Wedding week (the short version)

On Saturday our eldest son got married. I have not been as close to a wedding since my own 27 years ago. It was a very special experience! 

We flew to Cairns (far north Queensland) on New Year's Day. It was a red-eye flight (this seems to be the most common flight from Japan to Australia, we haven't flown anything else in 20 years of flying from Japan to Queensland). We're getting too old for overnight flights! We arrived at our accommodation as the sun came up and slept most of the morning and into the afternoon. We slept again that night and drove four hours south to Townsville the next day.

Townsville is a coastal city of around 200,000 people. We've driven through there once, and had lunch there once. It was new territory! Our first meal in the city was with our son and his fiancé. Such joy! It's been six months since we saw him and this was just the fourth time to see them in person together.

The weekend was a quiet one, but I did get started on something I'd been pondering ever since they got engaged in late August: what was I going to wear to this summer wedding? I haven't been in a place where I could buy summer clothes, so this had had to wait (almost every girlfriend was asking me...). I had three friends on quick-dial to give me advice from change-room photos and I found a dress quickly in a most unexpected place. Our future daughter-in-law recommended a second-hand shop close to where we were staying and she was right, they had a large selection of classier outfits for amazing prices. 

On Sunday we had the joy of worshipping with the soon-to-be-married couple and meeting some of their precious church family.

Scrambling over rocks at Magnetic Island.

Monday we put on our tourist hats and caught the ferry out to Magnetic Island with our son. It was interesting to see an island I grew up knowing the name of, but never had any idea exactly where it was or what it looked like. It wasn't as touristy as I'd expected. The buses also didn't run as often as we'd expected them to, so we got stranded for a while in the middle of the day. Lots of "shoulda's" but it all turned out in the end. The day ended back in Townsville with a casual meal with our son and his fiancé. We lingered a long time in conversation after the meal, it was a night we didn't really want to end. We've not spent much in-person time with our new daughter-in-law, but we're growing to love her!

Tuesday was quiet. We took a walk along the Ross River, and also did a little more shopping, and I found low-priced accessories to go with my dress.

Wednesday was a work day and the start of the influx of the rest of our family into Townsville. We helped decorate the church for Saturday. David worked on chair-shifting and high-strung auditorium decorations. I ironed tablecloths and curtains for several hours. My parents arrived mid-morning in their motorhome (yes, the one we drove around Tassie) and helped out for a bit too. It was tiring, but a great day to meet more of the young couple's biological and church family.

Thursday we met my own mother-in-law and then late at night welcomed our younger two sons at the airport. We also had coffee with the senior pastor of the church—he and his wife have a special part to play in the story of the young couple, so it was good to have a brief time with him.

Friday was the day for meals and hospitality. We had breakfast as a family of six for the first time: us, our three sons, and soon to be daughter-in-law. I'm glad for the advice from an older friend to lock in this event. Then we hung out with our younger sons for the rest of the day. Took them shopping, had lunch, and played host to another wedding guest. Dinner was a BYO picnic on The Strand (park on the coast in the centre of the city) with our wider family who had joined us in Townsville by then. It was also a worthwhile time to spend together before things got a bit more formal the next day.

Saturday morning was quiet, thankfully, and then the wedding at 3, coffee with family and friends at a nearby coffee shop while we waited for the couple to return from their photoshoot, and reception at 6.30.

That's a short one-sentence paragraph! It was a beautiful, simple, God-honouring ceremony. I was nervous beforehand, but didn't cry. David, however, lost it twice—once while the bride was walking up the aisle and again as he prayed on the platform for the newly married couple.

The Bridal table at the reception. 

There were lots of family photos afterwards: thankfully all inside in air conditioning. I definitely underestimated how busy it would be. I didn't have a pocket, so kept having to give my phone to others. And I didn't take many photos, but did get a few special ones, including a selfie with the bride and groom.

We left at 5 for a local coffee shop with family and a couple of friends. While we were gone key people transformed the church into a reception venue with stunning fairy lights surrounding a dance floor. This was no small feat—the church is a former gym, complete with exposed steel beams and basketball hoops. But it was gorgeous. I'm looking forward to seeing more photos from others; again I didn't take many.

The most unexpected element of the evening was the dancing. First of all, I ended up dancing with my son after their first dance. The song they were dancing to repeated, so on the spur of the moment he grabbed me and she got her father. No practice...just shuffling around together and saying precious things. But later the dancing got a lot more wild, including the Macarena! Most of the guests ended up dancing, and for the first time in my life I was on a dance floor with both my sisters (and my mum shooting evidence). It was a lot of fun after all the serious planning and logistics.

It's no secret to those who know me well that I love a good, deep conversation. One of the best conversations I had the whole week was on the day after the wedding. I had some things that needed to get to our son and daughter-in-law's house before we left the city (and country), and ended up giving them to the pastor's wife. We had a very special, short conversation before the service which will continue to give me a lot of joy. Our son is far from us, but, as well as a beautiful new wife, he has people nearby who love him and understand him well.

We're now back in Japan, after a day and a half of travel, but like Mary, the mother of Jesus, I have many things to treasure and ponder in my heart (Luke 2:19).

Another crazy week: but I'm thankful

I'm starting to realise that having a few less responsibilities means I'm more flexible! So I'm able to take up short-term opportunities more easily and have the space to recover from them.

This last week I've done a few not-usual things and it's been crazy busy. In fact this is the first time in seven days that I've actually sat at my desk.

David's office where we spent several hours on
Friday sorting wrestlers into weight classes,
recording their names, and setting up the
 initial bouts.

Friday and Saturday were crazy busy, but fun. David and I did the admin side of the school's wrestling tournament. We had 250 wrestlers on campus (a large number for our league). The gym was packed to the rafters. We held a middle school tournament, as well as a full raft of male and female weight brackets for the high schoolers. It's very hard to easily describe what we did because it included so many moving pieces and a lot of copying of names. As bouts happened we had to add those results to the tree diagram (called a bracket) and then create the scoring sheet for the new matches with the relevant wrestlers. We problem solved and answered many questions. One of the most satisfying things personally was solving problems by tracking down wrestlers whose bouts had slipped through the cracks somehow. We've benefited from others doing this for our sons over the last 13 years, so it was great to be able to serve others in this way. I'm thankful it was just those two days, though!

The busyness didn't stop after Saturday...but here are some photos to show you something of the weekend (see more about my week after the photos).

CAJ campus was stunning over the weekend...
but I spent most of my time inside!

No filter here (or in the one above)!

Wrestlers, coaches, and supporters everywhere!
The noise level was very loud...for 12 hours.

I got 20 minutes out of the gym
at lunchtime and I went for a short 
walk around campus. This
ginko tree was stunning.

This was admin central: where we spent about 12 hrs on
Saturday. We had several helpers, including the veteran
coach (Dan Rudd) who did announcements
until he ran out of energy mid afternoon. Coach Rudd
is the one who taught our eldest son in the earliest
days of his wrestling career (and answered so many
of our early questions).

I didn't see much wrestling...we didn't have the 
best seats in the house! Past all the people in
this photo is a CAJ wrestler getting his gold medal, he's
a former long-time teammate of our youngest son.

And the days moved onwards: Sunday morning was our usual time at church with lunch afterwards, then chatting to our sons over an hour or two. 

We had overnight guests on Sunday night, but due to their short stay (34 hrs) in Japan they had limited data on their phones to communicate with us as they travelled from the airport and a lack of on-hand cash meant they had difficulty buying train tickets. We live 1 ½ hrs from the airport, so it isn't an easy drop-in, but they were determined. We waited an hour for them at the train station. Thankfully we could pop into the cafe there for some warmth as the temperature was around 5C. It turned into a late night! The next day I showed them around the school and our neighbourhood and they treated us to lunch. We've had very few supporters visit us in recent years, so it was a delight to have this couple visit.

Another great Japan Harvest issue completed!

On Tuesday I went into the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association (JEMA) office to help pack magazines. A friend from CAJ-parent era met me there and we caught up while stuffing magazines into packets. That was an excellent use of time and I felt refreshed afterwards. I left a little early to get back to school for (you guessed it): more wrestling! Just an hour as a spectator, this time.

Yesterday I had another new thing going on: I'm hosting a short term worker and I met her for coffee and to talk about her involvement with social media, her weekly schedule, etc. I then took her to meet a Japanese friend of mine at the JEMA office, we ate lunch and packed more magazines. Another really good use of time because while doing a manual job like that there is much time for conversation.

It's been a lot. I ended up on my bed before dinner on both Monday and Wednesday. I'm really tired! Today is an office day (and a short grocery run). I'm grateful for the peace here at home and that while I've been gone things have been chugging along in the two teams I work with.

Thankfully it looks like the coming weeks aren't quite so hectic. It's just under three weeks till we travel to Australia for our son's wedding, so hopefully we'll be a bit more rested and able to enjoy that time.

Letting go makes room for new opportunities

I was chatting to a colleague the other day on a Zoom call. He noticed the piles of boxes behind me and asked about them, a little concerned that we still hadn't finished unpacking. I assured him that that wasn't the case and that these boxes were destined for the school's secondhand sale that was happening the next week. He knew about our quest to sell our oven, washing machine, and fridge, and commented that there was a significant theme in our lives recently: letting go.

It's true. We've had to let a lot of things go. In the last 18 months we've literally downsized from a three-bedroom house equipped for a five-person household, to an apartment equipped for two people. We've also moved countries twice in the last 16 months. Our move out of Australia included letting go of a number of things, as we also downsized there. When our two younger sons moved out in February we gave them a number of things that would be useful to them, but no longer useful to us. When we packed up in July this year we had to put away things that we enjoy, but can't take to Japan, and now might not see for a decade or more. Most of that stuff hasn't been hard to let go of. I think the hardest was the oven. Much of the rest of it was old and well-used, or had passed its "useful to us" date.

We had to say goodbye to two houses. One of which we'd lived in for 13 years and contained many memories—though we were happy to leave it in many ways as it was hard to heat and cool, and broken in various ways. The other one we only lived in for 12 months, but we were very fond of (we especially loved the deck).

Saying goodbye to stuff, though, has an upside: you get to say yes to other things. Like less stuff to look after. We're now able to live in a small apartment that requires less up-keep and takes a fraction of the time to clean and a fraction of the budget to heat and cool. And we now have a cute car that is easier to manoeuvre in the narrow streets of Japan.

Moving between countries means letting go of relationships too. Not as in ending relationships (at least not the closer friendships), but letting go of the intimacy that you get from attending the same church, living in the same community, or living only a few hours drive away. This has been an ongoing theme of our lives, ever since we first moved to Japan in 2000. This time we also had to let go of hosting our sons in person on Sunday afternoons/evenings.

I'm trying to grow lettuce from seed 
for the first time. I think I might have
sown too many seeds!

Other things we haven't so much "let go", but they've changed nonetheless. We're no longer a parents at school or at any sporting event. I'm no longer cooking or shopping for large appetites. But that's getting to be "old news" now, though my soul is still adjusting to it. Christmas is becoming imminent and we're aware that this will be the first time in 25 years that we've celebrated that day without any of our kids, and only the second time in 50+ years that we've celebrated without any family at all (aside from each other)...but again I mentioned that last time I wrote here.

It has been a season of letting go: it's worth continuing to acknowledge that. But also remember that letting go allows new things to happen, like the adventure we took last week to watch wheelchair rugby. We're embarking on a new adventure on Sundays too: a new church. If I look back at the four months since we arrived back in Japan, I can see evidence of all sorts of small opportunities we've been able to take up that were largely absent during the previous years of busy parenting. Only God knows where this new season post-"letting go" will take us.

A bit of couple fun

Every time we go to Australia for home assignment we have a debrief with a psychologist/counsellor. A few years ago they told us we were obviously good at working together, but probably needed to rediscover fun. Missionaries having fun?!? Yes, we need to!

And it was true that we'd fallen out of the habit of having fun as a couple. When the boys were younger we rarely went on dates. We first moved to Japan when we'd been married just three years, and we had a very busy toddler. In Japan we had no family and it was just too much stress to find a babysitter, so we learned to stay home and enjoy what we could do there, like watching a TV episode from a DVD or play Scrabble. We’ve turned into home-bods, even more than we previously were. As our guys got older David and I have slowly gotten out a little more, but still often found going out too tiring when we were already tired from work and parenting. Much of our fun was as a family: supporting our guys at their sporting events as well as camping and holidaying together.

The last 18 months, and especially the last nine (since our younger two moved out), things have been changing. David and I went to several cricket matches in Australia (our shared love). Obviously (if you've been reading my blog this year) we went away for two months! Living on a budget, though, we rarely ate out in Australia—though it’s easier to do so now that we don’t have to cater to enormous sporty teenage boy appetites.

This is the first time we've ever been to a live
match of any sport between our two countries.
Japan and Australia just don't have many team sports
in common. One day we might find a Rugby Sevens
match to go to!

Last night we did something that felt like "playing hooky". We went to an international sports event: Australia played Japan in wheelchair rugby, a sport we’ve come to appreciate via the Paralympics. We actually had tickets to go to a session of this sport for the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021…but Covid…'

It was a lot of fun. I just wish I could have cheered louder…there didn’t seem to be many true Aussie fans around (they handed out Australian flags to Japanese people at the door, in a valiant attempt to support the guests).

Time out for a quick team meeting with the players on the court.

It's called the Shibuya Cup and the teams are playing four matches. Last night was the first. They gave us a booklet that showed the teams, and explained the game and the rules.
If you'd like to take a look at some of the action, it's here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JWRF/streams

Japanese publications are so cute!

 

We also were given these free cartons of coffee milk as we entered!

This little trip yesterday was fairly spontaneous, I only heard about this free event last Monday because I follow the Australian Paralympic Facebook page. I wonder what our next adventure will look like? David's got Christmas holidays coming up...and we have no family to hang out with this year, for only the second time in our lives. We'll see what turns up and what fun we can find.

 

End of our Perth trip: it was good and hard

Birthday cheesecake.
A very rare occasion
when I didn’t make it myself! 

It’s only been ten days since I last wrote, but a lot has happened in that time. In terms of what we’ve done, we:

• Spoke in front of small and large groups (six times, once in Japanese).
• Had meals or “coffee” with people while answering questions about our life and ministry (eight times at least, I think).
• Spent about 40 hours at a church camp, interacting almost all the time we weren’t asleep.
• Travelled back to Brisbane (about four and a half hrs on a plane).
• Celebrated our middle son’s birthday with a family party on our 26th wedding anniversary.
• Spent a number of hours planning for future events.

Many evenings we’ve had things on: a dinner or party, an event to speak at, or we’ve been travelling. That’s been hard, because we’re used to relaxing after dinner. Talking intently to people until 9.30 at night doesn’t help with sleep!

We are, however, getting into the groove and I’m feeling more relaxed in front of a group than a month ago. But still, we long for a much more settled life. Alas home assignment is never settled. There is no routine, no “normal week”. We’re working towards the goal of going back to Japan in July next year, so there’s no incentive to get really settled here either.

And then there’s all the conversations that make me feel unsettled and uneasy. All the questions about our lives. Many of them are great questions, but explaining our lives over and over again isn’t easy. And it is exhausting trying to discern what someone wants to know, or what they already know about us. The hardest questions (aside from  the “So how’s Japan?” ones) are about things that I feel insecure or somewhat regretful about. They touch on what I, like these people, have imagined in the past a “perfect” missionary looks like: wonderful language skills (our kids included in that), amazing evangelism stories, and a clear, succinct answer on why Japan hasn’t been receptive to the gospel. 

Questions about how our kids are doing are constant and not easy. Some are from people who have read between the lines on our prayer letters and know that we’ve struggled. Others are from people who don’t know us at all. How do I summarise and satisfy people’s desire to know about us, without sharing too much that our boys don’t want shared?

It’s been exhausting, but, despite all my discomfort, ultimately very good. We especially like interacting with small groups. I think two of my favourite events in the last week were groups of 20 and 50. Both had atmospheres of informality and the kind of intimacy that invited honesty and excellent questions. After events like that, speaking for six minutes in front of a church felt quite flat and shallow.

We flew back on Monday, arriving home after 10pm. So grateful we didn’t have to take a red-eye like we’ve done every other time from Perth to Brisbane, but still tired. We’ve had a slower week, but still had appointments to get to, and next week to prepare for. 

Next week is another big one: from Sunday for four days we’re at a regional church high schoolers camp. These are usually great times to interact, especially with the leaders. But I’m going to be careful about managing my energy and taking downtime. At least we don’t have our own children to take care of at the same time, like we did last time we did a school-aged camp (?about nine years ago).

On the home front: our time in Perth was a big event. It was the first time we’d done an overnight ministry trip away without our guys, and we did it for 18 days! It was good for us all to experience that. Our two younger sons lived at home during that time and by all observations did well. They felt the pinch of not having a car at their disposal, but they got by. They’re gradually learning about life in Australia, which is good, as this is where they’ll be for a while to come. It was good for us as a couple to experience an extended time away from our kids too. We had fun doing some different things as we stand on the cusp of living life again as a couple after nearly 25 years of having kids in our home.

Our trip to Rottnest Is. was a highlight I mentioned
in my last blogpost.

We usually set up some kind of “table” display
wherever we go. We managed to squeeze some things
into our luggage for Perth. Packing for Perth is another
story: it was done at the end of an exceptionally
busy day and I didn’t do a great job personally. I 
wish I’d taken a larger bag and more clothes.

A sand bar at Point Walter on the Swan River.

Catching public transport, especially buses, in
an unfamiliar city was a new challenge.

This was the auditorium at the church camp. Very reminiscent of the place where we first started applying to be long-term missionaries in Queensland.

Change is in the air

The dominant theme in my week has been transition planning at work. Yes, I know, I've been thinking about this for months, and rightly so, it's more than one complicated problem that I've been trying to solve. But this week I feel like I made it past a tipping point in the planning and was able to get some plans rolling. Each day I've been juggling my usual work with communicating with people (via email or video call) about jobs I'm going to hand off to them, or how their particular job will change with me stepping back. 

It's exhausting and has come a bit to dominate my thinking over the last months. And, while I'm happy to be making visible progress, I think I'll also be happy to make it past the planning stage into the execution stage and see a visible reduction in my workload on this side of the ocean, to make room for new things.

End-of-senior-year pressure cooker

I'm very happy this is my last time as mum of a senior at high school. It's a lot of pressure and life is moving like a rocket for these kids at the moment. There is so much going on in these final weeks of school (graduation is two weeks from today), that it's hard for us parents to keep up. 

I'll be very glad for these two weeks to be over, but there's a bitter-sweet note too, as these friends with whom they have forged something very special, will be scattered around the earth, literally. Kids growing up outside their passport culture find "home" amongst other people like them, so at an international school the bonds are often stronger than you'd usually find in a school. During times we've spent in Australia it's their school and friends from CAJ that they have missed the most, even more than Japan itself. This is a much more "permanent" goodbye to that relatively safe place. Our youngest has been at this school since kindergarten, barring three home assignments, totalling 2 ½ years. During his life he's said goodbye to a lot of good friends, but usually one at a time, this time it's much bigger. So grief hovers below the surface of the craziness that abounds at present.

My experience of orchestral concerts has 
always been people dressing fairly formally.
It wasn't so on Saturday, but we had fun
nonetheless!

Something different

David and I did something totally unusual on Saturday night. We went to a symphony orchestra concert downtown. It was a suggestion I gave him for my birthday present. This is something really enjoyed doing when I was much younger: I have fond memories of my mum taking me to concerts as a young teenager. It's not something David has done much of, in fact, we have only once before done this as a couple, way back when we only had two kids, nearly 20 years ago! 

The concert was held in NHK Hall, which has a
capacity of 3,400! It was about ¼ or ⅓ full. NHK
is the national broadcaster in Japan, and the 
concert was recorded for TV and radio. Not sure
when they'll broadcast it. And yes, we were 
towards the back (there was a tier above us).

It proved to be a great experience, one that is very accessible in Tokyo. We can see concert-going in our future. We're definitely thinking about how life will be different as a couple and pondering how we can make that a rich and full experience, rather than the rather negative "empty nest" tag that it's often given.

Surprised by a book

I'm currently reading a book as research for writing an editorial for Japan Harvest on a topic I know little about: singleness. The book is called Sacred Siblings. Two people recommended that we publish a review for it in the upcoming magazine, but no one volunteered, so I decided to use it to help me write an article that I feel incredibly ill-equipped to write.

The book is not what I expected. It is very applicable to all people in ministry, but especially overseas ministry (their stated audience). I've been surprised to find that my experience as a married mother has come up many times in it. Married women with young children and single women have very different stories on the mission field, and not always in ways that you might imagine if you've not lived as each. It's interesting to have that written out in black and white, I'm not sure I've ever seen it acknowledged in print. 

I was struck by a story shared by one of the authors about two teams she was part of: one had a majority of married couples and the other had a majority of singles. She noted how the majority (no matter the makeup of that group) had a lot of difficulty seeing and accommodating the minority.

I'm nearly halfway through the book, but am already glad I've picked it up and hope that by writing about the book in the magazine it is picked up by others in the missions community too, especially the majority in leadership (largely married men with children).

My role is about to change in this area too with the remainder of my children leaving home, I'll soon be a married woman without children in Japan. I guess we've been living in the middle-ground for nearly six years now: with one of our sons living in Australia. I expect that this change to just the two of us here will give me a different perspective from that which I've had up till now—I've never been in Japan without children at home.

And such are the thoughts that are rushing around in my head at the end of this week. I'm also keeping an eye on the weather. I usually do a grocery run on my bike on Fridays and we have a rain front approaching us, so if I want to do it and stay relatively dry, I need to hop on my bike very soon! In fact . . . it's already raining, which is not what the forecast said . . . so do I don rain gear, or wait a little, or take the car?

Thinking about "come"

I don't make New Year's resolutions (see here), but sometimes it makes sense to start something new in January. 

This year I've started reading Naomi Reed's new daily devotional A Time to Hope with my "daily friend trio". One of my friends took the initiative of buying three copies and giving one to each of us. (I got an Australian calendar out of that deal too, not bad at all!) Not that we've ever lacked things to message and talk about, but not we're also holding one another accountable to do a daily devotional that will take us through the full sweep of scripture in one year, and when we refer to TTH, we've all got the text in front of us. We'll see how things go when we get busier as school and work starts up again for us all.

I've also decided to dwell some on the word "come" that God uses quite a number of times in both the Old and New. Especially the verse from Matt 11:28 "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest".

I've got a book that Jane Rubietta wrote called Come closer. I've had it for more than 10 years and read it a couple of times, but I'm at least going to start the year by pondering it chapter by chapter, the opposite of how I read most books (fast). There's 15 chapters, so we'll see, it might take me into next year (and she's got a second one called Come Along, so this might even be a longer thing than that!). She focuses on the New Testament, but there are some great "come" usages in the Old Testament too. I figure anything that will help me dwell on the Bible regularly is helpful.

So keep your eyes open for my pondering about God's invitations to "Come". I'm hoping to write one towards the start of each month.

Are you starting something new this year? Do you have a major life change on your plate, and don't know how that's going to look? Do you have something you are pondering this year? A verse? A word? A book?

Taiwan in Tokyo

On Saturday I met my two Bible-study ladies at Harajuku, a popular hub in Tokyo. I have only been there a handful of times. It is usually crowded and I'm not fond of crowds. It's also full of expensive shops and restaurants—not really our scene at all.

One of the ladies is Taiwanese and the other Malaysian. Our young Malaysian friend did some research and discovered a Taiwanese restaurant. Last time we met at an Australian restaurant and the time before was American. I guess this really is turning into an international Bible study, despite never leaving Tokyo!

Taiwanese noodles. They had a subtle flavour
that is apparently very Taiwanese. I ate some,
though I did find them quite salty.

So I got to sample some Taiwanese food and drink. I'm not an adventurous eater, so I struggle to try, and enjoy, new foods. I'm not a tea drinker, nor do I like tapioca, so it was a little wasted on me! I had mango juice, though, which was scrumptious. 

These were tasty. Fried daikon cakes, I think. Daikon is a large, white root vegetable. A type of radish (but mild-flavoured).

The decor revealed someone had had a love of hexagons!
This was the ceiling.

And the tiles on the front of the front counter.

When I arrived back at our station, I was treated to the gorgeous sight of the sun setting on Mt Fuji. I wish I'd had a better camera, but I just had my phone, which didn't take such a bad photo.

New tricks?

Old dog new tricks? Yes, I'm in my mid 40s, but sometimes I do feel like an old dog when it comes to things like learning new things about technology and social media. As I've gotten more involved in OMF Japan's mobilisation drive, I've found my boundaries of what's comfortable pushed again and again.

First, about 12 months ago it was helping in the redesign of the OMF Japan website (and talking about that to our leaders when I really didn't know what I was talking about) and picking up an Instagram account. Then editing the whole website. After that came learning how to blog on wordpress.com (something I'd tried in the past and given up as too complicated). Setting up guidelines for a new blog was the easy part!

Then I went to the social media for mobilisation workshop in Manila last month and discovered a whole 'nother world. I've been doing social media for years, but now it has become a more integral part of my work. I'm doing it not just in my own name, but for OMF Japan.

I've been working with another much younger colleague, who lives way north of here, to coordinate our FB and Instagram pages, that's taken some figuring out too! Even today, trying to figure out why she couldn't see the photos I shared on the Google calendar that I started for coordinating content.

I'm also trying to figure out the best way to convert an inDesign file of our 31 Days of Prayer into a sharable electronic document. Looking at Blurb.com just before lunchtime today drove me to the edge of what my feeble brain could manage. I'll come back to it later.

How my job has changed over the last few months can be seen somewhat by peeking at my iPhone homescreen which now includes these apps:

The first, Workplace, is a Facebook app designed for use for in the workplace. It's been very useful for our remote team. I've found it wonderful to easily get advice (especially technical advice) from others who know a lot more about these things than I.

Flipboard is a fun app. A bit like an RSS feed, except that you don't add blogs or anything else to it, just the topics you're interested in and it scouts around for you, looking for articles on the topics you're interested in. Helpful for me as I administer the OMF Japan FB page and am on the lookout for Japan-related stories to add to the mix.

Repost is an app that allows me to repost Instagram posts. I haven't used it much and have found it a little cumbersome so far, but I'm assured it's the best app there is.

Canva is also fun and allows you to easily transform a photo by adding words or graphics to it, creating your own "meme". I've used this a lot in the last month in creating content for the OMF FB page.

I don't have Buffer.com there, but it's on my laptop and I'm using it to schedule FB posts for OMF Japan. Another new website to add to my rapidly growing collection.

Yep, it's all related to social media. The workshop I went to in Manila was incredibly useful, introducing me to these apps (plus a lot more).

Then this week I've been challenged as I figured out how to distribute a video created for OMF Japan via social media (thankfully with a lot of help from our remote team via Workplace). 

Yesterday I added subtitles to a video for the first time using amara.org. Then I had to use handbrake.fr to apply the subtitles to the video. Figuring out how to upload the video to our OMF FB account (including allowing cross-posting to other OMF pages) and then to our blog have all been new challenges. Then it was discovered that there were mistakes in the subtitles and it had to be edited twice, which isn't an easy task when you need to make a completely new file as well as re-apply the subtitles to the video each time (thankfully a more tech-savvy member of our mobilisation team did it for me). But then the question: what do you do when the "faulty" video you've shared has already gone to a lot of people and you've got a new, better one to replace it?

I figure a few of you might not be fazed by this, but it was a challenge that made me feel quite like a techno dinosaur.

I wonder when it will settle down, or whether it just won't! This field is constantly changing and I suspect for as long as I'm doing this, I'll be playing catch-up.

I've learnt a lot and most of the time I'm glad I'm being challenged and stretched. It keeps me fresh and not-bored (the prospect of avoiding boredom drives me often). But sometimes I feel overwhelmed!

I am reassured by this article that one of these new apps sent me recently (maybe it was Buffer?). The article had a lot of good information, but this helpful paragraph at the end is reassuring:

If you take nothing else away from these eight lessons and case studies, do take away this: Find a social media strategy that works and stick to it. Evoke it through well-designed visuals, intentionally-written copy, and informed decision making, and you’ll be on your way to a storm of likes, comments, shares and results. From 8 social media lessons you can learn from the pros

A delivered dinner

We had Chinese food delivered for my birthday dinner. That is a very unusual thing to do for us. In fact in nearly 20 years of marriage I can barely think of a time when we've had a meal delivered, except, perhaps, pizza at a friend's house in Australia. I cook the vast majority of our evening meals (David does breakfast and lunch usually). Neither of us grew up in households that ever had delivery meals either.

My only "rule" about my birthday is that I don't cook dinner. I guess someone else could, but no one's ever volunteered. In recent years we would go out. But last night, the first day back at school, I felt it was important to stay home. As it was, the younger two didn't get home till after 5.30 from athletics training. It took our youngest till 9pm to get through everything including homework, a shower, stripping his bed and putting new sheets on (a fortnightly job), before he could hop in bed. And no, he wasn't efficient in his use of time. 

Having a delivery meal in Japan was an interesting experience. I don't have much to compare it to, but I can't imagine Australian delivery including dishes that needed to be collected by the restaurant after use. For that matter, I can't imagine a restaurant coming back to pick up said dishes! 

First we had to interpret the photo of a handwritten menu that a friend gave me (it's a small restaurant). Then look up a word or three on my Japanese-English app, including "delivery"—not having done this before it's not in our active vocab. Then David called them. In the middle of his conversation a long thunderclap rolled and the heavens opened in a rare April thunderstorm. Within half an hour a man pulled up in a raincoat  on his scooter with our food in a metal case which he unloaded in our entry. It was all in ceramic dishes with cling wrap over each dish. They also provided disposable chopsticks. I cooked the rice. 

We ate, and enjoyed (with complaints from one fussy boy who ended up completing his meal voluntarily with a PB sandwich, another boy said it was okay but not as good as food I cook :D). David washed up the restaurant's dishes and then this morning he put them in this bag outside our front door.

A friend from Australia called me for my birthday yesterday afternoon and was surprised to hear we were having a Chinese for dinner. It hasn't occurred to me that it was odd, no more odd than having Chinese food in Australia. But I can see her perspective. Tokyo really has quite an array of cuisine choices. We've eaten Korean, Indian, Mexican, Italian, Egyptian, and, of course American (McDonald's, for example) here. And that is a family that doesn't eat out very much, although I think we eat out a lot more often here than in Australia. 

There are always new things to experience and learn when you're living in another culture. Certainly it's hard to get bored. Sometimes the idea of being able to relax and risk boredom is attractive. But most of the time I love the life I live, especially as someone who plots constantly to stave off boredom.

Thinking about a new hobby

I'm thinking about taking up a new hobby*: weaving and maybe spinning. During our holidays in September we spent several days at my sister-in-law's place. She owns Alpacas. While we were there I had a go at carding (untangling) and spinning. It was fun, but challenging too. I'm interested in having another go when we go back in December. But I'm also wondering if this might be a new hobby that I could take up. I've been cross-stitching for almost as long as I've been married and perhaps it is time for a change. So I'm investigating. 

Spinning on my sister-in-law's
electric spinner.

The big challenge of a hobby for a missionary is that it needs to be something that is portable and not too expensive. For a missionary in Japan it needs to be something that doesn't take up too much room. I don't have a crafting room, or a sewing table that I can just have everything laid out all the time. All I have is a corner, a corner of a not-large lounge room.

I've tried various hobbies like knitting and crochet. Paper craft (quilling, making cards, origami and other similar things). Sewing (clothes, bags) and considered (but never seriously tried) quilting and patchwork.  But nothing has really captured my interest. I'm not good at things that require precision. Sewing I can do, but it isn't very relaxing, actually I get quite stressed at getting it exactly right and usually make big mistakes. 

As a child I wore out the craft volume of our Childcraft encyclopaedias. I loved craft. Now as a woman with lots of responsibilities and a busy home life, I need something that will relax and fit my lifestyle. Cross-stitch does but I'm getting a little weary of it. I'm wondering it's time to try something new and if spinning or weaving would work too?

So, I've been surfing the web and investigating different options. Equipment is expensive! But the other thing I looked for was spinning and weaving groups. I found one only 15 minutes from our house. They meet on Thursday mornings every week. I've been working up the courage to go one day and join them and today was the day.

The ladies were very welcoming and I'll probably join them next year and learn what I can. I'm thinking about buying a simple loom, perhaps a Knitter's Loom, but as you can tell if you follow that link, it isn't cheap. So I'm still thinking. Another possibility is a Inkle Loom, but as a smaller loom, what you can create on it is limited.

If I join the group I'll be able to ask them to teach me things. Much better than learning from a Youtube video (although that's quite a helpful tool too).

As someone with an unusual lifestyle, it is interesting to drop into a group like this. I didn't tell them much about myself, I didn't use the M word. At the end two of the ladies were probing for what I might choose to do, especially joining the group. I explained to them that we usually live in Japan ("my husband works at an international school" is a useful generic line) and that I'd be looking for a craft that's portable and small. They had lots of ideas, including the above looms.

So, I'm pondering.


*Back here I wrote about why I choose to do craft. And it isn't because I've got too much free time, there is a deeper reason related to staying mentally and physically healthy.