June joys

Birthday camp-out / rice planting crew

Birthdays, anniversaries, end of the CAJ school year, rice planting, with a dose of heavy construction, rainy season, plumbing issues, topped off by several Fuji climbing trips and lots and lots of coffee!

Moms waiting pick up

Throughout this month, I've been savoring a phrase from a sermon preached by my childhood home church (Lookout Mountain Presbyterian) together with the text from the sermon series at my local church, (Kurume Bible Fellowship): "God is determined to build dependence in his people by giving them more than they can handle . . . He will give you more than you can handle so that you will run to him." Colluded in comfort with: "Be relaxed with what you have. Since God assured us, 'I will never let you down, never walk off and leave you"  . . . . So, let's go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is. . . . God takes particular pleasure in acts of worship - a different kind of "sacrifice" - that take place in kitchen and workplace and on the streets." (Heb 13:5; 13:13, 16, The Message)

I've had moment after moment of I can't do this! followed by run to me! And we've run, repented and we've gone outside to worship around the coffee mugs, on the front porches, squinting in the sawdust of our construction-site-home.

We run to Jesus with our joys and griefs:
- I've mentioned for several months, our neighbor's 6th grade grandson is in the grip of brain cancer. As I type, I can hear his little sister, who has moved in with her grandparents, shouting and laughing next door. I'm grateful that our neighbor has connected with a cancer research physician who attends our church  and hosts "cancer philosophy clinics" - please pray for fruitful conversation and counseling and for healing of this boy's body and his family's hearts!

Another beam in!

- In order to help fund our summer travels and supplement our overall budget, Ryan lined up a full summer of part-time work. Each job is physically draining (guiding visitors up mountains, house renovation and furniture repair) and often takes him away from his family. Please pray for his ongoing safety, and rest, and that our trip to the states would be restful, as he is briefly away from his summer jobs.

Nap time at coffee open house

- Fellowship and communion with neighborhood moms remains one of the greatest joys and challenges of my daily life. Seven Christian moms who are connected with our local pre-school meet regularly to pray and host an open house coffee time for other moms. The conversations are rich and full. Please pray for honesty, trust, and community.

 - And . . . . exciting development! - 

Through the astounding generosity of some family members, we're able to make a quick, unexpected trip to Georgia this summer! A close cousin is getting married, and we are so grateful to be able to be present and celebrate in person with them! This also means we will have a few days to spend with some of you! If you are in the GA/TN area between July 8 and 18, and have time to connect, please let us know!

Merry May

It's that moment when you realize that - although your kids are laughing as they race with the crowd of little boys around the park - what the little boys are yelling at your kids is "obake!" ”ghost!" And the surrounding crowd of moms continues chatting away peacefully.

And of course because your kids are ghostly blond compared to the others, you feel it deep inside, even though you know its just that the little boys don't really know any better. And although your kids are laughing, you wonder - do they feel it deep inside too? That twinge that, really, "Friends, this world is not your home, so don't make yourselves cozy in it. Don't indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they'll be won over to God's side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives." (1 Peter 2:11-12, MSG)

Guys, so much beautiful good happened this month! Seniors at CAJ stood in front of their community and talked about how to support education for special needs students in Thailand, how to understand true biblical masculinity; topics they chose, researched for a year, and present a biblical response to. Student leadership took time away from the regular school week to retreat, plan, and ask questions like, what does it mean to be a Christian student at CAJ? What values should student leadership embody at CAJ? Local moms met over coffee cups to discuss child raising, marriage, culture, and adoption (a very stigmatized and unpopular practice in Japan). And we met on our knees to pour over our school, our classrooms, and our families.

Please join us on our knees!
- For our graduates: Friday, June 3 is CAJ's graduation ceremony. Please pray for students as they leave this stage of life and begin their next set of joys and challenges!
- For our school community: On the first Friday of each month, moms gather to pray for our school and community. On the third Friday of each month, we're inviting the whole school over (122 moms) for an open house to chat and get to know each other. Please pray for the conversations and relationships!
- For our students: Tokyo schools received two anonymous bomb (and thankfully harmless!) threats this month. Please pray for wisdom in school leadership and local police. Please pray for healing in the heart of the person sending these threats. Please pray for safety for our students!
- For our relationships and finances: We're so grateful to see God's specific blessing in several specific relational and financial challenges this month. Join us in giving thanks, and please pray that we will continue to serve generously as we have been blessed.

Actually April

On our fridge

“I really want to explain this to my family; when I try to tell even my husband about it, he doesn’t really understand.” Her hands dance as she wrestles with careful English and occasional Japanese. She is studying the use of light and dark in therapeutic and medicinal art, as a diagnostic tool for various illnesses. Now she’s wrapping up her final paper and asked for help polishing her English. “Light is fullness and energy; it is what brings life and joy. Darkness - solid matter like food, this table, our coffee mugs - is also needed, to help balance.” Isn’t this already a part of Zen culture, I asked, the balance of light and dark? “No, no; the light in Zen is empty, nothingness. The light I am talking about, that I want to bring to my family - it is bright and energized; it is full of joy!” I was silenced. Here is Love himself, the brightest of all lights, the deepest of all gentle, nurturing darks, finding us in this small coffee shop. Please join me in praying that Etsuko would find the Light, as I meet with her weekly to discuss light, darkness, and truth. 

Chopping wood
with the neighbors

We knew our neighborhood was quiet, calm and settled when we moved in six months ago today! We knew we would make quite a splash, with our three small ones, dog, cat and loud foreign ways. Our reception has been mixed. Our closest friend, just across the kitchen window, is a delightful, energetic retired couple. She marches out at 6 AM in red track suits for morning stretching time in the park. He briskly sweeps the street daily, picking up each fallen petal and leaf with care. She runs over with a bamboo shoot to serve my visiting relatives, with detailed instructions about how to properly cook it. And runs out in the dark, as I see off our evening guests, to chat about the day’s hospital visit. Her 6th grade grandson is dying of brain cancer; she asked us to pray. He had a very close call last weekend, and then made it through, so she told me she believes the prayers are working. Please join us in praying for this sweet family. 

The best part of teaching - one of many best parts - is when you get to see the epiphanies, the internalization, the ownership of new ideas. Last month, Ryan lead senior teachers and students on the annual trip to Northern Thailand. Students are often invited to return, to intern at the training center we visit, and continue helping out in local schools. Two of our graduating women are returning to Northern Thailand! We are so excited to support and encourage them! Would you consider supporting and encouraging these two young women? Please visit their website!

They outnumber us!

Because our supporting network is organic and small, I know and think of each of you as I write each month. Please know how grateful we are for each of your thoughts and prayers. You sustain and encourage us. Thank you. Thank you!

Oh my, March!

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood

from Auden’s "Musee des Beaux Arts"

Being raised half of my life in the American South, I got used to life sprinkled with a quasi-spiritual dusting, in the “God bless America” and “Lord have mercy” kind of way. The Judaeo-Christian culture is deep set in the southern Bible belt. Here, where I spend the other half of my life, the daily is marked by very different rhythms. Stopping to remember Easter is a radical act. 

Easter morning baptism for our sweet friend Emma!

At Easter morning sunrise, painting vans showed up at 5:59AM at the shop across our street to pack and load, and zip away by 6:20. As I hastily mixed easter cake for our lunch crowd. Skill saws screech from beyond the park where a new neighborhood is going up, as I hang my laundry and ready the house for family and friends.  

It’s not like Jesus was born into a "bible-belt" culture either, really. The world didn’t stop to celebrate his resurrection. Re-birth quietly slipped in, like tulips uncurling one petal at a time. Morning traffic picks up. Dogs bark, kids jostle and fight for space in front of the heater. And the Son of God opens his eyes, for the second miraculous time.

Ryan with a rescued child soldier turned friend

Praise: We’re grateful for a safe and successful trip to northern Thailand for Ryan and the senior class at CAJ. Students put learning into action by building a foundation for a handicapped school and playing with local elementary kids. Ryan was able to meet with the girl we’ve been sponsoring for the past few years, Neung. She is entering university and wants to study to become a nurse to work at her local hospital. We’re so pleased to be able to encourage her through to higher education! 

Prayer: please pray that the learning and connections students made on this trip will transfer back into the classrooms at CAJ and into their hearts. We left funds to help finish the project; please pray that the construction of the handicapped center would continue smoothly.  

Praise: After three months of conversation and planning, a proposal is beginning to take shape for a major project, in collaboration with two local churches. We’re so excited to begin a new ministry to families and needy individuals in our community. Our dream is to open a “kids cafeteria” (think the local soup kitchen, but cozy at grandma’s house), where anyone is welcome to come and eat a meal together, and everyone helps to prepare the meal, and hang out through the day. 

Prayer: As I approach this new project, I am overwhelmed with a need for humility in cross-cultural leadership, and grace and gentleness to truly help those who are hurting in our city. Please pray for humility, grace and gentleness!

Ceiling work with the neighborhood crew

Grandpa came!

Praise: We’re so grateful to be settled into our new house, and that our kids have had their healthiest winter yet! (we were concerned that our previous house had “sick house” syndrome, which leaks chemicals like formaldehyde into the air, causing many breathing problems)

Prayer: We’re doing our own renovation on the house to help improve the insulation and clean the air. Please pray for us as we juggle our various jobs and responsibilities. 

February fast forward

"What do you mean I have to connect the resurrection of Christ to water scarcity in Zimbabwe??" A lot of big ideas coalesce (collide?) in February for CAJ seniors. After more than a year of individualized research, intense conversations with teachers and classmates, hinged on a core question, seniors do the complicated work of connecting their sense of the story of scripture (creation, fall, redemption and restoration) to their chosen issue (water scarcity in Zimbabwe, teenage depression, gaming addiction, etc). 

Visiting Edo period museum (we're inside!)

And March is when it all becomes hands-on. Students have saved and studied for the past four years for a ministry trip to northern Thailand, where they will work with a local hill tribe school. This year's project is helping to build a foundation for a handicapped school. This is the first school of its kind in the area; a much needed resource! Together with the senior class teachers, Ryan has authored much of the curriculum preparing for and experienced on this trip. Please pray for safety, and rich learning as students culminate their four years of learning about stewarding, collaborating, leading and following. 

I mentioned last month that I'm working on a three month research project for my church, which takes me to coffee chats, shared lunches and church fellowship halls. What intense, beautiful, shoulder-bending work is going on in our city. The stream rushes by as I listen to stories - the boy who goes home every day to an empty house, the pregnant teenage girl making the agonizing choice between giving her baby up for adoption or going it alone as a single mom, the family struggling between yes and no when yet another needy mouth shows up at the doorstep, asking for a place to stay; I pray for humility to listen well and ask before planning where to jump in. And yet, I've got a big dream percolating, the kind that I catch myself daydreaming about and realize my arms are all goosebumps. Feels like waiting for another baby to be born. Please pray for humility to listen and learn before I speak or suggest. Please pray for wisdom as I collect ideas and present them to my church council at the end of March. 

Firewood for next winter!

For those on the Japanese school calendar, March is the end of the school year, and a brief spring holiday, with the new school year beginning with April's blooming cherry blossoms. Please pray for the smooth end to this year, and a joyful start to the next year.

And sometimes you find them like this. . .

Jubilant January

Sometimes repair uses up every roll of tape you have in the house! And sometimes there are flowers blooming in the snow. 

Look! Wintersweet is blooming!

Thanks to good friends who gave us a beautiful reminder of our theme and challenge for our house: a place of welcome, shelter, healing, and ultimately, a place of sending out. We chose the image of a tree, thinking of the tree of life "whose leaves are for the healing of the nations" from Ezekiel 47 and Revelation 22. And look what we were given! Now, when you're in our neighborhood, you will know just where to find our house! 

It's winter at CAJ, which means that middle school students and teachers take the first morning train toward downtown Tokyo to bring breakfasts to the homeless people who are sleeping in the stations overnight. Ryan helps high school students who welcome the middle schoolers back to campus as they process their experience. 

Best trash find!

This month CAJ seniors are wrestling with a core question that focuses their year long research on a topic that is person to them and could help bring good to the world. Over the years, many colleagues have worked on the curriculum for this massive assignment, and Ryan has put particular ownership into the core question process. 

For the next three months, I am working on a research project for our church. Our city is becoming known as a good place for families. Today I challenged my church family: are we ready for this? Ready to welcome in new friends and neighbors? Ready to fellowship with fellow parents, living out the daily reality of being in community? I've been asked to research by interviewing those in our community with a finger on the pulse of this change. And compile the results and present it to the church by March. Please pray for my conversations and for insight as I listen and compile! 

For years, I have carried around a tiny red pencil which reads "prayer changes things." While reading one of my grandmother's devotional books (Chambers, If ye shall ask . . . ) I was challenged by the phrase, "It is not so true that 'Prayer changes things' as that prayer changes me and then I change things" (14). Dear friends and supporters, your prayers change us, and they help equip us to live and love as we are meant to. Thank you for praying! 

Our new address is: 

3-23-16 Chuo-cho, Higashi Kurume-shi, Tokyo 203-0054

or

〒203-0054 東京都東久留米市中央町３−２３−１６

Delicious December

Repair is a radical act. In the blur of holiday commercialism, one phrase gave me pause. Repair is a radical act. Catchy marketing aside, this phrase stuck with me as I lived through this month. 

I got to pray at my friend Chieko's baptism!

For our neighbors, the new year is a time to value the clean sweep, the new purchase, the clean slate. While of course, we love a good do-over as much as anyone, we've been sinking deeply into repair, renewal, renovation. Rather than sweep it all away and start over, we dig deep into repair, acknowledging that - in some mysterious way - the beauty is more profound because of the brokenness. This month, we renewed some tough relationships, working to re-engage instead of move on. We celebrated repentance and new life through the baptism of our dear friend. We renovated our very-old-new house, repairing, insulating, making it stronger and safer. 

"Finding baby Jesus" with church friends

When we re-install the sink. . .

We're grateful! Thank you for the many of you who prayed and sent quick emails on the morning of our "party week!" We had a wonderful series of celebrations with so many reminders of grace. Particularly, I'm grateful that I was able to make a better connection with Kiyomi, the mother of one of our pre-school classmates. She and her kids will come over next week, after the new year holiday, to play at our house. She's very shy, but is willing to make time. Please pray for our conversation and friendship! 

We're humbled and challenged by our hopes for our new house. As we moved, we prayed over a theme for our house. We chose the image of a tree: a place of welcome, shelter, strength, and sending. A place to learn and grow, and receive restoration and retreat, and then a place to be sent out from and scattered, to heal the nations. We love the parallel verses in Ezekiel 47 and Revelation 22 which speak of the "leaves for the healing of the nations." Please pray with us as we dedicate our home to be a place of healing, welcome, and of sending out. 

The garbage bins are taped shut for the week of New Years

Please pray for the spread of grace in our community. As I look ahead to this new year, I pray for my friends to know grace. I pray for my family to know and live in grace. In Japanese culture, even the trash we put out for pick up must be clean, tidy, sorted, and acceptable. It is scrutinized by the neighborhood and can be returned to you if unacceptable! To me, a mother of little ones who generate many piles of unsightly trash, I struggle to have even our waste be neat and proper. 

Flowers from Enomoto-san

In my experience, Japanese culture is the most generous culture I have yet engaged, and also the most grace-less. Last week our kids and dog wandered into our neighbor's field and made mud pies. We fetched them apologetically, and chatted. That night, she came over with a bag of apples, and a beautiful evergreen wreath and table arrangement because I said her garden reminded me of my mother (a florist, as many of you know). Today, when I took a small apple crisp and bag of cookies to thank her for the flowers, she immediately filled my hands with boxes of chocolates, cookies and a roast beef! Incredibly generous! Yet, at our pre-school, when a boy is labeled a bully, the family resorts to quietly move to another school and cut all ties rather than face the pressure of the group. So much generosity and so little grace. 

Speaking of grace... we didn't manage to get Christmas/New Years cards sent this year. We still love you! Thanks for loving us anyway! We love hearing from you! 

Our new address is: 

3-23-16 Chuo-cho, Higashi Kurume-shi, Tokyo 203-0054

or

〒203-0054 東京都東久留米市中央町３−２３−１６