Pondering COVID's impact on life and ministry

One of my jobs with our mission's social media is to come up with media posts, especially the text-parts. That sounds easier than it sometimes is. Our goal is to raise awareness of the need of the gospel in Japan and getting people more involved, which is a bit different to how most of us use our personal social media accounts. I guess it's a close relative to "marketing".

We use a monthly theme to help fuel our creativity. Some themes are easier than others. Next month's theme is "How COVID has impacted life and ministry in Japan". That sounds like a good theme . . . but how did we find engaging content for that? 

Our team met early last week and brainstormed. One of my ideas was to do a short survey of our missionaries. But putting feet on that is harder than I thought. This afternoon I found some space to think about what I'd actually ask people. I shifted some ideas into a draft survey format, and then I have moved away to other things (like this). 

That is my usual way of operating with creative things: it's how I write, and edit, as well as work on tasks like this. Letting an idea drift around in my brain while I do other things is a brilliant way to find my way forward. I hate it when someone asks me to do "live editing" at a meeting. I prefer to read something and let it sit for a while before I do anything with it, and even when I do start to work on it, I want to do it without an audience, I want to play around with ideas in my head (and on the screen) before I decide anything. Actually, it's how I do shopping too. I hate shopping with (most) other people, I need space to think about options and decisions.

But anyway, what do I ask missionaries about how COVID has impacted their life and ministry?

My own ministry hasn't been majorly impacted by COVID. I worked from home and online for years before everyone else was doing it. The biggest impacts COVID had were more personal things like the inability to travel to see family in Australia (and them unable to come here) and watching my boys suffer as they lost opportunities and had to deal with online classes. 

Wearing masks hasn't been my favourite thing, but I've been able to avoid much of that as I work at home. 

Emotional distress probably rates fairly highly too. We've just passed the two-year anniversary since one of our young friends lost her battle with depression and died by suicide. We've had our own mental health battle in our own household during the pandemic and because I was isolated from good person-to-person contact with people for months at a time, I've found it difficult at times to find ways to interact with others and know how to talk about my own struggles. I wonder if I've gotten worse at "small talk".

Life is getting back close to normal now, though attendance in-person at our church is still lower than it was pre-pandemic. And we are still wearing masks indoors and in crowded public spaces in Japan. There is talk that next month the government recommendation for wearing masks will be lifted, but we wonder what that will look like. Life in Japan is very influenced by not causing discomfort for other people, and will not wearing masks create problems?

I can identify some positives that came about due to COVID: regular walking and talking with David. And the acquisition of a stand mixer (given it by a missionary who had to leave). Also, the increased tendency of people to have some meetings online and thus meaning less time is taken up with travel, even some opportunities to meet online with folk who we'd never otherwise have done so because we all live so far from one another.

But back to my question: What would you like to know about how COVID has impacted life and ministry for missionaries? If you are a missionary, what would you like others to know?

Not able to make plans yet

This year has been one filled with pain for many. One particular struggle has been the uncertainty and difficulty in making plans. We've had it relatively easy compared to some other cross-cultural workers (we know some who've been stuck in countries where they'd rather not be), we had no "big" plans for the year. That is:

• we'd not planned to go on home assignment, or return to the field
• none of our boys have been in the middle of a major educational transition
• we were settled in a good location and had work we could do regardless of the conditions around us
• we had no major travel plans disrupted 
• we got to take our annual summer holidays as planned in July

Of course there have been many disappointments: 

• our son in Australia has not been able to visit us as he'd planned
• school was online for several months 
• lots of other things have been cancelled or radically changed

This blog post in 2015 was answering questions we were dealing with back then about how our eldest son would be transitioning to Australia. We had big, bold, audacious plans! Surprisingly, most of them came to be.

Somewhat random photo, taken during my time in the park
on Friday as I pondered some of the things I've written in 
this post.

This time round, with our middle son graduating (Lord willing) in June of next year, we've got a clearer idea of some things, and, for a couple of reasons, a much foggier idea of others. Who said it gets easier?

Five years ago I wrote that blog post while we were on home assignment, partly out of frustration at having to repeatedly explain things (but I’m not sure it helped much as most of those who asked weren’t reading this blog). 

The challenge we have is that Australians don’t understand the American schooling system our boys are in and most people we encounter in Japan don’t understand the Australian schooling system. Add to that the challenge of having to negotiate the journey of your kids transitioning to adult lives when you’re not working in your passport country. Plus the fact that these kids have lived most of their lives overseas and have almost no friends in their passport country.

All these things add extra layers to such a time in life. The natural result is lots of discussion and plans. David and I love a real-life puzzle and we love planning, but this puzzle has too many pieces that aren’t even in the box yet.

One thing I’ve been struggling with is that the natural question to ask people at this stage of life is about those plans. The thing I’ve found is that most people would like to hear a neat, ABC plan. But what if you don’t have a neat “ABC” plan? What if your “plan” looks like a bunch of squiggles that don’t make much sense? What if your plans look more like a bunch of possibilities and maybes, than anything concrete? That makes for awkward conversation. It also leads to worry. At the moment, my challenge it is to trust God in all this. To “be still and know that he is God”.

I’m reading Sword Fighting: Applying God's word to win the battle for our mind by Christine Dillon, a friend of mine. She’s asked me to write a review when I’m done, but I’m not finished the book yet. However, the other day it was good to read the chapter about worry. Thinking about the story of Abraham and Sarah—God had promised them they would have children, but they’d had none thus far and were getting older. So Sarah came up with a plan, which turned out to be a bad plan, not God’s plan. 

I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to “help God out” by coming up with a plan that isn’t in line with his plans. But sitting still and trusting God is hard. And talking to people who enquire about the plans of our son who is in year 12 just highlights how many ifs and buts there are. It also seems that for people of our age, suggesting post-school plans for teenagers is a particularly enjoyable/tempting thing to do? We've been on the receiving end of so much well-meaning advice and suggestions, but . . . it hasn't necessarily helped me in waiting on God.

I’m reminded of the passage in Ecclesiastes 3 that begins “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven.” I reckon this fits (though there's no actual verse that says this): “There’s a time to make plans and there’s a time to wait.” Right now, for us, it’s time to wait, and trust in the Lord with all our hearts, leaning not on our own understanding and God will direct our paths (paraphrase from Proverbs 3:5-6).

This is getting to be a long post. But as I've thought about this over the last few days, God has been working in me. Yesterday I looked up "wait" in the Bible. It occurs many times, but here are a couple that are relevant to our current situation:

"In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly" (Psalm 5:3 NIV).

Indeed, we've been laying our requests before the Lord many, many mornings. We also need to wait expectantly for his answers (which may not come quickly).

"I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, in his word I put my hope" (Psalm 130:5).

Yesterday we also were privileged to hear a Japanese missionary from Wycliffe speak on Psalm 13. 

How long, Lord? Will you forget me for ever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’

and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;

my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing the Lord’s praise,

for he has been good to me. 

He pointed out that this was probably written later in David's life, as he reflected on the many struggles he'd had in his life. Verse 3 is David's prayer: that he would have "light" or understanding, that he would be able to see God in the midst of the struggles. 

The preacher also took a little detour to talk about the phrase "it came to pass". It's a common phrase in older versions of the English Bible. In modern translations it is often translated as "after that" or "one day". But he pondered what God might be saying to us through this Hebrew phrase and thought it might be a reminder that these things haven't come to stay. That no matter what you're going through it will pass—keep your eyes on heaven.

I'm praying that I'll have wisdom to deal with conversations that encourage me to worry, and more conversations that point me to trusting and waiting on God. And that God will enable us to sit with these current uncertainties and trust him to work it all out. 

Heading back home (which is where?)

This morning I'm blogging from the airport. Again! I'm in shock, actually. I've never gotten to a boarding gate for an international flight so fast. I arrived here less than 45 minutes  after was dropped off! I'm usually a bit of a mess before international flights, especially in and out of Australia, but today I'm feeling calm. And that's after having said goodbye to my son last night! I was even able to eat a decent breakfast at 6am, and that's almost unheard of in my history of flying internationally! I'm in quite a different emotional spot to when I wrote this blog post at Narita airport just two weeks ago.

This whole trip has gone remarkably smoothly. I'm so thankful. Have I said that before? When  big things like this work so well and I'm at peace in my spirit, I really know that people have been praying and that God is very present in the situation (and gone before, preparing so many things). What else can I do but praise him?

I read Psalm 98 yesterday morning and it starts like this:

Sing to the Lord a new song,
    for he has done marvellous things;

Indeed, I echo the psalmist's words today.

Mums in Australia have said to me about leaving our son here for uni, "I can't imagine doing what you're doing." But in many ways that is our life, we do a lot of things people who live in Australia can't imagine. But for those of us who live outside our passport country, it is expected that our children will leave and go to another country to study or work after leaving high school. So this really isn't as unnatural as you might think, and it certainly isn't unexpected. We've been thinking about this time for many years now. 

So I won't say it is easy, but it isn't as hard as you might expect. It's been made much easier by being able to see our son settle into a good living situation. He's with a Christian family who also have other university students living there, one of whom is very connected into the local church and a good Christian group on campus. Knowing that he's secure in his faith is another huge joy. Also seeing the steps he's made just in the last two weeks towards being independent, has been a big confirmation that this is good timing. He's ready for this challenge. (He had a difficult last time he was in Australia, I didn't write much about it on my blog, but just a hint came out here: https://mmuser.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/difficult-days.html That year really distressed me in regards to thinking ahead. What I didn't realise, though, was how much more maturity would come in the following 2 ½ years!)

So, here I sit. At another boarding gate. Preparing to go back to the rest of my family, and not feeling so bad about that at all (it will be nice to be in my own house again, though I've enjoyed all the meals made for me over the last two weeks). It's a new chapter, the next six or so years, as we gradually transition all our boys through their final years of school and into life as young adults. And once again, we're "making it up as we go".

Making it up as you go

"Making it up as you go."

Yep, that's what we're doing!

Often parenting as a missionary feels like you are all alone with little
to guide you. It can be scary. We're praying for this young man as he
transitions to the next chapter of his life: settling in Australia for university.

This was a phrase that an experienced TCK (third culture kid) mum said to me recently about an excruciatingly difficult decision that she and her husband had to make last year. 

I can't imagine making such a decision, but the experience of making it up as you go rang true. It is, indeed, what we've been doing our whole parenting journey. All, of which, has been done in the context of mission. We began applying to be missionaries with OMF before our eldest son was conceived, so when we announced my pregnancy there were questions from spectators. Even though we were still in Australia.

So this week as we head relentlessly towards saying goodbye to our son as he heads off to university in Australia, we especially feel as though we're making it up as we go. Questions like these have arisen within our family:

• What will we do about his birthday in May?
• Can we text him in Australia?
• How much should he take with him? 
• Should he take his wrestling trophies?
• When will he next be in Japan?
• Should he take all his shoes, even the grubby work ones since they still are in otherwise good condition?
• What kind of farewell should we have on Sunday? A family one? One with a bunch of friends?
• What food would he like in his last week here?

Parenting, I suspect, even in a mono-cultural situation is always about "making it up as you go", however there are many less cues to call on when you're doing this in a country you  didn't grow up in with a child who is having a very different childhood than you had.

I remember talking to a Southern US dad last year at wrestling. He said if he was bringing his son up in the US, he'd know exactly what sport his middle-school son would be doing. It would have been the same that he did when he was a boy (baseball?), and the same as a lot of his son's peers. But he was raising his son out of that context and to his surprise found wrestling had entered the mix and he was scrambling to catch up, to find out what this unknown sport was all about.

We've made lot of different decisions to what our parents made, purely because of context, not because our parents were wrong. I'm sure they've looked at what we've been doing, at times, and wondered at our wisdom.

The additional challenge to making it up as you go, is that you have to "back yourself" (an Australian phrase? Meaning "to have confidence in one's self"). Despite others, yes, even other missionaries, around you making different decisions you have to make the best decision you can come up with and stick by it. Getting to know our kids as well as we can has been important here. For example, knowing that some of our boys hate rapid change has informed lots of our decisions, for example not taking short home assignments.

As any parent knows, there is no laboratory for testing your decisions either. You may never know if you've made the right decision! That's hard.

Making this big change means that we're making it up more than usual in the next month. We're praying that we "get it right", which, of course, is what we always do: praying for wisdom and then doing the best we can.

Another (exciting) piece of the puzzle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fascinating map of the future

This is a map on a wall at school. Marked are all the places that the seniors who graduated from the Christian Academy in Japan in June planned to be going after high school. You can see that most of them went to North America or stayed in Japan. Our son is definitely in the minority.

You can see on the school profile here, that the school has 29 nationalities amongst its students. It is interesting that even many of the non-US students go to North America for college.

Another point of note from a non-American perspective is that no degrees are mentioned here. It is yet another point of the American system that I don't understand. In Australia you aim for a degree, not necessarily a university. So I went straight into Bachelor of Occupational Therapy, and that is what I would tell people if I were asked what I was going to do (of course, I could only answer with certainty about a month before uni started, not months before I graduated, like many US-bound students). Ask an American year twelve student what they're doing after graduation and they'll say something like, "Going to Biola." Assuming, often, that you'll know where that is. They rarely mention what degree they're aiming for. That question confuses, instead the correct question seems to be, "What will you major in?"

I guess by the time we've been here a couple more decades I might understand better . . . but for the meantime, I'm happy to be in the minority and with a son heading into a tertiary system that I've got a better grasp on.

And I love this map!

A piece of the puzzle

The thing that has been looming for the last few years is getting closer all the time: the day our eldest moves to Australia. I feel like we've been talking about it for an eternity (well maybe only four years, but still...) University starts late February, so he's currently here, working part-time and enjoying a break from study.

Two big questions need answers:
1. What will he study (and where)?
2. Where will he live.

Of course the second depends somewhat on the first. But it seems as though God has provided somewhere for him to live. A family we've known for many years who live in a convenient location have a room available for him and we've come to a verbal agreement! [Add large shout of celebration here.]

David and my Alma Mater:
University of Queensland.

It's what we'd hoped for, that he'd be able to board with a family, at least initially, to help him through this huge change: not just moving out of home and starting university, but changing countries too.

Phew! God's provision indeed.

Next step is already underway: figuring out what courses he wants to put on the application form (there are six spaces available). 

For my non-Aussie readers: university application is a centrally controlled thing in Australia, so local Australians just have to fill out a form with their preferences. An international Australian has things a tiny bit tougher, in that they have to figure out how to get their grades and scores to the tertiary application centre (QTAC or Queensland Tertiary Application Centre for our state) so that they can be allocated a "rating" that allows universities to decide if they want to accept them or not. Yep, all numbers, no essays or references or interviews (unless you're going into something like fine arts).

That all needs to be done in the next month. After that we sit back and wait a couple of months to see if he gets accepted. Particularly, if he gets accepted at a university that can be easily accessed from where he's potentially got a place to stay.

He sat the SAT

Following on from yesterday's post, this morning our eldest son did an American test called the SAT. It is a test needed to standardize his non-Australian high school results for application to the tertiary system in Australia. This is not a school-based test, though CAJ hosts them and facilitates kids preparing for them. Hence neither I nor my school teacher husband know much about it at all. Makes me feel a little embarrassed, but I'm not sure that me knowing a lot about it would help him. 

Anyway, we paid for him to take this three-hour test this morning. Hopefully he'll do well enough that getting into uni won't be a big issue next year. And he does have more opportunities to do the test if he wishes, because these are held seven times a year and he doesn't have to apply for university in Australia till September next year (2017). 

Here's a bit of what Wikipedia has to say about this test (it also says that over 1.69 million high school graduates in 2015 took the test):

The SAT is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. It was first introduced in 1926. ...The SAT is owned and published by the College Board, a private, nonprofit organization in the United States. . . . The test is intended to assess a student's readiness for college. It is designed to not be aligned to high school curriculum. 

The College Board states that the SAT measures literacy and writing skills that are needed for academic success in college. They state that the SAT assesses how well the test takers analyze and solve problems—skills they learned in school that they will need in college. However, the test is administered under a tight time limit (speeded) to help produce a range of scores. 

The College Board also states that use of the SAT in combination with high school grade point average (GPA) provides a better indicator of success in college than high school grades alone, as measured by college freshman GPA. 

I also learned that you can get a score between 200 and 1,600, 1,600 being perfect. The scores are in 10-point increments.

I didn't expect to have so many challenges in sending my kids to an English-speaking school. You simply don't expect that there's going to be a third or fourth culture to encounter when the second culture you're dealing with in your host country is such a challenge in itself. I think that because it is in the language that you grew up speaking, you expect it to be easier. But it isn't necessarily and it certainly keeps us on our toes!

Yesterday there were a few comments on my FB post where I shared my blog post. Some great comments that I wanted to share here today, especially because they celebrate the positives of the challenges:

A missionary friend in Japan wrote: 

What wonderful opportunities we all have to experience various cultures. This missionary life is an incredibly blessed life. We are in the Japanese school system and enjoying getting to know people from Pakistan, Tanzania, the Philippines and other countries -- not anywhere close to the incredible cultural diversity that CAJ families get to experience. But even so, we are blessed and thankful.

 Another missionary friend who grew up as in Japan and also brought her kids up in Japan wrote this:

Aren't cultures so fun! I lived with varying cultures all my life!

As a post-script to yesterday's post I want to add this comment from teacher at CAJ:

Actually I found all but a couple of these terms in the Acronym and Term directory found in all the CAJ student handbooks, and I'd be glad to add the others. (I think AST is ACT). http://www.caj.or.jp/.../index.../Acronym_and_Term_Directory Inside/exclusive language is a challenge in many, if not most, organizations including missions and churches. And of course a definition is far from understanding the why and the implications but it is a start. I'm working on learning a new set of acronyms and terms for our new school next year and thankful I'm not switching to an IB (international baccalaureate) school as their acronym pool is much bigger than any other educational system I've seen. 

Differences between higher education systems US vs UK

I came across this interesting webpage, it's aimed at people looking at higher education in the UK and USA and comes up with some enlightening differences that I've summarised below (understanding that I've not experienced either system personally). 

Not directly related to the article, but fun anyway. Our
eldest will turn 17 this month. That was a huge year
for me—the year that I finished high school,
got my licence, moved out of home, and started
uni. This photo was taken later in the year I started uni,
my first car! I can't believe, though, that I'll soon have a
17 year old in my house!

Length of time to finish a degree
US takes generally a year longer than in the UK (barring Scotland where a bachelor degree is four years). "Courses are shorter in the UK because the course programs are generally much more focused than in the US." The same would go for Australia. US degrees include a lot of general stuff not specific to the degree you end up with. They believe in a well-rounded education. 

The curriculum of many undergraduate programs is based on a “liberal arts” philosophy in which students are required to study courses from a range of subjects to form a broad educational foundation. These general education courses include study in English composition, social sciences, humanities, history, mathematics and natural or physical sciences. (from here)

I, for example, did a Bachelor of Occupational Therapy. From day one we were studying anatomy, psychology, human development etc., not history or English. The only maths we did was statistics in psychology.

Academic term
The calendars are different. The UK system is not as standardised across the country and of course doesn't have a Thanksgiving holiday. Australia is different again, starting in February and ending in November, generally using a two-semester system, sometimes including a third semester during the summer for those who want to get ahead.

University organisation
This relates to depth (UK) vs breath (US), but also how you apply to get into a university. I'll leave you to read the article if you're interested.

Cost
US is generally higher even for locals. The government has some control over the ceiling of fees in the UK, but in the US it's much more varied.

Accommodation
Both countries provide residence halls in which to live. They are similar, except that in the UK students generally have a bedroom themselves (that was my experience in Australia) but in the US it is common to have at least one other person you share with. There are apparently differences in catering too. It seems to me that the ratio of students living in residential situations in Australia is quite low compared to the UK and US (though I have no stats to compare). 

Homework
This is a big difference I see between Australia and the US system. The US has constant assignments, whereas the UK might have a couple or none at all, just an exam at the end.

Grades
US based on overall performance on everything, UK based mostly on the final exam.

We're not intending that any of our kids go to either country for higher education, at least not first-up. If they decide to go there later, that's their choice. But this is interesting to me because our kids are in an American-style school where many if not more of their peers will end up in the US tertiary education system. The Australian tertiary system is closer to the UK system than the US system, though, from what I understand, quite different from both in the high school years.

I occasionally hear people who've never moved out of their passport culture complain about education choices and how hard it is. I generally restrain myself from telling them of how challenging it can be if you live cross-culturally! There are many more factors to consider and sometimes less choice isn't necessarily good.
edu

It's a complicated life

Yesterday I witnessed and signed some papers for some friends. They're returning to their home country for an unspecified period of time from next June. They've sold their little "starter" house back home and bought something bigger in order to accommodate their older (and larger) family. The papers I signed were related to that.

Our post office.

They've done this remotely. Choosing a rental is difficult enough at a distance, I can't imagine what buying a house would be like. After I'd signed my name a few times they explained how even though this was a hard way to buy a house, waiting till they got home would have been harder. It would have meant, in the midst of adjusting to being in their passport culture again, moving into their little house, and trying to sell that while living there. Then trying to find a new place, perhaps having to rent in the meantime. Doing it now means they can move straight into their new place when they get back. Much less fuss.

It was a reminder that many things in life become more complicated by our lifestyle as expats. My friend apologised for inconveniencing me (he wasn't really) and thanked me several times. I countered with that it really wasn't a big deal, not like trying to do something like fill out a form in Japanese or go to an unknown Japanese hospital.

Small things become complicated, like: Which one is the low fat milk? Or, Where do I buy nutmeg? Thankfully some of those things get sorted out early. But other things that seem small, like visiting a new doctor or filling out a form, still aren't as easy as they might be in Australia.

Education is another example. There's no doubt that education is more complicated when you're living outside your home country. It's complicated enough when you live in rural or remote areas in Australia, but in another country all together, that's messy. We're thankful that we've had the benefit of a nearby affordable school (courtesy of David being a teacher there). 

Tertiary education is another level of complicated altogether when you don't live in the country where your child is expecting to go to university!

I wrote earlier this year about tentative plans for our eldest son after high school (prompted by many, many questions throughout our home assignment). That proposed plan is complicated and fraught with difficulties and potential difficulties. I'm thankful that just this week we've been talking about it again and come up with a couple of significant ways to make it less difficult. I'm feeling less concerned than I was, about how we and our son were going to manage that huge transition.

But there are some things that are simpler, just a few. One is what I'm about to do now: go and ask for our mail to be stopped for the next week. Even though I'm doing this in Japanese, I love the system here—it costs nothing and then they'll deliver it all to us when we get back! And I don't even need to pay for any petrol to get there, I'm going to ride my bike for free. I'll be back in only a few minutes too. Simple.

University for our son

This is another couple of questions that we're repeatedly answering:

"What is your eldest son going to do after he finishes school?" "If he goes to uni, will it be in Japan?"

I took this at our alma mater back in August
at their Open Day, when we spent time
investigating the answers to some of the
questions about "what next" for our boys.

So glad you asked. Our working plan is as follows:

• 28 June 2015 Return to Japan
• August 2015 School (Christian Academy in Japan or CAJ) starts for everyone, barring me :-)
• June 2017 Our eldest son graduates from CAJ
• July 2017-Jan 2018 He gets some kind of employment in Japan
• Feb 2018 Our eldest son starts uni in Brisbane (he's interested in engineering and maths), probably boarding with someone.
• June 2018 The rest of us return to Brisbane for a year. Our son may or may not live with us at this time.
• June 2019 We return to Japan and repeat a similar pattern, with our middle son graduating two years later and then our youngest graduating in 2023. (All the boys want to graduate from CAJ.)

I hesitate to write this out in black and white like this because it makes it seem all set in concrete. Of course anything could change, but we've found that it helps us (and others who ask about these things), if we can at least have a sketch of a plan in our heads to work with. It especially helps our boys' stability if they know the general plan of what's likely to be coming up in the longer term.

So people who are shocked that we're already talking to them about dates in May this year might be floored by such long-term thinking. But it really is just a part of life for us now. We've been encouraged from early on by our organisation to think ahead, especially with regards to schooling.

We regularly pray about our future, about all the above and more. Our future is in God's hands and we pray we'll be submissive to whatever He calls us to do, whether it fits the above or not. At the same time we're mindful of being wise and planning ahead.

Where?

The chief confusion for people is about the location of further education for our boys. Yes, we intend to send our boys back to Australia for higher education. 

Reason one is that it is the cheapest option. Anywhere else in the world and they are considered International Students. Here they will be Australians and can benefit from lower fees. Not to mention that they won't have visa problems here.

Reason two is that we have networks here. Finding accommodation will be easier. They have some knowledge of the area. They'll even have a home church, if they wish to worship there, where they won't have to start from Ground Zero in terms of making relationships.

The inevitable question following that is about how difficult it will be for non-Australian educated children to apply to uni. We've investigated this too, and as far as we can see it will not be too challenging an issue. Queensland universities have lots of students coming from other educational systems. They will take the marks of our boys, along with their SAT scores (standardised test scores, something like OPs) and come up with an equivalent value that will allow them to apply. A little bit more complex than if they'd grown up here, but not too bad. Much easier than applying to US colleges, that each require individual applications including essays!

This conversation, which we've had multiple times, is getting a little tired. But that is part of the job too. We have a lot of conversations multiple times during our year of home assignment. By the end we'll be very glad to return to doing the work we've spent a year talking about.

If I can just keep remembering that it's great that people are interested in our lives and the lives of our boys, I can keep a positive attitude towards answering the same questions over and over. But I do treasure the times when we get a unique question, or one that makes me think harder than usual.

Photos and a yucky surprise

Just wanted to share some photos with you today (especially as the computer and Blogger are cooperating with me on this front).

Today we've been working outside. This patio is at the back of our house and is very private. It's sheltered and well lit by the sun at this time of year. It is the best place for internet too. We're still waiting on connection to the network and are meanwhile reliant on mobile internet (maybe our wait will be over tomorrow). Additionally, it is simply warmer (about 5C warmer here than inside) and more beautiful here. 

What are we working on? Deputation plans. We have various speaking opportunities coming up. 30 minutes here, 40 minutes there, 6 minutes somewhere else. All these need planning and putting together. These earliest ones are the hardest as we've not road tested any of this term's stories yet. Next April/May our planning will probably exist as a short conversation: "Which stories will we do tomorrow?" "Hats, Wrestling, Mrs M, and March11 okay?" "Sure, let's go."

Outside is brilliant too, because we've got large trees and many bushes close by. Lots of bird noises. We were visited by four kookaburras too. This one on the fence was only about 10 metres from where we were sitting.

And I want to show you the photos I was trying to upload for my blog about the weekend yesterday. These two are from UQ. Yes, David and I went to uni "in a park", or at least that's what it seems to our eyes today.

Wattle: Australia's national flower and where our national
colours come from.

Gum leaves with the lake and fountain in the background.
Alas my degree never brought me to this part of the campus,
so I rarely got to enjoy this.

But just in case you think life's been all joy, here's a little fellow I found . . . in my muesli the other day. I didn't appreciate finding him there, especially as it was muesli that I'd been eating for several weeks. We bought it at a large grocery store in Cairns the day we arrived in the country and the packet is long gone: no one to complain to! Thankfully though, I've not suffered any ill effects. I'm sure there are people in the world who would have thought they'd found a treasure.

How was your weekend?

Saturday
Well the weekend slipped away from me and I never did get back here. Our Saturday mornings are generally taken up with wrestling training (and getting to and from that, which is about half an hour away).

Saturday afternoon, though, was a lot quieter than the previous weekend. We were at home, though our youngest had a friend over to play for a couple of hours. Yet another friend who doesn't have brothers (we tend to attract these types of boys, it seems). But other than that we stayed here. 

I indulged in some more baking and David did some gardening with a couple of the boys. They're working on a veggie garden up the back. Hopefully we'll have some homegrown produce in a month or two to supplement to weekly grocery shopping.

Sunday
On Sunday morning we worshipped at our former home church, which is now a new denomination, with a new name and "new" building. Thankfully there were a few people there we knew. Even one person from the church I attended during the early '90s when I was a uni, but haven't see for 20 years.

After church we were warmly welcomed by many in conversation and actually had trouble getting away to our next destination: Open Day at our Alma Mater, the University of Queensland (UQ). On the way there we ate onigiri (Japanese rice balls) that I'd made. I have to admit that this is the first time I've attempted making these in a loooong time. They are staple fair in Japan (think what a sandwich is to a Westerner and that's what onigiri are to Japanese). But because they are so readily available at convenience stores (and so yummy), I just never bother to make them myself.

However, because wrestling training butts into meal times twice a week (dinner on Monday and lunch on Saturdays), I'm finding I need to find healthy portable meals. Onigiri is a great choice, if I can get it so as my fussy "Japanese" boys like it.

The Open Day was great, at least the part we saw of it. UQ is huge, 114 hectares of it! To our Tokyo eyes it looked like you'd be going to uni in a park! It also has more than 45,000 students. 

We only saw the engineering/science part because that's what our 15 y.o. is interested in studying. It's great how these explorations of tertiary education over the last few weeks have sharpened his focus for the future. He seems to be pretty clear on what he wants to do and where now. I didn't expect such fast decisions, and of course that could change, but for now it's great to see him matured enough to think ahead like this.

I do have to say that the science and engineering folk did a pretty good job of providing entertainment for even those who aren't looking at studying there in the near future. While David did a tour with our eldest, I wandered around various displays with our 9 & 11 year olds and we found plenty to keep us interested. From patting a crocodile and wombat to learning about soil, having fun with balloons to learning about a new form of energy that could be used to fuel cars in the future, we had a great time.

Though we did poke some fun at dinner time last night about some of the representatives there who didn't seem to be able to talk in language that the layman speaks, or be able to interact with two younger boys in a meaningful way (doctors don't have the field to themselves in complicated terminology). Many did a wonderful job, however, and just treated us as people who were interested to hear what they had to say.

We finished off the day by wandering through the famous Great Court, seeing a bit of an Asian drumming performance and the UQ Sports department suiting people up in sumo wrestling suits to have a go (we were short of time and so didn't try it out). We also dropped by the UQ Bookstore and bought David a t-shirt and hoodie with the UQ logo on them.

And that was pretty much the end of the weekend. Not too bad. Almost no shopping (unfortunately a feature of re-settling in a new place), not too much "work", and a bit of rest too.

Alas it marks the end of our settling-in period. From here on we will have more and more meetings and opportunities to talk to groups about mission. We still have a lot of preparation to do, but the tempo is going to ramp up.

How was your weekend? Anything unusual or interesting?