October camping trip 2026

Lake Inawashiro at sunset

Last week we spent four days camping in the Fukushima Prefecture next to the fourth largest lake in Japan: Lake Inawashiro (for the record, we've now seen three of the four largest, and camped next to two of them, this one and Lake Biwa). It is about 280 km north of us in Tokyo.

Rice fields being harvested as we drove north.

We stopped at an expressway service area
and ate traditional "Service Area food".
David accidentally ordered the largest dish on
the menu. All this for about AU$25. There was
more rice here than the two of us would eat in
a single meal. He didn't finish it all!

We drove up on Tuesday, with our usual camping friends, though for only the second time of camping together we had no kids camping with us. When we arrived it was pretty windy and I was having flashbacks to our most recent camping trip where we ended up going home a day early because our camping set-up was overwhelmed with wind and rain on the second night. We were very careful about the angle that we set up our tent, trying to protect the pole that got damaged in March. But thankfully the wind started to die down as the sun set and it never picked up again through our whole stay.

So much space in our little car!

Kebabs on our surprisingly spacious
portable fire pit.

Wednesday was a pretty quiet day. It rained in the morning and was cloudy and cool all day. We strolled around the large campsite (100+ sites) and enjoyed gazing at the lake and spent time reading after lunch. 

After our last trip we threw away our cheap little wood fire stove and bought a brand-new higher quality portable fire pit. We had a lot of fuel with us, so we ended up playing with fire most of the day. It was relaxing and a great "circuit breaker" to help us get into relaxing mode. Dinner was chicken kebabs and fire-roasted veggies followed by Apple Crisp cooked over the fire! (Fire and food cooked over the fire is the best thing about camping, we don't starve!)

Moss!

This impressive plant is called
"Jack-in-the-pulpit".

Moody lake views.

Thursday dawned bright and sunny. Our friend Mark, had, as usual, brought his bike and prepared to ride all the way around the lake. His ride ended up being about 60 kilometres. As is common in this country, at times the mountains descended straight into the lake, so the road wasn't at water-level all the way around so he had a fair bit of climbing to do, and contrary to what seems logical, he tells us he had a headwind the whole way!

While Mark was off riding, the rest of us walked around a large park across the road from the campsite. After lunch, we met Mark at a tourist farm for ice cream and then all convened back at the campsite. The evening meal was all about the fire again, and we enjoyed campfire-cooked pizza (using a base made on location from flour, baking powder, water, and then after we loaded the toppings, it was folded into foil for cooking) followed by American S'mores. We're so happy with our new fire pit!

Our location had lots of trees. 

Ice cream :D

Mossy wall in the park

Autumn leaves

So many dragon flies! Hard to photograph,
but they were everywhere around us.

Autumn leaves, blue sky, and Mount Daisan (1,729m)

Our friends brought solar-charged fairy lights, which made our
basic setup kinda pretty. Hard to take a photo of, though.

Thursday night was pretty chilly and to stay warm, I wore most of the clothes that I had on during the day to bed. We ended up in bed really early and got up late due to the chill, such is the camping life!

On Friday we packed up our camp and headed to an nearby tourist spot: a Japanese castle. Actually the real castle was demolished in 1874, but the outside of the tower was rebuilt in 1965. Inside the tower is a (mostly) bilingual museum which told us some of the history of the castle and the area. The castle has stood on this location since the 1500s! It was again humbling to learn just a tiny bit of this nation's complex and long history. It continues to fascinate me at the same time as boggling my mind!

Tsuruga Castle (aka Aizuwakamatsu 
Castle or Wakamatsu Castle)

Then, after a short stop for lunch bought from a convenience store, we turned our cars towards home. It was all going well until we encountered a 15km traffic jam on the expressway that took a couple of hours to clear away (caused by a truck being on fire). We didn't get home until after 7pm. But unlike our last trip, at least we were in the open (not in tunnels) and we'd had a good sleep the night before. We were also thankful that no rain fell on our last two days, so we didn't have much cleanup to do once we got home. 

I'm so thankful that we decided to go the "camping route" 15 years ago. We've seen much more of Japan than we otherwise would have. We also frequently note that the act of camping creates a kind of weird time warp. Four days away feels like much more, mostly because when tent camping you have to focus more on daily living, like making fire, keeping dry/warm, ensuring the tent stays up, etc. It takes your mind away from the things that usually occupy our minds at home.

Our next touring adventure is only a couple of months away. It will be cooler so we won't take our tents, but instead plan to make use of the little rustic cabins that these campsites frequently have to rent. Stay tuned for our mid-December road trip!

2026 writing retreat

I'm back in northern Japan at another five-day writing retreat, a pretty similar event to what I organised in May last year. We have ten writers, including myself, four of us were here in May last year, but six weren't. It's exciting to have new people coming along. Last year it was pretty "in-house"—just OMF-related people. This time we've got attendees from a variety of organisations and locations in Japan, though everyone except me are from north America (Canada or US).

It's again such a joy to be able to facilitate such a gathering. We're in a beautiful location in Aomori Prefecture, about 20 minutes drive south of Aomori City. Two months ago we came back to Tokyo from Australia and I haven't been out of the city in that time, it's so delightful to get away.

I've shared with various people about coming to this and they have been curious and asked clarifying questions. It is not a "workshop" where lots of stuff gets formally taught. It's not a conference where we have many meetings. Nor is it a place where everyone has come to work on a single project. It is simply an event organised for people to get away from their usual day-to-day lives to do writing. The schedule includes significant amounts of time to work on things that are on their hearts or that they need to. Some people here are working on newsletters or sermons. Some are working on writing stories, or on book projects. Others aren't sure why they are here except that they feel compelled to write and are able to take some time away to see what they can achieve.

One of the keys to this event is that we're doing it together with others. According to my records, this is the eighth time I've organised a writing retreat in Japan. Each time I've come away feeling more encouraged and excited about writing than before I went. Writing is largely a solitary activity, but thinking that you can grow as a writer without engaging with other people is dangerous. Getting together with others who are also writers can be very stimulating and helpful. 

This event therefore includes times of solitary writing as well as sharing and helping each other. But don't be fooled by the word "retreat". Yes, it's time away from our regular responsibilities, but it is by no means a holiday. We're working here! Publishing these days is easier than it's ever been: I'm going to his "Publish" on this blog post when I'm finished it. But getting full books published, or even short stories published, is much more complicated than it used to be. So while writing can be a joy, it also can be like wrestling an elephant up a hill, it also can be like guiding an elephant through a wilderness where there is no map, but many possible paths. (For anyone who is interested, a colleague shared this helpful website about publishing paths with me.)

So, in addition to silent writing times, we're talking with each other, sharing stories and challenges. We're asking each other for advice, for clarity; asking others for a different perspective on the forest of words that we have created and are too close to to have any clear vision.

I've just spent some time with a friend mulling over a very short (true) story that she felt compelled to write, but wasn't sure why. In some ways I feel similarly about these curious "writers retreat gigs" that God has me organising. I don't know why, but somehow I'm able to do it and I just have to trust that these events are helpful to the people who come along on the journey.

Unexpected hospitality in the rain

It's been months since I've been able to ride my bike to my favourite park south of here. After arriving back in Japan in early August we've had plenty of heat and rain and I've had plenty of work to fill my days. In the middle of it all, I was longing for a quieter day that coincided with good weather. Up until we got up yesterday morning, it looked like it was going to be that perfect combo! But somehow the weather didn't conform to those earlier forecasts! 

My only photo from the day, just after 
arrived home.

With stubborn optimism I rode off mid-morning into very light rain. From there it went downhill! Partway into the ride I pulled out my rain jacket. By the time got to the park about 30 minutes later, my glasses were wet, but my jeans weren't too damp.

Koganei Park is one of the largest parks in Tokyo. It's about 80 hectares (112 professional soccer fields or 80 400m running tracks; or to use a park in my hometown: more than three times the size of Queens Park in Toowoomba). It's a beautiful place, but there are only a couple of places that you can shelter if it's raining.

So, I headed for my favourite sheltered spot and discovered that a few others were sheltering there too. I wasn't surprised, but a little disappointed. I cruised past on my bike, but recognised a couple sitting in the shelter: two people from church. Initially I was going to find somewhere else to hang out and eat my packed lunch and read the book I'd brought, but something prompted me to change my mind and I circled back to say hi. They were surprised to see me, but welcomed me and we ended up spending nearly three hours together. We were all hoping that the rain would ease up while we talked, but it really didn't, it got worse, and chillier. So, in the end we departed, me, for my seven kilometre ride home and them, for a much shorter walk to their nearby house.

This time I donned my full rain gear, and covered my two bags with plastic. Nothing I could do about keeping my glasses clear, though, so I peered between raindrops on my specs and thankfully had a safe trip home. My rain gear did a pretty good job, though the cuffs on my jeans and flannie (US Eng: flannel shirt) both got fairly wet. It was a relief to get inside and dry off my face!

Hospitality

The sermon at our church on Sunday was on 1 Peter 4:7–11. Here's 8–10:

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. (NIV)

It's a rich passage with many concepts, but a couple are hospitality and loving one another. At lunch after church one man asked "How does hospitality look if you're an introvert?"

It so happened that that was the same man I encountered in the park with his wife. Hospitality is much a broader concept than hosting someone at your home for a meal or a night. In fact we have a whole industry using this name, an industry that encompasses providing food and beverages, accommodation, tourism, travel, and entertainment. 

I would venture to say that Christian hospitality is welcoming others, it's having a heart that is genuinely open to others. A heart that creates space (physical and otherwise) for others. I would also say that sitting and chatting to another person is a type of hospitality. 

When I arrived this man and his wife did practical things like shuffled over to give me a dry place to sit and offered a cloth to wipe my glasses. They also shared some of the food that they'd brought (something I forgot to do, but it's very Japanese to do this when eating together like this). They didn't dash off, they welcomed me into their conversation and we spent a few hours getting to know one another better. This was blessed fellowship and one that we would have missed if not for the rain (we probably wouldn't have met at the shelter except that we sought respite from the rain and would have left earlier if it hadn't been raining).

I'm thankful. I was able to share this story last night at our church's prayer meeting and another lady said she was encouraged by it. It reminded her that God has the power to make "coincidences" like this happen and encouraged her to pray for someone she occasionally encounters.

What other things would fit under the umbrella of Christian hospitality that we don't typically first think of?

He is not unable to sympathise when we grieve

This year I've been working on a big goal that I wrote about here in May last year when I was at the writer's retreat I organised, and then again in my first blog post this year. 

I took a big break in the middle of the year, but much of the rest of the year I've been trying to set aside some time on Friday mornings to think about and write chapters of a book that I'd like to see published. We'll see if publishing ends up happening, but I've discovered that if I literally write "Writing" on my calendar for a Friday morning and avoid having other meetings or outings that morning, I can usually settle down to write fairly well. However, if I don't do any of that, then I usually don't get anything done.

This morning I ended up with a 9 am meeting and I have not been able to settle to any book writing after that! But maybe I can write a blog post instead?

I'm in my 50s and have been living in Japan for about half my life! Life has changed greatly over that time, but there are still themes that keep coming back again and again. One of them is grief and loss. It's something I've written about many times here because it's something that keeps coming up. Everyone who has lived on this earth for more than a few years deals with loss and grief, but the cross-cultural life we live has a tendency to bring more of it into our daily lives than many people deal with.

I'm thinking about it at this time because a friend and colleague who has become very close in the last few years is leaving Japan permanently in February. It's a long, sad goodbye. Yesterday we had lunch together over a video call (we live on opposite sides of Tokyo), and finished with prayer for each other, and tears.

This is a reminder to me
of the time five years ago
when we had a picnic with
my friend and her family
on my birthday and she
baked me a cake :D

After our call finished I couldn't settle to my regular work. I don't know if it's true for others, but it's pretty normal that straight after a video call I can't just jump back into whatever is next on my list—especially if it is editing or a creative task like writing, and if the meeting or conversation was emotional, it's even harder. Yesterday I struggled to figure out what I could do to get myself back into the place where I could get things on my to do list done.

So, instead of ignoring the elephant in the room, I pondered grief. I looked at some of the things that I'd written about it in the past. I remembered talking to a psychologist about the grief I have accumulated over the years as I've said goodbye to many, many friends and colleagues. She mentioned the verse in Isaiah 53 that says Jesus was "acquainted with grief". So I looked that up.

I usually use the NIV version and it doesn't use those words, its translation is that Jesus "was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain" (Isa. 53:3 NIV).

"Familar with pain" is the phrase they've used for "acquainted with grief".

ESV, RSV, and KJV use "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief".

NLT "a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief".

But what does "acquainted with grief" actually mean? "Acquainted" means to have personal knowledge of experience. It's stunning to think on this. Jesus knows about grief personally. 

He knew about grief before he came to earth as a man, actually, so I shouldn't be so surprised. The Old Testament tells us that God was grieved so many times by his people. One story of a conversation between Moses and God in Exodus 32 tells us how angry God was about Israel's disobedience when they made for themselves a golden calf and worshipped that instead of God.

The Lord said, “I have seen how stubborn and rebellious these people are. Now leave me alone so my fierce anger can blaze against them, and I will destroy them. Then I will make you, Moses, into a great nation.” But Moses tried to pacify the Lord his God. “O Lord!” he said. “Why are you so angry with your own people whom you brought from the land of Egypt with such great power and such a strong hand? (Ex. 11:9–10 NLT)

But we also see evidence of Jesus's grief in the New Testament. Of course when he wept at Lazarus's tomb and we know he lost John the Baptist to violent death (Matt. 14:13 says when he heard he immediately left in a boat to a remote area to be alone). But also in a larger sense we see his heart when he said "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God's messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn't let me" (Matt. 23:37). Jesus also endured the pain of betrayal in Judas, something that must have been more painful because he knew it was coming?

As I pondered these things, I plucked my copy of Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (by Dane Ortlund) off my bookshelf and scanned through some of the chapter titles and then text. Here are some snippets:

Whatever it means to be human (and to be human without sin), Jesus was, and is. And emotions are an essential part of being human. . . . Jesus experienced the full range of emotions that we do (p. 104).

He ponders Hebrews 4:15: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (ESV). Ortlund says:

The burden of this . . . verse is Jesus Christ's sheer solidarity with his people. . . . it is in "our weaknesses" that Jesus sympathizes with us. . . In our pain, Jesus is pained; in our suffering, he feels the suffering as his own even though it isn't—not that his invincible divinity is threatened, but in the sense that his heart is feelingly drawn into our distress." (p. 46). . . 

If you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance. Nothing can hold him back. His heart is too bound up with yours (p. 51).

In Chapter 12 Ortlund considers again what it means for Jesus to be a tender friend. I think that was the most comforting thought in all this pondering. That, even when my close friend is no longer close, Jesus never leaves me. That my location is irrelevant in my relationship with him.

Christ's heart for us means that he will be our never-failing friend no matter what friends we do or do not enjoy on earth. He offers us a friendship that gets underneath the pain of our loneliness. While that pain does not go away, its sting is made fully bearable by the far deeper friendship of Jesus (p. 120).

None of this is especially new to me. I remember praying this in 2000, with tears, over my toddler, when we were grieving as we left Australia for the first time:

7 I can never escape from your Spirit!
I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up to heaven, you are there;
if I go down to the grave, you are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there your hand will guide me,
and your strength will support me (Ps 139:7–10).

Nonetheless, we are forgetful beings, or at least I am! It's good to stop when things like this make us stumble, and remember in our hearts the truths we know in our heads.

Faithful administrator

A couple of weeks ago I listened to a sermon about faithfulness, one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit—characteristics we should see growing in Christians. Instead of talking more generally about this characteristic, our pastor looked at a real person in the Bible: Daniel. 

A fruit photo was called for...and why 
not share with you one of my favourite
"Japanese" fruit: nashi, aka "Japanese
Pear". I don't like "Western" pears,
so loving nashi has been surprising.

As someone who grew up on Bible stories, the things that first come to mind about him are the amazing stories: spending a night imprisoned in a lion's den and not being devoured, being chosen by King Nebuchadnezzar to be brought into his royal service and then resisting the king's food, interpreting two king's dreams, and praying to his God despite that being illegal. Not to mention his three friends who didn't die after being thrown into a furnace.

But I have never really thought about Daniel as an administrator. 

It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three chief ministers over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the chief ministers and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. At this, the chief ministers and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. (Daniel 6:1–4 NIV)

The preacher pointed out these things about Daniel from this passage:

• First Daniel was part of three chief ministers over 120 local governors with the goal of the king not suffering any (financial?) loss.
• Then Daniel so distinguished himself that the king planned to set him over all the kingdom.
• Daniel had "exceptional qualities". In a different version (ESV) it says that he had an "excellent spirit" in him.
• His colleagues tried to find fault in him, but they couldn't "because he was faithful" (ESV). He was "trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent" (NIV). 

He had a lot of responsibility and was clearly gifted at what he did.

The story continues. Those conspiring against Daniel asked the king to make a new law that made it illegal to pray to any other God or man other than the king for the next 30 days. They lied to the king, saying that everyone had agreed to this law (but clearly Daniel had not). The penalty was the lion's den. The story says that when Daniel learned the decree had been published he went home to his upstairs room and prayed, just as he had done before, three times each day. He was discovered and they "dobbed" him in (Aussie and maybe British for reporting someone for doing wrong).

Daniel clearly didn't hide his devotion. When the king gave the order, he said, "May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!" We focus in on the lions and the rescue, but do you note that even the king knew that Daniel, one of his most trusted administrators, served his (foreign-to-the-king) God faithfully.

Over the years I have become more and more an administrator, a team leader, and a project/event manager. I enjoy what I do. It's a quiet job that I mostly do on my own from my own home. Though I interact with dozens of people through my week, it's usually via email or other text-based ways. Somehow it's easy to get discouraged. 

I don't know if other people who do administration get discouraged. I see some of the little (and big) tasks that go into the running of our Japanese church and am so thankful for the people who do them. They make sure supplies are ordered, that buildings are cleaned, that minutes are taken, that finances are managed, events are organised, and equipment maintained. Without administrators, our churches, missions, organisations, schools, governments, etc. wouldn't run. People tend to only notice administrators if they're doing a bad job!

But clearly administrators are valuable in God's sight too. Being faithful in what I do is glorifying to God, even when it doesn't feel that way. I found this such an encouraging sermon!

It doesn't make economic sense

I've been putting off writing here, because I had too many unformed ideas competing for air time. Plus, this week I've had meetings every day, a lot more than I usually do. I've also discovered over the years that meetings mess with my ability to process my thoughts into written words. In any case, I'm here now, and determined to get something coherent written before the end of Friday.

Last week I listened to an episode from my favourite podcast: Undeceptions. The topic was close to my heart: Dis/ability. There was lots to chew on, including different theological ideas about what heaven will be like, whether the disabilities that people experience here on earth will have any part of that or not.

One of my favourite earrings. It's
a shard of pottery, created by a
group called Nozomi Project who 
began after the giant triple
disaster in Japan in 2011. They
made jewellery out of broken
pottery, initially from what was
washed up on the shoreline after
the tsunami. Their tagline was
"Beauty in brokenness", a 
beautiful way to think about the
brokenness that disability brings to 
people's lives.

As one who has worked as an allied health worker, I was thinking about this topic from well before I encountered disability as a parent. As an Occupational Therapy student we were trained to think about people holistically, to consider their whole lives and probably more than most professions in the field, to think deeply on what someone could do as opposed to what they couldn't do.

And then we had kids and got neurodivergent diagnoses which gave us another perspective on this whole topic, especially as our kids moved into post-school years.

I'm not about to rehash what was covered in this hour-long podcast, but wanted mostly to mention something that particularly jumped out at me. The host, John Dickson, interviewed Kirk Patston, the Director of the Centre for Preaching and Pastoral Ministry and a lecturer in Old Testament and practical theology at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. He's got lived experience as the parent of an adult son with a disability as well as professional experience as a former speech pathologist.

He and his wife were working in four churches when their son, Jerrah, was born. Kirk talked about the mentality of someone in Christian ministry where there is always a feeling that there's more you can do and a sense that you can always do better. This really resonates with me. It's a strange mix of our worth is based on how much we do, yet our faith is about God's grace, which has nothing at all to do with how much we do. They weren't getting much sleep because their son was having seizures and not sleeping and they both ended up having to "live off government payments and people's kindness for a year." It was very different to the church work they had been doing, and this of course meant they thought about who they were, what did God really want from them. See the full transcript at the end of this post.

Kirk said, "It doesn't make economic sense". Indeed, the whole field of disability can make you step back and think about human value. If our value is based only on economic output, then disability really challenges that. So does caregiving of little children and elderly people. (Cross-cultural mission also doesn't make economic sense, but I digress.) Kirk also said, though, that "that's not to say that the Lord's not in it, and that God might actually be doing something deep and important here."

I think this is an important point to think on: that even if it doesn't make sense from an efficiency point of view, it's not the only perspective. God has a different view on our lives and we need to trust him that he's got a purpose in the situations we find ourselves in, even if we don't understand it now.

A portion of the transcript of the podcast:

 John Dickson:

How has Jerrah, over the years, helped you think through, maybe not at the highest philosophical and theological level, just approach our topic that I wanna talk to you about of, of disability? Have you found that this experience, this lived experience has actually had a big influence, or did it just simply turn your mind to the topic, as it were?

Kirk Patston:

Oh, no. Big, a big influence. Kind of an undoing of me, really. Yeah. Um, I think I had a framework about Christianity, which I, I knew intellectually I was always had to work against, that, um, what God really wants from me is, you know, lots of service of other people, lots of activity.

A very kind of activist, uh, account of Christianity. So, my wife and I have… We’ve got theological training and have worked in church ministry, and you’re always feeling that there’s more I can do. There’s more people I could talk to about Jesus. There’s m- you know, there’s better pastoral care I could offer, more, you know, there’s how can we grow things?

So you’ve got that kind of story where you’re, you’re productivity based. Sure. Um, and, and but with paradoxically at the same time knowing that the Christian message is actually about God’s grace- Yeah … where, you know, we don’t earn and where we’re actually unable to- Mm-hmm … perform. So it’s, it’s sort of weird.

Like, there’s this clash in it, and oftentimes I would identify and know that clash. But then along comes Jarrah, and, um, he came along in a period in our life when Lisa and I had four churches to look after that were all struggling. Um, but one or two of them in particular were just sort of going through a time of change.

New people were coming. There was this sense of, aha, these churches that were dying are not going to die. God’s going to do something. And then along came Jarrah with these uncontrolled seizures, and, he didn’t sleep. He’d just sleep in 40-minute little snatches. So we just… Our life was so chaotic, we just got to the point we just had to walk away from our ministry roles.

We just lived off government payments and people’s kindness for a year. And, um, so then you think, oh, who am I? You know, who am I as a Christian? Mm. What does God want from me? And you begin to see the dignity of, and the, the wasteful dignity of I’m going to care for one little person with epilepsy, rather than four churches.

Yeah. Um, and it do- doesn’t make economic sense. It’s not efficient. Mm. But that’s not to say that the Lord’s not in it, and that God might be actually doing something deep and important here.

(This is a transcript with this note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. I've removed some small errors, but I haven't checked the audio before quoting it here.)

Satisfaction in completing a project

Cover of our latest magazine, to be
mailed out next week.

On Tuesday we sent another magazine to the printer. Each of these issues is the culmination of about four and a half months of work of our team, so it's worth noting when each issue is finished. However, the magazine team is remote, so remote that five of them are currently living in Australia and the US. Different time zones and that we all hold many different responsibilities outside of the magazine combine to make it hard to do much at the same time at all. I don't even try for frequent all-team meetings.

A friend asked me on Sunday if I celebrate at these times, when we finish a magazine. My answer was "No, not generally." But when I thought about it later, I realised that if the weather is good, I'll often go for a ride to my favourite local park in the days following the completion of an issue. But this time of year it's hard as it's still pretty hot and humid. However my friend's kind question prompted me to take a moment...and so on Tuesday I rode to my favourite local coffee shop and enjoyed the treat of someone else making me a good coffee.

On Tuesday I also started writing our prayer letter, which, alongside this blog, is one of my favourite ways to reflect on recent events, as well as look forward to the coming weeks. Through doing that I realised that my Saturday mornings are extra busy in September (usually David and I try keep Saturdays free for relaxation and home-stuff). On top of that we've got a lot going on in October (three work trips between the two of us plus a camping trip and a one-day mission conference to speak at). Phew! 

I realise that you don't really want me to list all the various tasks I've got on my mind at work (though it helped me to list them anyway, but I deleted them before I hit "Publish"). Most of it is planning and preparing for future events or projects in the coming months. It all feels quite messy. In contrast, our magazine process has become quite organised and clear, and it's very satisfying to finish one and hold it in my hand. So I do often find it a bit of a challenging transition from the intensity of finishing off a magazine back to other (often less clear-cut) responsibilities.

In other news on the self-care front—I did go to the dentist today, and got the all clear for another few months. And I'm continuing the struggle with cooking too much food for us two...but enjoying the leftovers on subsequent evenings!