Tidbits from recent weeks

In the spirit of sharing "ordinary life," which is where this blog started out all those years ago! Here's a bit of what's been going on in our house recently (aside from camping):

School

New building and field (before it was completely finished)

School started last week for the students. David started work again full-time more than a week earlier than the kids, and had been working part-time since the start of the month. I'm trying to figure out when we last had just one boy at school—that would be when our eldest started Japanese kindergarten in April 2003, before the one who is now our only boy at school was even born.

Another exciting development at school is the new building that replaces the old cafeteria, but includes a band practise room and a multipurpose room. It overlooks a new full-sized soccer field that is covered in artificial turf. The school looks very different! The 'field" has been gravel for many decades, so this is a huge change.

COVID-19

We've also been touched by COVID-19. We had one case in the high school and that prompted online schooling for just two days at the start of this week while they assessed the situation. We're back to usual on campus classes again now.

As of yesterday all the Tokyo Marshalls are now fully vaccinated, which we're very happy about, especially considering that the country is in the midst of a spike of infections that is far bigger than we've had so far.

Weather

The weather has been in the forefront of our minds, as it usually is in a Tokyo August. Oddly, we had a cooler wet patch in the middle of the month, which we were thankful for. Alas the unbearable heat and humidity soon returned and we had challenges with sleeping and close proximity. Only three of our six rooms are air conditioned, so that made for interesting times with teens who value their privacy. 

On Tuesday this week another cool change came through which dropped temperatures into the low 20s, a shock to the system, but most welcome. We've slept deeply these last couple of nights. A cool change at this time of year is unlikely to turn back into the worst of summer, though we might have one or two 30C days still to come.

Olympics and Paralympics

We've enjoyed many an hour watching these amazing events in our lounge room. The range of English commentary available to us online has been impressive, and we've often played the "guess the commentator's accent" game! It was sad that we didn't get to use the tickets we had to four different events, but a relief in some ways, as spectating in the Tokyo heat would have been very tough.

Lily pads

With holidays behind us, I've struggled a little to find "lily pads" to look forward to. We have talked about a possible camping plan for October and have booked our usual pre-Christmas holiday. But I've also made some smaller plans, which includes pulling out my sewing machine and trialling a weekly out-of-the-house work date with myself.

My work

These last weeks I've been working on the final stages of our Autumn magazine issue about Men in the Japanese church. We finished that on Tuesday afternoon. I've also been communicating with authors who have/are writing for our Winter issue about Technology in Ministry. There's a lot that's been going on in that area and it's a very timely topic to cover, alas that also makes it a challenge to fit everything into the space available!

Our social media continues onwards also. In August we covered Sports, for obvious reasons. Not as much Olympic and Paralympic news as we would have had if we hadn't been in a pandemic, but still, we managed to find plenty to share. In September we have a more challenging topic: Japanese church history. So in recent days I've been reading and trying to write summaries of various topics and eras that make sense and work for social media while at the same time keeping in mind our purpose: mobilising people to be more involved in mission. Yeah, not the easiest of tasks.

I also picked up a small writing gig: writing an article about missionaries and loneliness for our OMF US folk who are tackling that topic in September. It's a topic I've written about many times here, so it was interesting to pick it up again and try to write something fresh.

I've also just written our monthly news and prayer letter. We also have the responsibility of running a prayer night for our fellow 120+ missionaries at our online field conference in a couple of weeks. Planning needs to be done!

I tend to be easily bored, so I'm thankful to have a job that means I'm kept on my toes and have lots of different places to turn my attention, even if it can be stressful at times.

But for today, it's time to pull the plug on work and move into dinner prep and a relaxing evening. How's your August been?