Craziness plus encouragement

This week has felt overwhelming (last week did too, but for different reasons). I could have seen it coming. It tends to happen four times a year when several things collide in my schedule. The overlapping of the end of one magazine issue and the start of the next is the main culprit, though this has been less so in the last couple of years since I handed off some responsibilities to another person in my team. However that person has left our team and I've been helping two people take his place. You don't need to know the details!

On Monday of this week I spent much of the day travelling to and from meetings on the other side of the city. It's a usual monthly gathering of missionaries from our organisation, and almost always worth being at, but it takes out an entire day from my week and often leaves me feeling behind when I sit down at my desk on Tuesday.

I'm usually writing our prayer/newsletter in the week leading up to the first Sunday of the month...that happens to be the first week of September, rather than the last week of August this year! I tried to start last week, but didn't get as far as I'd have liked to have.

My social media ministry team has also had increases in responsibilities as we cater for a team member going on maternity leave tomorrow. I've had to learn some new stuff!

On top of all that I had email troubles. One of my three work emails stopped working yesterday. That always flusters me as I rely heavily on email, and I'm not the most confident when dealing with tech stuff.

Those are the main things that have all landed on this week and I found myself jumping ever more rapidly between one thing and another. I usually work quite well juggling various responsibilities, but this week hasn't been so good.

I put this out there, not because I want you to feel sorry for me, but because I'm trying to be real here.

But God has also given me different pieces of tangible help through the week:

• On Monday I heard the story of someone who has come to serve with our organisation who was prodded by our social media work to get involved. Exactly what we're trying to do and such an encouragement to see someone in front of me who probably wouldn't be there if I didn't do what I do.
• We booked flights to go to Australia for Christmas to see our new grandchild (due end of November)!
• We've located a good spot and good days to go camping with our friends next month.
• I flipped the calendar to September and was reminded that we have tickets to the World Athletics Championships, which are in Tokyo this month. The session includes the 200m finals, which might include a young man from Queensland who has been making headlines in recent months: Gout Gout.
• Last night we attended, as usual, our church's online prayer meeting. I was able to share briefly in a small group that I'd been feeling overwhelmed at work and they prayed for me! Such an encouragement.

Bit by bit I've made it thus far through the week, and that I'm able to sit here and write about it is proof that things are calming down a little. 

I'm thankful, too, for a cooler day today (28C, current humidity 81%). It's been grey with some showers, which is really encouraging. The length and intensity of the Tokyo summer has been close to the top of almost every conversation that we've had recently—we're all longing for the cool that autumn brings.

Our July holidays

We went away for two weeks in the latter half of July and I jumped back into work on August 3, only to be swamped. I'm only just in the last couple of days starting to come up for some air! 

However, I want to tell you a little bit about our holidays before they get too far in the distant past. Because other prefectures are nervous about Tokyo-ites visiting them at the moment (many more cases of COVID-19 in Tokyo than in other places), we decided to have a very quiet holiday. We mostly stayed at the holiday home, or only went to places where there were virtually no other people close by.

We did lots of sleeping, reading, game-playing, and movie-watching. That probably sums up our fortnight away very well. It was at the same place as we went this time last year (and also at Christmas), a delightful Swiss-chalet house that OMF Japan owns and rents to its members at a low rate. We appreciate the views, the green-all-around, the peace, and a place without Wi-Fi.

As I did last year, I organised myself to not do any work during those two weeks, that included not looking at email at all. Our daily routine was simple and refreshing. To get even more sleep I also took time-out from caffeine. Not without a challenge (my body is very sensitive to caffeine), but in the end I manage to stay off caffeine totally for a week and have been on reduced caffeine in the two weeks since then (instead of 2 ½ cups of fully caffeinated coffee a day, I've had two half-strength cups a day, decaf coffee is a very handy thing, even if the coffee snobs turn their noses up at it). As I result I got 9 or 10 hours sleep every night for a couple of weeks, which was very nice indeed! During July I also stopped doing my daily Japanese review. The sum total of all that was lots of read and many books read. 

So, even though today I feel pretty blurry and am having difficulty thinking clearly, I know that I did have a good rest in July, so I'm hopeful that that will be a good thing for whatever lies ahead for the rest of the year. For starters, we've got our second son beginning year 12 next week. That in itself will potentially mean stress for the family, if it is anything like his big brother's senior year! Not to mention that we're by no means free of the wide-reaching consequences COVID-19 pandemic.

But back to our holidays in the mountains. Staying "home" made things very simple and we slipped into a gentle routine. Dinner and an evening movie we did together, sometimes late afternoon included games. Watching a movie each night was something we did last year also and it seems to be a helpful way to enjoy the holiday as a family, as well as provide fodder for conversation around the table. We watched The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series, then several other older movies like Back to the Future, Forest Gump, and Jonny English. 

All these latter movies were borrowed from a local DVD rental store—yes, Japan still has them! But let me tell you that it's not easy to find movies in a Japanese store if you're an English speaker. Have you ever thought about learning "alphabetical order" in another language? Japanese has its own order! And even if that is fine, and your Japanese reading is up to scratch, many English movies have completely different titles to their original versions.

Things are ramping up again now in our house with both David and I have worked full-time this week and school starts (I say YAY) next Thursday. But we think back fondly to our July holiday with great thanks that we could take the time off and had a place to go, and look forward to next time we can recharge like this!

Here are some photos from from our time away:

We caught the last two weeks of the rainy season and everything was very
green. This was one of the trees in the local park where we played Park Golf.

Park Golf. I am appalling at it, but it's a fun activity (if you don't record your score).

This lily's flower was bigger than my hand!

A cute frog posing on our youngest son's hand.

We had many rainy days and only saw two sunsets. This is the view that we could see from the dining
room and lounge area.

David and I went on a couple of local walks. Beautiful!

Wild boar trap along one of the roads we walked on.

Reading my Kindle at the dining table...with a view.

We took one 1,000-piece puzzle loaned to us by friends, it was fiendishly difficult. An overall picture of Yoda,
but made up of 1,000s of micro pictures.

Wet = fungi. I had my eyes open for some photogenic mushrooms in the park.

One of the two sunsets we saw from our living area.

Inside our holiday apartment. Our middle son loves this loft. He set up
his bed and recreation area up there. Our bedroom door is on the right of the photo,
the other side of the ladder is the entrance to the bathroom and far left of photo
is the kitchen. It's pretty compact, but the lofty ceiling with exposed beams
makes it feel spacious.

In the last couple of days the volcano we were perched on showed its peak.
This is taken from the verandah.

Pausing to gather my heart?

Today's my first day back at my desk. Considering we've been back in Japan less than five days, I don't think that's too bad. But we have moved straight back into the same house that we walked away from on June 30 last year, so it isn't too much of a stretch to be dipping our toes back into normal life.

In reality, though, we're physically here, but I feel like it will take a little while longer for my head and heart to catch up. We left Australia in a manner that felt very fast. On January 1 we returned from a couple of weeks of visiting family in Queensland. We returned to a fully functional house. In just three days we packed up and moved out, three days after that we'd completely moved everything out, put our stuff in storage and sent everything else to its next place of residence (including a substantial amount to a secondhand store), and had the house ready for bond inspection. Thirty-six hours after that we flew out of Brisbane. 

It happened efficiently and with significant help from others. But you can't do efficiency with hearts. The goodbyes happened quickly in the midst of it all, and for better or for worse, I didn't have time to dwell on any of them.

So, while I'm physically sitting now in at my Tokyo desk—yes, even doing work (I sent more than 30 emails/messages today)—I need to make sure I take some time to get the rest of me here too. I'm not sure how will looks, though I suspect some of it will happen here on my blog. I'd also like to get to the park on my bike sometime soon. Perhaps a pause at a coffee shop too?

On the edge of ordinary this week

As usual, I've been casting around in my mind for a blog post for today (even more so as I've not written for a coupole of days), but what can I write that isn't dull and boring? (If you make it to the end, you'll find some mildly exciting stuff...or, I guess, you can scroll straight there.)

One photo I found today in my
ongoing search for photos for
home assignment usage.
This is David doing the rounds at
a middle school science fair a couple
of years ago.

Daily life continues here at a pretty regular rate. There are only a handful of school days left. Three and a half, to be precise. Actually a bit less than that for our high schooler who goes into "culminating events" timetable from Friday (what we used to call "exam schedule").

Email troubles
I've endured some significant frustration over the last several days as it gradually dawned on me late last week that perhaps my email was playing up (again). Emails I'd sent weren't necessarily being received. And this going back ten days or more! 



Email trouble always flusters me and I beat myself up that I can't get my head around solving them. This time it was more than one email account and as soon as I tried to do any fixing, it got worse. In the end I asked for help from our mission's help desk in Singapore. Of course that meant writing an email, and it took some time to actually get an email through to them. I'm now grateful for the set-up they have that immediately replies to any email you send them with a "received" email, because then I knew that I'd been successful.

I think I started asking for help last Wednesday and finally yesterday everything came together. It took him almost an hour using a screen-sharing app, to fix the problem. You see my email situation is pretty complex. I have four email addresses that I use regularly, for different parts of my job! Plus another couple that are yahoo/gmail and help with things related to those platforms. I have to say that I'm a little jealous of people who have tech support in their workplace, but considering our organisation's workplace is all over the world, this is a pretty good solution.

A friend, who prayed for this particular problem during a coffee date on Monday, not only gently chastised me for beating myself up, she encouraged me that God is using stuff like this to refine me, grow me! Praise God for friends like that!

A meme I made today from a quote I found while I looked for
a tiny bit of advice about writing rejection letters!

School
Yesterday I also had boys coming in and out of the house. It was an unusual day at school and there were no classes, though middle and high school students were required to attend one or two presentations by the seniors about their year-long projects. So, a bit of a scattered day over all, but in the midst of it I got quite a number of things achieved.

More work stuff
I continue to do a variety of scheduling, just today I've booked in our 16th church for December! I've messaged a friend about catching up in Australia before they leave for Taiwan.

I'm also still wading through handover. I have spent time in these last two days signing up people for different apps or website groups, and writing emails about where I'm at and what next to do.

Just today I've written 39 emails. These last three days I've written 101! (Not sure how many have actually landed, though.)

Editing continues, some of those emails have been back and forth correspondence with writers. I even had to tango with a rejection email today (one I have to write for an proposed article for the magazine, but I can't send it yet...I have to wait until next week).

Well all that stuff is pretty boring, really, but it is where my ordinary life is at right now.

The exciting stuff
The exciting stuff of this week includes things like:

• Can we watch State of Origin live tonight for free? (For non-Aussies, it is a yearly series of three rugby league matches between our state of Queensland and neighbouring state of New South Wales. Very hotly contested.)
• Discovering some old videos on this computer from as long ago as 2010.
• Helping our middle school son complete a craft project for a craft stall after school. (A bigger drama than you can probably imagine. My husband cut out 60 circles 11mm in diameter.)
• And last night we received news that a large piece of our home assignment puzzle has fallen into place...but that is a post of its own that I'll get to when I get just a bit more information...and maybe a photo or two.

Well, it's after 7 and I'm going to call it quits on the computer for today. Maybe I'll have an exciting post to write tomorrow?

Advice on tentmaker ministry in Japan?

One email I had to answer in my work today was from someone who had found the OMF Japan website and was asking for advice about becoming a tentmaker in Japan. 

As I thought about how to formulate my reply, or even if I should pass this enquiry off to someone else, I realised that I had the perfect resource to start, one that has much more authority to it than I could on my own. Early this year we published a Japan Harvest magazine with the theme "Independent Missionaries".

A number of the articles from that issue are now online, so I sent our enquirer some links. I thought you might enjoy them too. These are articles "from the horses mouth". Independent missionaries/tentmakers themselves writing about their experiences.

Good and bad aspects of tentmaking by a friend of mine who has worked with her husband in a rural part of Japan since 1991.

Independent not self-reliant by a Malaysian lady who's been in Japan with her husband for just over a year.

Relational Evangelism by an American who teaches English in Japanese schools.

Doing mission when you're not a missionary by another friend who is in Japan after her husband got transferred by his company from the UK (she's the lady on the cover).

Tentmaking ministry in Japan looks different to other countries. I remember Aussie friends who were here teaching in schools when we arrived in 2000. One of the reasons they didn't stay long-term was that working full-time in Japan is very time consuming. Employers demand a lot and there is little left-over time for extra "ministry".

But some have made it work. I do recommend having a look at the articles I've linked to above, you'll see different perspectives to what you get from someone like me who lives (partly) off what we receive from generous friends elsewhere.

Picking up the threads again

Now things have settled down for us medically I'm trying to pick up the threads of various things again. I started doing this a couple of weeks ago, but it all got put on hold for a bit there.

Magazine editing

High school cross country team in 2013.

I've been meeting with various key members of the editorial team over the last few weeks. I have one more person to meet with tomorrow morning. I'm getting a positive impression, though also a sense that a bit of housekeeping needs to be done. I'm so thankful for these busy people who've volunteered their precious time to run the magazine in my absence. 

But I'm still getting back into the game. Jumping into any job like this after someone else isn't easy. Especially when this job involves hundreds of email communications between people. Putting a magazine together involves many details, and getting a grasp of where everything is up to isn't easy. One detail missed can be a big problem, for example, an author who submitted an article but it wasn't published or an advertiser who submitted a change to their ad but it was missed. 

At least I'm picking up again, so many things I'd set in place before for the smooth running of the magazine I can pick up again. I feel sorry for those I left here during the year I was away. One, particularly, was doing it all for the first time. Ouch.

There have been other threads besides work to pick up. Even though we've come back to the same house, school, and virtually the same jobs, there have been changes. Being away for a year does make a different.

Relationships. I had coffee yesterday morning with an Australian friend, it was great to catch up and hear a bit about how transitioning their eldest daughter from CAJ to university in Australia has gone. She's just one, there are many others I haven't really touched base with yet.

Sports. Last Saturday we went along to the first cross country meet of the season. There have been changes. I was reminded during at least one conversation that we've missed a year.

School. There have been changes while we were away, and our boys have "skipped" a grade. Our middle son is now in middle school, which isn't exactly the same as when his brother was in middle school.

That's just the ones that come to mind. Yes, we're still settling and it takes time, patience, and discernment. But we're getting there (especially when everyone stays well).

Doing shopping and stuff

This morning David and I had a "shopping date". We headed off to a shopping centre and attached a list of stuff that needed attending to. It was great to do this without the hinderance of children. We ended up shopping in parallel to each other, keeping in touch with which shops we were each at, but each doing our own thing. Stopping in the middle to have morning tea coffee/milkshake (our second for the week). I also came away with a skirt from Katies that was originally $59.95 for only $17, that was great too. A lovely productive morning!

This week has really been about settling back into preparing for the remaining five months. Our minds are turning back to Japan. It's brought into focus things that need preparing for/doing/buying before we go back to Japan. It's also meant a number of emails setting up appointments/making enquiries etc.

I spent a good number of hours putting together our prayer letter over the last two days too, which also produced a flurry of emails from folk who want to meet up with us in the coming months.

Some examples of things we've worked on this week:-

• made an optometrist appointment for one child
• enquired about some immunisation that our 15 y.o. missed and the medical centre didn't ring us about (though they said they would)
• enquired about making a psychologists appointment for debriefing
• sought the contact details of theOMF medical advisor for this area to talk about a referral the school in Japan requires
• found out David's timetable for this semester and trying to get our minds around how that will work with our one-car family
• arranged to get together with various people here in Brisbane over the next couple of months as well as in Canberra when we're there at the start of next month
• trying to get more details about our obligations in Canberra
• trying to line up a car for us to use in Canberra
• investigating courses in design and writing, thinking ahead to taking up my magazine editing role again
• David's been continuing preparation for the courses he's teaching later this month
• trying to line up a couple more church meetings
• shopping for remaining school supplies, new clothes/shoes for David and me, new sheets for some beds in Japan

Quite an array! It's good to be productive, I hate being bored.

A quieter week?

This week has been a quieter week on the deputation front. We have a break this weekend from formal church ministry and instead get to hang out with friends who also happen to be supporters.

Injured thumb
I've spent portions of three days driving to and from doctors and X-ray appointments. Our youngest son wrenched his thumb during wrestling training on Monday night and so just to be careful, we've had it checked out. Thankfully nothing was torn or broken or dislocated, so time will heal. But it has taken a chunk out of my week.

Camping
We've been gathering camping equipment for our camping trip at the end of the month. Thankfully friends have lent us most of what we need (of the biggest specialist equipment). 

And we've been helping our middle son pack for his class trip to Canberra, starting on Sunday morning, including trying to hunt down a pair of ski gloves for their trip to the snowfields while they're down there!

Preparing for our visit to WA
Another notable activity of the week has been trying to drum up deputation opportunities. We're going to Western Australia next month for nine days and had locked in a couple of Sunday morning "appearances" but this week have sent off a number of email to various contacts over there trying to fill in some holes. 

It seems a shame to go all that way (with the cost of five tickets) for just two Sunday mornings and two evening meetings. By the way, for those of you who don't know, it takes about five hours to fly to Perth from Brisbane, which is about the same as flying from New York to Los Angeles. From London, you could get to Africa in the same time!

Last time we sent David over on his own, but want to go back one last time as a whole family (next HA at one of our boys will have graduated from high school). We have many faithful prayers and givers in WA, we really want to go and thank them together. Plus it's a beautiful corner of Australia to visit! We first visited there for deputation when our eldest was one, and once more at the start of our first home assignment when we only had two children, so we want to allow our youngest to experience a tiny taste of the west coast of this amazing nation.

Drumming up meetings in Queensland
We've also been seeking meetings with churches in south east Queensland, sending out emails to supporting churches here to see what we can be doing in the last couple of months of 2014.

New book

The book that my story has been
published in.

Today I received my author's copy of a book, Project Story, that is the compilation of 25 stories from Australian OMF missionaries. One of my stories, "Crying in the Snow", is included. This is worthy of note, because it is the first time I've had something I've authored included in a book (not just a magazine or ezine). The book is also for sale, let me know if you'd like a copy (A$10 plus postage if I can't hand it to you).

PS about tonight
Just heard from the friend we'd planned weeks ago to meet tonight that she's ill with a stomach bug. Boo! 

As crazy as it sounds, I could only give her two possible dates in October when we could meet her family for a meal. But she's busy those two dates, so it will be November before we can get our families together. 

We're limited in when we can meet people by children in school, so weeknights are pretty much out. And weekends are so full of various events for us, plus two weeks away on holidays and two weekends in Perth. It feels so frustrating, because we have plenty of time during the week, but few people have time then!

Generally tired
So that was our week (at least the major point). But I have to say I'm feeling more energetic today than I've felt for a couple of weeks. The huge weekend in Sydney two weeks ago really knocked me around (plus the cold I was fighting off at the time). That plus last weekend's overnight with deputation Sat-Sun took some recovering from. I can't say I'm disappointed we had a "quieter" week and have a similarly low-key weekend coming up. 

I'm also desperately looking forward to getting away for our camping trip. This transition to Australia, though well planned and as easy as we could possibly make it, has taken its toll and we're all easily worn out.