The struggle to feel useful

Recently I spent time editing three short articles by colleagues from my organisation. They all were about staying healthy on the mission field (our social media theme for November). They all talked about various personal struggles to stay healthy in Japan. Not just physically healthy, but mentally and spiritually healthy too. I identified strongly with many of the things they wrote about, but one common thing struck me: the desire to feel useful. 

And a fire photo from last week's camping,
because I needed an excuse to share one
more camping photo! :D

One of the articles was by a couple who’ve been in Japan less than two years. Their struggles to take care of themselves as well as their young daughter on top of learning Japanese and living in a place where they felt like toddlers themselves was all too familiar to me, even though it’s been 20 years since we were in a similar position. Another article was by someone who’s been here a while longer, but her struggles were not so dissimilar. 

They all are in Japan because they (and many around them) discerned that God called them to serve him here, but the struggle to feel useful is common to them all. I think it’s an innate human trait, and certain none of us came to Japan with the intent on being useless, though we feel that way more often than we’ve ever felt like that as adults in our home country.

I've seen this "need to feel useful" struggle in others too when I've worked with people who have been here for a short time. There's often a great deal of gratitude when they're given a task that they can actually do, a feeling of usefulness that helps them through the other parts of their lives. 

Feeling useless is tied to the struggle to learn Japanese and that is innately tied to learning the culture (you can’t really do the latter really well without the former). In my early years here I was told that I needed to get better Japanese otherwise I would hold my husband back. That cutting statement only added to my feelings of uselessness and, sadly, the statement still hurts (my tears are flowing as I write). I doubt the person who wrote it knew how deeply that cut. I felt it was saying my poor ability to learn Japanese affected my ability to be the wife God expected me to be to my husband, while trying to live and work in the land God had called us to.

Over the years in Japan I’ve felt more useful in certain ways, but still feel very limited here. One of the areas I’ve felt most useful outside of my editing work, is maintaining a home for my husband and kids—doing my best to make sure they had good food and a clean, comfortable place to live. I think part of the big adjustment I’ve had this time is that I no longer have that way to be useful in Japan (to my kids). And so it’s felt more difficult in Japan to deal with that loss than it was in Australia where I am overall more capable.

However, I’m re-reading a book that always gives me a good readjustment to my thinking—Awe by Paul David Tripp. He defines awe as the desire of every human being to be amazed, blown away, moved, and satisfied, and clarifies that it actually is a universal craving to see God face-to-face. You've got to read this book!

In a recent portion I read, he wrote about how we humans try to place our identity in the wrong places. We try to be useful, we tie our identity to our relationships (kids, partner, friend, daughter/son), we identify ourselves by our jobs, by how much we earn or own, by our citizenship, by what we’re good at, what we’ve achieved, what our kids or parents have achieved. 

The grace that has connected me to [God] has also freed me from looking for identity anywhere else. I am what I am because of who he is for me by grace. In his awesome glory, I really do find everything I need. . . . I do not have to hunt elsewhere for meaning and purpose for my life. I do not have to look elsewhere to define who I am. I do not have to look elsewhere to measure my potential. I do not have to look elsewhere to find that inner sense of peace and well-being. Why? Because I have found all those things in him. Awe of him liberates me from a life-distorting bondage to awe of anything else. Remember, you and I tend to be in awe of what we are convinced will give us life (identity, meaning, purpose, pleasure, etc.). (All quotes from Chapter 13 of Awe, Paul David Tripp). 

This is in a chapter about work. He goes on to say:

Because work is such a huge and significant dimension of our lives, it becomes very tempting for us to look for our identity there. And when you look to work for your identity, you will find it very hard to resists challenges, demands, and promises of reward.

So we have this label "missionaries" or "cross-cultural workers" and we feel like that's our identity and that we have to "succeed" or at the very least "be useful" at that to have any worth. That's obviously a big mistake, especially in a place where it is rare for English-speakers born elsewhere to become native-level fluent in the language and culture.

But Tripp points out that it's a mistake for any human:

When I don't let awe of God give my heart rest and define me as his child, I will seek identity in things like success and achievement, power and control, and possessions and affluence, and I will work like crazy to get them, leaving a trail of relational and spiritual destruction behind me.

One of the articles I edited this week talked about a new missionary's temptation to overcommit to things that they felt they might be useful at, but also to overextend themselves in language study in an effort to get to the level where they can be useful.

Only when your heart is satisfied in [God] can you be freed from looking for spiritual satisfaction in the fleeting pleasures of the physical world. When you're satisfied in him, you will be liberated form working constantly in order to possess more of what you hope will give you identity. 

So the bottom line: my identity is not tied to my kids, my job title, my usefulness or output, or how busy my schedule is. This isn't really news to me, and yet why do I have so much trouble remembering it. So much trouble lining up my emotions to fit it?

Memory lane

Yesterday I took a different destination for a long ride. I had a language exchange meeting at our usual spot, but instead of taking the train two stops, I rode my bike. A 5.5k ride that took 24 minutes. It was a chilly start, but a beautiful blue-sky day with little wind.

After we chatted in Japanese and English for two hours we parted. I bought some lunch at a local convenience store (truly convenient and cheap—I spent less than AU$5) and rode to a place I used to know well: our old neighbourhood. We lived only 1.6k from the station, but I remember it was a long trek with three little boys.

You see we lived here from 2005 for four years, our youngest spent his babyhood and toddler years here. Our eldest finished kindergarten, started Japanese school, and transitioned to CAJ when we lived here. Our middle son completed all three years of Japanese kindergarten while living here. 

You can see our old house in the centre of the photo, the first place we lived in Tokyo. 

When we first moved here all the newer houses in the foreground (and another 30+ besides) weren't there. This was all a mini forest that we loved looking out upon. All our five main rooms looked out on green and we couldn't believe that this was Tokyo.

That all changed within a year when the owner of the "forest" died and his family redeveloped the land to build many houses. It was very sad, and a story that remains dear to our hearts.

But yesterday I took time to sit in a tiny park created in the middle of that "new" development as I ate my lunch and pondered those years.

They were crazy years, we had a baby, 2 y.o. and 6 y.o. when we moved there. We knew almost no one in Tokyo and jumped straight into the Japanese schooling system without any foreigners nearby. CAJ, where my husband began working less than a month after we moved in, was a 6 km ride or 20 minutes drive away. We knew almost no one there too, and it took a long time for me to get to know people at CAJ because I got over there only infrequently.

As I mentioned above, our eldest son had a lot of change during those four years and it wasn't pretty. Getting to and from the kindergarten one kilometre away twice a day wasn't pretty, as I tried to walk at least once a day, but, well, I didn't have the most cooperative kids (and they were heavy, so I didn't try to ride or put them all in one stroller). Parenting wasn't pretty.

This is the place where I learned that I didn't really like teaching English, and none of us liked home schooling. It's where we battled through a singularly nasty gastro bug that took down not just all of us, but David's sister and new husband, all within 36 hours! Where I accepted the gift of a pack of toilet paper from a kindergarten mum who was concerned for us.

But there are many good memories from this time too. My best Japanese friend (who, incidentally, I'd just had coffee with that morning) I met at the kindergarten on our middle son's first day. She's been a gift from God!

During the four years of living here God took me from a place of not knowing why he called me to Japan, to seeing a light at the end of the tunnel (in the shape of writing and editing). This is the house where I started writing this blog.

And of course, we've got good memories of our kids from those four years. This is where two of them learned to ride bikes without trainer wheels. Where my eldest son said, "I love your costume," when I came down in a skirt after a long, cold winter. It's the place where we used to talk about "Guruguru Yama" (round and round mountain), a man-made hill in the nearby former leprosy colony where the local kids would play.

This is where we learnt so much about Japanese culture. And where I learnt more about depending on God when my human resources had petered out.

All these, and more, were the thoughts that I pondered yesterday as I sat and ate my lunch. It was a pleasant journey down memory lane. A thankful time. A time to remember what God has brought us through and how he shaped us for the next part of the journey.

This is a nearby baseball field. We used to go and play here when being inside
got to be too much. It is part of a much larger fenced-area that used to be a leprosy colony.
A few times we played cricket here, sometimes while baseball practise was going on at the
other end of the field, much to the bewilderment of the baseball players!

16 years today

This day, 16 years ago, we walked on Japanese soil for the first time. We came as long-term missionaries and stayed nearly four years before we left for home assignment in Australia. No vision trip or short-term trip beforehand. No mid-term holidays. I think we did it the cheap way, but the hard way! I had very little understanding of what life would be like and it was a struggle, especially because we arrived in the middle of a Sapporo winter which was like nothing we'd ever lived in before (they routinely get five metres of snow each winter and snow is permanently on the ground from November/December to March).

However as I've contemplated today's anniversary, I've had two main thoughts.

Our first Christmas in Japan, only 11 days after we arrived. Those
two boys in high chairs will graduate from CAJ next June!

1. How far we've come!

In just the last two days I've done things I could hardly have imagined 16 years ago. I've independently:

• gotten a hair cut and a massage, 
• ordered a coffee and lunch, 
• driven two hours in Tokyo with a Japanese driver's licence (admittedly along a route I know quite well, but it is not a straightforward route),
• had conversations in Japanese with several service providers and a Japanese teacher at the school, 
• wrote a text in Japanese, and
• caught two trains (admittedly quite local, but I know I can do more than that).

Not to mention both of us contributing as much as we can to mission work in Japan on a daily basis.

2. How little of us still being here is because of us!

I get frustrated when people praise us because we've been here "so long" now. I'm frustrated not because I don't like praise (alas I do), but because we have seen so many people leave the field after being here for less time than they'd hoped for reasons beyond their control. For example illness in the family, learning difficulties with the kids, home church issues, lack of financial support, educational difficulties, relational difficulties, differences of opinion with the mission, even death. 

Any of this could have happened for us. Indeed we've had challenges with our kids and home church issues that could have resulted in us leaving. During our first term one of our sons had health issues that could have sent us back home. I felt so discouraged after our first term that I nearly didn't have the heart to return for another term. We spent nearly two years raising support to get here 16 years ago and we never did get to the 100% that our mission requires, they took a leap of faith and used general funds many times early on to keep us here. Were it not for David's job at CAJ, we probably wouldn't be able to stay, financially-wise.

As we were just before we arrived in Japan (at our
mission's international headquarters in Singapore at
their orientation course).

So the reason we're still here isn't because we're so amazing. Instead we have an amazing God who has sustained us here. He's given us good health (mental and physical), protected us and our kids from serious illness, provided appropriate schooling options, given encouragement and friends, provided suitable work, equipped us with suitable skills to match the work he's given, and more than adequately arranged for all of our needs to be taken care of. He's given us a stable marriage where we work well together as a team and provide the balance we each need. He also created both of us with a strong degree of perseverance and a reluctance to give up that's sustained us through some difficult times.

Okay. I'll get off my soapbox. 

I'm grateful and humbled and thankful to be able to still be a small cog in God's plan in Japan (and Australia).

Tension

My kitchen in Japan. Yes, I miss it!

I received a message from one of my good Japanese friends last night. She asked how life was for us in Australia, whether we felt settled here, and mentioned how she missed our language exchange time.

Among other things, I wrote the below in reply:

Yes, we're fairly well settled. But it's only 5 ½ months till we get back to Japan! Hard to believe how fast it's going.

Sometimes it's hard to be in Australia because we're reminded how easy life is for us here and how much we enjoy life in Australia. Also we're reminded of all the people and experiences we miss when we're in Japan. However, our passion for being a part of getting the gospel to Japan hasn't waned, so no doubt God will provide the motivation to get back to Japan when it is time. We'll be back in early July, Lord willing.

I often feel really torn when we're here. Torn between loving being here (friends, ease of living, climate, language, family etc.) and wanting to be there (friends, a sense of purpose, things specific to Japan like the activities at the school, our stuff, boys happier there etc.).

I imagine it is a tension I'll have to live with for the rest of my life, on one level or another.

Ongoing sadness four years later

This morning I sat in a park with a friend. A park that was under metres of water in Brisbane's flood nearly four years ago. Two months after that disaster we experienced our own disaster in Japan. The fourth largest earthquake ever recorded which caused a tsunami of mammoth proportions.

The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that reached heights of up to 40.5 metres (133 ft) in Miyako in Tōhoku's Iwate Prefecture,^[16][17] and which, in the Sendai area, travelled up to 10 km (6 mi) inland.

There were many differences between the two disasters. 

South East Queensland: Up to 50 people were killed, mostly in areas where flash floods occurred. Most of the floods were expected and most people were able to move out in time.

Damage initially was estimated at around A$1 billion^[3] before it was raised to $2.38 billion (Wiki).

This morning as I sat in the park that had been covered by this flood, I saw zero evidence. Houses that had been flooded were occupied. The park was restored (or reformed, I don't know, I hadn't been there pre-flood).

North-east Honshu: Around 18,000 people were dead or missing as of February this year (Wikipedia). While earthquakes and tsunamis are expected in Japan, this tsunami was unusually large. The tsunamis (yes, there was more than one wave) simply flowed over structures designed to protect communities from inundation by tsunami, so many people were caught unawares.

The World Bank's estimated economic cost was US$235 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster in world history (Wiki).

However, if I were to go today to one of the areas in Japan that were inundated, I'd see much evidence still remaining. Mostly empty foundations: places where people used to live, but no longer do. 

The fourth winter since the giant disaster in north-eastern Japan has arrived and many are still in temporary housing. Not because there isn't enough money, but because the money for reconstruction is tied up in red tape. This article is quite detailed in places, but it reveals the sad reality for many who have been promised homes, but don't yet have them.

Summary of the below: 
Lots of negotiation has been required to get land to build new homes on. It hasn't been easy to find the true owners of property. 

Here is more detailed explanation:

The government’s five-year reconstruction plan was built on unrealistic assumptions, said Yoshikiyo Shimamine, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo. “Given bottlenecks such as labor shortages and material cost rises, and difficulties in getting consensus among residents who are relocated, reconstruction budgets are not something that can be spent within five years,” he said. 

Officials in Ishinomaki, home to 150,000 people, say spending the more than ¥437 billion in reconstruction aid has proven tough. With all of the municipal-owned land having been designated for temporary housing after the tsunami, the city government had to negotiate the purchase of an additional 9,000 plots to build permanent homes, the reconstruction office’s Oka said. That inflated the price of a plot of land in Ishinomaki by 15 percent last year, the biggest jump anywhere in Japan.

Before the city could buy land, it had to track down the legal owners. That proved tedious, said Oka. Officials discovered that in many instances, properties had been passed down without proper inheritance procedures.

A great photo

I just had to share this photo with you. 

This was our son's second pin on Saturday. He achieved this only 2 seconds before the end of the second 3-minute period and the end of the bout.

You can see that the ref (the guy lying down) has his hand in the air and is looking over towards a guy in blue with his hand in the air. There are three refs on each bout and two need to agree to score a point or call a pin. Their hands in the air mean they are agreeing and he is about to slam that hand down on the mat, signalling a pin and the end of the match.

To pin an opponent you have to hold them so that both shoulder blades are touching the mat, that is why the ref is on the ground.

I won't bore you with any more wrestling today, just had to show you this photo. Good photos of wrestling are hard to take, especially by a parent (too emotionally involved), so I'm so happy to have this moment captured. I'm thankful for Isabelle who took this one.

Monday is a the two year anniversary of the giant earthquake

Next Monday is the 2nd year anniversary of the Great Tohoku Disaster (earthquake, tsunami, followed by the nuclear power plant catastrophe). There are a variety of stories surfacing again. It isn't common to find stories involving missionaries in the secular press, but here is one in the Wall Street Journal's "Japan Real Time".

Our local grocery store the week after the disaster (that
was more than 300km away from us).

I've also become aware of a 24 hour prayer event for the disaster affected area (and Japan as a whole) that anyone can join. If you were touched by the event and even the reports on this blog, consider signing up to pray for just a little while on Monday. Check here for details. 

I'm just back from a two-day women in ministry retreat and haven't had as much beauty sleep as I need, so I'm a bit blurry eyed. But I will be posting more about what's happened since the earthquake here next week. Tomorrow I'll let you in on some of the fun and excitement of our women's retreat.

Till then...

Another encounter of the medical kind

Today I ventured into a large inner city hospital. I have a dislike of large Japanese hospitals, mostly due to my experiences with them in my first term (I wrote down some of that here).

I have a niggly knee. It is barely enough to call "pain" most of the time. I'm not limping, but I know that it just isn't quite right. Especially if I walk on rough surfaces or jolt it for some reason (like tripping and landing heavily on it). I've been trying to ignore it, but some colleagues urged me to at least as our OMF Japan medical advisor about it and he advised me to get it seen to, as it is the second time in a year that my knee has caused me concern.

The trouble is, it is only a niggle and there is no reason why, as in, I can't pinpoint an accident that might have caused this. It is hard to describe, even in English, as it isn't consistently painful and I can still do everything I usually do.

All of this heightened my anxiety to stay out of a Japanese doctor's office. But, that is exactly where I ended up today.

And not just our local orthopaedic's office, we've been there a few times with our boys with sprained joints and a hair fractured finger, but a whopping big hospital. Reason being, investigations were likely to lead down the path of an MRI (arrgghhh).

So, we did what foreigners do in Japan when confronted with a medical problem (actually a need for any sort of service, a car problem, need for a hairdresser, a dry cleaner etc.). We asked around. End result: a friend's husband contacted a colleague and got me an appointment with a professor, no less!

Some of our many Japanese patient cards.

So, today I swallowed my fear and strode off downtown on my own. The who-you-know principle was very clearly to my advantage today. The hospital already had me in the system, they had my patient card* and a chart so that meant I could avoid all the initial "set
up" and could cut straight to the chase.

But I'm sure you don't want to know the rest of the story. It is a typical story of the large-institution-in-Japan type. You get shuffled from place to place, carrying various pieces of paper as you go. It reminds me a little of international airports, actually.

I saw the doctor, he sent me to x-ray, they sent me back, he saw me again. He was somewhat puzzled (and probably a little bored by my not-so-dramatic case). The x-ray didn't show anything and my symptoms are hard to describe and not so severe. No surprises there, really. We talked around in circles for a bit (thankfully his English was better than my Japanese), and eventually agreed (I think) to pursue an MRI if my knee is still bothering me in a month.

I survived, minus a few too many yen! But I didn't feel very triumphant. You see I just want this problem to go away. I don't want to struggle to hike with my kids. Heck, I'm not even 40. I want to go back to the gym too. I was grateful to see that there was no sign of osteoarthritis. But whatever the problem is, it's hiding. I don't really want to brave an MRI for such a seemingly small problem, but it seems that might be exactly where I'm headed. And hopefully that will justify my complaint. At present, there is no evidence that this isn't just all in my head.


*I don't think we have the equivalent of this in Australia. Whenever you go to see a medical professional here, you get a card. We've got quite a collection from various hospitals, specialists, dentists, and even a masseur-type professional.

Tragedy anniversaries are heavy

Today, as I look down my RSS blog feed, I see, "Six months on" and "10 years on". Eerily the two anniversaries coincide. Six months since the giant earthquake that triggered a monster tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan. Ten years since the disastrous plane hijacks and deliberate crashes in the US.

Can I add another? Yesterday it was nine months since the flash flood in my hometown and  nine months ago today the Brisbane river began to breech its banks in a sizeable flood.

And another? One week ago a downgraded typhoon was hanging over a portion of Japan, dousing it with well over a metre of rain. Again, lives, property and livelihoods have been lost.

It's been a shocking year. I wish I could write something profound, but I cannot. The loss of life, property, livelihoods, and even the loss of everything except ones own person are tremendous. It is hard to fathom. It is heavy to write about.

Yes, these are but a small handful of tragedies that happen every year. Mostly our news gets filtered to local or sensational concerns. But there are people dying in tragedies every day. Some days less, some days more. Some tragedies attract more media notice than others. Tragedies that affect more affluent countries, for example, attract more press, I think I'm safe to say. Tragedies that happen to famous people and places attract more attention.

If you've been to a place where a tragedy occurs, it hits you harder. If you know someone who's been directly affected by the tragedy, it hits you harder. In March people who had previously never appeared to cared a whit about Japan were suddenly contacting us and our family to enquire about our well-being. Humans are strange creatures.

It is equally hard to fathom that all these tragedies and yet we ourselves are physically untouched. I cannot say we are mentally untouched. It is hard to say how we've been changed, affected or what lingers after seeing these events take place. 

I do think I am somewhat effected by something like compassion fatigue. I found it difficult to take a look at the story about the typhoon last week. I feel a little overwhelmed by disaster stories.

I wondered at the time why I was so lacking in "fun" when we visited Tokyo Disney in July. I wonder if it was a part of this fatigue. As I look back I wonder if it was a feeling that with so many disaster and people suffering out there, why should I be wasting all this money and having a good time in this place. It was a weird day that I didn't particularly enjoy and that I felt guilty about being a part of (even though it was a gift from generous friends).

Well, I've raved on and on. It is hard to gather thoughts on such a day. The weather is even heavy. The humidity in the 80s, the thermometer over 30 and the clouds have hung ominously all day. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

One year anniversary

This is now our bedroom.

Last week I missed an anniversary here. The one year anniversary of moving into this house! We remain so thankful for the convenient location of this house. It is fantastic. It is also just the right size for us. With room for visitors on occasion too!

If you want to, you could look back at a couple of posts around the time we moved in last year here and here. But I've replicated my favourite embarrassing story of the move here:

My first grocery shop was the first day we arrived in our house. Of course - there was absolutely nothing besides our water bottles in our marvellous fridge. Especially nothing for breakfast the next day. Thankfully I'm already fairly familiar with the area and didn't have much trouble finding the shop I wanted. It was not much trouble shopping, either, because it is a smallish shop of a chain that I shopped at two or three times a week for four years, so I know what they stock (very unlike Woolworths or Coles in Australia). There is very little choice of brand, but that is fine - I get through fast!

The trouble came when I got to the cash register and realised that in Japan you pay in cash, not with your plastic card (as I always did for the groceries in Australia). And I only had 7 000 yen on me (less than AU$100. So, red-faced, I explained in a halting-just-returned-from-a-year-without-speaking-Japanese way that I had to go and get some money. He was very kind and held aside the rest of the groceries while I rushed home with what I'd managed to buy and asked my husband for more from his wallet (Japanese ATMs are still too scary for me).

In my rush I had to try and find our house. I got close. Our neighbour's houses all look pretty similar to ours. They're all close to the road, close to each other and have covered garages next to the front doors. With my car blocking half the narrow street, I climbed out and dashed into the most likely door (which was unlocked) - shouting, "David, where's your wallet?" Too late I saw that the entry hall was not jammed with boxes...I left as fast as I could. I still haven't met our neighbour (coming up soon - another Japanese custom we must adhere to). I don't know if anyone heard me or not. I hope not.

Too many embarrassments for one afternoon! It is a good thing that someone brought us some pizza for dinner. 

To this day I don't know whether our elderly neighbours know about that "house invasion". These are the same neighbours who have given us advice about gardening and gutter sweeping. The wife occasionally sweeps our gutters when we don't get around to it fast enough and are always amazed when I have one or more of the boys helping me sweep.

But again, I have to say how thankful we are to be able to live here. We hope we'll be able to live here a lot longer! Just today we had to clear out the top of our china cabinet so that it could be shifted temporarily so that a new air conditioning unit can be installed (to replace a geriatric one). Just the removal of those things threw me back to bad memories of moving. But for now we don't have to think of moving and I am so thankful!

A surprising old "friend"

Our boys' school allows them to each take 25 books home over the summer break. Because my husband teaches there, he also gets 25 books, I guess. Additionally the library is open on a few Mondays in June and July. Yay!!! What better way is there to while away the long summer hours except with a book?

I cannot remember this ever happening at schools I've been associated with in Australia. I guess in Australia you can always borrow books from the local municipal library. (English libraries are a bit rarer here.) And in Australia summer holidays for school children are never as long as 11 weeks.

Two "old friends"

So, we've borrowed quite a lot of books this week. Not up to our 25 limit yet, but we'll get back to the library in the coming weeks and on the last "open Monday" we'll get our limit to tide us over until school starts on the 25th of August.

Amazing - I did these as an Occupational Therapist with some of my clients!

The amazing discoveries on Tuesday were two books that take me back to my childhood. We owned both of these books. The left one, The Lettering Book, I drooled over for years. Now I can see that I was longing for a computer with fonts! Back then I could only lament that my artistic skills didn't allow me to reproduce the amazing fonts, borders and other fancy things it showed us. But the book also talks about page layout, and other creative things that I now use when I do desk-top publishing for newsletters, brochures and other things. Funny to look back and see those "gifts" beginning to surface in primary school.

Love the clothes in these photos!

The other book is one volume of the Childcraft Encyclopedia set, published in the mid 60s! It was one of my favourite go-to volumes in times of boredom. I'm the eldest and I am 4 1/2 years older than my next sibling, so I very often had to play on my own. Mum, of course, hated hearing, "I'm bored" and usually found something "bad" for me to do. So I quickly figured out finding my own fun was much better.

This volume is 300 pages of Things to Do. Crafts, cooking, magic, creative play, theatre etc. So many ideas. When the all the volumes of the encyclopaedia was lined up on the shelf you could see this one was the most frequently used because the little bit at the top of the spine was damaged, because that is how I got it off the shelf.

Well we've borrowed both. The funny thing about the encyclopaedia is that you're generally not allowed to borrow reference books, and this one didn't even have a bar code on it! The librarian said it might as well be used! So she let us borrow it. But to do so, my son had to write his name on the library card - just like I used to do in primary school! He was very confused, never having done that before. She kept the card. You can see that no one has borrowed this book since 1995! However old it is, it contains time-less ideas for ways to spend those long hours of summer. I look forward to seeing my boys get into some project...

Meanwhile I better think up some "bad" things to give them to do when they complain they are bored when they finish school at 12 today!

Today is graduation day

OMF families at the 2006 CAJ graduation.

Well, not my graduation or my kids' graduations, but CAJ seniors' graduation. Including the children of friends and colleagues. My husband taught this class back when they were in Year 8. 

I've only been to one CAJ graduation, and it is interesting to look back on that one two years ago and see my blog reflections before and after that event. 

Tonight will be an emotional evening at the end of an emotional week and months. One senior isn't graduating after his death on Tuesday. A seat will be left for him and I'm sure he'll be mentioned during the formal proceedings.

I'll let you know tomorrow how it all went.

A little something from my past

Karen has a Monday Muppets series going. She's awoken old memories! As a result I've shown the boys some great Muppets clips recently. Last night we introduces the boys to Twiddlebugs last night. Does anyone remember these little guys:

I remember being shocked when we bought our first station wagon back in the late 90s. My only comment was, "We own a family car!!!"

The other shocking detail here is the date on this particular clip!

This day ten years ago we arrived in Japan

Ten years ago today we landed in Japan for the first time.

We started the day very early in Singapore. We'd just attended a compulsory orientation course during November at OMF's International headquarters. The temperature was average - 30 degrees and humid. 

Our first stop was a brief one at Taiwan airport - so brief that all the passengers who were continuing on were kept in one large spartan waiting room. There were no baby change facilities, so I changed the nappy of our 18 month old on the waiting area floor.

Then we took off for Osaka. My first glimpse of Japan was the multiple forested mountains that dominate the country. They looked lush and thick and the mountains seemed to stretch right to the edge of the islands and into the sea. It was an emotional moment, as we'd been headed for Japan for almost two years and there'd been times when we wondered if we'd ever make it.

In Osaka we had time to find dinner, which was a challenge for our toddler. I think we ended up ordering sandwiches - a wonderful cultural beginning. It was in Osaka airport that we first heard the word "Kawaii". It was to become oh so familiar to us. It means "cute" or "adorable" and white babies growing up in Japan are prone to thinking it is their middle name, so often do they hear it in relation to themselves.

Then our connecting flight to Sapporo, our fourth airport for the day. We were getting pretty tired of aeroplanes and entertaining our son on them. His usual style would be to resist strongly against remaining seated for the take-off and then, once allowed, walk constantly around the aeroplane until once again restrained. We met lots of people that day.

When we finally landed, we were greeted with a sea of red and green. The Sapporo airport welcome lounge was filled with Poinsettia. It's not a flower we're used to seeing in Australia, so the sight was quite striking.

We were met by a veteran missionary who escorted us out to the mission van. Before we left the warm building she asked if we had warmer clothing with us. We'd been adding clothes along the journey, figuring the temperatures would be low. But being Queenslanders we didn't quite realise how low that would be. About 40 degrees lower than where we'd started the day. It had been snowing outside. the temperature was below freezing. Well, we pulled out the jackets that we'd packed on top of our suitcases. I don't remember if we had gloves and scarves. I do know that we didn't have snow boots. That was one of our first purchases in the country a couple of days later. sneakers just don't cut it in wet, slippery snow and ice!

Not the first day!

We drove for more than an hour through snowy landscapes to our new tiny apartment.

My first impression when walking into our apartment was, when is it going to open out into the rest of the place? It never did. The ceiling was so low I could touch it. The lounge so small, I could pace from one side to the other in three or four steps. The only bench (counter) space in the kitchen was where the dish drainer sat. And the place to change for the shower was next to the washing machine, which was next to the sink which was next to the microwave and fridge. It was a tiny apartment.

Then our kind welcomer proceeded to tell us how to turn the water off and empty the pipes before we went to bed and other important details. But by this time it was quite late and I could hardly take anything more in. My brain was partially jelly after all the travel that day. But it was true - it was important to turn the water off or it might freeze in the pipes, leading to burst pipes and a great mess. But I was just too tired.

As soon as she left, I crashed - tears and sobs came flooding out. The whole day had been too much.

We quickly huddled into our beds and slept very soundly. The next morning we found ice on the inside of the walls of our room and our son's hands were blue.

That was the 14th of December, 2000 for me.

Another unusual reunion

Here is the story of three couples and their kids. Back in the late 90s all six of us were childless couples, living in Brisbane, attending vastly different churches but applying to be long-term missionaries with OMF International. In January 99 we all attended an OMF Candidates Course in Brisbane (one of the children was a babe-in-arms at that course and I was pregnant). At that course we were all accepted to join OMF. From there we all went on the deputation trail. OMF required we have 100% of our support before we left. The Callows (Jeff and Belinda) and the Himstedts (Daron and Janet) were headed for Thailand and we for Japan, so the amount we needed was vastly different.

Over the next 15 months we did a number of mission related events together. The most extravagant was an imitation aeroplane trip to promote mission. It was huge! So was I...at 38 weeks pregnant!

In March of 2000 the Himstedts left for Thailand and in the middle of the year the Callows took off. That left us. I cried. We didn't know at that point if we'd ever get where we felt God had called us to. We eventually left in November of that year, but were undersupported for most of our term. Actually in retrospect we should have left it until after the northern winter, but that is another story altogether.

The wacky part of this story relates to both our ages and our kid's years-of-birth. For at this time of the year the adults' ages step up one year at a time. Couple by couple. So the Marshalls are the youngest, then the Callows, then the Himstedts. Our kids were all born in consecutive calendar years - every year from 1998 for nine years. Four of the nine were born overseas. And the families took it in turn too. Callows, Marshalls, Himstedts, Callows, Marshalls...you get the picture. We all have three children. The Callows and Marshalls have boys and the Himstedts have girls. Weird, hey?

So, all of us have now served for about 10 years overseas. We've all had our trials and challenges. We've walked in different places (we haven't been to Thailand and they haven't been to Japan, for example), but have so many things in common. The one thing we have not managed to do is live in Brisbane all at the same time. Both the Callows and Himstedts have only just last week come back from Thailand and we've about to leave again. This is the first time since 2000 that we've all been in the same city at the same time.

So much to talk about this morning, it was a pity when the time came to an end. We've all prayed for one another over this last decade and we're all Facebook friends, so we know an awful lot about each other's journey - both from what we read and what we've ourselves experienced. Now we have another memory to add to our collection, plus photos!

From on-site at camp

We're at a Scripture Union summer camp. For grades 6 to 8. It's been over ten years since I last went on such a camp as a leader. Most of my overnighting-in-community experiences since then has been at adult focused events, like missions conferences and church camps. The kid-focused event is quite a different beast. 

Even though I haven't been a fully involved leader (having your young family on camp does that for you as a mum), I feel like I've been constantly on the go and constantly moving from one thing to another. I'm tired! Mid-summer and near the beach, we're spending a lot of time outside and at the beach. I am totally over putting sunscreen on myself and three reluctant boys. The boys are too! 

Apart from that, though, they are having a fantastic time. It is great to see them really involved. I'm glad that we made the effort to come. 

The things you get to do on camp you'd never get to do as a family - like the messy games afternoon. For a couple of hours the campers (and our boys, of course) played games that involved getting food all over them. Like Duck-Duck-Goose, except instead of merely tapping people on the head, you dripped some kind of food on their head - chocolate sauce and molasses, I do believe. 

 Last night we ran an international night. Lots of work, but fun too. Toilet sign game, rock-paper-scissor train, Spanish songs and lots of different food, games, drinks, and other experiences. Late night, though. We didn't get the boys to bed until after 10 and they're tired today. 

 This camping experience (we're not under canvas, by the way), is also such an Aussie experience too. It reminds me of many childhood, teenage and young adult experiences. Positive memories, to be sure. Memory building for our family too. We'll remember this Aussie experience for sometime. We cannot take a lot of luggage back to Japan, but we'll take our memories. 

 The other great thing about being here, is that it is service that is NOT about us. Deputation is full of us running around talking about Japan, our experiences and answering questions about us and Japan. 

Here it hardly matters here that we are missionaries and that we've lived most of the last decade in Japan. Yay! I love it. Well, it's smoko time (morning snack/coffee time) and a coffee might just hit the spot. See ya.

Slipped my mind

I thought of a great little blog post to put here, but was walking the kids to school and now I'm back - it's gone. Maybe I left it at school too? Now off to the gym and the weekly groceries, it may slip back into conscious recall, you never know.

Mowing the lawn

My shocked 4 y.o. has just rushed out of the house to witness an unheard of event in his life. His father is mowing the lawn! Now my husband isn't lazy, quite the opposite. However, in the last 4 1/2 years of our son's life he has not had a lawn to mow. All the grass we had in Tokyo (below) was easily managed with some grass clippers. My pleasure in it (besides not having to push the thing) is the wonderful smell of cut grass. It takes me right back to my childhood!

Another challenging conversation at the gym

Whoa, had a doozy at the gym the other day. Some time ago I was approached by a trainer on behalf of one of their clients interested in doing some English conversation practice because she was going to visit her daughter who was doing a year-long working holiday in Australia. I legitimately claimed I didn't have time, but managed to find someone else who did and passed on their details. I promptly forgot about the incident, but on Good Friday received a flustered phone call from the trainer asking me to come in the next day to receive a present. A bit weird, especially as I'd already been to the gym that day. Anyway, I promised to come in the next day and it turned out to be a chocolate bunny from Australia from that same lady. Well, we enjoyed the bunny and presumed that was the end of it. A week or so later when I was at the gym again, the same trainer whispered in my ear that the giver of the bunny was just across the room. So I rushed on over and did the best "Japanese thank you" complete with bowing. And again put it out of my head. Last Thursday I went to the gym and only a few minutes into the circuit, the lady next to me turned and addressed me by name (that should have clued me in) and asked me where I came from. My standard response slipped out, "Australia." (At which point she could definitely tell that I'd forgotten her face.) She replied, "Yes, but where in Australia?" "Brisbane." "My daughter is coming home next week from a year in Sydney." (That should have rung alarm bells, but it took several minutes longer to clue in.) We engaged in some more small talk about Australia as we progressed through the stations. The thing about Curves is that once start you are next to the same people for the whole 30 minutes. I usually don't end up in long conversations, though. Usually because people don't believe that I can speak Japanese at all, so they don't try. After about five minutes or so it clicked - this is the woman who gave us the bunny and I should say how tasty it was...So I swallowed my pride at the earlier mistake and thanked her again. Then came the tough end of the conversation, she immediately asked, "Why do they have chocolate bunnies? Isn't it usually chocolate eggs? Is any animal okay?" Ho, boy. I don't think I could have answered that question in English let alone Japanese. When I replayed the conversation with my husband, he told me it probably goes back to a pagan festival which fell at the same time as Easter...way back! Maybe it was a good thing I didn't know that. I could just claim ignorance! The other challenge with any conversation for me at Curves in Japanese is that every 30 seconds you have to 'change stations'. So I am alternatively jogging and exerting myself on a machine with loudish music in the background. It is hard to hear and being a little short of breath, hard to talk too. Maintaining a decent thread of conversation is pretty hard at the best of times. The conversation basically petered out. I felt, yet again, a failure as a missionary because of my language. Though I really don't think that it would've been easy to turn such a weird aspect of our culture to an opportunity to explain the real meaning of Easter. The other theme in here, that you might have picked up is my poor memory of the lady's face. Asians do not all look alike, in fact there is tremendous variety in their facial structure and skin, as well as personality and dress taste. However, to us they still look more alike than Westerners do. I think I rely a lot on a person's hair to tell them apart. That just doesn't work very well here in Japan. Unless they have some significant thing about them or I've had repeated contact with them, I often don't remember faces and even less frequently remember names. This can be very embarrassing. I've even had someone bawl me out on this fact! It is probably good practise for coming back to Australia next month. There are many people who know our faces and names better than we know their's. This is also embarrassing and confusing. For our kids too. Many have 'seen' them grow up through our prayer letters, yet our boys can hardly remember anyone from Australia. Our two youngest were 2 yo and 3 months last time we left Australia after our last home assignment after all.