Unusual week, including my first podcast

In November last year I got an email from someone who does a similar job to me (digital content managing) with OMF in the US. He's been following this blog for a while and noted that I'd written occasionally about our upcoming home assignment. He's noted that it's an element of missionary life that is not well known and not often written about. So he asked if I'd be interested in writing an article about the process of planning for home assignment, with the intent of helping people who've never worked as cross-cultural workers to understand this (rather significant) element of our lives.

It sounded like a great writing project to sink my teeth into. One article quickly turned into six. I knew it was a big topic, but I think I surprised myself with how much I could write. It ended up in total around 4,500 words and took several months to complete because it was often at the bottom of my to-do list because it wasn't so urgent.

So this week the first of the series came out and you can read it here:

https://omf.org/us/what-home-assignment-means-for-a-missionary-part1 (they'll be coming out weekly, I think)

The new, and even more unexpected element to this project was the opportunity to record a conversation with Kesia, a colleague/friend here in Japan. She read my edited articles and then we talked about home assignments for 30 minutes while I recorded it. The tech gurus have turned that into a podcast, so you can even here my voice (and my friend's):

Playing, amid the boxes. 

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/omf-us/episodes/What-Home-Assignment-Means-for-a-Missionary-e2696fh/a-aa2dv0i

And bringing this blog post back to the ordinary daily life of a missionary in transition. Here are the sorts of things we've been doing this week:

• Packing boxes: yes, we've actually got to that stage.
• Sorting: in a few weeks you'll be able to see the blog post I've written for OMF US that includes a scary diagram about missionary sorting.
• Things have been leaving our house: furniture we've sold to others, and the first van-load of stuff has gone to the OMF storage facility. Oh, and more plants have left too.
• Sorting clothes: the daunting task of packing for 12 months. I struggled through this on Monday so that I could empty the set of drawers in our room. I'm going to go back in a few days an reassess what I've done (separated my clothes into leave here and take with us).
• Medical stuff: a couple of doctor's appointments. Mostly regular checkups, but I've also got a bacterial infection that's being stubborn (and the sort of thing my body does when I'm in transition and stressed).
• Applying for rentals in Brisbane. This was complex and threatened to drag on for several weeks, but God was merciful to us and on Tuesday gave us the first house we applied for. For the first time we'll actually be present and part of the "moving in" of stuff to a house in Ipswich in a few weeks time. This has been a huge answer to prayer.
• HA prep stuff: photo and text for a prayer card, starting on a HA photo album 
• Administrative stuff: making sure our bond is paid to secure the house (which required an international phone call to our Australian bank who wanted to text our Australian phone number to confirm identity . . . but our Australian phone numbers aren't active till we're in Australia), re-entry visas applications, organising to do the transfer of ownership of our car, changing addresses, etc.
• Helping other people move: David and our youngest son have both helped others this week.
• Hosting. We had two of our youngest son's friends playing Monopoly in our lounge amongst the boxes yesterday afternoon. They both stayed for dinner and one stayed overnight.
• Goodbyes: I had afternoon tea with two Japanese friends on Tuesday. One of those ladies I've known since 2006. It's always difficult to say goodbye, but we hope to meet again next year.
• Naps: I napped after lunch for three days after conference!

 I think that is a long-enough list. And now I think I need another nap . . . or maybe a coffee?

But first, something that's good for me to remember in this turbulent time of transition. In preparing this blog post, I stumbled about a great quote from the retreat I went on in March:

On a daily basis we're faced with two simple choices. We can either listen to ourselves and our constantly changing feelings about our circumstances, or we can talk to ourselves about the unchanging truth of who God is and what He's accomplished for us at the cross through His Son Jesus. (C.J. Mahaney inThe Christ Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing")