Exciting and scary

I think I'm pleased to report that we booked more plane tickets on Saturday. I have to say that after our journeys last year, I wasn't keen, but I'm also glad that it's done. At least this time there are no passport or visa dramas, and no Covid regulations either! I've also booked accommodation in three different locations (one in Japan and two in Australia) that will help us have places to lay our heads between July 10 and August 2. After that, only God knows!

This transition represents the next stage in our journey: the start of our 5th (!) home assignment. It's also a significant journey as we take our sons back to Australia for good. As I keep saying, we're not bringing them back to Japan next year.

I'm also pleased to say that this week I was able to submit the 4,500-word project I'd been working on since November last year. That felt both very good, but also nerve-racking even though it was something that I'd been commissioned to write. I'm glad to have gotten it to this point and to shove it into someone else's hands for the time being. I think all editors should periodically take a turn at being writers whose work is submitted to editors, I think it would help us all to have a good deal of insight into what writers feel.

Then on Wednesday, I found enough free space in my schedule to ride to the park—my usual haunt—to spend time with the blooming sakura (alongside hundreds of others). Last Friday we sent the latest magazine to the printer, and this week I only had one meeting on my calendar and no out-of-the-office responsibilities during work hours. So, from several years of experience, I knew that this week I'd have a little extra time and that a ride to the park was viable. It was a shock to realise I haven't done that in five months! It was definitely time and yesterday everything lined up: time to spare, beautiful weather, and sakura blooming. Ah, it was a blessed couple of hours. I relaxed enough to even lie down and read a book under one of the pink trees!

This week it's been delightful to have more time to think about home assignment preparation . . . though I need to stop writing now! I've probably already got sufficient "story modules" written for our rounds of speaking. Noting that we're often only given 10 minutes between us to talk about Japan and our ministry over the last 4 ½ years, and we rarely speak to the same audience, it's not too hard. Because I love to write and "stories" are my hobby horse, it's the easier part of HA preparation for me. The hard work of upending our lives and moving will be much worse.

So, now, I think, a story is warranted. Smile! Writing for publication can be a scary thing, but it's also an exciting thing. For the same reason: you never know where your words are going to end up. Editing and publishing are the same. I feel a little like a midwife, sometimes, in the various publishing that I'm involved in. 

A couple of weeks ago at the women's retreat I went to I saw one of my "babies" on a table. I think it was for sale. "Beneath the Surface" is a prayer guide I spent several months working on in 2019 and 2020. I wasn't a writer, but I laboured over the editing! Oh, I did write the initial draft of the "From the editors" at the beginning, but it was heavily worked over in one of the most intense "team editing" sessions I've ever been part of.

I've just done some intense searching, and I can't believe that I never wrote here about this big "baby". It was a huge project (that involved a lot of collaboration across organisations) to undertake on top of the other day-to-day responsibilities I have at work. Probably one reason that I never wrote here about it was that it happened in the middle of the pandemic, at least the end part did. We had planned a post-publication party for the three of us editors who conceived and worked together on the project, but we never ended up being able to do anything. In the end, in November 2020, the only thing that marked this going out into the world was an online launch party for the contributors. 

In any case, I'm still very happy with this amazing booklet and feel a little possessive whenever I see it around somewhere. I'm unsure how many copies have been sold around the world, but it's many thousand. And it's been translated into a few other languages as well. The Japanese version is currently being worked on.

I think the unique thing about the booklet is not only that it is not about the work of any one mission, but also that it delves into some really deep and difficult topics, but makes them accessible to many people because as much as we could we tried to utilise stories. Oh, and you can buy it here.

But that actually wasn't the story I was planning to tell you. I've got another one. I received an email early in March from someone in the UK. He's a Christian student worker (IFES), and specifically, he works with music students. One of the authors in the Winter issue of the magazine that I manage Japan Harvest happened to be in the UK and gave a copy of the magazine to this man. (This issue was themed "Arts in Ministry.") This man in the UK read the whole thing and wrote: 

"I found [it] fascinating—I've known for quite a while that using the arts in mission is something that is done to particularly good effect in Japan, and so it was eye-opening, encouraging, and inspiring to read so many articles documenting the thought and practice of so many missionaries in Japan."

He was particularly taken by one of the articles and wanted to reprint it on this website. https://musicnetwork.uk/.

The website is the "chief online resource for equipping music students here in the UK to live for Christ in the world of music. We are always trying to give them deep theological foundations for their musical practice, as well as actively trying to encourage them to think globally and missionally, and the article certainly did both of those things I feel."

You can check out the article that's now been republished here.

I was so encouraged by this little exchange. The magazine is primarily for people ministering to Japanese people, so to think that this went halfway around the world into the hands of someone working with quite a different audience is pretty cool.

I like my job. It is indeed both scary and exciting. Who knows what God's going to do with my words or the words I help into publication?

I'm also excited because we've got a camping trip planned for next week! So my next blog post might be a camping one!

Unexpected story of an editor, a 12 y.o. boy, and Japan

A sermon I recently heard at our church introduced me to an editor-missionary who I'd never heard of before. But really, who knows the names of famous editors? It really isn't our thing; we generally prefer to remain in the background.

The man, Luís Fróis, was a Jesuit missionary from Portugal in the 1500s. He worked in Japan from 1563 until he died in 1597. Much of his ministry was as the clerk and editor of letters and periodicals that the missionaries sent to Rome about their work. A missionary who is an editor! (Not someone I come across every day; it's more common to come across missionaries who are writers.) I'm particularly amused by this quote: 

"[Father] Valignano had discovered that many of the letters and reports, especially those written by young missionaries not yet familiar with Japanese conditions, gave a false impression of the country to the readers. He therefore gave orders that the reports concerning the various missions should be collected by an experienced missionary and should be read and, if need be, corrected under the orders of the Provincial as an official Annual Report." (From here)

An editor's brief!

He was also commissioned to write a history of the Catholic church's work in Japan, but ended up writing a very large work that included much observation of Japan of the day, as well as some history of the country.

He was also a witness, in 1597, of the execution of the now famous 26 martyrs in Nagasaki, Japan. It is mostly because of Fróis that we know so much about this event. He wrote a detailed report of this event and sent it to his superiors, only months before he himself died.

But what especially caught my attention during the sermon is the connection that the preacher made between Fróis and a more recent missionary, who died a couple of years ago. Alfons Deeken, another Catholic missionary, was just 12 during WW2 in Germany when he was selected for the Nazi teacher training academy, a great honour at the time. However, he refused this opportunity because he disagreed with what the Nazis were doing because it went against his faith. This decision would have even been viewed by some as anti-German. Alfons had read Fróis' account of the 26 Martyrs. In that he read about another 12 year old boy called Luis Ibaraki, who was among those being marched to Nagasaki in 1597 for crucifixion. This boy's steadfast faith in the face of death inspired Alfons Deeken to go to Japan as a missionary. He's quoted as saying "I felt a great desire to visit the country that had produced such a courageous boy."

Neither Luis Ibaraki, nor Luís Fróis would have anticipated that their actions would inspire someone to do what Alfons did: reject the social pressures of the times and go even further to become a missionary in Japan.

I'm a writer and editor who works in mobilisation. My team and I work to produce social media content that will hopefully mobilise people around the world to be more involved in mission, however that looks. But we rarely hear how our work has directly influenced people to do what we're aiming for. This story excites me because it was a writer/editor who simply wrote what he saw, that ultimately was the vehicle to getting someone 400 years later to make a life-changing decision. He didn't plan to mobilise anyone by writing that report. There are actually a whole lot of unsung heroes here: this was originally a letter in Portuguese. Someone published it, someone translated it into German, and published it again. And someone got this book(let) into Alfons' hand.

This makes me excited about what I do. Writing down things, editing, and publishing them is a sacred task. You don't know where they will end up or what change they will cause in other people. Or even when that will occur. If something I do or write or edit makes a difference to someone in 400 year’s time I would be very surprised. However, I can hope that my words make a difference, even in the here-and-now.

Discovering I've got a skill I didn't realise I had

Me in my comfort zone

In the last week or so, I think I've done more writing than editing! It been an unusual period, but I'm not unhappy, I do enjoy writing. However, I did get pushed outside my comfort zone. In order to attempt to solve a lack of content problem with our magazine, I asked our Japanese pastor if he'd consent to an interview (in English). He agreed, and promptly found three other people I could also talk with about the topic at hand. So on Tuesday afternoon, I spent about two hours interviewing Japanese people. The second hour was mostly in Japanese and stretched me greatly. They had a lot to say, and I didn't catch all of it, but I have enough to write the needed article. [Ironically, I've ended up with the opposite problem—after I implemented a few other strategies to find more articles, we now have more than double the number of potential articles than we need.]

I've been working in publishing for over 10 years now, but I've always avoided doing interviews. I'm not sure why, but I thought it's something I'd probably not be good at. Maybe I'm thinking about the sort of journalism that is intrusive or controversial, or requiring the journalist to do "cold calls". I'm just not that sort of person.

However, I've discovered that I've had many years of learning to ask questions of others, of learning to draw people out. Not for the purpose of writing about them, but just getting to know them, or simply to enjoy their company when we've been together for some reason (like a car journey, or as volunteers, or eating together at a group meeting). 

I've also spent many years living with non-chatty introverts and have worked at facilitating conversation at home. These interviews, in comparison, was easy. My questions were welcomed, and the interviewees wanted to talk. It would have been a lot easier if my Japanese had been better, but I was with our bilingual pastor, so he's helped me a lot.

I'm happy that I discovered this and that I consented to be pushed beyond my comfort level. I'd hate to be starting to plateau in my middle age! I want to continue to grow as a person. I'd like to continue to find opportunities to practise this newly discovered skill (as well as figuring out how to write a 1,500 word article from an interview).

But, reflecting on the last few years, I've been continually pushed beyond my comfort level, but usually not by choice. Mental illness has become part of our everyday lives since before 2018 (we only got the diagnosis that year, so could see it for what it was)—that's definitely pushed us out of our comfort zones. I never anticipated that any of my boys would struggle to complete their studies, but we've had that experience now too. Watching our older two struggle to find their way into adult lives has been really hard, and we've needed a lot of grace to walk alongside them through this stage, and it's certainly not over yet. It's all left me feeling a bit vulnerable and shaky.

But, of course, missionary life is continually pushing us past what's comfortable, more so than perhaps might have happened if we'd never left our native land. But as I said to a newer missionary early last week—I think that this is a privileged life. Not that it isn't hard, but we keep encountering challenges as a result of what we do that push us to depend on God, and on others. Whereas otherwise we might have been much more self-reliant, we've been frequently cast upon resources that we couldn't conjure up ourselves. And experiences like that make you grow.

I was surprised to have a friend who knows more about me than most write to me that she has been observing "a positive shift in me from anxiety and feeling isolated to coming to peace with what is and inviting others into a space of being honest and vulnerable." I can't especially detect that myself, but am glad to hear that she senses this. Apparently God's been at work in me during the "grit your teeth and get through the day" times that I've had in the last few years and I'm glad.

I feel like we've hit a little bit of a breathing space, a bit of light in the tunnel. But the next big challenge is coming at us like a freight train: home assignment next year. Just the other day I wrote two emails one afternoon about pencilling in dates for later next year in Australia—that's a tiny bit scary. And we've already been working on downsizing, that's what the bazaar helped with last month, but since then we've given away more of our stuff too. 

But if I keep in mind that through it all God has never failed us, that he's always with us, and not only that, but he's growing us through the challenges. That as a result of all the "out of my comfort zone" we're going to be better people. When I remember this, then I'm calmer.

Here are a few Bible verses I've found to remind myself of (and maybe you too), that God is at work in us:

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 'Make level paths for your feet,' so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. (Heb 12:11–13 NIV)

And this was in Paul's prayers for the believers in Philippi: 

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Phil. 1:4–6) 

For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Phil. 2:13)

And Romans 8:28 of course: 

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

And of course "for the good of those who love him" doesn't mean God's our genie in a bottle. It means that God is working to make us more like Jesus, more likely to do things that glorify him and achieve his purposes in this world.

That same passage in Romans goes on to say we can't be separated from God's love, nothing and no one can do that, not hardship or danger or distress or poverty or criticism or even death. So therefore, we should live as ones who have nothing to fear (preaching to myself again, for surely there is more fear in me than I'd like to admit).

Okay, I didn't expected to end up here when I started writing this blog post last week, but here we are. I need to get back to various other writing assignments and emails (and all those people I have to write "no-thanks" emails to for their magazine article proposals). Next blog post I want to write about an unsung hero I learnt about yesterday. A man after my own heart.

LittWorld 2018: the rest

It's three days since I left the conference in Singapore. It already feels like an age ago, mostly because of what's happened since (we had four deputation meetings over the weekend).

The meeting rooms had geometrical names!

However, this post is about the conference. It continued (after I wrote on Monday) to be a remarkable event. Most people were keen to meet new people and find out what they're doing and why they were attending the conference. I learnt a lot, and not all publishing related.

I talked with a Russian about climate, a Chicagoan about life there and in Japan, I talked magazines with a lady from Nigeria who produces one for teenagers and one from Bulgaria who produces a magazine for ladies, and talked theology and current events with someone from Sydney. I roomed with a lady from Denver, Colorado who is a publisher with William Carey. I sat with the head of Tyndale Publishing and his wife, talked with an author from Costa Rica, learned from an Egyptian editor and translator, and attended talks by a journalist from Nigeria and a deputy managing editor with Christianity Today. I went riding with a lady from Egypt and talked to a pastor from Pakistan. 

Phew! 

Even meals were intense. I rarely sat with the same person or group of people twice, and because I hardly knew anyone, I was constantly introducing myself and what I do. The last day of the conference I was "on" from 7.30am to 10.15pm. At that point, I retreated to my room to have a shower and pack my bag in preparation for my 6.30am bus to the airport the next day (the programme for the day wasn't finished at that point, but I was finished).

The view from the island on our bike ride as the sun was setting.

Conferences are fun and stressful at the same time. This one I went to with high expectations, and only knowing two others. I obviously met many others, but did run into someone I hadn't seen since the mid '90s and was able to joyfully hear the story of his involvement in mission.

One of the lunch buffet tables. Feeding people from
52 nations is no joke. We mostly ate Singaporean
food. (At least I assume that's what we ate...not
being a Singaporean expert.)

There were a number of other missionaries too. A New Zealanders in India, Americans in the Philippines, Nigeria, and a ?British couple in Costa Rica. I met a lady who has worked in the Hong Kong office of OMF and one who works with archives in the UK offices of OMF.

I've never been at a conference with an app. It was brilliant. The go-to place to check the schedule, but also an easy way to check out other attendees, to connect and communicate with them, or ask questions. Here's a screenshot of the homepage:

It was a delightfully international environment. The main focus of Media Associates International (the organisation behind this three-yearly event) is encouraging the writing and publishing of books in local languages. It was exciting to see people from countries where it is challenging to be a Christian, getting training and becoming excited about the potential.

My roommate. A delightful person to debrief with at
night time!

Near our hotel. In the background: apartments, I think.

The venue was quite lovely, though because the programme was pretty busy there were days that I didn't do much other than sit, and change rooms, and eat. The hotel was at one end of Singapore, a bit of a distance from the main city centre (not that anywhere is far from anywhere in Singapre). Close to the hotel was a grassy island/park and a beach. I skipped one main session and went wandering over to the island for some serenity (mid-week it was a very quiet spot).

On Thursday I squeezed in a ride between 5.45 and dinner (complimentary bike hire for an hour for hotel patrons). It's been several months since I was on a bike, and it was great to jump back on. However hopping off the bike wasn't so easy. I'm blaming muscle memory: I usually ride a ladies bike, which are easy to dismount, but this was a mountain bike and in my haste to dismount, I tried to swing my leg in front of me. The end result was rather heavily falling on my knee and quite a large graze that bled rather well.

Knee covered by a bandaid I probably wouldn't have
had with me had I not been a mum-of-boys!

Small touches that make a hotel seem a bit fancy. This was one of the ladies' loos.

 A playground on the island. I sat here for a while soaking up the serenity of not having anyone to concentrate on listening to or questions to answer.

 

You see that I couldn't just leave it at "Australia". With so
many internationals there, I reckon they should have
had an option for two countries on the nametag!

This is a taste of the botanical gardens. That's for another post: our mid-week excursion to these extensive gardens. I took my big camera there and will show you some of my photos another day. 

Enough words for today. I've had a much needed day-off and now need to get a good night's sleep. This week I shold have plenty of blogging time, so hopefully I'll be able to catch-up a little and tell you some more about what I've been up to and thinking about.

Third reprint

This 35-page booklet was a project I worked on in 2013 and 2014. It was published three years ago and has sold 6,000 copies round the world since then.

It's also been translated into German and will soon be in Chinese too.

We've sold out the English version again, so we've done a third print and they've arrived in the office. 

I've done my head in this week in trying to figure out how do-able it is to get a Kindle version of this book available. It's been unreasonably complicated.

However, let me know if you'd like a print copy for your own library. (See this post from our second reprint a bit longer than a year after it was published).

Making sense of today

It's been nearly a week since I've had the time and energy to write here. A typical Thrift Shop week. I've had lots of ideas floating around in my thoughts, but no time to write them down. 

Drying out the content of David's backpack after the Spartan Race.

And now today's had a weird start: a typhoon blew through overnight and school had a late start (10.30), so we slept in and didn't have breakfast until about 9. Add to that my husband, who's flying to the US today (a first for our family). He was only planning to be at school in the morning and then taking off across town, but the typhoon messed with that a bit. Thankfully it's passed and hasn't messed with his flight, though.

The weather has me on edge too. We started the day with grey overcast, gusty conditions and now it is a typical post-typhoon sky: bright blue, but the wind is still gusting at times, which always makes me unsettled.

I did a car trip for groceries yesterday, instead of riding, because it
was raining steadily. This shop had three older guys working hard to
 manage the traffic flow in and out. I love the way Japanese take care of
customers and the public in general.

So now I'm sitting at my computer, trying to make sense of it all and settle down to work. Because I haven't sat here for days, and only vaguely monitored email via my phone amidst the organised chaos that is Thrift Shop, so I'm struggling to get my head back into my usual work.

Though maybe it's partly my head that's the problem. I've felt a cold coming on these last few days and, typically, after relaxing yesterday afternoon, my throat flared last night and the cold is moving in. So, as I type, I'm sipping a honey and lemon drink.

I'm going to try processing the week a bit here in writing to see if I can get an handle on the way forward.

Conversations at Thrift Shop
Thrift Shop is hard work, but also full of wonderful (and random) conversations. On Tuesday, when we began work, I was only remembering the work, but was wonderfully surprised by the joy at working with others and getting to know them better. Here are a few conversations that I remember:

• Working with an Australian on Saturday all morning who is slightly ahead of us in the sending-kids-to-uni-in-Australia stakes. It was good to hear and share some stories. And with the sharing of stories (this goes for a number of conversations over the week), be reassured that the behaviour we find disturbing or annoying in our teens is well within the normal range of what parents-of-teens experience.
• Working with an Englishwoman on Friday and hearing her story, of how she met her south American husband and what they're now doing in Japan. Also starting to set up a Boxing Day morning tea with other fruit-mince-pie enthusiasts!
• A quick conversation where I put my publishing hat on. Getting a quote for a third printing run on our 31 Days of Prayer booklet.
• Getting to know a Japanese mum, who's spent quite a bit of time in Australia with her Australian husband. It was great to talk about some TCK issues (where do they feel most at home, etc), but just generally get to know her better.

The week was wet and cold, unusually so for October, so it was good to be busy and occupied inside where I didn't have time to brood over the unseasonal dip into winter.

Spartan Race

Saturday, while I worked at Thrift Shop, was an unusual day for the rest of our family. One stayed home with a cold (he gave it to me!) and the other three went to the Spartan Race. A private sponsored obstacle race that you enter like a triathlon or marathon. It was wet and muddy. Apparently that adds to the fun? It certainly makes for interesting photos and stories. 

Our eldest and youngest competed. The race for the 12 year-olds was a little low on challenge and our son was disappointed. He thought it was longer, so was pacing himself. Nonetheless, he came third and got a substantial medal for finishing. Our eldest, with his teammate, took 2 hrs 17 minutes to compete their much more challenging race. They came equal 5th in their age group. Great memories. It was a very wet day and there was no shelter. Even the spectators got thoroughly wet and muddy. Though we ran the heater all day yesterday with my husband's leather wallet on top of it, when he put notes back into it today, they were still getting damp!

Tiny's gone

The other surprise of the weekend was that on Saturday our pet turtle, Tiny, went to another home permanently. We'd put up a sign at Thrift Shop saying we were looking for a new home for him and I got a phone call five minutes before the end of shopping on Saturday (12.55) asking about him and could they take him straight away! It took some quick action, but I managed to get him to his new owners and he was whisked away to adventures at a small Christian school south of here. I hope that he brings much joy to the students there. I discovered later there is a bit of a backstory here. The pastor who's involved in running this school had been looking for a "cool reptile" for the school and so Tiny was just what they were looking for! Though perhaps a little larger than they'd bargained on. We're thankful that he's been taken off our hands. Our boys had outgrown the joy of having a turtle and so he was really just another job on the list of household things we had to do (not to mention that I've been bitten twice this year—I did warn his new owners).

That's enough for now. Tomorrow I'll have Thrift Shop photos for you: bargains and fun moments.

Celebration of things achieved

Before I move on to the next things on my to-do list, I want to celebrate the things achieved.

Cover of the new magazine issue.

In the midst of the last week of travel and workshopping (and illness), two projects that have taken considerable amounts of my time have gone to the printer:

• The latest issue of Japan Harvest
• A greeting card for the use of our Japan Members for mobilisation of prayer

It's easy to peck away at the keyboard here day after day and forget that things I'm working are actually moving forward. The magazine issue I've been working on since May. The greeting card came out of the realisation that the prayer calendar I usually produce for the field was going to be cost-prohibitive this year, something that I discovered back in March. It is easy to just say, "They're done" and move on to the next project, but actually THEY'RE DONE! After months of work, they are actually completed.

Other things that I've also produced have been published online in the last week:

• Three blog posts for OMF Japan: 
• Lessons from a Korean prayer team
• Don't mention the war
• The value of short-term workers
• And I've been getting more active on social media too, with re-posting relevant things on OMF Japan's page. One of my fellow workshop attendees muttered, "What used to be just for fun has become work." It's true. I'm doing Facebook for work now! That changes the things a little. Although, I guess, in a way I've been doing social media for work for a long time, this blog being a big part of that.

And of course now I'm already working on future projects:

• The next issue of Japan Harvest has been in the works for more than six weeks now, but thankfully I've only got one issue on my plate, instead of two for a few months now.
• More blog posts continue to come in for the OMF blog
• Another printing project for OMF Japan is on the horizon, I just need to kick-start it

I find it easy to think that I'm not doing much, but it's a lie. Perhaps I'm not doing what I do as fast as I'd like to, but I am not fluffing around doing nothing. What I need to find is a better rhythm. I'm not doing much in the way of exercise just now and it isn't helping my stamina nor, probably, my mental state at all.