December update from the Marshalls

 Here is a generic version of the first page of our prayer letter that I've sent out this morning (no mention of our boy's names or our address). Let me know if you'd like the full version, complete with family news.

It's still stormy

On Wednesday I rode to my favourite large park and enjoyed some time on my own. I read a book, but then words of my own started breaking into my concentration. So I stopped and put the book down and started to put my own words down. I "wrote" on my little phone screen, so poetry seemed easier than prose. Or maybe it's just lazy prose...

This was part of my view on Wednesday while
I wrote.

What's below is an edited version of what came out in the park.

It's still stormy

Same storm different boat
It's a phrase people are using
About these strange pandemic months.

It makes sense.
Most of us have been stuck at home
Doing things differently to usual
Spending more time with some
And less time with others

But each one has a different household
A different set of griefs, of longings.

I've lost solitude.
I've gained more time with some of my family.
I've lost time with friends.
I've gained space in my schedule to rest.
I've lost a summer visit from a loved one.
I've lost precious farewells with friends.
I've lost more than I've gained.

Every morning I cast myself

In the arms of the God who bears our daily burdens

Lately that’s felt more important than usual
Maybe that will be what I've gained when the storm is over.

Life is usually full of ups and downs

This year they’ve been more intense 

More unpredictable 

More universal 

It’s been odd to go through a global disaster

To experience the same storm here as everyone else

Yet our boats are all different

My boat has two teenage boys and husband

My boat has a tiny backyard, but a beautiful tree

My boat affords little solitude, but it's safe

My emotions have crashed around

From gratitude to grief

From relief to fear

From joy to lethargy

I’ve bounced between 

Action and resignation

Energy and boredom

Feeling free and struggling against confinement

I’ve been disappointed

By myself

And by others

But I’ve also been surprised

By unexpected blessings

I long for things that will never be regained:

time, goodbyes, opportunities.

And some that will be regained, but will take time:

freedom to travel, to go outside without my face covered.
For a life free from the fear of other people's germs.

Same storm. Different boat.
I long to be through the storm.
To be reflecting on this from a distance.
But the clouds haven't cleared yet.

So I'll continue to daily
Cast my burdens on the Lord
The one who promised rest for our souls.

Living with the tension of not understanding why

I finally got myself back to the gym this morning. Ever since my husband was in hospital in the latter half of November (followed by family holidays and school holidays), I haven't really caught up on work. And if I'm behind on work, I find it hard to justify the time it takes to go to the gym. Anyway, after five straight work-days at my desk (with just grocery shopping to interrupt my computer time), I'm feeling like I'm not paddling so desperately anymore. It's a nice feeling! 

The gym is a good place to think and process and I spent time thinking over the recent weeks and what I might write here this week.

So, after three weeks of very lazy holidays, our family got whiplash on the 6th when we went back to school and work. Work that I had put to one side over the break suddenly overwhelmed and I paddled with fervour. Those first ten days after getting back came with two big deadlines: 

1. The prayer booklet for Japan that I'm working with. From mid-November I was responsible for liaising with authors, acquiring content, and doing the initial edits. that was all due in my first week back.
2. Last Wednesday morning I taught about writing and social media at our mission's annual pre-home assignment workshop. It was a first for me to stand up in front of a mission workshop like this as "the expert" and it took both time to prepare for, and time to recover from!

In the latter part of last week it was a relief to have those two things over, and be able to concentrate on my more regular work (although #1 is by no means over, I've got more to do there, but I did [mostly] meet that particular deadline).

As I reflected on these weeks this morning, while working the machines, the undercurrent of grief that flows ever stronger, the older I get, worked its way closer to the surface. I've had to ignore it to meet my deadlines and get my work done, but on reflection, there's a lot of "brokenness" going on around me.

Australia's disasters
I think I may have offended some non-Australians recently when they've asked me about my country's state. As much as I love social media, it is capable of spreading misinformation and ugliness quickly. Most of the rest of the world has been under the impression that the majority of Australia is burning. Unfortunately, the fires are a more dramatic story than the devastating drought that my country's been labouring under for years now. And, yes, the fires are of enormous magnitude, but no, the majority of Australia is not on fire.

I hate the blame-casting. Of course, everyone who talks to us about it wants to know why the fires have been so bad this year (Australia has fires most summers). But so far as I can see there is no easy answer to this question. There are many factors that have tragically combined to produce this disaster. (Please note that I really don't want to have a discussion on this on social media and will delete comments on this post that are to that effect.)

Once again it hurts to be watching from a distance as our loved ones suffer. Though I am very thankful that none of my family or close friends have lost their houses or lives, my heart goes out to those who have. The air quality of our beautiful land has been difficult for many millions. And again, the suffering brought on by the drought is hard to comprehend, but our farmers, in particular, are doing it really tough.

Personal disasters
And then there's family and friends who are suffering just now, apart from the national disaster: watching a child die from cancer, trying to find a way through this year as a marriage dies, and dealing with the false accusations and old-boy-style of working in a new job. Just a few of the currents that are running under the surface of my life at present.

I'm trying to compartmentalise: seeking to enjoy the blessings God brings into my life (thanking him for clean air to breathe, for example) while at the same time holding the pain of my friends (which is also my own to a certain degree).

Yesterday I listened to an English sermon while I ate lunch and did other household tasks. It was specifically about what God thinks about the fires in Australia. It pointed us back to the fact that this world is broken and groaning and nothing is going to fix it before Jesus comes back. The preacher compelled us to be compassionate and do what we can for those who are hurting, but also to fix our eyes on Jesus. To put full trust in him alone, because no other can save us in the long run. 

We can put the fires out, but will still die of some other cause later. We can follow God's lead to a new job, and find that the rug has been pulled from underneath us before we even arrived. We can be as good as we possibly can, but still have the person we pledged to love forever turn their back on us. We can devote our lives to serving others, only to have cancer take our lives.

God's most extensive answer to someone who asked "Why?" that is recorded in the Bible is in Job. If you read through chapters 38 to 41, you quickly have your breath taken away. God didn't answer Job's question about why he suffered so greatly, but rather revealed to Job the vast chasm of difference between his knowledge and power and God's. Afterall what human can answer the question: "Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, 'Here we are'?" (38:35 NIV).

And again in Isaiah 40 God speaks to his people, people who are in a world of pain: exiled, crushed, and without hope. He points to his great power and wisdom, "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?" (v12 NIV).

So, I'm pointed back to God, who says:

"We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perpelxed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destoryed... 

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Cor. 4:8, 9, 18 NIV).

For me, now, today, that means continuing to trust God no matter what comes across my path. I don't understand and don't want, the pain, grief, or strife. But I won't turn my back on God, whose understanding far surpasses mine. For the time being, we all have to live with the tension of not-understanding: just like we do when we watch a movie that doesn't lay out all the pieces at the start.

Excerpts from our April newsletter

Excerpts from our April prayer letter. Again, if you'd like the full version (which includes eight photos), please message or email me.

The beach where we camped last week.

End of an Era

This month marks a historic occasion in Japan. After 31 years, Japan’s 85-year-old emperor is stepping aside to allow his 59-year-old son Crown Prince Naruhito to take the throne. This is the first time in over 200 years (the last time was 1817).

In an address to the nation two years ago, Emperor Akihito said, “When I consider that my fitness level is gradually declining, I am worried that it may become difficult for me to carry out my duties as the symbol of the State with my whole being as I have done until now.” 

The role of the emperor in Japan is entirely representative and ceremonial, with no political power at all. However, he is held with a great deal of respect by the nation. Before WW2 the emperor was held to be divine, but the current constitution, written under Allied occupation, prohibited that practise.

The traditional Japanese calendar is tied to the reign period of the current emperor. Each time a new emperor begins to rule, a new counting of the years begins and the period acquires a new name. For example, 2019 has begun as Heisei 31, meaning the 31st year of the Heisei era. The new era will begin on May 1, and the name for that era, usually announced after the death of the emperor, was announced today: Reiwa.

A public holiday has been declared to celebrate the new emperor’s ascension. That means that there will be 10 public holidays in a row, as it’s in the middle of a collection of holidays dubbed “Golden week”. CAJ doesn’t take most of these, but services like doctors, gyms, and  the garbage collectors will take a number of them.

OMF Japan’s social media this month will focus on the changes that have happened in Japan over the last 31 years in relation to culture and mission work. It will be an illuminating journey. We’d love you to drop by our Facebook and Instragram pages and learn more about this fascinating country. 

Welcoming new people

We have many new students arriving at CAJ in the first week of April: 22 of them! That means that our community will be hard at work helping them to get used to way we do things. However, it will be a challenge, as we are only 11 weeks away from the end of the school year!

Why so many right now? Most of these families have waited until their children have finished their current year in Japanese schools—which start in April and finish in March. (For those teachers out there, that means only a two-week break between school years. It has pros and cons, but seems to work here. Their longer break is in August, at the height of summer.)

For younger students, it will be a time of getting to know their classmates, rather than trying to catch up on the work that the others have done. CAJ teachers try to only give them marks based on what they have done here. For older students, there will be an added burden of catching up small things here and there, usually a maths topic.

Please pray that our school community would welcome the new students and that they would find friends quickly. Pray, too, for their parents to get to know other parents and ask for help when they need it. 

Some prayer points:

• Continue to pray for new financial support pledges and one-off donations that add up to 100% support each month. Praise that thus far in 2019 we've received 105% of our support needs.
• For rest. We're feeling weary. David's had three colds since we returned and Wendy's struggled with stress-related symptoms.
• For the right person to be appointed high school principal of CAJ.
• For our Japanese church—that they will grow in enthusiasm for missions and for wisdom for the leaders encouraging involvement.
• Pray for new students (22) at CAJ in April.
• Praise for our camping trip and a week off school at the end of March.
• For our youngest boy as he celebrates another birthday this month.

Latest newsletter

I've started many blog posts in my head recently, but simply haven't had the time (or if I've had the time, haven't had the energy) to complete one. But I can share our very early January newsletter with you, shared this early so that we can let people know about our Commissioning service on the first Sunday of 2019.  What a great way to start the new year! But also let people know a bit more about our movements in the coming weeks. 

Here's a screenshot. If you want a better version, drop me an email or message. If you don't have an address for me, use this: wendymarshall04 at gmail dot com

Another (exciting) piece of the puzzle

In the ongoing saga of transitioning our eldest son to the next stage of his life, we've had unexpected news. 

Good news. Unexpected, because it's come about two months earlier than we thought it would. But very good news.

On Friday night, while I was cleaning my teeth, my husband called out in a curiously upbeat voice, "[Our eldest son] has got a letter."

I knew he'd not gotten snail mail that day, so at 10pm, how could he have gotten a letter? I poked my nose into our bedroom where my husband was folding clothes and raised my eyebrows (my mouth occupied by a toothbrush). He pointed to the big boys' bedroom next door.

I poked my nose in there and couldn't see anything, because our son's desk is tucked away behind a bookshelf. So I went all the way in to where my son was staring at his computer. He pointed at the screen. There, I could see an official letter from the University of Queensland that said something along the lines of, "we are offering you a place in the course Bachelor of Mathematics and Science."

"Wow!" I spluttered, barely keeping the toothpaste inside my mouth. "That's amazing! Congratulations!!!" And I high fived him.

Our middle son was wandering around saying, "Mum's in my bedroom cleaning her teeth?!?"

Our eldest son said the understatement of the month, "You seem excited mum."

It was his first choice and one that we wondered if his score would be high enough to get. Not to mention that we weren't even waiting for such a thing at this time.

For years we've been wondering, and answering questions from other people wondering, about how easy it would be to get an Australian child from an American-style school in Japan admitted into an Australian university. It all seemed too easy in the end, though. It hasn't cost us much time at all and gone very smoothly. I kept waiting for the hitch.

But it seems he is now accepted into university (a double degree with a high entry mark at a university ranked in the top 50 in the world, 4th in Australia, no less, oh and our alma mater too). And it's getting real.

I guess soon we'll have to make it even more real and spend some money to buy tickets to take him to Brisbane in February (school year starts in the third week).

More news on dual citizenship in Japan

Today a follow-up article on dual citizenship appeared in the news as the Japanese politician I mentioned the other day admitted that she did indeed still have her Taiwanese citizenship. 

The law is that you are supposed to choose by the age of 22 and if you choose your Japanese citizenship you can't keep your other citizenship. Apparently, though, (and we have heard this) it is common to just not say anything about the other citizenship and it's fine. In 31 years of having this rule, there have been no penalties awarded (i.e. removal of Japanese citizenship).

But this is a real issue for many people we know. In CAJ's school profile it lists the number of nationalities as 35, with 34% of the student body (464 students) as having dual passports. Not all of these are Japanese-non Japanese families but a high percentage are.

Here is a telling portion of the article:

Accepting it [dual nationality] officially would be very difficult politically, as Kono [a politician who tried to introduce legislation allowing dual nationality] found out in 2008, and touch on lots of sensitive issues related to nationality identity. It is pretty much politically taboo at this time.

This isn't just an issue being discussed in Japan. As you know, globalisation is happening around the world:

Since 1960, the number of countries where citizenship is automatically lost after an individual chooses to acquire another nationality has halved to around 60 — or 30 percent of the nations on Earth — according to a recent Mexican study. At the same time, the number of dual citizens has risen dramatically in countries that collect data on this issue, on average doubling in the decade or so between censuses. 

Buying confusion

We aren't avid news watchers/readers. Not in Japan or in Australia. In fact most news we see these days comes via Facebook or email or blog threads (for example I get an email with news headlines from Brisbane's main newspaper but don't often close CAJ on them).

So I admit we're not necessarily up to date with what's going on. Frequently we look on as distant observers in confusion or amusement or with lack of interest. After all most has no daily relevance to us. 

I did "buy Australian" today, at least one of my grocery items. Rare Australian
seedless grapes. Usually the only affordable grapes we can buy are small
Delaware grapes, not the big juice seedless ones that are staple for many
months in Australia.

I have to admit that our experience with the media during Japan's triple disaster five years ago only added to my cynicism about the factuality of the news we see. And with the advent of so much news on the internet, many news sites have resorted to the tactic of exaggerating or pretty much lying about the content of the piece, just to get people to click on the link to the article.

One particular theme of news gives me mixed feelings, that is "what should responsible shoppers buy"?

The Australian press tells us many things (some of which change over time):

• buy certain brands
• buy Australian
• don't buy clothes made in Bangladesh/Vietnam etc.
• buy preservative-free
• buy local
• buy gluten-free
• buy artificial-colour-free
• don't buy MSG
• don't buy chemicals (this one gets my goat)
• only buy stuff that "remembers" where it came from
• don't buy food from Vietnam/China/Thailand etc.
• buy low-fat, don't buy low-fat
• buy margarine not butter, buy butter not margarine
• buy Fair Trade
• buy Halal/don't buy Halal
• buy low-sodium, don't...

etc.

The list goes on and on and it is thoroughly confusing. Even more so for someone who doesn't even live in the country. 

In Japan the labels are nowhere near as clear (even if I could read Japanese well). Labelling standards aren't so strict. Additionally choices for me are more limited, especially if I'm buying Western-style ingredients. Stores tend to be smaller (at least the ones where I shop are) than the giant grocery stores in Australia and other Western nations, so, for example, there are only two types of margarine in my regular shop. Buying butter has become unaffordable, so I generally don't except for special baking.

As for "buying Australian", well that's pretty difficult here, understandably. In fact Japanese are similarly urged to buy Japanese. I have particularly mixed feelings when I see "don't buy certain brands because they come from such and such a place where there's poor standards". I don't really know where most of my food comes from. 

When it comes down to it I buy what I can find for a reasonable price. As for health, our family is pretty healthy. We have no allergies or food sensitivities. So I don't pay much attention to the current trends in "what good or not good" food-wise because what we've been doing up till now seems to work. All of us are within good limits for weight etc. All the food fads in Australia just don't hit here at the same time, or never hit here, so I don't bother entertaining them.

As for the current discussion about "don't buy Coles or Woolworths cheap milk" debate. That's understandably an issue that seems a long way away from us. What shocks me, though, is that once again it seems as though we've been told a lie. This ABC documentary tells us that it doesn't matter which milk we buy, the dairy farmers get the same price? And once again, the news stories we've seen are incorrect, a whole lot of hype that's raised the issue of what our farmers are paid but not enabled consumers to do much about it.

The whole thing is difficult. What does a conscientious person do? A conscientious person who lives on a somewhat-tight budget?

I want quality food and clothes. But I also don't want to blow my budget paying for them. The way things stand, it doesn't seem clear that even if I pay more for my good and clothing that it goes to the right place. So what do I do?

This has been a bit of a rant and a rave. Can you see how being overseas  gives us a different slant on the news?

Frequently we also don't know what will be important to know or not to know when we get back to Australia. 

Will it be important to pay attention to the news on politics? I don't know, I tend not to, it is not in my face. I will not be voting (we've excused ourselves off the electoral role because we live overseas and it's harder to be up-to-date on what's the right local choice).

Even if there's important news that will impact our lives when we get back to Australia, we frequently don't pick up on that until later. Like the changeover of Brisbane trains from tickets to Go Cards. It wasn't till we got back that we realised it had happened and was important to figure out how and where to buy the cards, how to recharge them, then how to use them.

Ah, not a super cohesive post, but I hope it is somewhat understandable.

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.

Kids Musings June 2014

I've just sent out our quarterly Kids newsletter. I've taken out personal information and post it below for your interest/enjoyment. Please pass this on to anyone you think may enjoy it or be able to use it. If you'd like a larger version, please contact me as per my email address to the right of this post.

Shocked and sickened!

Last night I was shocked to see a news report on Japanese TV that talked of the discovery of 1,699 disabled people who'd been abused in Japan in the last 6 months.

Here is an excerpt from this newspaper article:

The health ministry has confirmed that more than 1,500 disabled people were abused, most of them by relatives, in the six months through March this year.

Local governments nationwide received reports or were consulted over a total of 4,502 cases of allged abuse against disabled people in the six months after a law to prevent abuse of the disabled came into effect in October last year. Of this number, abuse was confirmed to have occurred in 1,524 cases involving 1,699 victims, according to the first such survey ever conducted by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

The survey found that more than 80 percent of the 1,524 cases involved abuse by relatives of the disabled people. Three victims died as a result of the abuse they suffered.

The TV report included more detailed information about one of the care homes that has been found guilty. They gave an example of a man in his 70s who'd come to live in the home after receiving a head injury 10 years ago. Since he'd been in the the home, it was recorded that he's had 70 injuries, three of which were broken bones. The report went on to quote care givers who said things like,

"We hit them to get them to finish their food faster. There were others waiting for it. It worked the first time, so we kept doing it." 

"He refused to get out of bed, so he was punched." 

"We all had our own threshold of acceptable violence." 

"Some patients were found to have been abused daily."

I felt sick! I know that in Japan these caregivers are frequently poorly paid and trained, and there is a high turn-over. But behaviour like this is abysmal. I find it hard to find the words to describe how evil it is to treat other human beings with such a lack of compassion and dignity.

I also know that this is a world-wide problem. I don't want to be judgmental, because I've worked a bit in this field and know it can be extremely frustrating and exhausting. Care givers endure a lot and suffer a lot of stress. BUT these people with disabilities often have no voice to complain. We need to be their advocates.

I'm glad that the laws have changed in Japan and this area is being exposed. I'm also glad to discover that Australia currently has a National project on abuse and neglect of People with Disability takes shape-5 August 2013.

Passionate about kids and mission

Four times a year I put together a newsletter for kids about Japan, I've been doing this for over 10 years now. It started as a desire to reach out to the children of our supporters. I was given a passion for mission as a child and I wanted to provide a tool for our supporters to do the same for their kids. You can see I've been interested in publishing as a communication tool for quite a while now!

Here is the "Kid's Musings" I've done this week (with a slight modification taking our address and names out of it). The theme I'm using this year is seasons. If you'd like a better quality version, just send me an email.

International News

Over the weekend we learned various big international news, including the result from Australia's national election: a new ruling party and prime minister. How that all pans out, we'll just wait and see.

The moment of victory for our son earlier in the year.

Of more interest to our boys was the news that Tokyo would host the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. Additionally, this morning we heard that the IOC has said that wrestling can remain an Olympic sport (for now). This is a reversal of what we'd heard several months ago. And there was great rejoicing in the wrestling circles! There's a short video of the announcement in this article that shows the excitement of the wrestling contingent when they announced the decision.

We're only new fans of the sport (and we haven't seen much of it really), but we're excited.

There is one negative point I hadn't considered about the Tokyo Olympic announcement, it was mentioned by a Facebook friend: that for the IOC to reject Istanbul was a missed opportunity:

I believe the Olympic movement just turned their back on a wonderful opportunity to build a bridge of trust to the Muslim world and the Middle East region. Confirmation that their ideals no longer embrace peace and brotherhood through sport, rather they embrace the filthy lucre.

Only God knows where we'll be in 2020. As I tried to explain in my halting Japanese this morning, God hasn't given us an end-date for serving in Japan. So, unless He gives us direction otherwise, we'll still be here in 2020, with two boys in high school. It's going to look a bit different to how our household looks now. I'll probably be the shortest in the family again. We'll probably also have a son in university. Wow!

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...

Regular news update on us

Today I sent out our monthly prayer/newsletter. If you're interested in checking it out, please email me at wendymarshall04 at gmail dot com.

Four interesting stories in the Japanese news

I've read some interesting Japanese stories this week, so I thought I'd share them with you (don't worry, they're in English). You may have seen them, I often don't know what makes it into international news.


Firstly, a man on the police's most wanted list gave himself up on New Year's Eve, only minutes before the new year. The funny thing about the story is that he tried several times to do it, one policeman he went to refused to believe his story and sent him to another police box (yes, that is what they are called, and rightly so, they are tiny, local police stations) down the road. He was a part of that cult that gas bombed Tokyo's subway nearly 17 years ago. A very serious offence, but who would guess that he would give himself up? Here's the story. His reason for giving himself up was that the March 11 disaster: “Many senseless scenes from the massive earthquake in the Tohoku region made me question my own situation. I wanted to turn myself in by the end of 2011."


A second story is about a tuna fish. The story is here. A 269kg tuna fish caught in Japan's waters sold for the record price of US$736,700. Making it the world's most expensive tuna. The story is particularly noteworthy, because a sushi chain in Japan bought it, in the previous couple of years it has gone overseas. I don't fully understand the "it" in this, but nevertheless, the owner of the restaurant chain said, “Rather than having it taken away overseas, I wish for Japanese people to eat good tuna together. Despite the March 11 earthquake and the sluggish economy I want to lift up Japan’s spirits urging people to work hard together.”


Third story: no free flights to Japan. It was a story in October that Japan's tourist agency floated an idea that they would offer 10,000 free flights to boost flagging tourist interest in the  country. Unfortunately that wasn't approved in the budget. Full story here.


The fourth story also involved money and reveals a Japanese tradition that you might not know about. A bit like Black Friday sales (day after Thanksgiving in the US) and Boxing Day sales in Australia, they have New Year shopping here. But the big thing are bags. Like lucky-dip bags crossed with show bags. You don't know exactly what is in them, but they are supposed to be a great bargain. Here is a story that opened my eyes as to how extravagant these "bags" can be. Here are the last two paragraphs of that story:

At Seibu Ikebukuro department store in Tokyo's Toshima Ward, about 20,000 shoppers formed a line. Among the top selling lucky bags at the store was one with candy and other items, which sold for 1,000 to 3,000 yen.

Hankyu Men's Tokyo in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, a menswear store, offered a Mercedes-Benz sports car lucky bag, along with the privilege to drive the car on a racetrack, for 24.9 million yen. About 10 people applied for the special lucky bag, which was available to just one person.

20,000 people in a line! Us, being the great shoppers that we are NOT, have never tried out this particularly Japanese tradition. It could be a long time before we do.

Sending out the news

It's one of my monthly jobs - today I'm sending out our latest news/prayer letter.

This is a bad image. If you don't receive the real "Marshall Musings" and would like to, let me know.

I don't know what to do

As we went to bed last night the loudspeakers that exist in every locality in Japan spluttered to life and announced we were to experience planned power outages today, starting at 6.20am this morning. The plan, apparently, for our locality is power out from 6.20-10am and 4.50-8.30pm, perhaps up until the end of April. But then when we woke up a bit after 6, we waited - and it didn't happen. Different rumours are going around about when or if it is going to happen at all. It seems as though they couldn't get organised in time or they changed their minds about this morning. We're used to reliable, trustworthy Japanese - if they say something will happen, it does. So this current situation is very unsettling.

Also the boys are home from school. With mixed messages about electricity comes uncertainty about train schedules and whether many students could get to school. So instead they've made it a student-free day. Teachers are debriefing and planning for the future. What will it look like? Will the boys be home all week?

It seems there HAS been panic buying in the shops, which makes me uneasy about going. I think mainly because I don't want to leave the boys here alone in the house for an indefinite period while I wait in long lines. I think I'll make do with whatever we have. After all many in Japan are in a far worse state! I'm glad we can get everywhere locally on foot or on a bike and don't need petrol - as that is in short supply too. Thankful that I made a couple of loaves of bread over the weekend - as that is missing in the shops too.

Planning is hard too. Will we have power this evening? I can make do without power if I have gas - we have an elderly gas stove which will do just fine, but will we have gas? And I can't just go out in our tiny backyard and light a fire - that is illegal. Wow, how we rely on electricity in this country!

Then I wonder what to do with my "now" time. All the lists of things I have on my to-do lists don't seem all that important now...

Another update from Tokyo

At church this morning, there was a definite feeling of shock and of needing to talk about our experiences. Actually it was hard to have a group conversation because everyone had something to say, to add to the conversation. Listening patiently was hard (even harder than usual, in my case!). All the missionaries are experiencing a great deal of email/internet/phone action from overseas. We ourselves have received more than 100 emails pertaining to the earthquakes and tsunamis. It is rather overwhelming. It's been overwhelming to our relatives too - as others have phoned them asking for news. I'm just glad we were able to give them good news to pass on.

One missionary friend was woken this morning with a phone call from her mother-in-law who was panicking about a nuclear disaster. It was a bad start to the morning!

One of my regular jobs is to answer emails from the OMF Japan website - it too has received a number of emails in the last few days with various queries and offers of help. The most touching are those from supporters of OMF missionaries in Sendai. The missionaries there have no power and no much internet, so it has been hard for them to get out information about their well being. However, we now know that they are all safe and well.

Aftershocks continue to strike, one happened during church, and sometimes we feel like something is shaking, when it isn't really. This especially seems to happen when lying down. That is unsettling.

There is conflicting reports about the nuclear power plants. It is easier to try to ignore the various reports. Many rumours are flying around - how many are true, we don't know. What we do know is that the power plant is more than 250 kilometres away and so we are in no immediate danger. 

However we haven't seen any panic buying in the shops here in Tokyo. The only thing that seems to be largely missing from the shelves is batteries - we've been warned that we might have power blackouts. Last night we didn't have any, but things don't seem to have gotten any better at the power plants, so that is still a possibility. So, we have torches and candles and lots of blankets ready. It is winter - something Aussies might not remember. Temperatures up north are cold enough for snow to fall immediately after the earthquake on Friday. Many people have no power or gas, so many are cold.

Just down the road a meeting is happening right now. It is the CRASH group I posted about here. They are planning strategy for the coming weeks and months. They are not planning to go in and do immediate rescue missions, it is more about helping recovery and getting the region back on its feet. They will especially be looking at the less "dramatic" areas - the areas where the media doesn't get to. We saw that in the Brisbane disaster - there was much assistance in some areas, but other less accessible areas were ignored.

Here is what one mission leader wrote on Facebook:

Immediate relief and rescue efforts are being done by trained professionals. CRASH Japan will be spending the next few weeks organizing task forces and committees to handle finances, communications, work teams, etc., and will primarily be involved in secondary response and service throughout the Tohoku area (the north-east of the island of Honshu).

We're feeling like we have a ministry of "presence". Though we are neither victims nor able to go to those who are affected, we, by merely being in Japan, have raised the awareness of this disaster by being here. Because those who know us or who know people who know us are praying for this nation right now and paying closer attention to the news. That is amazing.

Soon I'll have dinner to prepare and boys to bathe and put to bed. We're not sure if there is school tomorrow, but we should know soon. UPDATE: From the headmaster: "Most international schools that are more reliant on public transportation and run the risk of having students stranded are closing." Therefore no school for the kids tomorrow. David still has to be at work.

Otherwise life is going on pretty much as per normal. We're a bit extra tired from the emotional shock, but otherwise okay. Our eldest son is exhausted - the emotional ups and downs of the earthquake - the retreat is off, then on again and delayed, then modified, then off and modified again - it has been a hard thing for him to take. We've had to order him to rest on bed a few times.

I'm sorry if you've emailed and we haven't replied personally, it hasn't been possible to reply to each one - so great has people's concern been. Please know that we've read your mail and are thankful for your concern and prayers.

Capricornia - a new state in Australia?

This is an intriguing blog post. It reports that on Sunday Britains' Daily Mail published a story on the floods in Queensland. Trouble is, it included a map that marked Capricornia as a state of Australia! But it isn't - at least no one in Australia knows about it.

Queensland is the bright yellow state in this map. The Daily Mail split Queensland in two horizontally and made the top half into Capricornia!