Feeling a little overwhelmed

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed as I approach the end of this first week of November. So it's probably time to do a little bit of processing here. I'll separate it into different sections to help keep things clear.

OMF Japan field conference

Last week I had a three-hour meeting on Thursday that has given me homework to do. It was the fourth meeting this group has had as we work towards running a conference for all the OMF Japan field missionaries and their kids. 

This is our conference venue in Hokkaido.
I'm really  thankful we have a Japanese
colleague communicating with
the venue!

I'm not really great at committees, though I've discovered that meetings that are very outcome focused aren't so bad, especially if I have a hand in running them and I'm actually the "chair" of this group. I'm also not the best event organiser, but this is an internal-to-OMF event that I have attended many times over our 26 years in Japan and so there are a lot of things that are done regularly (even if we tweak it to look a bit different every time). It's my first time to help organise this conference, but this group has a number of people on it who have done it before, so that it really helpful. Each member also has specific area of responsibilities, so that also helps make things more clear-cut.

So, the things I have been working on are mainly asking missionaries in Japan to take on different responsibilities, like taking photographs, organise our worship times, design a logo, etc. Asking people to do things (and giving them deadlines) is something that I regularly do in my other roles, so this isn't so hard. But it's extra on top of the other things that I've been juggling.

OMF Kanto meeting

On Monday we had an all-day meeting at our headquarters with most of the OMF missionaries in the greater Tokyo area. We regularly meet once a month like this, but the November one is a bit special in that it is more about the leaders reporting back to us and members discussing various important topics. Just getting there and back is tiring for many of us. Tokyo isn't that big a place, but there are a lot of people in it moving around. I took seven trains to get there and back (about 90 minutes each way). It was a tiring day with lots of interaction.

Magazine

I'm working on aspects of both the upcoming Winter and Spring issues of Japan Harvest magazine. The Winter issue is moving into the design and proofreading stage. My role at this stage is to review all the editing and fact checking on each article (over 20 of them), create a design-ready version of the article, and check with authors and deal with any of their concerns. Once that is done I'm working with our designer and proofreader to make the final copy as correct as we can. This is a lot of moving parts and many details to keep track of. 

We've had a lot more movement than is usual with the Winter issue. Usually by this time our general content is almost set, but we've one advertiser and one article have been withdrawn from this issue in the latter stages. We thought we had a replacement article, but that has also been postponed till Spring.

So I've had more involvement with the Spring issue than is usual at this time too. I've been interacting with the authors of the two articles I mentioned above, as well as one other author who I was tasked to ask to submit an article. Oh, and I've got two of my own regular articles to write in the next week or so too. Plus scheduling for the editing team for the coming months.

Believe it or not I really enjoy this, but it's tiring.

Social media team

Our OMF Japan social media team is in the midst of transition...we kinda have been all year. We started 2026 with five team members. Early in the year one left for home assignment and we weren't able to find anyone to replace her. Then another team member left the team for the same reason a couple of months ago and also wasn't replaced. A third member will finish up at the end of December. In addition to this we have a short-term worker coming to join us part-time for three months from the end of November. We have one missionary temporarily helping us in a very part-time fashion, and another who might join us in the coming months too. It's a lot and in the midst of all that our work of producing about four posts a week continues.

Yesterday we met for just over 90 minutes to talk about upcoming content for the rest of 2026, start planning for 2027, and also talked about our team retreat coming up later this month that I'm supposed to be planning. I'm doing most of the writing and editing for the team at the moment. 

At the end of yesterday's social media meeting I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with this as well as all the other things that are currently on my plate. I worked my way out of the overwhelm by writing short lists that summarised what I need to be doing just now (rather than thinking about all that needs to be done in the coming weeks). It really helped. But I crashed last night. I was in bed before 9pm!

Help in weakness

Then this morning I was listening to Scripture and happened to be up to Romans 8. It's a chapter with a lot in it, but one thing jumped out at me:

This is the cute poster that some
ladies made to advertise the World
Missions Conference. I don't really
recognise myself (except that my name
is under the image).

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. (Romans 8:25–26 NIV)

Paul also talks about weakness a few times in his letters to the Corinthians:

But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9–10)

It also comes up in Hebrews in another very encouraging passage:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin. (Heb. 4:15)

What a relief: our God helps us and understands our weakness (NLT version uses "understands" instead of "not unable to feel sympathy"). Not only that but the NLT version of the 2 Cor. 12 verse says the Lord says "My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness."

I haven't written here about the World Missions Conference that our church hosted a couple of weeks ago...it was a big day with over 100 people attending. I didn't have a formal speaking role, but spent an hour in two small bilingual groups talking with attendees. I don't remember the exact flow of question and answer, but at one point I said that World Missions doesn't actually make sense from a human point of view, but that God seems to delight in working with weak people. Weakness is what I'm feeling this week and praying that God's grace will get me through, and that somehow through my weakness, God's glory will shine even brighter.