We've had an awful lot of "life" going on

We went back to our home church last weekend for the second Sunday in a row. It was a relief to feel a lot less fragile this time.

Almost the sum total of books we own in
Australia. Not many at all! And many of them
are photo albums or school yearbooks. But
it's good to have them up on a shelf and
out of boxes!

In one conversation I had with an older lady, she comment frankly: “What you’re dealing with is just life.”

My gentle retort was, “Our problem is that we’ve had an awful lot of 'life' all at once." 

For example, most people help their older teens adjust to adult life over months or years. In the short 20 days we've been here we’ve been doing things like teaching them about banking, getting a learners licence, getting a MyGov online account (for various official purposes like tax, medical insurance), etc.

On top of that we're introducing them to life in Australia, as almost-newbies. How to access a doctor in Australia, how medical insurance works, what's the best place to buy a certain product, how to get a haircut, public transport, etc.

It also happens to be university-open-
day season at the moment, so on Sunday
we hoisted ourselves off to the University
of Queensland (UQ), David's and my
alma mater.

We've also moved houses into a suburb we've never lived in before, so we don't know the answers to all the questions that are related to locality. And it's not all about our sons—David and I have started new jobs and we've also just bought a car in Australia for the first time in over 25 years.

It's no wonder that I'm routinely feeling like we're much further into August than we actually are (it's not helping that we haven't gotten around to putting up more than one calendar yet, nor that the season doesn't feel at all like winter, except in the middle of the night and early morning).

We're trying to get on top of daily life things so that we can pay attention to what we're going to say in our upcoming speaking appointments. This Saturday we're running a 50 minute elective at the state conference for our organisation. The blurb we gave them was:

Title: Working together to share the good news about Christ in Japan

Blurb: Why do a school teacher and editor/writer work with OMF in Japan? Mission work involves more than just church planting and evangelism. Our work in Japan contributes to supporting the wider community of missionaries. Join us to consider how missionaries work as a team to spread the good news in a nation where less than 1% of the population are Christians.

I've actually written on this topic in the past (see this) and I'm married to a teacher, so things like this don't faze him much. We have a general idea of where we're headed, but just need to nail down some details.

This morning, though, I'm taking a break from everyone and have walked to our local library. That's right: we're walking distance from an English library!!! If I hadn't been an ardent e-book borrower over the last four years from this exact library, I'd be even more excited, But I am keen to see if there are some hard copies of books that I haven't been able to find electronic versions of.

But the main reason I've come to the library is to write. And to hopefully start something of a Tuesday morning tradition for this home assignment. Hence this blog post has been written, but I'm planning to write other things too, I'm just not sure what they all are yet!