes on him so that my awe is directed towards him again, instead of my own "kingdom of one".

God sent me to Japan again in July. He came with me and he has a purpose for me here in this new season, with all my weaknesses and foibles. I need to trust him . . . still and again! Possibly I'll look back at some time in the future and know what that purpose is (though I suspect it won't be one simple thing). Right now my job is to do my best each day, with God's grace, to point others towards his glory, however that looks in my life and with the strengths and skills that he gave me.

I hope this makes sense to you. I am not sure I can make it any better at this time! I am planning to finish the last three chapters of the book before the end of the year. Maybe I'll write again after I read those, maybe I won't. Perhaps you'll see the outworking of God in my life and writing without me consciously trying to pry it out of my head?

A very encouraging week

Last week was very full. I was looking forward to it, as well as wondering how I would fare. I'm thankful to be past it, but also see that I managed to make it through without falling in a heap, which is really encouraging.

On Monday we had our monthly regional gathering for our mission. Around 50 people joined together to sing, pray, fellowship, and eat together. We heard, and prayed thoroughly, about some business matters. 

After a short break mid afternoon, five of us (plus a facilitator) jumped into our social media team retreat in the same location. We had a formal time of getting to know you, and then went out to dinner together. I was pretty "whacked". I struggled with a headache all afternoon and by dinner time it was making me feel woozy, but I managed to do all that I needed to do. I did head to bed at 8.30, though.

The next day we gathered after breakfast and spent the whole day thinking about things like decision making, team characteristics, some big picture questions about what we do and how we do it, and spent time growing in creativity. It was a big day that we followed with dinner out together, and an evening of creativity.

I knew this team was much younger than me, but it was confronting to spend significant time together and feel very middle-aged (the next youngest person is 13 years younger than me and three of our team are in their 20s or early 30s)! However it was a really good time. We are a remote team and most of us don't know one another well. I've learned over the 14 years I've worked in remote teams that trust is a huge component. If you don't trust one another, it makes your job far more difficult. This was a great time for building trust.

It's also a team that has undergone much change recently, and there is more change and uncertainty in the upcoming months. This level of team change is very challenging. I'm so thankful we had an experienced "team builder" help us as I'm certain I wouldn't have had the knowledge to do what he did, and certainly having someone outside the team to run it was a good move too. This retreat is something we've been talking about doing for a few years now, but the pandemic put a stop to a lot of that kind of initiative (and how often have I heard "but the pandemic..." uttered recently when people are reflecting on the last five years!?).

I got home from the retreat on Wednesday, in time for my usual mid-afternoon coffee. I unpacked, did a couple of "time sensitive" work things, and then collapsed on the lounge for the rest of the evening.

Thursday was a day I had carefully kept clear of other responsibilities. I didn't have high hopes for my capacity for work that day, but surprised myself and others by ticking off (US Eng: checking off) quite a number of editing jobs.

Our table

Friday was entirely taken up by an event we've been anticipating for over 12 months. Last year as we finalised our packing and moving, we realised we had a number of things that others could find useful. So we didn't throw them all out, we kept a few boxes of stuff and stored them, planning to try to sell them at Friday's school bazaar. At the bazaar we rented a table and filled it with stuff we were trying to get rid of. Between 10am and 4pm we sold quite a few things! We also sold all 200 pieces of fudge that I'd made. But it was also a great ruse for having our own "quiet" spot in the school gym where we could sit and greet friends who wandered past. I had so many conversations with friends, many of whom I've known for a number of years. It was a great encouragement to my soul.

It was fantastic to see the school community coming to life again "post pandemic" (yep, that word again). In October 2019, for various reasons, CAJ ended its long tradition of "Thrift Shop". That tradition had, twice a year, filled the gym with donated goods and provided us with not only many cheap household goods, toys, clothes, camping gear, and other miscellaneous items, but many hours of volunteering there over the years provided me with community and friends. That October was supposed to be the start of a new tradition, but any forward momentum got interrupted just six months later by a pandemic, and no more school bazaars happened until October 2022. It's taken a while to get back to a sense of wider community at the school, at least from my outsider position as a mum and teacher's spouse. So Friday was wonderful to behold.

These brand new size 28 slides didn't sell, would you like them?

We also are looking for a runner to sell these "spikes" to.
They've been used a couple of times (also a pandemic casualty).

Friends catching up! Such joy.

A little bit against what I thought was wise, social interaction continued through the weekend. On Friday night we watched a movie with our camping friends at their house. On Saturday, David helped rearrange one of our mission's storage places and had lunch with his two co-workers. I had a haircut and finally did some grocery shopping. That evening we met a couple visiting from the US, a couple who have listened to us and helped us through some tough times in the last few years.

On Sunday we visited another new church and to our surprise knew many people there. It was an English-speaking service and our various English-speaking networks in Japan all were represented. We also ran into an OMF colleague and gave her a lift back to ours for coffee before her next appointment. Straight after that we chatted with our sons for over an hour. 

Phew! I am really surprised that I am not more exhausted than I am today (Monday). Perhaps I'm getting back to some kind of new normal level of energy?

Whenever the topic of leaving Japan comes up, I'm reminded of this wide group of people I only know because I've lived my life here. When the time comes to move on, it will be a sad day, though I know that this is a mobile group of people who I will probably gradually say goodbye to as they move on over the coming years anyway. 

But for now I'm just thankful for a full heart from all this wonderful interaction over the last week.

Why did the chicken cross the road? and other linguistic challenges

Why did the chicken cross the road is a classic joke, but we recently found out that it's very much an English-speaking-culture joke. We had dinner last week with two colleagues, one Australian and one German. After dinner we served our Australian guest tea in a mug that had a version of the chicken-road joke. It was a "Far Side" comic. She loved it, but confusion took over as we tried to explain to our German guest the meaning of the joke. She's fluent in English, but didn't understand why that version (or the original) made us smile. (The joke turns out to have quite a history, check it out here.) Humour is so much more about culture than it is about language.

We continued talking about humour and I brought up the example of Mr Bean. I'd thought he was pretty clever with his non-verbal humour that seems to be appreciated across cultures, but our friend tells us that in Germany, Mr Bean is seen as "British humour"!

Most of our colleagues and friends are not Australia, many are not native English speakers either. Sometimes people in Australia notice that our English isn't quite as Australian as it used to be and it's because we've spent nearly 24 years living and working outside of Australia in multicultural environments. It means some of our word choices are different, for example, I tend to say "bathroom" more often than "toilet" these days, simply because it's less likely to cause confusion or offence. I used "rush hour" just this morning and found out that "peak hour" is more often used in Australia. Probably "gas station" comes out more often than "petrol station". I tend not to use colloquial words like "arvo" or "footy" and geographically-tied words like "ute" (pickup truck) and "regional" (yes, this word is used differently in Australia to other parts of the world). Our accent has become more "international" and we probably don't lengthen our vowels as much as many Aussies do.

My work as an editor and writer means that words are on my mind a lot. Almost all I write is for an international audience. Both my jobs are with international teams who speak different kinds of English, or have English as their second, or third language. Linguistic challenges are often on the table for discussion, hence my apparently well-known "Wednesday Words" Facebook statuses. The other day I tried to set up an online meeting with a British colleague and American colleague. Communication went a little bit awry with what I suspect was a hastily written email by our British colleague that confused my American colleague. Each of us had a slightly different understanding of what had been written. No big deal, as far as I know. But it could easily have been.

Working in an environment like this can make you think more carefully about the words you use and how you say them. A good communicator thinks more about their audience than they might have in their own country. For example, if I'm talking to an American, I would tend to say "ketchup" not "tomato sauce" or "candy" not "lolly". If I'm talking to a friend who speaks English as their third language I might choose simpler words and sentences than I would when speaking to my Australian or British colleagues, not because my friend is unintelligent, but as a way of respecting them by speaking in a way they understand.

It might be a surprise to you, but the differences between our English go way beyond spelling, word usage is a big difference, and not simple biscuit vs cookie vs scone. Will I stand at the back of the room, or in back? Is it good or bad news if I hear "you lucked out"? Is the chicken walking in the road or on the road? But I think it's time I hopped on my bike and rode on the road to the grocery store.

The struggle to feel useful

Recently I spent time editing three short articles by colleagues from my organisation. They all were about staying healthy on the mission field (our social media theme for November). They all talked about various personal struggles to stay healthy in Japan. Not just physically healthy, but mentally and spiritually healthy too. I identified strongly with many of the things they wrote about, but one common thing struck me: the desire to feel useful. 

And a fire photo from last week's camping,
because I needed an excuse to share one
more camping photo! :D

One of the articles was by a couple who’ve been in Japan less than two years. Their struggles to take care of themselves as well as their young daughter on top of learning Japanese and living in a place where they felt like toddlers themselves was all too familiar to me, even though it’s been 20 years since we were in a similar position. Another article was by someone who’s been here a while longer, but her struggles were not so dissimilar. 

They all are in Japan because they (and many around them) discerned that God called them to serve him here, but the struggle to feel useful is common to them all. I think it’s an innate human trait, and certain none of us came to Japan with the intent on being useless, though we feel that way more often than we’ve ever felt like that as adults in our home country.

I've seen this "need to feel useful" struggle in others too when I've worked with people who have been here for a short time. There's often a great deal of gratitude when they're given a task that they can actually do, a feeling of usefulness that helps them through the other parts of their lives. 

Feeling useless is tied to the struggle to learn Japanese and that is innately tied to learning the culture (you can’t really do the latter really well without the former). In my early years here I was told that I needed to get better Japanese otherwise I would hold my husband back. That cutting statement only added to my feelings of uselessness and, sadly, the statement still hurts (my tears are flowing as I write). I doubt the person who wrote it knew how deeply that cut. I felt it was saying my poor ability to learn Japanese affected my ability to be the wife God expected me to be to my husband, while trying to live and work in the land God had called us to.

Over the years in Japan I’ve felt more useful in certain ways, but still feel very limited here. One of the areas I’ve felt most useful outside of my editing work, is maintaining a home for my husband and kids—doing my best to make sure they had good food and a clean, comfortable place to live. I think part of the big adjustment I’ve had this time is that I no longer have that way to be useful in Japan (to my kids). And so it’s felt more difficult in Japan to deal with that loss than it was in Australia where I am overall more capable.

However, I’m re-reading a book that always gives me a good readjustment to my thinking—Awe by Paul David Tripp. He defines awe as the desire of every human being to be amazed, blown away, moved, and satisfied, and clarifies that it actually is a universal craving to see God face-to-face. You've got to read this book!

In a recent portion I read, he wrote about how we humans try to place our identity in the wrong places. We try to be useful, we tie our identity to our relationships (kids, partner, friend, daughter/son), we identify ourselves by our jobs, by how much we earn or own, by our citizenship, by what we’re good at, what we’ve achieved, what our kids or parents have achieved. 

The grace that has connected me to [God] has also freed me from looking for identity anywhere else. I am what I am because of who he is for me by grace. In his awesome glory, I really do find everything I need. . . . I do not have to hunt elsewhere for meaning and purpose for my life. I do not have to look elsewhere to define who I am. I do not have to look elsewhere to measure my potential. I do not have to look elsewhere to find that inner sense of peace and well-being. Why? Because I have found all those things in him. Awe of him liberates me from a life-distorting bondage to awe of anything else. Remember, you and I tend to be in awe of what we are convinced will give us life (identity, meaning, purpose, pleasure, etc.). (All quotes from Chapter 13 of Awe, Paul David Tripp). 

This is in a chapter about work. He goes on to say:

Because work is such a huge and significant dimension of our lives, it becomes very tempting for us to look for our identity there. And when you look to work for your identity, you will find it very hard to resists challenges, demands, and promises of reward.

So we have this label "missionaries" or "cross-cultural workers" and we feel like that's our identity and that we have to "succeed" or at the very least "be useful" at that to have any worth. That's obviously a big mistake, especially in a place where it is rare for English-speakers born elsewhere to become native-level fluent in the language and culture.

But Tripp points out that it's a mistake for any human:

When I don't let awe of God give my heart rest and define me as his child, I will seek identity in things like success and achievement, power and control, and possessions and affluence, and I will work like crazy to get them, leaving a trail of relational and spiritual destruction behind me.

One of the articles I edited this week talked about a new missionary's temptation to overcommit to things that they felt they might be useful at, but also to overextend themselves in language study in an effort to get to the level where they can be useful.

Only when your heart is satisfied in [God] can you be freed from looking for spiritual satisfaction in the fleeting pleasures of the physical world. When you're satisfied in him, you will be liberated form working constantly in order to possess more of what you hope will give you identity. 

So the bottom line: my identity is not tied to my kids, my job title, my usefulness or output, or how busy my schedule is. This isn't really news to me, and yet why do I have so much trouble remembering it. So much trouble lining up my emotions to fit it?

Sole camping trip for 2024

I've been away from my desk for much of the last 2 ½ weeks and have been playing catch-up this week, but I am determined to do a little bit of my own writing today. Last week we went camping for three nights in Fukushima Prefecture, about 250 km north of Tokyo. It was our first time to spend any time at all in this prefecture, aside from driving through on the expressway. 

It's the first time we've been camping in 19 months...we were looking forward to this trip so much! It's been really hard to accept the reality this week that our trip is over. It was a much needed break. We've been going pretty constantly since we got back to Brisbane in early May from our long motorhome sojourn.

We had a spectacular time. The first time to go camping with none of the participants under 20 (in fact all four of us are a long way past 20)! It was very quiet. We were literally the only people there in this large campground. After 4pm there wasn't even a caretaker around.

But back to the start of the trip: getting there involved over four hours of driving, first on Tokyo's congested ordinary roads, then an expressway, and finally over an hour through the Japanese countryside—over mountains and valleys and through tunnels. It was our first time to drive at 120 km/hr in Japan. I took a photo of this dual-speed sign to give us time to read it...and yes, we were allowed to drive this fast in our little car.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside "service area", one of the joys of travelling long distance in a car in Japan. There is usually many food options, as well as lots of clean toilets. We were already enjoying being away and hanging out that we took quite a long break at this point! Eventually someone pointed out that we still had more driving and a campsite to set up, so we got going again.

The countryside we drove through was, as usual, gorgeous, especially to eyes that have been in Tokyo for months. The layers upon layers of mountains still amaze us Aussies from a wide-flat land!

When we considered what car we would buy, a key requirement was the capacity to carry all our camping gear. This little car did a magnificent job. And we discovered that with no extra passengers it was really easy to pack the back of this, which is basically a box when you lower the back seats. Of course we had less gear, but still, we could see out the back of the car when fully packed and that has not always been a given!

It was wonderful having three nights away: it meant two full days without travelling. We had a very relaxed time. We played games, read, napped, strolled, and the one who brought his bike went for several long rides. Our friends introduced us to a beanbag game called Cornholes (US game) and we introduced them to a card game called Take7.

And of course fire featured a lot. This campsite sported a big flat place where people had previously had fires, so, with no rule saying we couldn't, we gathered up wood lying around and had two big fires on the last two nights. Not just entertainment, but we cooked our evening meals there too. Cooking for four wasn't hard, but the biggest difference was how little washing up there was for just the four of us: we were almost finished before we started. A big difference to when we've camped with 10 or more people.

This simple meal was so delicious.
Thin-sliced pork and baked veggies
in foil.

There was plenty of nature to enjoy. I didn't take photos of the bees, mozzies, or bees, or the vast numbers of "stink" bugs but I did capture the more photogenic dragonflies who loved to land on our ropes and car antenna. 

It was a pretty cheap place to stay. Just $AU42 for three nights for each couple. For that we had water, as much space as we wanted, flushable toilets, and a place where we could wash dishes. Ironically the toilet seats were heated. The toilet pedestals were pretty much the cleanest thing in the whole place—the hut they were in was full of bugs and spiderwebs, though nothing too big (I've seen much worse in this land). The showers were also very clean and open 24 hrs a day. They cost $AU1 for five minutes, which is plenty of time. Alas there were no hooks or benches in the showers, but thankfully there was an actual door between the shower room and changing area, so our stuff didn't get wet.

You might wonder how we find these places. It's a pretty simple Google Maps search. We only stay at places that have sufficient information online for us to judge if we're happy about trying them (usually a simple webpage). The translations on Google reviews on these campsites are sometimes illuminating and often entertaining. This one had a lot of chatter about "Kevins" and I briefly wondered...until David clarified that "cabin" in Japanese is sometimes spelled ケビン or literally "kebin"! There were indeed a lot of unoccupied "Kevins", that looked great on the outside, but I don't think there was kitchens or showers in the Kevins. We knew that we were getting a better deal in our tents. Yes: much cheaper, potentially cleaner (according to the reviews), and more fun. I mean you don't get to play with fire in a Kevin! 

Gotta love a good fern!

Beautiful squishy moss.

One area we drove through was obvious a dairy farming area, which is quite unusual in Japan. They had a farm that was set up for tourists and we stopped there for a yummy lunch and ice cream on the way home.

Yep, a dairy farming themed area!
This is a post box at the local convenience store

Ice cream with our long-time camping friends.

The farm shop...speaks for itself.

And a random bus! We could see the road that
went past the campsite and these between-village
buses went by a few times each day.
And it's a sign that you're relaxing
when you have time to notice the 
occasional bus driving past (it wasn't 
a busy road).

One more dragonfly because they are so beautiful!

This was the view up a nearby hill. It's a valley
that contains both a village and yellow rice fields.

We think this pond is where most of the mozzies were
coming from. Because it's well into autumn I definitely
underestimated the mosquitoes.

Comfort gained from gathering with others

Earlier this week over 2 ½ days I talked to dozens of people, almost all were missionaries. 

On Sunday afternoon we caught a train to a fairly new church plant. After the service we talked to several missionaries about the church.

It helped that on Tuesday we met in a beautiful
location (Okutama, western Tokyo), though it
rained all day, so we didn't get to go walking.

On Monday morning I travelled in a car with five other OMF missionaries across the city to meet with maybe around 50 other people, most of whom are also involved in cross-cultural work. This was our monthly regional meeting for worship and fellowship, but this time we also had a working bee to help with some deeper cleaning of our Japan headquarters and guest home. I travelled home with three people, arriving home around 5 pm.

On Tuesday morning I took our car on its first trip filled with cross-cultural workers. Our four-seater car was filled with ladies attending a Women in Ministry worship and fellowship time out in the far west of Tokyo, where we met with around 35 other women from variety of organisations and backgrounds. This was a total of three hours of driving and talking in the car, plus six hours at the meeting.

Monday's meeting (lunch)

Adding it all up, I spent over eight hours in cars with eight different people (nearly half of that I was driving) and about 100 people over the three days.

I've been very tired in the wake of all that, and have struggled these last couple of days to push through a headache (again).

So, was it worth it? Yes! I desperately needed the encouragement and re-focus that these meetings provided. Here are just a few tidbits from conversations and the speakers:

• Encouragement from two couples who have moved back to their passport countries after serving here until their mid 60s. It was great to hear them encourage us to keep our eyes on Jesus; that the task was too big for any of us, but not for God; and that God uses each of us differently.
• Time and encouragement to focus on praising God. Something that was surprisingly hard to do with my tired, squirrelly brain.
• Praising God for being an author (Acts 3:15 ESV), was particularly meaningful.
• A conversation with another mum, just a few years behind us, who has a neurodivergent daughter. She needed some hope about the future.
• I chatted with a single lady who is doing things that she couldn't have imagined, even 12 months ago.
• I spent time getting to know one of my newer teammates and her husband. So encouraging to see how they've grown while we've been away and they encouraged me too.
• A colleague and friend who brought up a sensitive topic, made me cry, but then encouraged me hugely in a short conversation!
• I gave a short back rub to a friend who was celebrating her birthday.
• I was encouraged to hear the wife of a former leader talk about them choosing a church to attend once they were no longer church-based in their ministry.
• Two of the ladies who rode in my car yesterday are new to our area and have never been to one of these Women in Ministry events. One of them couldn't stop saying thank you for bringing her.
• Lots of hugs with women who I've grown to know and love over the years. I only see them two or three times a year at these events, but they're precious to me. "My people" from a vast array of backgrounds.

There's much more than I can write here, or even remember, but I'm grateful for it all. 

Today I read an article about Australian farmers finding community at their local cattle sales and how important that time of gathering is. It's easy for people on the land to become isolated and lonely. That is also true when you are living overseas. And even more so as Christian workers: our enemy doesn't like what we do and he targets our weak spots, especially when we live too much inside our own heads. It's important for us to gather with "our people" for encouragement and connection. I'm so grateful for these times, they help me to remember who is really in charge, as well as opportunities to pour into other people's lives from the comfort that God's given me over the years.