Hi from Tokyo

We arrived last night at our mission's guest home 16 hours after leaving our holiday apartment on the Gold Coast. That included a five minute taxi ride, one eight and a half hour plane ride, and over an hour on two trains. And, obviously, several hours at both the Gold Coast and Narita (Tokyo International) airports.

The sky as we flew into Japan last night. Photo
taken by our 10 y.o. from his seat.

I'm happy to report that we had a fairly smooth journey. We weren't overweight in our luggage. And we were barely looked at by customs as we came into Japan (they are two of our big concerns as we travel between countries).

This morning after breakfast we went for a wander to the shops to pick up some important or not so important bits and pieces. We also enjoyed some day-to-day Japanese food/experiences we've missed. The boys particularly had many moments of recognition of things that they'd forgotten, and enjoyed re-experiencing.

Tomorrow we head off on some more travel (work-related), so I'll be off the radar for about a week. But next Tuesday is the red-letter day as we'll be headed "home" early in the morning.

"Home" meaning the same home we lived in Tokyo from July 2010 to June last year. Yes, it still has all our stuff in it and we'll enjoy reacquainting ourselves with life there. 

School doesn't start until August 25th, so we're at the start of our long summer holidays.

I'd like to say that hopefully things will start to settle down a bit from next Tuesday when we're "home", but July still holds even more travel: but this time for holidays and camping. So realistically "settling down" to a more usual home-based routine,and that includes blogging, won't be happening for another four weeks. But it is something to look forward to.

Airlock time

I'm writing from a small apartment on the Gold Coast. I can see the Pacific ocean and the beach as I type. In 25 hours we'll be settling into our seats on the aeroplane that will take us away from Australia and into Asia. 

We'll miss Australia, our friends, and family. The food, language, space, climate, and relaxed attitudes. 

We're tired, though. Leaving has been like a marathon of goodbyes and endless lists of things to do. It will be good to walk away from all that.

We are treasuring these two nights on the Coast. They are like an airlock between countries. Here we don't know anyone (or if we do, we haven't told them where we are). We're geographically separated from where we were living, so we weren't tempted to leave things to the last minute. We're doing a little bit of admin (like last-minute email checking, activating our travel-SIM card, sorting out what Australian cash we have, repacking our bags (for the umpteenth time) and finally, handing back our car to the people who bought it for us last year. Before we get back to Japan where we'll have to work to do in settling back in to the country.

But July holds a variety of other things, including a conference, holidays with my parents, and a camping trip. So some more down-time, before we jump back into our roles in August.

Therefore, bye for now. See you from the other side, maybe even on Monday.

No second class missionaries

We are, in three days, returning to Japan and ministries that are classed as "support ministries". We aren't "front-line" missionaries. It is a division that doesn't actually officially exist in our mission. But is often referred to informally by churches or individuals. 

My husband, doing his job as a teacher of kids,
40% of who are missionary kids.

Put simply:

• "Front-line" missionaries are those doing church planting or evangelism.
• "Support" missionaries are those supporting other missionaries. Like accountants, IT experts, medical advisers, teachers of missionary children, admin staff, publishers, guest home mangers, pastoral care etc.
• Others doing work like medical, relief, community development fit somewhere in-between the two above.

The other day I read a superb blog post about support ministries and how they are not second-class: http://gilandamy.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/in-defense-of-second-class-missionaries.html

Even if you don't think that support ministries are second class, I recommend reading this article. It gives a very good argument as to why supporting those who aren't "front-line" is actually strategic. And shows up how many churches have a different standard for missions than they do for their own staff. (Though as an Aussie I do have to tell you that this is American-centric article, in that most of the church examples aren't replicated in Australia, most of our churches simply aren't big enough or wealthy enough).

Dealing with transition, from the trenches

All the double adaptors are packed, so the computer is
plugged in across the doorway.

I'm writing this from an almost empty house. I still have internet and electricity. I even have a microwave to heat the leftovers I brought for lunch from the family we're staying with. 


David left an hour ago with our pastor and his wife and the last of the 50 boxes we're storing in Australia. They're taking them to our storage container, which is an hour from here. Meanwhile I'm waiting for someone to come and collect the fridge and freezer which we've sold them.

The last load of our boxes going into storage.

There is nothing in the cupboards or on shelves or in drawers. Just furniture that we're giving away (and will be collected in the next few days) and a few odds and ends that we're  donating to the school's garage sale.

The boys are at school, their second last day.

It is an odd place to be. An oddly peaceful place to be.

I'm grateful for it. Grateful we've left enough time for this transition so that it isn't frantic.

It's complicated
Because our move, as you probably know, is complicated. Yesterday we had helpers pack our kitchen and not even that was simple. I found myself faced with questions from them like:

"Do you really want to keep these large ice-cream containers?" (We did.)

"What do you want to do with these unused mosquito coils?" (This one nearly undid me, I still don't know what happened with them.)

Boys' grief
Then I picked up our boys from school. One had just completed his school track and field competition and collected a bunch of firsts, plus age champion. So happy for him. But sad too, because he can't go on to represent the school next term in the inter school competitions. 

I held him on Sunday as he grieved the losses, the sports he's excelled at here (AFL, ARL, cricket) that he can't continue in Japan. And the unthinking comments he's overheard other children say, like, "Oh, I'll be first in that after you're gone." Or even talking in his presence like he's already gone.

I quelled the impulse to squash his sadness. It is sad. It is okay to feel that sadness. But after feeling it, it is right to think ahead and count the blessings that we know are coming his way.

More than just moving stuff
Dealing with transition is more than just moving stuff. It involves saying goodbyes (to people, as well as things and places), grieving losses, and thinking ahead.

Here are a couple of articles that flesh that out more fully:

Building a RAFT while transitioning: http://chinahopelive.net/2013/03/18/how-to-do-cross-cultural-transitions-right-build-a-raft

Dealing with the grief the boys are experiencing (me too): http://mmuser.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/depression-and-missionary-kids.html

One piece of proactive parenting

Today I've been to my final Friday morning ladies Bible study at church, followed by going out to lunch together. Thankfully there were no painful goodbye speeches or presentations like there might be at a Japanese farewell.

Tonight I'm going with the youth group for the final event of the term. They're rock climbing.

Tomorrow we're holding an open event in the park for anyone who wants to come and say hi.

Sunday we stop sleeping here, moving out so that we can finish packing up and cleaning the house (you can't pack fully when you are still using things like sheets, towel, and kitchen stuff).

And on the list goes.

I got tired yesterday of telling the boys about all the events coming up in our lives over the next weeks. So I made a calendar detailing all that we know about the next three months, especially big things, like changes of residence and when planes leave etc.

Today I was talking with a friend who still has little ones, explaining how our stage of parenting has its own challenges when you're undergoing big transitions. In particular you need to try to get the kids on-board for various family events that impact them. In the changes coming up, many of the decisions we've made without their input and have a dramatic consequences for them. They can feel very disempowered and therefore very resistant. At least this is my family. My boys like to know what's coming up. Surprises, especially for one of them, aren't appreciated.

Last night the calendar I'd created made for interesting reading for them all. I hope that it will continue to help them anticipate changes and make our journey as a family smoother, with less complaints.

More good questions about our support base

I have some fantastic friends. They are of varying nationalities, but I think one of the most outstanding characteristics of my closest friends are that they are good at asking questions. Superb at asking excellent questions.

One of my friends asked me these the other day:

"How do you get these churches to invite you? Why these particular churches? What about all these people you've been meeting individually, who are they?"

One of the churches we visited, a group praying for Japan.

How this journey all started
To answer this I really need to go back to when we started out on this missionary journey. Back in October 1998 while we waited for OMF to process our application to join them, we started to write a prayer/newsletter that we distributed to people we knew, asking them to pray. 

That really was the key, the people we knew. From there we asked people if we could visit the churches they were associated with. But some people also approached us. We also asked churches within our denomination if we could visit them. The most notable of these were the churches in Western Australia, with whom we had no personal connection but who welcomed us in 2000 for a visit. By the way, none of this involved asking for money. OMF does not allow solicitation of money. We were merely talking about Japan (a place we'd never been to) and what we were hoping to do there.

It took until October 2000 for us to get clearance to leave (that included medical, psychological, and financial clearance). It was the financial clearance that was the hardest, because of exchange rates and the different costs of living between the two countries at the time. 

At the end of 1999 David quit his teaching job so that we could focus on deputation (and staying sane, full-time work plus deputation was a huge stretch). That was a giant decision for us financially because I wasn't working either (our eldest was 6 months old).

During that 18 months to 2 years of deputation we developed a lot of new relationships and networks, and strengthened old relationships. Since then, every time we come back, we revisit many of those people and churches (at their invitation). We have found a laid-back response works best: we make sure people know that we're available, but we tend not to aggressively pursue getting together with people or seeking church invites.

Churches we've visited?
So the churches who invite us have usually seen us before or there are people in the church who know us and have advocated on our behalf for us to visit. Only four out of the 20 churches we visited this time we'd never been to before, those visits came from the advocacy of contacts or friends.

All the people we've met? 
Many are friends from the first 27 years of our lives. People we'd met in the course of life, in various churches we've been involved in, uni, family friends, former colleagues, and even someone I learnt piano with. Others are people we've met along the way, like our youngest's Prep teacher who has prayed for us ever since we left five years ago. And then there's the OMF network. People who have themselves had involvement with OMF, former missionaries especially. This time we've also met a few people we know from Japan, not Australia, but for varying reasons we've ended up in the same cities, so we've caught up. In Perth we also stayed with a family who'd visited us in Japan.

Then there's new friends. I feel a little like a snowball. Every time we come back we make new relationships. This time it's primarily been at our new home church. But I also met a new Japanese friend and a friend who I'd met online via my blog and Facebook.

One of the strange aspects of a missionary's life is that part of our job is to stay connected to people and groups of people we don't often see. I'm pretty sure we have a wider network of friends and people than many Australians. 

But what a blessing. Our prayer letter goes out to more than 200 units (Ed. I orginally published this as 300, but I should have fact checked and not relied on my memory) every month. I don't know how many pray, but I know that a lot do. That's a big support base. I'm scared to think of what life might be like without that. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't still be in Japan if we didn't have such a group of people behind us. 

So that's what we've been doing in Australia. We've been reconnecting with all these networks and relationships that we've built over the last 40+ years and cultivated over the last 17 years.

Keeping the emotional space I need

I'm glad that packing isn't the biggest thing that's happening for us right now. Because we need emotional space. Individually, and as parents we need that space to help us help our

The other thing that is helping me stay
sane at this point is reading. I'm reading
more than I usually do (we're ahead on
packing). It is the best way I relax and
recharge.
This book I read a few weeks
ago, the most decrepit book I've ever read,
it was falling apart in my hands. But if you
ever get a chance, The Kon-Tiki Expedition
is a brilliant true adventure story that is
 great reading.

boys with their struggles. Yes, they're mostly happy about returning to Japan, but even a good change is challenging, merely because it is a change and things get messy. Plus they are old enough to know that there are good things about both places they've called home and that there are unknowns about what we face when we go back (like, "Will my friends still like me?")

I realised this morning how, though I'm not seriously busy, I've moved into a space where I'm very focused on the work of saying goodbyes, finishing up all the loose ends, and helping the boys cope.

I realised this when two different people made reasonable requests of us. Reasonable, except that their timing was bad. One was a simple networking request, one I'd usually love to be involved in. The other was responding to an article of mine that was published last month in an international ezine for Global women. I normally love it when people interact with my writing, but this one was asking too much of me, especially at this point in our transition.

Life's been a bit rocky on the parenting front this week as we've dealt with meltdowns/tantrums from all three boys on various occasions. To deal with that, and all the peripheral damage that goes with it, needs me to be focused, not distracted. So no apologies for being quite focused on us and those precious to us at this point. It's important for our sanity.