Looking forward to a weekend at the beach

It is about a 400 km journey. Funny thing is the boys
 now poo-poo that length. They say,
"Ah, we drove 800 km in a day..."
After 8,000 km in 16 days, 400 km isn't all that much!

Tomorrow morning we're going to the beach at Takayama for a three-day weekend. It is a place where many missionaries take holidays in August, but we've never taken a holiday there.

It is also a place from which last year's tsunami was witnessed (it is high up, so the witnesses weren't swept away). It is not far from Sendai, on the coast. None of us have been up to the disaster-hit area. From all reports a huge amount has been done up there, but many of the areas decimated by the tsunami haven't been rebuilt. So, I'm not sure how I'll feel to see it with my own eyes.

There is another thing I don't know how to feel about. We've been invited by colleagues of David's to join them at their holiday cabin. I don't know them very well, I'm not sure how much better David knows them. But the context is that we rarely get invited even for a meal to someone else's house here in Japan. To be invited to stay with someone for two nights is pretty amazing.

There are a lot of unknowns and that makes me feel a tad nervous. But I'm also excited. The last couple of months have been crazy-busy. Not to mention our gut-busting 8,000 km journey! To stop for a couple of days at the beach is sounding pretty attractive. I just hope the boys are cooperative. Maybe, because we'll have an "audience" who holds authority in their lives at school, they'll put on their "good" faces. Here's hoping . . .

To have a history is special

So today was the last in a series of days away from my family. I have scarcely been home since last Wednesday. I'm feeling pretty tired as a result of lots of people interaction, mind being stretched, the 24 or so trains I rode on, plus a few hours in a car in Tokyo traffic today (thankfully I wasn't driving, though).

Here is just a small number of the 40+ women who
gathered together today in the most beautiful part of
Tokyo — Okutama.

Today was a special opportunity to be with a bunch of other Christian women, mostly expats and many missionaries. We spent time worshipping and praising God together as well as praying for and encouraging one another.

The longer I'm here, and the more of these events I go to, the better connected I feel. It is wonderful to go and feel I'm among friends with whom I have a little bit of a history. When you first move to a new country you have no background at all with people. Often very little in common at all, more so than just moving cities or states in the same country. So it is wonderful to be developing relationships that have a longer history. So today, for example, I prayed with a German lady I've known for about 10 years. What a blessing to be a part of this.

But now it is late and I need to get to bed. Because tomorrow I get to sit at my desk and catch-up on all the work that has been on the back-burner for the last week. Then I need to pack for our three day long weekend at the beach!

Be Strong and Courageous

I really like this post I found the other day. Talking about how if God has given us a vision, we don't need to be deterred by the critics around us.

That's a really hard thing to do. I don't know how many people over the years have tried to get us to question our vision for serving or continue to serve in Japan. It comes in many forms, from

"Are you sure, you've never been to Japan."

to

"But now you're pregnant, does that change your plans?" (our first son was born during our preparation to go to Japan)

to the more brutal

"You need to choose between us and them." 'Us' being a supporting church and 'them' being OMF International.

Then the ones that came later (and continue to come) after serving in Japan for some time

"How long are you going to keep doing this?" 

"When are you going to settle down?" 

"Do you see yourselves coming back to Australia permanently some time?"

We didn't personally receive criticism for remaining in Japan last year after the earthquake and nuclear crisis. But many of our colleagues did, and it was very hard for them to defy their well-meaning critics to do what God has called them to do.

How have you defied the critics and  followed God's leading in your life?

Asking good questions

I've blogged a little bit about good questions before, but mostly about asking good questions of missionaries.

Today I've been learning about asking good questions at the three day workshop I'm attending, but I've realised that I haven't really explained "coaching".

The given definition is this:

"Coaching is an on-going intentional conversation that empowers a person or group to fully live out God's calling." — Keith E. Webb.

It is basically a bit like mentoring, except that perhaps there is more emphasis on asking questions to help the person discover the answers for themselves rather than to give them advice or help.

And even if I don't end up doing any formal "coaching", the skills we're learning will be useful in all sorts of relationships and conversations that I have. Most close to home would be in parenting. Learning how to have better conversations with my boys to help them discover the answers to their own problems and situations will help us tremendously, I predict.

So a large portion of today's teaching and learning was about questions. But I'm still finding that I don't always ask good questions, I'm often ending up with closed questions. We've been provided with lots of example questions, but unless I personalise them and use my own words those questions sound very plastic and contrived.

For example I would never say:

"What are the relational dynamics in this situation?"

or

"What are key points in understanding the situation?"

So  I thought I might have a go at writing some good questions that might be more natural for me.

What do you think of these? (I'm thinking, not of a formal coaching situation, but a good, deep conversation with someone.)

• What's on your heart?
• Is there something you've been struggling with recently?
• What other factors are in play here? 
• How does your personality influence this situation?
• How do you think various cultural factors impact this?
• What might God's perspective be on this?
• Why do you think that person responded to you like that?
• How is this affecting your family?

What do you think? Are these questions that might help you think more deeply? There are an infinite number of questions out there, depending on the topic. Can you think of some more that are good questions that help others discover things about a situation they are struggling with?

I tend to ask my kids poor questions, especially when they first come home from school.

This is a doozy: "Did you have a good day?" It is really a throw-away line and it rarely elicits an answer. They just aren't ready to talk with me much when they first come into the house. So perhaps I should wait a bit before I start asking any hard questions. 

I asked each of them tonight (on the phone, because I'm still not home): can you give me three highlights from your day. For our eldest I also asked him for a lowlight. To my surprise, they all answered my question. A colleague today told me they ask these questions each day while eating dinner with their kids. I think that's a great idea. Now I just need to implement it. We might find out more about our kids' days than we've done in the past!

I need to get myself to bed now. My roommate has a nasty cold, so I'm hoping that I don't get it from her and take it home to everyone. There isn't much I can do about it. I've already shared a room with her for the night and there aren't any spare rooms I can shift into for tonight anyway.

Tomorrow evening I get to reverse the train journey I did yesterday morning. Probably with almost as many people. Though I think that 9pm is more of a peak hour than 5pm is, I guess I'll be able to tell you about that from first hand experience.

Coaching workshop begins

I'm at an OMF coaching workshop these three days. This morning I survived the body contact sport that is peak hour train travel. It wasn't all that fun and I am glad that I'm not doing it each day of the workshop. I'm sleeping on this side of town, which is far less stressful (for me).

The coaching workshop has been good. The concept and skills can be widely used in the various roles I have. I'm not sure if I would ever get into formally coaching people, but you never know. It is nice, though, to be learning a model that could be used if such an opportunity came up.

As a result of the train journey this morning and the intense use-your-brain time all day, I'm feeling rather exhausted this evening.

As an aside, I've joined a one month photo challenge here on Facebook. If you want to go over, you can "Like" my photos and boost my (currently non-existent) standings in their ratings. Today's photo theme was "beginnings." However it might be a bit difficult to find. I hope I'll figure it out better tomorrow and will be able to "share" it on my own FB page also.

I'm obviously too tired to be writing here, I can hardly think straight. Off to the shower and then bed for me. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be more coherent. A much slower start — no trains, for starters!

Night.

Shoe shopping with boys, our strategy

I've blogged before about the challenges of shopping with our three boys. For example here. I think we've learned the art of doing it successfully pretty well, though, and we proved that again today. There are three keys

1. Know exactly what you want
2. Find what you want, buy it, and leave. 
3. Do it all fast

There was a need to buy shoes and no time lately to do it. All our weeks and Saturdays have been too busy, leaving Sundays. We don't normally shop on Sundays, but today we made an exception and hit the shoe shop. We bought six pairs of shoes in under half an hour.

My new brown rain boots. Do you like them? My old ones were terrible
for walking in, which kind-of defeats the purpose. These ones
look better and feel better. And in the land of much rain, these are
much needed.

This was probably the most shocking part of our trip. Not long
ago my eldest son and I could share shoes. Look what's
happened since then (this is my foot)! Now his feet are bigger
than his dad's. These shoes are Japanese size 29 (i.e. 29 cm length feet).
I think that is about 11.5 in Australian men sizes.

And may we avoid going shoe shopping for a few more months as a family! On the way home I lamented that we aren't preparing them very well for their future wives. They asked, "Why?"

I tried to explain that many women like to shop around, they take time to try on many different styles, even different shops, before they make a decision. There was silence in response to my explanation. Women are from a different planet? I doubt they have any comprehension of that kind of shopping behaviour. Oh well, I guess I still have time.

My 36 hours retreat

It was the OMF Kanto women's retreat.

It started (and ended) with a five train journey. This was the last train, out in the country, and not many people riding. The first three trains I didn't get a seat and had to work to find space to put my tiny suitcase.

 The view from the last train was awesome. This is heading into the valley where we've been camping several times (including in June, when a typhoon invaded the valley, see here). I love this corner of Tokyo!

 Today we wandered down to the river and had our small group time here.

 I love the internationalism of OMF. At the retreat we had only two pairs of people from the same countries.
New Zealand 1
Australia 1
US 1
England 2
Germany 2
Switzerland 1
Korea 1
Japan 1
Uganda-Sweden 1

Here Alison, our Kiwi, is talking to Philipa, who grew up in Sweden,
and moved to the UK when she was 14. Her Dad is Ugandan.

Headed home. We had a blessed, yet short, time of renewal.

And I was on the other side of the train with two other lovely ladies!
We were grateful for a seat. Being Saturday afternoon and not inner city, that
wasn't too much of a problem.

I slept well last night and enjoyed the relaxing fellowship of these ladies. But now I'm back with the "rabble" and I need to go and pay some attention to getting them through showers, dinner, and bed.