A very encouraging week

Last week was very full. I was looking forward to it, as well as wondering how I would fare. I'm thankful to be past it, but also see that I managed to make it through without falling in a heap, which is really encouraging.

On Monday we had our monthly regional gathering for our mission. Around 50 people joined together to sing, pray, fellowship, and eat together. We heard, and prayed thoroughly, about some business matters. 

After a short break mid afternoon, five of us (plus a facilitator) jumped into our social media team retreat in the same location. We had a formal time of getting to know you, and then went out to dinner together. I was pretty "whacked". I struggled with a headache all afternoon and by dinner time it was making me feel woozy, but I managed to do all that I needed to do. I did head to bed at 8.30, though.

The next day we gathered after breakfast and spent the whole day thinking about things like decision making, team characteristics, some big picture questions about what we do and how we do it, and spent time growing in creativity. It was a big day that we followed with dinner out together, and an evening of creativity.

I knew this team was much younger than me, but it was confronting to spend significant time together and feel very middle-aged (the next youngest person is 13 years younger than me and three of our team are in their 20s or early 30s)! However it was a really good time. We are a remote team and most of us don't know one another well. I've learned over the 14 years I've worked in remote teams that trust is a huge component. If you don't trust one another, it makes your job far more difficult. This was a great time for building trust.

It's also a team that has undergone much change recently, and there is more change and uncertainty in the upcoming months. This level of team change is very challenging. I'm so thankful we had an experienced "team builder" help us as I'm certain I wouldn't have had the knowledge to do what he did, and certainly having someone outside the team to run it was a good move too. This retreat is something we've been talking about doing for a few years now, but the pandemic put a stop to a lot of that kind of initiative (and how often have I heard "but the pandemic..." uttered recently when people are reflecting on the last five years!?).

I got home from the retreat on Wednesday, in time for my usual mid-afternoon coffee. I unpacked, did a couple of "time sensitive" work things, and then collapsed on the lounge for the rest of the evening.

Thursday was a day I had carefully kept clear of other responsibilities. I didn't have high hopes for my capacity for work that day, but surprised myself and others by ticking off (US Eng: checking off) quite a number of editing jobs.

Our table

Friday was entirely taken up by an event we've been anticipating for over 12 months. Last year as we finalised our packing and moving, we realised we had a number of things that others could find useful. So we didn't throw them all out, we kept a few boxes of stuff and stored them, planning to try to sell them at Friday's school bazaar. At the bazaar we rented a table and filled it with stuff we were trying to get rid of. Between 10am and 4pm we sold quite a few things! We also sold all 200 pieces of fudge that I'd made. But it was also a great ruse for having our own "quiet" spot in the school gym where we could sit and greet friends who wandered past. I had so many conversations with friends, many of whom I've known for a number of years. It was a great encouragement to my soul.

It was fantastic to see the school community coming to life again "post pandemic" (yep, that word again). In October 2019, for various reasons, CAJ ended its long tradition of "Thrift Shop". That tradition had, twice a year, filled the gym with donated goods and provided us with not only many cheap household goods, toys, clothes, camping gear, and other miscellaneous items, but many hours of volunteering there over the years provided me with community and friends. That October was supposed to be the start of a new tradition, but any forward momentum got interrupted just six months later by a pandemic, and no more school bazaars happened until October 2022. It's taken a while to get back to a sense of wider community at the school, at least from my outsider position as a mum and teacher's spouse. So Friday was wonderful to behold.

These brand new size 28 slides didn't sell, would you like them?

We also are looking for a runner to sell these "spikes" to.
They've been used a couple of times (also a pandemic casualty).

Friends catching up! Such joy.

A little bit against what I thought was wise, social interaction continued through the weekend. On Friday night we watched a movie with our camping friends at their house. On Saturday, David helped rearrange one of our mission's storage places and had lunch with his two co-workers. I had a haircut and finally did some grocery shopping. That evening we met a couple visiting from the US, a couple who have listened to us and helped us through some tough times in the last few years.

On Sunday we visited another new church and to our surprise knew many people there. It was an English-speaking service and our various English-speaking networks in Japan all were represented. We also ran into an OMF colleague and gave her a lift back to ours for coffee before her next appointment. Straight after that we chatted with our sons for over an hour. 

Phew! I am really surprised that I am not more exhausted than I am today (Monday). Perhaps I'm getting back to some kind of new normal level of energy?

Whenever the topic of leaving Japan comes up, I'm reminded of this wide group of people I only know because I've lived my life here. When the time comes to move on, it will be a sad day, though I know that this is a mobile group of people who I will probably gradually say goodbye to as they move on over the coming years anyway. 

But for now I'm just thankful for a full heart from all this wonderful interaction over the last week.

God at work through community

I don't always (or often?) hear about how my words or this blog have helped someone, but did last week. Let's trace some ripples in a pond and, hopefully, show how God's been at work.

When I was in Australia I spent a little time with a psychologist. She is the same psychologist who did assessment back in 1998 when we started on this missions journey. Each time we go back we're required to do a debrief with her and her husband, it's been great to have a long-term relationship with them, even if we rarely meet.

This time I went back a couple more times. I've written here about how that resulted in me being more intentional about cultivating certain friendships in Australia. 

It turns out that the two friends I stay in contact with daily have spent time with the same psychologist. It's been an interesting element to our friendship, because we occasionally reference this common professional and her words. One thing that keeps coming up, and originated with this lady is the concept of "lily pads". I can't even remember if the psychologist mentioned them to me, but my friend hasn't let me forget this very useful concept.

And so I mentioned lily pads briefly last week in my blog post. Each time I write here I share the link to my blog post on my Facebook page, so often people comment there, rather than here.

On this post last week, a missionary friend commented that she found the concept useful in general too, but that it is a hard part of the current situation. I replied saying that planning smaller things like baking on the weekend, a TV series to work through, or a book to read are helpful, or even necessary to staying healthy. She commented that she'd been trying crochet as something of a lily pad, but hadn't been having much success.

A few days later my missionary friend and I received a message from one of my expat FB friends in Japan who'd been struggling with the lack of plans, especially not being able to see family. She found the lily pad idea amazing and very helpful. That it had been so helpful to her blew me and my missionary friend away. It had been such a small interaction, but one that happened in a place that my expat friend saw and was inspired by. She went on from that and shared her revelation with friends of hers who had similar reactions.

What a fascinating, rippling trail of God's grace.

I think at the moment thoughtful Christians are considering what Christian community is all about. In recent weeks/months many of us have been unable to physically meet together like we are used to. What has community looked like in that time?

For me it has looked like all the below:

• worshipping virtually with others, while sitting in my lounge room,
• long and short conversations—planned and unplanned; text, video, or phone call; or even the occasional in-person physically-distanced chat
• generosity—both giving and receiving
• being a part of a loosely-formed book club around a book by a missionary that has helped us to reflect on God at this time
• the giving of grace—in my work, with my family, and with others
• seeking how to creatively bless other people near and far.

You can probably come up with different ways it's looked for you. I will probably think of more after I publish this!

Before I go I want to share another way that friends and colleagues have blessed me in the last little while.

Encouragement folder

Last week God knew I needed a bit of extra encouragement and I received a few other encouraging emails. After I shared some of the encouragement with my two "daily" friends, one of them encouraged me to set up an encouragement folder on my computer. 

I always pass encouragements related to the magazine I work on to my magazine team when I receive them, but I haven't really collected them. I also haven't routinely collected encouragements non-magazine related for my own benefit. 

I'm so excited to be collecting them now, even a couple of sentences in an email can be something to lift my day, and now they can last longer than a day. And that's important. Not only do I work at the pointy end of publishing at times (having to work with authors who aren't happy or don't understand why we've changed what we've changed), I also live with teenagers who sometimes seem to think it's important that they critique my every move and every word. We're spending more time together in 2020 than usual, so a bit of extra encouragement is not to be discounted!

How have you seen community in your life in recent weeks?

Vital community

Book Face, the cool bookshop/cafe where I spent my morning.

I spent the morning at a cafe with some ladies from our Australian home church. It was great. I'm flying back to Japan on Wednesday, so this was the last time to see them before July. Though it was hard to say goodbye, I am delighted that they have been able to keep a corner in their hearts for me to jump in and out of their lives. 

And not just them, there are others too. What a blessing God has given to have special friends both in Japan and here. Even though I can never be satisfied because I always have to be away from one community to be in the other, I'm not without community in either place.

It was timely to see this article up on Facebook this morning. I worked on it (as an editor) a few months ago. It talks about the importance of community in helping new missionaries settle into their new country. Though it was beyond the scope of the article, I think that it really helps a missionary (or at least this one) to have some people who love and accept them in their home country. That's asking a lot, because you go in and out of their lives, something that can make good friendship quite a painful thing. But oh so valuable to have, so that this missionary, at least, can feel "at home" in either place.

Expats and community

Yesterday on Facebook, a former CAJ teacher shared an article she'd found about why expats love (and need) community. It was a good article for a couple of reasons—community IS very important to expats and the article explains why but also why expats struggle in the area of community when they return to their passport countries.

Some of the current members of our community. The
people I travelled with to Korea for wrestling earlier
in the year. 

You've read me rave on about community, friends, relationships here. Here's a sample:

• Crucial community
• Making and keeping connections with others
• Friendships with sports-parents

And this post called The Colander of Expat Life, that has had more than 2,000 hits on it since I wrote it last year.

After I read the article above (the first one) I wondered if my non-expat readers understand what community is like for expats and why we need it so much (besides losing all our support network at the same time by moving away from our home countries)? The article says this:

Relationships go deeper quicker because our conversations are fueled by vulnerability.

No one says it out loud — “Hey I’m a bumbling idiot and you seem like a slightly less bumbling idiot, think you could help me out here?” — but that’s the field where community grows.

We huddle up — and we help each other — because we would fall apart if we didn’t.

We move forward together and learn to function at varying degrees of competence but all of us (even the long time vets) are operating at a fraction of the functionality of the average local person. 

Because we're functioning at a lower level than the locals, we need one another so much more. It works in facilitating relationships with locals too. Asking for help can open many doors of opportunity that you wouldn't otherwise have if you were competent  That's how I met my best Japanese friend: I was hopelessly incompetent when our children were in kindergarten together and she rescued me.

Here's a couple of other examples when I've been helped by expats in our community (local or Facebook):

• The chicken mince incident
• Finding a local "meat" shop

But it's also important to realise that when we go back to our passport countries, not only  have we been changed by the experience of living like this, but that others won't get it. And we won't find quite the same type of community living again. That's why I wonder if people who haven't lived outside of their home country understand. This is what Jerry, the author of the article wrote:

[We expats love community] so much so that we long for it wherever we go, especially back “home” — but “home” is a different reality.

You’re not a bumbler there.

Scratch that. You’re not supposed to be a bumbler there.

We haven't transitioned back to living in Australia permanently (or even for a longer period than 12 months) yet, but I can see from our experiences of living there that we miss (or at least I do) the community I've got here, even if it is constantly changing.

So do go and read the article—if you are or were an expat it will ring true and if you aren't you might learn something about us.