Catching up

Today we went back to one of our "home" churches. They gave us a delightfully warm greeting. It was part of the "work" part of our holiday. Reconnecting with some of the key churches in our support network in Australia. So, despite our fuzzy heads, we hopped up in front and talked a little about our work in Japan. It didn't go quite as planned, but hopefully did the job well enough. Many of the people in the church are new and hadn't met us before, so hopefully it was good for them to put a face to a name.

The bonus for us was catching up with people who we knew fairly well from our 12 months living in the area in 2009-2010. God gave us some special friends at that time and thankfully we've been able to keep in contact with some of them via Facebook and my blog.

But it was sobering to drive through our former suburb and remember the floods there and in numerous other places in this area 18 months ago. We talked with some locals and saw photos. Ouch.

It was extra hard to get out of bed this morning I'm fading now at 3.45, but I'm determined to push through to bedtime. Hopefully tomorrow I won't feel so woolly headed. Most internationals we meet in Japan find it hard to believe we've never experienced jet lag. (And most Japanese find it hard to believe that we've never been to America!) There is only one hour difference between Australia and Japan. Flying between the two therefore doesn't cause time-difference problems, but there is certainly travel fatigue!

Tomorrow we face bureaucracy: getting our expired Medicare cards sorted out! We'll also be shopping again. I don't know if it will be just groceries, or if we'll manage more, as we'll be in a major shopping centre anyway! Depends on how energetic we feel in the morning.

But today's been good, but one of the best things for me personally was having two people say that they loved my hair cut short. That was great!

Another exciting thing was someone who read the magazine I put together last year after the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear power station disaster. She said Japan hadn't really been on her radar before, but that magazine issue really brought the needy land of Japan into her focus.

Ah, I'm so grateful to God to have me in where he does. We periodically get asked how long we'll be in Japan. The only answer we can give is, "As long as the Lord has us there." At present we really feel like we're in the right place doing the right thing and that is a very satisfying feeling indeed.