This last week before HA

 This week is all about getting as much of our regular work finished as far ahead as possible. I've been doing these things this week:

• The final stages of the Summer magazine: answering questions from our designer, checking proofreading of individual articles, and hopefully before next Wednesday we'll be looking at proofreading the whole magazine (the last step before going to print).
• Deciding things about the writer's retreat I'm running in October so that I can get a save-the-date email out this month. (Exciting!)
• Writing two articles for the Autumn issue of the magazine (due end of May).
• Writing and editing OMF Japan social media posts for the coming months.
• Starting to think about the OMF Japan field conference (June 2027): I'm part of the organising work group.
• Doing the admin necessary for the editing stage of the Autumn issue: so editors and fact checkers know what articles they are responsible for and due dates.

I am starting to think about what clothes I'll pack in my suitcase...11 weeks is not a short time, but neither is it a long time. Thankfully most people will only see us a couple of times, so it doesn't matter if I don't have a lot of variation in my suitcase.

I've also been juggling my schedule to try to fit in various things in these last days: drop off my plants at a friend's house, get my hair cut, practise the piano for Sunday, drop our keys off with colleagues, and a couple of last-minute additions of conference working group meetings. And a couple of not essentials, but nice to fit them in because I have time: time for writing another chapter of my book and time to ride to the park. It's actually pretty chill, quite a bit more so than when we've done this in the past with children!

And then I ran out of time to write this because the the "whole-mag proof" landed and I'm deep into proofreading again...

Getting close to leaving for our 6th home assignment

Three years ago I wrote a six-article series for OMF US about home assignments, particularly about all the preparation that goes into one.* When I was finished with that project, I realised I'd written 4,500 words! I didn't realise I had so much to say on the topic, but clearly I did.

I think this is the actual plane that took
us back to Australia for our first home 
assignment, the first and last time we travelled
with just our eldest two kids between Japan
and Australia (our youngest was born during
our first home assignment).

We're now two weeks out from our sixth home assignment and I have to acknowledge that this is something I know a fair bit about. We've spent 4 ½ years of the last 25 ½ years actually "doing" home assignment. We've spent at least that much time again "planning for" home assignments. That's about a third of our missionary service and a good chunk of our adult lives!

We're now staring down the barrel of 13 more sleeps before we fly to Australia for an intense nine weeks of speaking at gatherings and meeting people (plus two weeks of holidays in the middle). 

Back in February, I wrote about why we've decided to do a much short home assignment this time.The preparation phase certainly been a lot less intense and also shorter, a good portion of that is due to not having any kids at home anymore, but it's also due to the shorter length of our absence from Japan—because we won't be away all that long, we've not really had to hand our jobs over to anyone and we're not having to move out of our house or organise a rental in Australia. As a result, it feels a lot more like a short visit to Australia, than a home assignment like we've known in the past. 

In the past, as we've crept closer to leaving for home assignment, my body has shown indications: especially infections, poor sleep, and headaches. Not to mention a skittishness that comes with having to split one's attention between two different locations—finishing here and thinking about landing there. Up until this week I've had none of that. Because it still feels like a "short visit" rather than a "home assignment" I've been a little surprised this week at how my body is giving me small hints that a change is coming. I've been struggling a little with sleep and also the ability to concentrate on harder tasks. Hopefully it won't become a major issue and I'll be able to continue with working through next week because there's plenty to do at the moment.

Today I had meetings pertaining to the two main ministries I'm involved in (Japan Harvest magazine and OMF Japan social media) and both involved planning for the coming months. Naturally I want to get as much as I can done before we pack our bags and leave for Australia on the 20th. I'll still have work on both of these ministries to do while we're in Australia, but I'm hoping it will not be too much. Most of the 20+ "events" that we will be present at will be on weekends or evenings, so we're planning for downtime during the week. 

It's going to be another home assignment like we've never done before (just like our last one). I called it an experiment in our most recent news/prayer letter...one that we will reflect on when we get back in August and decide what we'll do next time!

* You can find links to them all here: https://omf.org/us/what-home-assignment-means-for-a-missionary-part-6/

Home assignment prep: help needed

These last couple of weeks have been much more pedestrian than our Spring Break adventure. It's been time to start facing up to the reality that we leave for home assignment in just seven weeks!

This short home assignment is much easier to execute, for that I'm really thankful. Most of the "easy" stuff has been organised:

I need to keep finding ways to share the
gorgeous spring blossoms that surround us :D
This riverside plum tree was visible from
our lounge room a couple of weeks ago.

✓ Get permission from relevant line managers.

✓ Buy plane tickets.

✓ Organise accommodation and transport in Australia.

✓ Set up meeting times.

✓ Organise some holiday time and time with family.

✓ Get people to look after our plants and our apartment while we're gone.

But these tasks remain:

☐ Write talks for the 16+ public speaking engagements we've got organised.

☐ Organise our stories under a cohesive theme that we can present together.

Many of our stories can be used multiple times, but in at least three churches we'll have two opportunities to speak that will potentially include overlaps in people hearing us speak...so a bit of variety is desirable.

I have to admit to feeling a little bit dull about it all. This is the sixth time we've done this and there is little new under the sun that we can say. Our jobs haven't changed significantly. And we're in support ministries, which are hard to talk about. We don't have many (any?) dramatic stories. What on earth are we going to say that isn't going to bore people to tears?

I've come up with a couple of things today. But I'm interested in any ideas from you. What would you like to hear if we were visiting your church or small group?

Transition reflections

We are inching closer and closer to home assignment. It's less than five weeks till we fly out of Japan and while I know there is a lot yet to be done, I'm also getting impatient for it all to be over! I feel a bit overwhelmed by all the anticipation! 

This week I've been slowed up considerably by the miserable cold I mentioned last post, complicated as usual by my chronic asthma. I've gotten a lot less done than I'd expected, but nonetheless, I don't appear to be terribly behind, which is a great relief.

Yesterday morning I had my last "handover" planning meeting. Gradually the puzzle that I've been working on is being solved. The question that's been heavily on my mind for months now was how I was going to take leave from my various roles in Japan for 12 months without having those ministries collapse (not because I'm indispensable, but because I have been a key leader of both my main ministry teams). 

The goal I've been working towards is officially finishing most of my roles next Friday. After that we have our OMF field conference for a week in Hokkaido and then three and a half weeks to pack up our house, pack our bags, move, go to final medical appointments, say farewells, dispose of stuff, and hop on an aeroplane.

Forgive my unbelief

One of the stresses of moves like this one are all the unknowns compounded by many, many decisions. Most of the unknowns for us now are problems to be solved in Australia: like where we're going to live and how we're going to get around. 

We sent out our June prayer letter this week and in that we made an appeal to borrow furniture. We don't know where we'll live, but chances are that it will be unfurnished. We have only a very small amount stored in Australia and almost none of that is furniture, so each time we've got back for home assignment, we've asked our network to help us out. They've never failed in 20 years and I can't remember ever having to buy any larger (or even medium) household goods. God's provided in the past. But I still succumb to anxiety, which, I realise, is basically rooted in not believing that God will supply our needs (despite what I say with my words). In the case of the furniture, only an hour or two after I sent out that prayer letter, a good friend messaged me with news that she can supply most of those needs! Wow. Thank you Lord, but please forgive my unbelief! And help me to apply that faith to the other needs we have!

Quietly rebelling

What most people don't realise is that we really do like what we do in Japan. The essence of home assignment is that we have to give up what we really like doing here to become public speakers in Australia. And neither of us really enjoys public speaking.

I find myself quietly wanting to rebel against what we’re required to do over the next twelve months. Most of what we do in Japan is usually in the background. Neither of us feel comfortable being in the limelight. But home assignment puts us firmly there. We morph into speakers, workshop leaders, and Japan experts. My quiet rebellion is because I don't really want to be considered an extraordinary human being, one that needs to be pointed out as something special, someone who we invite to speak about their amazing experiences. That sub-text is contrary to what I want to communicate: that we are just ordinary humans, doing pretty ordinary stuff (just in an extraordinary place). We appear "special" because not many people do this, but it's not because we are inherently special. All we have and are is from God. It's because we serve an extraordinary God that we can do this, and keep doing it.

Translators?

I'm reading a book at the moment called Uncommon Ground, a collection of essays brought together by Tim Keller and John Inazu with perspectives from people thinking deeply and working daily to live with these times. What I didn't expect was to gain some perspective on what our role is during home assignment.One of the authors, John Inazu, calls himself a translator, though he is a lawyer and teacher. He says each of us is called to the task of translation: making words and ideas accessible to audiences unfamiliar with them. He describes his role as translating for and to each of the two worlds he occupies: the church and the university (he teaches law). "My vocation of translation means translating the university to some of my church friends and translating the church to some of my university friends." (p. 115)

In the case of a missionary on home assignment, we have to "translate" overseas mission and Japan to Australians. In general people we encounter there don't clearly understand what we do or where we do it. If you've followed my blog for a long time, you'll know that our work in Australia is composed of answering a lot of questions.

Much patience and diligence is required in translation. Much attention to detail as well as sensitivity to the wider picture. My work as an editor is also translation to some degree. I have to ensure that the writer's intent is accurately and appealingly translated into words that the audience will understand and not stumble over. And of course, as a writer who writes about cross-cultural life, I am translating my experience, life in Japan, and missionary life, into words so that others can understand. Pretty similar, in a way, to what we do on HA, except that as a writer and editor, I can hide behind my screen, rather than have to engage people face to face, or stand up in front of an audience with no time to edit my answers.

This is an interesting, helpful new thought for me. The author's thoughts on how we all need more humility, patience, and tolerance, are challenging, but helpful as we head into a different season of translation.

Thinking outside the box was helpful this week

A Pacific rhododendron I spied at
our meeting on Monday. Gorgeous!

This week started with a wonderful influx of people-time. On Monday we had a gathering of missionaries with our organisation. That was very busy with little time for free conversation, but after several months of not having the energy on the designated gathering-day, I was able to be there, which was great. 

The huge bonus was the 24 hrs following that time. One of my colleagues has become a close friend over the last couple of years. The main way we've invested in our relationship has been by regularly staying in touch through the week via texting. We have shared meals and picnicked with her family a few times.

But we've struggled to actually physically get together and have time for just the two of us, because we both juggle many responsibilities and live on opposite sides of the metropolis of Tokyo. It's over 1 ½ hrs by train or an hour by car, but the latter is expensive for one person as it involves tolls.

So after a couple of failed attempts, I jumped out of my box and suggested that I could have a sleep-over at her house after the meeting on Monday. My mother would have frowned at that if we were kids: I basically invited myself over to her house! But it worked. And we had a great time, in fact I struggled to leave when I had to head home again. Neither of us had taken a day off, so it was more like doing life together. I took my computer and we both worked between meals and coffee breaks. But it was great, and refreshing.

Since coming home I've struggled to concentrate on my work. That's actually been a problem throughout March, as we have been preparing for our trip to Australia mid-year. We've booked, cancelled, and rebooked flights; followed leads on accommodation and transport; lined up accomodation in a few places and found transport; communicated with family about schedule; investigated options and appointments for health needs; and many other things. It's been a buzz, but also a huge distraction. And then just last week daily life included accompanying my son to a passport interview and a medical appointment—that equalled more than a whole day of travelling around (not mentioning the stress plus recovery time from the stress). 

So just hanging out with a friend on Monday night and Tuesday felt like a calm amidst the storm, something of an oasis to mix my metaphors. I'm back in my boat in the storm now and need to get back to work, as crazy as that sounds.

Postscript: I wrote the above at the beginning of my working morning and after writing, went on to have a productive couple of hours of editing. I'm thankful. And sometimes writing works like that for me: it helps me process what's going on and then move on.

A story blast from the past

This week I'm preparing to help facilitate a two-week online workshop. I'm not experienced at teaching (and would be inclined to say, not good at it either). Nevertheless, I was challenged this week by an article I had to edit that it's important to not avoid doing everything that you aren't good at. That's a real temptation for me! 

Anyway, I'm trying to "marinate" in the content I have to present next week (that's the advice of a teacher friend) and hope that I'll be able to wing it once we get there and there won't be too many awkward moments.

One of the parts I like about this course is that it encourages (actually, requires) people to write their stories. It's a course that helps to prepare missionaries to go back to their home countries and share with people there about Japan and their ministry here. 

So, as a facilitator, we have to model "story sharing". The particular format they've chosen is to share "module stories" of two minutes each. I've actually gotten quite distracted writing some of my own stories and looking at things I've written in the past. 

I need to get back to work, but want to share with you a fiction story that I'd forgotten I'd written, even though it was only written five years ago, but it's quite poignant as it's based on real experiences in language school 20 years ago.

“Don’t pick up the phone.”

This is my mantra in my first year in Japan. It is too intimidating. It presents an impenetrable divide between me and the person on the other end called language and there seems to be no point. A while ago our language adviser found out that I was not answering the phone and I was in trouble. After all, I am in language school, I am supposed to be boldly confronting this wall of language.

Trouble is, like a rock climber with sweaty hands, I struggle to find a handhold. The footholds don’t match my feet and my progress seems unmeasurable. Whenever I do get a handhold it turns out it’s the wrong one. Or it doesn’t allow me to get a foothold too and then my teacher corrects me. As soon as she does I lose my grip and my confidence in the same moment. There just doesn’t seem to be a way forward to begin to climb that wall.

I used to be a daredevil, that, after all, is how I came to play both netball and the clarinet. I came close to representing my state in netball and my senior year at school was a blur of activity. As a child I had too much energy, so my mum sought to direct that into extra activities. It seemed to work, or maybe it drained me of spunk? Because I don’t feel like a daredevil anymore.

“Brrrrrring, brrrring . . . brrrrring, brrrrrring” Oh no!

“Brrrrrring, brrrring.”

“Ah hello?”

“Ohayogosaimasu, blah blah blah…” The rest was a blur.  I presume they introduced themselves.

“Goshujin . . . blah blah blah . . . masu?” Ah, are they looking for my husband? He’s not here, otherwise he would have answered the phone. Um, how do I say, “Not here?”

“Ummmm. Gakko desu.” He’s at language school, how do I say that?

Silence

So I venture: “Arimasen.” Does that mean not here? No, maybe it means doesn’t exist? “Go ji desu.” I think I said five o’clock. That’s what time I think he’s coming home.

“Go ji kaerimasu?” He’s coming home at five?

“Ummm, hai.” Yes, am I agreeing to the right thing?

“Shitsu . . . blah blah blah.”

Click.

Sigh. Daredevil I am not. Surely there is a better way to live than this? But how can I admit to being defeated by a language? How can I continue to live in a land where I can’t even answer the phone and tell someone that my husband is out and won’t be back until 5 pm?

My problem is not only that I’m bad at learning language, I’m bad at quitting too. I can’t come up with a good enough reason to call it quits here. We spent a long time telling people how much Japanese needed Jesus, and that we were going to help. How could we just turn our backs on that? What would we tell everyone?

But secretly, I’m looking. I’m checking the internet for jobs in Australia. Oh how I dream of going back to a place where I can talk to anyone I like. To a place I can read. To a place where I’m not scared of the phone.

But I can’t admit it to my husband. He’s soaring away from me in language learning. He loves the challenge, I hate it. He’s climbing up that wall at a speed that is shocking to me.

“Brrring brrrring” Oh no, not again!

“Ah, hello?”

A familiar voice greeted me, “Hi, it’s me.” Phew, I sink to the floor, so weary of the fear.

“Hey darling, when will you be home? I just got a call from some unknown person who, I think, wanted to know.”

“I wonder what that was about? Maybe it’s our new table they’re going to deliver. I’m just leaving now, do you want anything from the store?”

“Just a new brain.”

“Ah, what?”

“Never mind. I think we need some milk and eggs.”

“Great, I’ll be home soon. Love you.”

“Love you too. Bye”

Click

Fantastic, just enough time to write an email to my best friend. I scurry over to the computer. 

“Hi Sal, 

I miss you!!!!!! I’m not doing well today. I just can’t stand it here. The phone rang today and I answered it, but I could barely understand a word that was spoken. I still don’t know who it was and why they called, or if I managed to communicate anything with them. How am I going to keep living like this?

The other day I went to the store and I put four milk bottles in my basket. The cashier took two away from me at the checkout and wouldn’t let me buy them. I’m not sure why. Then when I got home I tried to make dinner. I just felt so down that it was hard to get up the motivation to cook. I was making pizza on bread slices (no pizza bases here), but because our kitchen is so small first I had to wash and dry up all the dishes and put them away so that I’d have room to cut stuff up. I’d rushed out so fast this morning that I didn’t get to them and, presumably, Phil didn’t get to them either. Somehow doing all that just to get the space to chop up stuff for simple pizzas seemed like too much work. I ended up preparing everything on the dining room table in the other room. We ended up with a lot of washing up afterwards, but at least we got dinner.

Daniel's doing well at language, but they want him to be a church planter and he’s not so sure about that. Me, well I’ve got no idea what I’m doing here. How are we going to work in a church when I can’t even answer the phone?

Tell me I can come home? Help me find a way I can get out of this.

I miss you so much, can I have a virtual hug?

Love,

Tess.”

I heard a key in the front door and a blast of cold air rushed into the room. “Hi honey, I’m home.”

My greeting was less than enthusiastic; I’ve never been good at pretending I feel good when I don’t. “That was fast.”

As he shook the snow off his boots and hung up his coat he asked, “What’s for dinner?”

“Oh, I haven’t got that far yet. I was totally derailed by that phone conversation.”

“Hmph. I’m hungry.”

“Well, I’ll figure something out. Did you get the eggs? Is it okay if I scramble them?”

“I suppose so. Are you okay?”

“Yeeeees, maybe not.” My brave mask started to crumble. Heck, where’s the tissues?

“What’s up?”

“I really hate living here. I can’t even answer the phone without sounding like a complete fool. I’m stuck. I hate being so dependent on other people and not knowing what’s going on. I’m lonely too. When did I last have a good conversation over coffee with a girlfriend who’s known me more than a couple of months?” I paused as I blew my nose.

“Yes…”

“Well, too be honest I’ve been looking at jobs in Australia and there’s this really good sounding one in Dalby, not so far from my family.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Well maybe this was all a mistake, maybe we misread the situation. Maybe we’re not meant to be missionaries?”

“But a lot of people have given money for us to do this. We spent so many months visiting churches telling them this was God’s calling for us. How can we just give up? What will we say to everyone?”

“Yeah, well I had that thought too. But how can I go on?”

“But what if I don’t want to go back to Australia?”

“Oh, well . . . “I pulled out a bowl and started breaking the eggs into it. “Um, I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to keep trying?”

The next day we have a guest at the language school, Rose, a missionary from England who’s in her 50s and been in Japan since she was my age. Her talk is about looking after ourselves, how to “stay the course”.

Afterwards there is time for questions and before I could think I burst out with, “But what if it’s too hard? What if we can’t envisage ourselves staying until we’re 50?”

She looks at me and I know that she’d been where I am. She said, “You do it one day at a time. Can you last out today? Then do it. And tomorrow you ask yourself the same thing. That’s how I’m still here.”

“Does it get easier?” I blurt.

“Yes, in a way it does.”

At 5pm Daniel came home to a wife that was just a tiny bit happier.

He said, “Hi darling. How was your day?”

“A little better. I still made tons of mistakes in my classes and messed up at the pharmacy, but I think I can stay tomorrow.”

He looked puzzled, “What do you mean? Where are you going?”

“Oh, nowhere. Rose spoke at language school today, I’m sorry you couldn’t be there. She said just do this one day at a time. Don’t let your mind race ahead too far. I’m thinking that I can manage that, for now.”

He grabbed me in a hug, and I grabbed the tissues again.

Different presentations every time

So, one of our most obvious jobs these six-months is the up-front speaking. We spoke at two churches in July, and three Sunday morning church services plus one mid-week church meeting and three other groups in August. September is not too much different.

For our sanity we're using the same basic presentation every time. One that we mostly prepared before we came to Australia. However, it also gets tweaked every time according to what we've been asked to provide, the audience, the time we've been given. We add bits in, or take them out, and now, ⅓ of the way through our time here, getting quite adept at this. Tweaking also means altering the power point presentation as needed. 

For example, here are some of the requirements we've been asked to meet:

Church A: 
1.     Share during the service for 5-10 minutes with maybe a summary of what’s been happening in your family and in Japan
2.     After morning tea, to do a 45 minute more detailed summary/presentation of your ministry and OMF’s ministry in Japan (and able to take questions at the end)

Church B:
He (pastor) concurs and you have all the time from 10.00am to present your story and finishing with David preaching. We will need to finish at 10.45

Church C:
Would you be interested in attending a church breakfast? You would have the floor after we had all eaten.

Meeting at a theological college:

[Speaking] from 0930-1020 followed by morning tea 1020-1050 where there is time to chat with the students in a more relaxed setting. . . it will be great for them to hear directly from you of your own experiences, positive and negative, your learned priorities and how you have changed or had to adapt during your time away from Australia. Plus whatever else you deem appropriate. 

Church D:

MLT will try and organise you to visit Bible study groups between those dates and speak at the Mission spot on the Sunday. The Mission spot is 10 mins long and if you have any visuals if you please contact this person...

Mid-week church meeting:

We would like to invite you to one of our Wednesday mission nights to share with us. You have been once before and always appreciated.  I remember you had an activity on sorting garbage in Japan. We start at 7pm and finish at 9pm, with a coffee break at 7.40pm.

Another mid-week church meeting:

Our group can be anything from 12 – 26 people, and yes seniors. All able to drive them selves to the church. We don’t know anything about you or your mission. The group loves hearing from those working in Gods field and you would be warmly welcomed.

We start at 9.30am with morning tea, followed by a devotion – I can get someone from our group to do it or you can do it – about 15 minutes. Then our guest speaker for about 30 minutes with a question time if possible. We can provide a computer and screen if you want to show photos etc.

As you can see our "brief" varies significantly between groups. Sometimes this is written clearly in an email, sometimes it is nutted out over a number of emails or instant messages, or even on the phone (shock! Yes, it still does happen!)

It keeps us on our toes. We enjoy the more formal, small group times where we can interact with our listeners more, but understand the value of getting some precious minutes in front of the captive audience on a Sunday morning.

Our theme of Support and Mobilisation is helping to keep our presentations focused. We're telling people how important it is to have support personnel in mission and putting faces on what that looks like.

Of course this whole thing comes unravelled if we ever have to face the same audience twice, but thankfully that doesn't happen very often.

Ah, but now I need to get back to actually doing that: editing work for the magazine. Thankfully our two meetings for Sunday are pretty well organised, thanks to our method above, plus a little bit of experience under our belts (more than four years experience over the last 20 years) and I can spend time doing other things!

On the edge of ordinary this week

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So live

I'm still struggling to find some open space for swimming. That's how I'm phrasing my current "status" at the moment.

It's less than four weeks till we walk away from our lives here in Japan and move to Australia to spend half a year talking to people about what we do in Japan. Preparing for that continues to seem quite messy right now. I'm hoping that I'll have a clear run at getting my current responsibilities under control in these next few days, but every time I see a bit of clear space to swim forward, another "piece of debris" turns up to hinder my movement forward.

Today, it is email-sending difficulties. That always flusters me because when you send an email you trust that it goes to where it should, especially if your computer says it has gone and you don't get an error back. However I am periodically getting messages from people asking about an email reply that I sent and they didn't receive. That's a big concern when I've sent about 140 emails from four of my five regularly used work email accounts in the last 12 days (when the trouble seems to have begun). Yep, my work is very reliant on email.

It's easy to be flustered and I admit I've been there today. Then, late this afternoon, I remembered this article that I saw over the weekend: 
http://www.alifeoverseas.com/death-is-right-around-the-corner-so-live/

Here's a particularly good quote: 

Living and working cross-culturally is hard, and we often forget the joys of the little things. We need rhythms of rest and Sabbath to restore us, to remind us of how much we need the “sensible and human things.”

The content in quotation marks is a CS Lewis quote.

Though I know that it delayed my dealing with all the things I need to deal with in preparation for this move, I'm really glad that I spend my Saturday doing "sensible and human things".

Basically we "played". Friends invited us and another family over for a final get together before we leave. These are two families that we've spent quite a lot of time with over the last three years, socially, and at school events, especially sport, as our kids competed together. Two of our kids graduated together last year. We've travelled together (one of the mums I travelled with to Korea with and shared a room). One family we've camped with several times. These friends have become something like the family you have when you aren't near family.

On Saturday we were invited to lunch. Before we left, David and I spent time in the kitchen together preparing some things to share (I made tortillas from scratch and he made waffles and a yummy chocolate, nutty sauce to go with). That creating in itself was therapeutic.

Then lunch was tasty and fun. I did not expect it to morph into an afternoon of fun, though. The adults played card games and the seven kids kept themselves entertained (eldest 18, youngest 8). At one point I video-called our eldest and everyone spontaneously sang happy birthday to him and several chatted a little with him.

We got home at about 5.30pm. My love-tank was full to overflowing. We'd laughed our way through the afternoon. It was the first day that week that I didn't take a pain killer for a headache!

We didn't get anything done to prepare for our move at the end of the month, but we were reminded to live, and in doing so, attended to our well-being. So as I continue to try to swim forward through all the cluttered water ahead of me, I'm bolstered by the rest we engaged in on Saturday.

Mixed thoughts on home assignment

It was a lovely weekend. Without an athletics meet to spend all day at on Saturday, we were left with a much slower-paced weekend than we've had since early April. I did some guilt-free relaxing. I started this email, but never got to finish it. Watched two movies and another episode of Downton Abbey. Slept in! Finished a book, started another. Did a little bit of baking. Played games on my phone. Chatted with our eldest son. Tried a little bit of paper craft (but didn't finish).

But with extra time comes time to think. Especially, in our case, time to think about what needs to be done in preparation for leaving for Australia.

Home assignments
I'm working at finishing up things or finding people to hand work tasks over to. I've got a meeting tomorrow that will hopefully sort out some of my OMF social media responsibilities. But work-wise, I'm not yet quite at a place that I've got much spare time for the preparation of materials we'll need only a couple of weeks after we arrive when we start speaking at meetings and churches. However, that extra time is close, especially when our weekends are much free-er from now on.

This is the fourth time we've gone on home assignment. We're getting a little bit of experience under our belts!

The first time we moved from Hokkaido to Tokyo, via a year in Brisbane (2004-2005). That was a huge move as it involved starting over again: new city, new friends, new colleagues, new job, new baby (our youngest was born two months before we moved back to Japan). Moving out of Sapporo we had boys aged 2 and 4). We stored our goods in Hokkaido and it came down via ship to Tokyo when we arrived there a year later.

The second time (2009-2010) we also moved cities, but within the prefecture (yes, Tokyo is a prefecture, not a city). We had boys aged 4, 6, and 9) when we left for Australia. We had to store all our household goods for those 12 months.

The third time (2014-2015) was most similar to what we're doing this time. We were coming back to the same house. But we had full-time sub-letters coming for 12 months, which meant we had to reorganise our house and try to do a very deep clean. Here's a blog post from May 12, 2014. Our boys were 9, 11, and 15.

So this is the fourth time. We have only two boys again (13 and 15) and I'm feeling more relaxed than previous times. Possibly also because it's only for six months, which seems more like an extended trip than a whole year. If we don't get a deep clean done, no one will notice: as far as we know we don't have anyone coming for any length of time to stay. That also means not much packing and reorganising is needed.

But it is still a big thing: to uproot for a while, change many of the routines, and settle in another place, even if we don't really put our roots down there. I can't believe that it's six weeks today that we'll be landing in Australia!

Bits and pieces to organise
We don't have a house or car yet on the other side, but a house will be searched for by a precious friend in June. The spreadsheet about our household stuff is filling up with promises from our home church and others. And we continue to pray for a car.

Give me a home among the gumtrees.

We're working on school enrolment for both our boys (not so easy as it might sound). Also on lining up the "big rocks", for example, a trip to Singapore for professional development for me and then onto meet the guys in Perth for 10 days of visiting supporting churches on the West coast. My flights are booked...the guys, not yet.

Most of our church visits are booked and a variety of other speaking appointments are also in the schedule. We've still got lots of room for mid-week and Saturday events.

One thing, that might seem a minor issue, but I have been thinking about a bit is that I have committed to not taking as much of my wardrobe previous times. It just doesn't seem necessary for only six months. But that leaves me with, eventually, deciding exactly what I will take. Thankfully I can lay aside all my super warm clothes (clothes for day time temps below 10/15C). Queensland is a warm place, with winter equating to a nice mid-spring day in Tokyo.

If you're a missionary  this is an interesting article with practical ideas of ways to prepare for home assignment (or leaving more permanently), some of which you many not have thought of before.

Not to many emotions going on yet. Part of me is not happy about the upheaval and disruption, part of me isn't happy to say goodbye to our friends here. Another part is looking forward to seeing friends and family in Australia, and the freedom for me that comes with living in an English-speaking country. Part of me isn't looking forward to doing a lot of driving. Part is looking forward to the variety of things we get to do while away from Japan, including working much more closely with my husband. And of course a big part of me is looking forward to seeing our son again more often!

So there we are. No, we're not packing, but we're doing lots of other small and not-so-small things to prepare to leave.

Planning for our 2018 Australian sojourn

Today we've been doing more home assignment preparation: we spent the afternoon talking about ideas of how to communicate about our work and the elements that go into what we do when we're meeting people in Australia.

That includes:

• Elements of a short presentation that we can use in front of a church or other group that explains what we do and why we do it. Most places we'll only get around 10 minutes, so we don't actually have to prepare a lot and will recycle it endlessly!
• What to put on the display board and table that we cart around with us: it's a place we talk more informally to people after meetings and have resources to give away and sell
• A photo album: a great communication tool about our lives in Japan that we take everywhere with us, yes, even to coffee shops when we meet people.
• Audio-visual stuff that gets projected onto a screen while we talk. We've found a fun video that we're keen to use at a "Japan Night" if we can persuade anyone to hold one.

and

• Take-aways: stuff about us that we can give away, including a prayer card.

Which is where this photo comes into the story. A couple of Sundays ago we stood outside at school in 6˚C temperatures and took a family photo for the staple product of a missionary: a prayer card. We suddenly realised that we needed to do this before our eldest son left for Australia next month.

We were much blessed by a photographer friend and his assistant wife who were willing to stand out there in the cold with us and take nice photos. Once the whole family shots were taken we got an unexpected bonus of some photos just of David and I. Do you like it? 

My hair is a mess. I really should have had a haircut before the photo and the sneaky breeze finished off the mess. But nonetheless, it's lovely to have a nice photo of the two of us—once you have children photos as a couple are quite rare.

From early July we'll be in the South-east Queensland area, but closer to Christmas are also planning to spend up to 10 days around the Perth area. If you'd like us to visit your small group, youth group, young adults group, Bible study, or church, please contact me and we'll book you in. If you'd like us to run a fun missions awareness evening or afternoon for your group, they are one of our favourite things to do (aside from meeting people for coffee), let us know!

Social media workshop in Manila

Seven years ago this week I was in Hong Kong participating in a week-long writer's workshop. This is one thing I wrote on my blog:

Even better than reading our writing, we got to pray for one another and be prayed for. I confessed my struggle to find a way forward from here. My vision of what I'd like to do with my writing, but the difficulty of getting there. I long to tell the stories of ordinary women who happen to be missionaries. It was encouraging to have someone pray that God would bring people across my path whose stories I could tell. We'll see what becomes of this passion. 

Eleven months before that I was at a magazine editing workshop in Manila. It was still a year before I started working with Japan Harvest magazine. This is where I was at (from my blog):

My future with Japan Harvest is not totally clear. Probably it will be an evolving role. Mission work is different from a paid job; boundaries and responsibilities are often less clear and often it is up to you how much you pour into something. I am excited, however - magazine editing is something I definitely have an interest in and has much room for learning and growth. I can see the current editor needs help and we'll see how much I can do.

Both events were significant preparation for what was to come. I wrote a post in March about my journey of becoming a magazine editor and managing editor leading a team.

I'm not writing other people's stories, but I am helping a lot of people get their stories out there, as an editor. Interesting indeed!

Now my journey includes another curve that I didn't anticipate. As I wrote earlier this month, I've been tasked with starting a new blog for OMF Japan. It's well on its way. I'm also now an administrator for the OMF Japan Facebook page.

And in ten days I'll be winging my ways back to Manila, this time for a three-day Social Media and Web workshop, representing OMF Japan. The invitation said:

It will be an opportunity to learn about a range of different media and communication tools, how to use them together as a part of a cohesive mobilisation strategy and measure progress.

Learning more about social media! Sounds like fun, right? A couple of Japanese friends were shocked to hear about this. I explained that it is common for a mission like OMF to use social media to spread the word about what we do. The trick, apparently, is doing it with a cohesive strategy...

I'm not OMF Japan's mobilisation coordinator, nor am I overall responsible for media and communications, but I was the available party and have my toe enough in the water. Not unusual for me: it seems like I never really fit these workshops' "perfect audience". I'm usually on the edge:

2009 (Manila) Magazine editing: I wasn't yet a magazine editor, though planning to be. It was useful preparation, though.
2010 (Hong Kong) Writing: much of it was related to writing books, which I had no intention of doing and made me unusual among the participants. However it was a useful workshop.
2016 (Bangkok) Teams: most of the teams they envisaged were church planting teams that physically worked in the same place. Not what my teams are like, but still a useful workshop to think about leadership.

So, we shall see how a social media and web workshop goes. I'm sure that it will be helpful (for me as well as for OMF Japan). And if past experiences are anything to show by, God probably has things in mind that I don't know about yet.

In the meanwhile, I'll continue to hang out on the edge and see what comes next!

Doing shopping and stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sort your rubbish?

Today has been more planning for presentations. Boring stuff to write about on a blog, really!

Rubbish collection station around the corner from
our house in Tokyo.

The fun thing was talked about over lunch, however, was an idea we've had for some time but haven't had time to put it into action. Aside from talking in front of groups of people in formal-type situations, sometimes we get the opportunity to do some more interactive things with groups. These are so much fun! In the past we've done slipper relays, chopsticks challenges, origami, a Japanese receipt game, and a language learning activity. 

This time we want to do a Rubbish Sorting Game. Sorting the rubbish in Japan is complex but a game based on this has the potential to make a fun activity to give people a feeling of culture shock. It's just that there are so many ways we could do it. We've been bandying around ideas for months now, but not gotten very far.

We talked in more detail over lunch about it today, though, and David's actually written some things down. Perhaps we'll make some progress on this soon?

It certainly takes our mind off the internet troubles that we continue to experience. Today we were supposed to have someone come, supposedly to "connect us up", but it didn't happen. The "outside team" that would make sure there was a connection that came from the street (as far as I understand it) didn't show up so the technician that did had nothing to connect up to. 

And so we continue to wait. But we're not in too bad a way, as long as we can continue to use this mobile internet out the back in our "patio office" it works pretty well and decreases the incentive to work at night-time when it's coolish out here.

Cleaning Up

On Monday we had a bonus day to our weekend. This week just gone is called Golden Week in Japan. That's because it is "golden" for retailers and films. There are several unrelated public holidays all clustered together. As a result there are big crowds at tourist places, and on the expressways.

Alas CAJ only takes one of the holidays. But we took advantage of it: while millions of others were relaxing in various places we used it as a day to prepare our house for us leaving for Australia next month. The other advantage is that by staying home we didn't have to deal with crowds or traffic jams.

New oven

Our new fancy oven. I'm tempted to say, "fandangle" oven
but the dictionary tells me that means "nonsense or elaborate
ornament", which is clearly isn't.
 

We went to buy a new oven/microwave/grill at an electrical

store. Our old one hadn't quite died, but it was showing its age (it was about 12 years old). For example, a couple of times recently the door has spontaneously opened slightly while cooking. The first time this happened we were baking pavlovas for guests that evening (you aren't supposed to open the door of the oven while baking these), so it caused some consternation. It took some time to figure out what had happened, because the door opening was so slight that it wasn't visibly open, just enough to stop the oven from working.

If we were moving out and packing up stuff into storage, we wouldn't have bothered to buy a new one now. But we're preparing our house for house sitters, and we really don't want to leave them with appliances that are going to pack-it-in while we're away.

When I posted on Facebook about our new oven, one Australian noted that it was obviously different to renting a house in Australia. Yes, Japanese houses usually don't come with a built-in oven. Ovens are usually an appliance you take with you. That being said, the last two houses we've rented have both come with ovens. But this is very unusual.

The other thing unusual about this appliance from an Australian point of view is that it is not just an oven, it is also a microwave, and a grill too. That is pretty standard here, unlike Australia. Very efficient, unless you want to use an oven and a microwave at the same time!

It is also small, by Western oven standards. Only 33L, but the largest we could buy in this style (I presume you can buy built-in ovens), but larger than the one we replaced by a couple of litres. So evidently ovens here are gradually getting larger?

The challenge now is figuring out how to use it. It's got all sorts of functions that we'll probably never use. We've figured out how to use it as a basic microwave and oven, but there is still much to learn, including a "steam oven" function and a "self-cleaning" function.

Fixing the dryer

While we were at the electrical store we asked about our dryer, which is leaking. We mistakenly took the dryer with us, but they said they'd check with the supplier about spare parts and, if available, would send someone over to try to fix it at our house. So we toted the dryer back to our house and back up to its 1 ½ floor home (our laundry/bathroom is halfway up the stairs, over the carport). Thankfully we have a strong boy in the house. Strength training at wrestling came in handy and he easily managed the moving around of these items!

Today the fix-it man came and fixed our 11 year old dryer for ⅙ of the cost it would have taken to replace it.

Another point of difference from Australia to Japan: dryers here are pretty uncommon, there were none "on the floor" at the large electrical store we visited. So it was good to see the fix-it man finding his way around the dryer with no problem.

Deep Cleaning

After lunch we told the boys they were expected to work for an hour cleaning around the house. We gave some suggestions and let them choose. No going into details, but some of us quickly got our hour done and one other took quite a bit longer. But the end result was that we made progress on leaving our house cleaner for our house sitters. We still have a lot more to do, but it feels good to have done some already. 

And so, our preparation for leaving continues.