Excited about possibilities

Today I went to a day-long prayer meeting. Sound boring? Absolutely not!  It was our mission-wide end-of year day-of-prayer.  It is times like these that I especially appreciate the vastness of OMF International. We have well over 1,000 long-term missionaries. Over 100 of those are in Japan, the largest mission in Japan. 


Because we're in Japan it is easy to be totally focussed and overwhelmed by the needs and ministries in Japan, but on a day like today we prayed our way all over the "OMF world". I love how international we are. Our meeting was led by our German Field Director and at just our little table of six pray-ers we had Australians, a Korean, Swiss, and Japanese. As a mission we have missionaries from many countries who work in South East Asia (and with South East Asians who aren't in South East Asia!). So today we've gone from the Netherlands to Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand. Cambodia to Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines. And many more. We covered ministries in Creative Access Nations too, that I cannot mention the names of here. It is an exciting way to pray, if a little dizzying!


In between prayer times we had time to chat, and I enjoyed networking with my colleagues, some of whom I hardly ever see. One lady I've worked together with this year on several magazine articles, yet she didn't know that I'd had my hair cut (that was in May). We've been busy and so has she. 


I had lunch with two colleagues that I've worked with over the last few years. We've called ourselves the Japanese Diaspora Ministry Link Team. OMF has a field called Diaspora Ministries. A field is generally a geographical locality, but in this case the field covers the globe. Anywhere there are South East Asians who are living outside their home country. They recently had a field conference and had 60 workers attending. 


We didn't just have lunch, we had had an impromptu meeting. In the past this three-person team has put out newsletters to inform and encourage those ministering in other countries with Japanese people. A number of factors has meant that we haven't produced a newsletter for some time. But today I proposed a different tack. I suggested we start a blog which doesn't have to be as formal as a newsletter and can be easily updated and shared. We decided to give it a go, see how it goes. 


I'm the tech person of the group...the reason I was firstly involved in this team was as the desktop publisher to put newsletters together. Now I'm the blog creator! We'll see how it goes, what form it ends up taking. But I love possibilities, so it was exciting to talk about this today. I'm not so great at the details end of it, but I do get excited by ideas and love brainstorming! However, I realise that I've volunteered to do yet another thing!


But it was a great day of worship, fellowship, prayer, and an impromptu meeting thrown in for a bonus! I feel fueled up and ready to go for the rest of the fortnight, which promises to be a doozy (or "impressive in size and magnitude")!