Nine years of blogging!

I was surprised this morning to realise that it's nine years today since I started blogging! This is my 2,818th published post. Who knew that I'd be still doing this nine years later? That means that I've been blogging more than half the time we've been in Japan (which was 17 years last December).

Lots has changed in nine years! For you too, I suspect.

Nine years ago:

• I was living in a different suburb of Tokyo.

• I had one boy in elementary school at CAJ, one in Japanese kindergarten (about to graduate), and one eager to start any kind of out-of-house schooling.
• I was home schooling the younger two in English.
• I was about to embark on full-time homeschooling for the first (and only) time.
• that filled the gap for our middle son between Japanese kindergarten and starting in the middle of grade one in Australia because...
• We were about to go on our second home assignment.
• Outside being a mum I had few roles:
• conversation English teaching at the kindergarten
• desktop publisher of a newsletter for missionaries working with Japanese outside of Japan
• critique partner for three other writers (which is where I started learning editing skills)

I was looking forward to seeing my youngest start school, so that I could do some other things, especially I was planning on starting work with the editor of Japan Harvest after our home assignment.

Well, things have changed a lot since then! I've now got almost too much on my plate, though admittedly my boys are a whole lot more independent than they were and I've got a lot more time to do things other than be a mum. Or that being a mum can be done in tandem with more than I used to be able to do, for example, I did a lot of editing work this morning despite having two boys home on a student-free day. That wasn't possible nine years ago! Mothering also isn't as exhausting as it used to be.

Well, I've got no intention of ceasing blogging. As I wrote on the 7th anniversary of this blog: 

• [Blogging] helps me process life as it's going on in my life.
• It's fun to look back on things I've recorded (like a public diary, I guess).
• Connecting with other bloggers (though that seems to be happening less and less, I've outlasted many who were blogging seven years ago).
• It's a great vehicle for sharing things I'm learning.

I don't know if I'll get many replies, but I want to challenge you to write a comment on this post (or on FB, if that's where you came from). You can just say hi, tell us how you found out about this blog, tell us what you were doing nine years ago, or share a random fact. Got for it!

Learning prefectures

I'm still on a quest to learn more about Japanese geography. Last year I bought a puzzle at Thrift Shop that is made up of all the prefectures of Japan (see it here). It's a bit awkward to have out all the time, so when I saw this poster on sale at our local 100 yen shop, I snaffled it up. Yes, it's all in Japanese, but the simple "alphabet" kind, so it isn't hard to read. Maybe one day I'll progress to reading the more complex "Chinese characters" that go with these places.

I've found that knowing your geography really helps when meeting people. "Where do you work?" was a question asked on Monday afternoon/evening as I interacted with people. It was great when I knew where Nagoya was, and that I've been there (camping), but awkward when I didn't know where Tottori was!

I did know approximately where New Jersey was (the place a visiting mission leader was flying back to the next day). And indeed my American geography has improved a lot since moving to Japan! We often pull out our atlas or Google maps to figure out where people come from.

Yesterday we had some little guests for the evening. They came after school and stayed till bedtime when I took them home and waited for their mum to return from a work dinner. We played with the puzzle I mentioned above. They didn't really have an understanding of prefectures, but commented on how small Tokyo was compared to all the rest of these places. Indeed! It is. All the more reason to explore other parts of Japan.

Alas no more camping trips for us for some time now. This Japan-summer is consumed with our move to Australia. Maybe next summer (though our "next summer" will really be over Christmas in Australia), really, "next summer holidays in Japan" which will be middle of next year. 

Confused? Yep, me too! Sitting in church on Sunday I had to think about what season we were actually in the middle of, literally work it through. Yes, Easter is coming up. I tell you, changing hemispheres, I didn't get jet lag, but it did exacerbate my usual "seasonal confusion". I still haven't completely adjusted back to Tokyo's winter temps, but thankfully some "warmer" days are in the pipeline (i.e. in the teens, rather than single digits).

Serving Japan together

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the annual meeting for the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association (JEMA), the organisation that publishes the magazine that I manage. I've not heard of another country that has a group quite like this, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong. It is a voluntary fellowship of missionary groups and independent missionaries who join together to network, support, and encourage one another in their work in Japan. They represent around 1,000 missionaries. I wrote a little bit about this group back here. The group is about 50 years old and does remarkable things. 

In a country as hard as Japan is for missionary work, I'm sure that JEMA has helped more than a few people remain serving in Japan. I'm glad to be a part of that effort by publishing Japan Harvest magazine as well as attending many of the women's fellowship times that they organise.

I mostly go to get a feel for how the organisation is working and also for networking, it is one of the few times I get to meet some of the people who write for the magazine. I'm not someone who enjoys meetings, but I find this one surprisingly encouraging.

The most memorable thing I learned was that a group of Japanese churches (Japanese Evangelical Association) has done an estimate of the number of foreign Christians in Japan: it is similar to the number of Japanese Christians who live here! Imagine that? 

International churches are quite a thing here, but I know that there are a number of "ethnic" churches too. I also know that OMF is starting to think about how that impacts the Japanese church. It is one of the prayer points in the OMF International February prayer focus on Japan: 

"Lord, as you bring more non-Japanese people to live and work in Japan, may the church be one which welcomes those who are already Christians and may these Christians bring encouragement and blessing to the churches." (From here.)

But today I'm back to the nitty gritty of putting a magazine together, creating social media content, writing a prayer letter, uploading omf.org/japan website content, and editing articles. Oh, not to mention managing the food-side of our household (grocery shopping, bread making, and cooking dinner).

Yesterday's Global Hymn Sing

At the start of the month I wrote about the Global Hymn Sing that OMF and Keith and Kristen Getty were promoting. It was yesterday (in Japan time), the 25th of February. 

It seems that close to one million people participated across the world. But I suspect that there's a number of churches who participated and didn't get registered (there's still time to register, if your group sang, but aren't on this map).

Our church sang the hymn at all three of our services and then a special global praise and prayer time was held after lunch. We had 16 people there (plus children), which was a great encouragement. 

We aren't leaders in our church, so it was something I told our pastor about and he organised it, however he sought to involve the two OMF families who attend our church (us and another family). I didn't feel able to lead from the front (in Japanese), but unexpectedly I did get to help in that I played the piano for a couple of hymns that we sang at the prayer meeting. I had no warning that I was to play, so it was satisfying to know that I can still sightread hymns! Alas I had to decide on the spot that the designated hymn's arrangement was too tricky to sightread. Without a song leader, the new refrain was a bit tricky (the hymn is an old one, by Isaac Watts, but the Gettys wrote a new refrain for this event) and the piano arrangement didn't include the melody, which made it even trickier!

But as I said at the start of this post, it was an encouraging time. It's a mission-minded church and wonderful to see so many people turn out for a non-regular prayer meeting. Though it seems set to become an annual event!

Life moves on rapidly

This was the view at Mt Cootha botanical gardens, where I spent a few
hours catching up with my parents on the 13th. It seems an eon ago now!

I've been home a couple of days now. It's a new normal here which will take some time to get used to. But as I've found with all "losses", life continues on. Work continues, school continues, people still get hungry, clothes still need washing, things still get dirty and need cleaning. Life goes on. And at present it seems to be moving at a pretty fast pace.

Lots of travel

February/March is always a rather turbulent time of the year for us as we head into spring, there are lots of extra, once-a-year events: retreats, class trips, etc. This year has its own collection that means that I'll be away:

• two nights early in March for the usual Kanto missionary women's retreat
• three nights late in March for an unusually early OMF national conference (in Hokkaido)
• four nights late in April for training (in Hokkaido)

And where I ate with my life-long friend Mel on the 14th. Very tasty!

Additional to that, we've got only one boy at home this weekend, while the youngest is at a middle school youth group camp, which is rather weird, on top of not having our eldest here. David goes away for a night in March with the eight graders. And then our youngest at a summer camp in June after school is out.

Then there are other flights to book and schedules to organise: 

• for home assignment (leaving the start of July and returning at the start of January) 
• during home assignment: 
• national conference at the end of August
• professional development in Singapore at the end of October
• a deputation trip to Perth at the start of November

We're facing a rather busy year! And we're at the point of doing a lot of organising and preparing. I'm really glad that we're not facing moving out of this house as well. 

Our son's adjusting well

I'm also glad that one of the big things on the list to do (and yes, like it or not, it was something to "tick off") was relocating our eldest to Australia. It's done and we're moving on.

And for all those who want to know: he does seem to be doing well. He's landed in a good living situation and is surrounded by people who seem keen to get to know him and involve him in their activities.

He's found it quite nice to be operating in English and to be treated as a responsible adult as he's gone about establishing a new life. Life's quite a bit different when you have money and a phone and are 18! And at least on the outside, he fits in quite well (he's got an Australian accent too).

We still need to figure out how best to communicate between the five of us. It's not so easy or "natural" when you're not having meals together. I'd love to have us all on the same messaging network, so we can have a family group for chatting. But that requires cooperation from all involved to get the same apps. It's new habits to be formed and that takes time. Especially when you are unmotivated, like teenage boys are wont to be.

Thankfully, though I've jumped from summer to winter, sat in a plane for nine hours with hundreds of others, arrived back to a house with cold/ear infection, and sat in two doctors' surgeries with my youngest for over three hours in the last few days, I seem to have dodged illness.

Movie splurge

Here's something random. On Wednesday I flew for nearly nine hours. A whole day on a plane. I did something I've never done before and watched movies for nearly that whole time: four movies and one TV episode. It was an interesting collection of movies. 

Glass Castles: a story about a family with rather unstable parents. They moved a lot, squatted in many places, but stayed together. The four kids decided to work hard to get out of their situation and it follows them through to adulthood and them relating to their parents as adults. Based on a true story, it was a tear jerker, but the ending was good. "Enjoy" seems to wrong word to use, but it certainly kept my attention.

Strong: another movie based on a true story, it was about one of the survivors of the bombing at the Boston Marathon, who lost both his legs above the knees. They did a good job of being realistic and again, a tear jerker, but "enjoyable".

After these two, I looked for something that wouldn't jerk tears from me (not easy, considering I was flying away from Australia without my son).

A Young Victoria: there's a theme. I like realistic fiction! I do like historical fiction too. This was a very enjoyable insight into England's history.

The Hours: an older film (2002) that won awards. You might remember it? It had Merryl Streep and Nicole Kidman in it and was based on the life of Virginia Woolf and a novel by her, Mrs Dalloway. It was the first time I'd seen it and it was intriguing, yet sad too.

Not an unenjoyable way to spend the day travelling on my own. But the despite the movies, the hours did drag. It was a long day. You might feel that Australia and Japan aren't that far distant, but it was 15 hours from door to door (granted, I got to the airport nearly three hours before departure and it took two hours on three trains to get from the airport to our house in Tokyo). Long enough!

But I'm glad it's the weekend. I've spent the last two days trying to catch up with things I'd neglected in my work (though not so successfully yesterday as I was out most of the day). 

Today, I'm trying to relax (I stayed in bed a long time, it's less tempting to work there). Now, even though I'm on my computer, I'm sitting in my relaxing chair and have the Winter Olympics on the TV. Nice!

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".

Vital community

Book Face, the cool bookshop/cafe where I spent my morning.

I spent the morning at a cafe with some ladies from our Australian home church. It was great. I'm flying back to Japan on Wednesday, so this was the last time to see them before July. Though it was hard to say goodbye, I am delighted that they have been able to keep a corner in their hearts for me to jump in and out of their lives. 

And not just them, there are others too. What a blessing God has given to have special friends both in Japan and here. Even though I can never be satisfied because I always have to be away from one community to be in the other, I'm not without community in either place.

It was timely to see this article up on Facebook this morning. I worked on it (as an editor) a few months ago. It talks about the importance of community in helping new missionaries settle into their new country. Though it was beyond the scope of the article, I think that it really helps a missionary (or at least this one) to have some people who love and accept them in their home country. That's asking a lot, because you go in and out of their lives, something that can make good friendship quite a painful thing. But oh so valuable to have, so that this missionary, at least, can feel "at home" in either place.