Embracing the unexpected

Today has turned out a lot different to what we'd expected.

I've spent all week hoping my cold would be better by Saturday so that I wouldn't have to miss going to the wrestling finals. Yesterday afternoon I was in there process of convincing myself that I'd be fine by today when my husband texted me saying that the finals were cancelled. The forecast was for a day-long snow storm. 

Once I got over my initial personal disappointment, I realised how disappointing this would be for the wrestlers, especially the Junior Varsity (JV) ones (the B-team, which our son is a part of). Because this was to be their last meet. The Varsity team (A-team) still have a 3-day meet called "Far East" from Thursday next week, where they'll compete against not just the five other schools around Tokyo-Yokohama area, but other international and US defence schools in Asia.

Not only was it to be the last meet for the JV wrestlers, but I believe it is to the be only event where they get their own competition and awards. That is, they won't be competing against the varsity wrestlers.

A while later we received an email from the coach telling us that the whole meet had been rescheduled for Monday. Thankfully I have nothing on Monday that couldn't be changed or skipped, so I was free to go. David volunteered to drive the bus, and so he's able to go also. Unfortunately our younger two sons will have to rely on our reports and videos to appreciate the event.

Mid-morning just before I walked to
the doctor. Not too bad, if you're dressed
warmly enough and keep moving.

So, today isn't what we expected. It is what the weather bureau expected, though: it's snowing. Not hard, but constantly, enough that it's accumulating slowly on any horizontal surface.


Once the wrestling meet had been rescheduled I realised what a good thing that was. It would give me another couple of days to get better from this persistent cold. Plus, give our boys a quiet, restful weekend. At least two of the boys have been coming home from school very tired this week, like their bodies are fighting off something. A quiet Saturday definitely sounded like a good thing.

I thought I was getting better yesterday afternoon, I had more energy and the symptoms seemed to be slowly abating. But later as I coughed and coughed my way to bed, I realised that today would also be a good opportunity to go and be checked out by the doctor, hopefully getting some more/better medication for my cold-stimulated asthma. 

So this morning I hiked off through the snow to the doctor. Perfect day to go, too. It seems that the snow kept most people home, so I hardly had to wait at all. Turns out I also have a middle ear infection, which explains the deafness in my left ear. Got meds for that, plus permission to use more asthma meds. Hopefully with these aids, my body will overcome this bug and let me get on with important things that are piling up. 

Just when I was feeling, at the end of January, that I was getting ahead with the magazine editing, this cold has smitten me and I've done practically nothing in that line this week. Nothing like illness to help you realise how little control you really have!

But now I have a clear afternoon. It's the perfect afternoon to do some baking for the busy week ahead. My husband cooked up some apples this morning, so I'm going to bake an Apple Pie, and hopefully some apple muffins with any left-over apple. There also has been a request for Snickerdoodles. That will keep me from sitting still and feeling sorry for myself!

Feb: Reflecting on Heb 12:1-3

I wrote early in January that I wanted to reflect at least monthly here on the passage at the beginning of Hebrews 12. So here goes.


Hebrews 12:1-3

12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Verse 3 from The Message:

When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!

Well reflecting on this in the midst of the wrestling season obviously colours my thoughts.

Cloud of witnesses

These two photos from 12 months ago come to mind when
I talk about perseverance and wrestling. This was a huge
6-minute match and both wrestlers scored lots of points.
This is the end of it, and you can see how exhausted they were.

I can see the guys trying their best on the shiny blue and gold mats on Saturday. Our team was "at home" so there were many urging them on. The noise of the crowd "witnesses" was loud. My son tells me he doesn't hear distinctive voices, but just the general noise of the crowd. He does, however, hear the coach. That was very obvious in one bout on Saturday when he was struggling to pin a guy and the coach gave him a specific instruction about changing his position. He did that and it had an almost immediate effect on the situation.

The good news of that match, was that our son won it. He
persevered through something very hard and won.

The verse tells us that as we live our lives we too are surrounded by a crowd of witnesses. They would be people who've gone before us who watch us from heaven, and people who are walking alongside us here on earth. 

Obviously the voices we hear are usually the ones of those walking alongside us. Sometimes we can hear the crowd, sometimes we can only hear specific voices. In thinking about this, however, I realise how important it is to pay attention to our most important "witness", God himself. Our "coach" if you like. There are times in supporting our son wrestling when, in my naive enthusiasm, I've shouted the wrong advice. At those times I'm glad my son hasn't headed my advice, but rather his coach's. Same for my life. There are many surrounding us who can give us wrong advice, but it it doesn't agree with God, our "Coach", then we shouldn't heed it.

Endurance/perseverance
"let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us"

Wrestling not only takes explosive power, but it requires perseverance too. There are bouts that our son has won in only 30 seconds of action. But there have been others that have gone the full 6 minutes. Often in the longer bouts, it has been our son's endurance that has won the bout for him.

Same in life. There are times we need to sprint, or put some extra energy into a narrow space of time. But there are many other times when we need to keep our eyes on the longer-term, to carefully use our energy so that we can stick it out for a lot longer. That is what the author is urging us to do here. To have patience, to keep pressing onwards and not giving up too easily. 

I need to remind myself of this often, especially with parenting. Not that I want to give up, but that sometimes it seems like I'm getting no response to my repeated efforts and striving. This is a reminder that parenting is a long-distance event and I should continue to stick at it. 

Mission is the same. We want fast results and we want them now. But that isn't the reality, especially in Japan. The missionaries I admire the most are those who've stuck it out the long-term, not the ones who began with a great deal of energy and zeal, but who didn't stay.

Adrenaline

I love verse 3 in The Messenger. Adrenaline. That's what keeps me going back to wrestling meets. It is a huge shot of adrenaline that goes coursing through me when one of the CAJ guys on the mat strives hard and then succeeds (especially when it is my own son). It is the reason that, though I've taken a small cross-stitch project to all the meets I've been to this year, I've only managed to complete a small portion of it. The adrenaline means I can't concentrate to stitch or count accurately enough to work on it once the bouts begin.

So this verse gives us a clue as to how to give our spiritual lives a shot of adrenaline! "That story" here particularly refers to the story of Jesus, I believe. But it also could be that we should reflect on the stories of those who have gone before us and persevered. Certainly I find it encouraging also to review how God has enabled me in my spiritual story to persevere in the past. Even to recall how he has provided for us to serve in this expensive land of Japan for the last 13 years is an encouragement to my soul and something of a spiritual adrenaline shot!

In conclusion
So, yesterday as we had our first "formal" planning meeting for home assignment, the hugeness of this year came into focus once again. Big changes, big decisions, tough things to do. 

But taking it back to these verses, I know that sticking at the course God has led us to is important, but not just that, that he will be with us in the change. That many have gone before us on this difficult journey of packing up a family and going "home" for deputation, and survived. Those witnesses are watching, and cheering us on. 

If I flag in the journey, all I need to do is consider, not just those missionaries who've done this and survived, but Jesus as he walked down the road of his life, fully knowing the big, hard thing he had coming up in his life.

Planning to do what?

Today is unusual day. My husband stayed home from work, not because he's sick. Actually he planned to stay home today. We've set aside today to start to plan more intensely for our home assignment.

That hasn't quite looked like I wanted it to look as I'm still unwell enough to be lying on the

This is what we looked like when we first started talking
to groups about being missionaries in Japan. Yes, this
is a family photo: pre-children! We've been at this gig
now for more than 15 years! This will be our 3rd home
assignment, but the fourth time we've spent an extended
period going to different groups to talk about mission.

sofa in the middle of the day. However, I can still talk. And operating a laptop from a lounge chair isn't such a hard thing. 

"So, what does planning for home assignment look like? You just book tickets and go, don't you?" 

Ah, no, I don't actually believe you are that naive! It does actually take a lot of thinking and planning, especially when you have five people to think about. We've done quite a lot already to just get to this point. We've weighed up pros and cons of short vs long home assignment, thought about when and where. We've put into motion procedures to have ourselves replaced for our year away. 

It has been a matter of conversation in our family for years, in fact. When we came back to Japan 3 ½ yrs ago, the boys knew we'd probably be going back to Australia after 4 years. So they've known for a long time that this is the rhythm as a family. Thankfully nothing has happened that has disrupted those plans, though one never knows what's around the corner.

However, now a lot of that bigger picture planning needs more flesh put onto it. It's time to get down to business. When I told the boys their Dad wasn't going to school today, but that we'd be planning for home assignment. One of them thought we'd probably start packing boxes! But no, we're not doing that either.

This is what we've done today:

• printed out a blank calendar for the next 18 months
• started to fill it up with "big rocks" like 
• school holidays, 
• conferences that we know about,
• reminders to do certain things
• talked about when it would be good to go to Western Australia for deputation
• brainstormed ideas about what stories we can tell
• talked about getting some testimonials on video for use in deputation
• searched for the list of what we've got stored in Australia, but failed to find it!

While I was napping before lunch, David also wrote a couple of short presentation "modules" (2 minute components of what would make up a presentation) and brainstormed some sermon ideas.

I guess I should have a go at writing a "module" myself, seeing as my claim that I'm not up to writing today is being discredited by actually writing a blog post!

Commonwealth Games Wrestling Preparation Camp Video

I am, unfortunately, still feeling pretty rotten with a cold (including blocked Eustachian tube, dizziness, and my old friend asthma). 

So, as a follow-up on yesterday's post about Australian wrestling, I'll give you this one today. This is a video at an Australian wrestling preparation camp for this year's Commonwealth Games.

Will your son continue wrestling in Australia?

Recently I've been asked by several people about whether our son can continue wrestling in Australia while we're there for a year. So I thought I'd write a little bit about that here.

It was, indeed, one of the first things we thought about when planning this upcoming home

For those of you who aren't sure. Queensland is the
state that we're from (north-eastern state). Brisbane
is in the south-eastern corner.

assignment. His passion for the sport is such that it would be cruel to not allow him to continue to participate. Indeed it is a sport that is best approached with a long-view and taking a year off in the middle isn't a great idea. On Saturday at our local meet, I mistakenly said that one first-year wrestler was "a good wrestler". I was quickly corrected by a long-term coach who said, "No, he's a first-year wrestler who has a lot of potential." To realise that potential, longer-term consistent work is needed.

So, we did a Google search, and found that there is indeed wrestling in Australia (though we'd never heard of it before). And there is a club in Brisbane that our son could join for the duration of our time there (there are in fact, only three clubs in the whole state). 

The bonus is that our younger two sons can also join. They've seen a lot of wrestling in the last three years and are pretty keen. Our youngest son definitely wants to do this in middle and high school at CAJ too. Our middle son, true to his nature, is reserving his commitment till he's tried it out in Australia.

So, our adventure in this land of wrestling continues. It will be interesting to see the lay of the land of Australian wrestling. As a nation, we've only had three medalists, and all of those in the first half of the 20th century. Australia sent one wrestler to the London Olympics. I'll be interested to see the level of competition as compared to what we're seeing at the moment.

Japan Photo Answer #46

On Saturday I asked if anyone could guess what this was used for. No one's gotten close. 

It is a food delivery bike. Especially Japanese noodles in soup, I believe. It is rigged so the the soup won't spill as the scooter goes around corners. 

Peter noted that these have been around for many years. They're certainly a common sight. 

Scooters are a popular way to deliver food here. Pizza is delivered that way, so is McDonalds. Japan is probably not the only place that happens, though, judging by this webpage.

But small vehicles, in general, are very useful in the narrow winding streets that makes up much of Tokyo. Check this one-person delivery vehicle we found parked at a 7-11 we visited one day.

This is our 8 y.o. son standing next to the car. It was tiny!

You can't hold parties for wrestlers!

Yesterday CAJ hosted a Kanto Plains international schools individual wrestling tournament. It involved considerable volunteer work to put it on. 

For starters the wrestling team set-up the gym. Which included moving wrestling mats from the upstairs training room to the main gym floor and taping them all down. It also involved setting up tables for judges, scorers, the announcer, and the admin people who organised the results of 111 wrestling bouts. All of this set-up happened after the inter-school basketball matches in the gym that finished somewhere around 9pm. Needless to say the guys got home late. 

Sorry for these bad iPhone photos.

As hosts we also we beholden to provide food for the coaches and refs. It was called the Hospitality Room. I helped a little with that. 

On the day we had four people working on the admin and announcing, and about four people at any one time on scoring. Each match had three refs working hard with one or two coaches per wrestler.

In the foyer, an army of Seniors ran the Concession Stand. We enjoyed Japanese Curry Rice for lunch. 

Afterwards the whole thing was reversed, freeing the gym for other sporting teams and school PE. But we also cleaned. We swept all the grandstands (bleachers). A lot of [eople = a lot of mess.

(Almost) no parties for wrestlers

As we were packing up the hospitality room one of the other wrestling mums lamented that, unlike other sporting teams, you just can't give parties for the wrestling team. 

I don't know how many of the team are on the very edge of their weight class, but it has to be several. I'm thankful this hasn't been an issue for our growing son, but at least two of the team have lost several kgs during the season in order to compete in their weight class. And the next two weeks hold the two most important meets of the season, so maintaining their weight is very important. After holding back for so long, they've got a large party planned for the first day after their last meet! It is a legendary party. 

Yesterday's results

The semi-final against his team mate.

As for how our son went yesterday. He did well. There were 16 wrestlers in his weight category. He won his first two bouts which took him to the semifinals. There he met CAJ's best wrestler, who also has only been defeated once in his last 60 or so bouts. Our son manned up and did what he had to do. He certainly didn't disgrace himself or his school, he made his teammate earn the win. 

From there it got more complicated. And I leant a new word: repechage. I've heard it, especially in Olympic commentary. By never really figured out its meaning. Yesterday, after the semifinal loss, our son entered the repechage rounds. Two wrestlers who'd lost earlier in the competition than him had to wrestle off for the privilege of wrestling our son for the bronze medal (strangely enough there were two bronze medals, with another set of wrestlers competing for the other medal). 

Unfortunately our son lost this bronze medal bout. It was disappointing, but great to see he'd made it that close to the medals. It is a challenging match to watch (we video each bout). It is hard to see where points were earned: the guys were all over each other. But he gave away too many points in the end. 

However, we had a lot to celebrate for the rest of the team. We got two gold medals, four silvers, and two bronzes. The whole team came third out of six. A great team effort!

Good Atmosphere
Being an at-home event, we had more supporters than usual from CAJ. One of our Aussie friends came with his young son. The first time he'd seen live international wrestling. By his own admission, he found it pretty confusing at first. I helped explain some of the rules, at least the more common ones. Americans find it hard to believe how rare wrestling is in Australia. I don't know anyone who does this as a sport. It isn't a school sport, nor a university sport.

One of the things I commented on with my Aussie friend, was the good atmosphere of the tournament. For a combat-type sport, it really is interesting to behold how non-aggressive it is. Even while wrestling, there generally isn't nastiness, the best wrestlers are well controlled in their actions. They really approach it in a "gentlemanly" type way, with handshakes all round and even the occasional hug between wrestlers. Sometimes the coaches shout in protest about a call the ref made, but generally it isn't too major. And there's generally no nastiness (at least that I've heard) from the supporters in the stands.

So, I remain an enthusiastic supporter.  Good thing too, because despite this season being nearly over (one more tournament for our son), it looks like we're in this for the duration. Our youngest wants to join the team as soon as he can, which could mean I'll be watching wrestling live for the next 10 years!