Feeling encouraged

There's too much going on here. Much of the "juicier", more emotional stuff I can't write about here, though!

Today I've done a couple of things in my professional and personal life that have felt a little like stepping off the sixth rung of the ladder, and hoping the landing will be okay. So far, so good.

But I've spent all morning on the phone or Skype, not quite what I expected of my stay-at-home and get-stuff-done day. Nonetheless, they were important calls this morning.

David with his new bus licence.

However, that doesn't help the fact that I feel like I'm drowning in work and responsibilities just a teeny bit.

On the family front we've had some exciting times this week. Here's some of the news:

Youngest son did actually move up a level and a belt in karate (there was a mistake and communication issues for a week that caused confusion for a couple of weeks).

Middle son got his own email address for the first time (a school email address). He's excited. He moved up in karate belts too, but he skipped a belt, so is feeling quite accomplished.

He also gets to put in his preferences for an instrument to start learning for 5th grade band. He's decided on
1. Percussion
2. Percussion
3. Trombone.
We'll see what eventuates. He also is looking forward to a birthday next week.

Eldest son got a tentative invitation to go with the school cross country team to Guam. I didn't even know where that is...have had to look it up. (It's an island about halfway between Australian and Japan, it's a territory of the US.) We didn't expect him to do this well in his first year in high school cross country (only the top five runners of the school go). But if he gets selected and we say yes, that will cost quite a bit! Tomorrow he's also getting orientation on how to use the weights in the training and conditioning room at CAJ. My teenager is going to look even more muscled!

David gets to drive the new school bus next Friday. Fun, fun, fun!

As for me, my list of what I have to do seems to be getting longer and longer. Magazine editing is a relentless occupation. On top of that we've begun a publishing project called 31 Days of Prayer, for OMF. It's a second edition, but not much of the previous one is useable, so I'm busy with trying to recruit writers from busy missionaries for each of the 31 days.

Most of my excitement at present is second hand—enjoying other family member's excitement. But we did get some great magazine feedback last week. I think that God engineered that, as it arrived in the midst of the trouble I wrote about on Sunday.

This was one email:

Thank you for your ministry to us missionaries in Japan.  We love your magazine Japan Harvest.  I read it thoroughly. 

I especially enjoyed your articles on MKs, rural missions, language learning, and Japanese culture.  Please keep up the good work.

The other person ordered more magazines because they'd given all their magazines away to volunteers and in training.

I'm so encouraged by this! And I'm encouraged to see my boys all thriving in their various interests. It's worth sitting down like this and counting your blessings one by one.