Cleaning Aso Sansō.

The main building of Aso Sansō.

Teamwork and cleanliness are two of Japan's most esteemed cultural values, and these are both well-expressed in the church. Every year near the end of May, Lutheran churches, schools, and organizations in Kumamoto Prefecture come together at Aso Sansō (Aso Mountain Retreat), a Lutheran retreat center in the mountains, to give the entire place a good cleansing. This year I took the hour-and-a-half trip out with seven or eight people from Kuwamizu Church.

Airing out futons and blankets.

Jobs included scrubbing the toilets, weeding, washing the floors, and laying out to dry in the sun everything that wasn't nailed down... including the futon mattresses and blankets. The only place with enough space to do that was the parking lot, and when the tarp they'd laid down on the ground was full, they moved to the cars.

My corridor.

I spent most of the day cleaning a corridor in the 63-year-old main building with the church ladies, who lent me a pair of gloves and a rag to wash the windows and a mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I'm at least a head taller than most people at my church, so I was assigned to clean the higher parts of the windows. "Ah, it's really convenient that we have Laura around!" remarked one of the pastors, walking past me as I scrubbed the dirt out from under the top corner of the window frame. I smiled. I don't always feel useful in this country, especially considering my linguistic limitations, but if I can help a bunch of church ladies wipe a window clean, I'm happy.

Camps and retreat centers have a spiritual significance for many people I know in the States (including myself), and it's the same in Japan. With the numerous camps and events that the Lutheran church holds there every year, it holds a lot of memories for a lot of people. I kept thinking back to my old summer camp as I wandered the grounds on my break. The common love of a place, the peaceful natural environs, and even the smell of the damp earth was the same. So, for those of you curious about what a Japanese retreat center looks like, here are a few pictures:

View from the veranda of the main building. (2013 photo.)

One church lady called this place the "green chapel."

No shoes in the building!

Communal sink. The nets are actually a good way to get suds from the bar soap.

The bath is communal, as well.

One of the several rooms for lodging in the main building.
(The futon mattresses are stored in the closet until bedtime, when they're rolled out on the floor.)

A side entrance I also helped clean.

Tatami-matted front of the main hall.

It was a tiring and sweaty Saturday, but well worth it. (Afterward, the church ladies took me to go soak in an area hot spring afterward, which felt heavenly!) It's a privilege and an honor to be working alongside my Japanese brothers and sisters in Christ to celebrate, enjoy, and take care of God's creation here in Japan.

My terrible five-year-old point-and-shoot camera does not adequately capture the beauty of Aso, but this gives you something of an idea. We crossed a bridge spanning this gorge on our way back to Kumamoto City and stopped for photos.

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
Ephesians 4:15-16 (NIV)

School (and Golden Week), take two.

Overflow student bike parking.

It's my second year of teaching at Luther, and the first semester is in full swing. This year we have the largest incoming class of first-years that we've ever had--something like 400 kids! Last year was a lot of learning the ropes, so this year it's going a bit more smoothly. (I don't forget the keys to the classroom nearly as often as I used to!)

One of the "changes" I've been talking about recently includes the birth of a beautiful baby boy to Katie and her husband in March, which has brought much joy to the community. We've been missing her a lot at Luther, but we've got some great people pitching in to help in her absence as she stays home to take care of the li'l guy for a while.

Meanwhile, April was crazy, full of getting ready for our new influx of students (and a year without our 14-year J-3 veteran adviser/translator/person-who-tells-us-what's-going-on extraordinaire Katie). I've got fewer class hours in a week than I did last year, but it's more than made up by the amount of outside prep work, grading, and planning. Golden Week, that glorious clump of consecutive public holidays, came just in time.

Caroline and I were both feeling the pressure of school, so we decided to just do a simpler variation on last year. We took the train to Aso again, but instead of staying overnight or climbing a mountain, we ate lunch at a street fair, picked an area of the town we hadn't explored and just walked. We stumbled upon markers for an "open-air museum" walking tour, and following them, found shrines, trees, and little hideaways off the beaten trail. The rest of Aso was crowded with tourists hoping to get out of the city, but the backroads we were on were almost empty. It was perfect.

Hama Shrine.

A very large, very old gingko tree.

Carp flags for Children's Day on May 5.

Stairs leading off the road...

...into a secluded little park.

At one point, the "open-air museum" signposts became a little ambiguous and we ended up out in the middle of nowhere, on a highway that stretched through endless crop fields. I knew we were most likely not following the prescribed route anymore, but I enjoyed the walk, anyway. We rehydrated at a sports field complex with vending machines and eventually found our way back to the station just in time for the train.

We think we may have been in the dead center of Aso crater.

The next weekend was Luther's annual Sports Festival. It was much the same kind of stuff as last year, but still a lot of fun.

Waiting for the baton pass in the sports team relay, in uniform.
(Note the swim team member. Poor guy!)

Finished Maypoles.

Senior girls' eurhythmics. Kind of like Extreme Patting-Your-Head-and-Rubbing-Your-Belly.

Students waiting and watching from their class tents, under the Luther flag.

Yellow team Ōendan performance.

It's been busy, as always, but I really do enjoy my work. It's hard knowing that this is my last year as a J-3, but I'm planning to make the most of it. Thanks for your prayers and support!

Then people go out to their work,
to their labor until evening.
Psalm 104:23 (NIV)

International Children's Program.

One of my favorite J-3 duties is the International English Children's Program, held twice a month in the evening as the "Sunday school" of the International English Service at Kumamoto Lutheran. In the year that I've been assisting with it, we've gotten anywhere from two to six kids on any given Sunday, ranging in age from 3 to 11 and all over the map with regard to English language abilities.

The Palm Sunday story in felt.

Our session usually starts at 5pm with a story from the Bible, and we're lucky enough to own a full set of those Bible story felt boards, which is nice. Did you know those things actually have like 400 pieces? I certainly didn't think about it when I was five years old and in Sunday School. The attention to detail on those things is pretty impressive, and it makes things easier for the littler ones with less English to at least get an idea of what's going on.

After the story, the boys start to get a little antsy, so we go into the games portion. I've found that games involving blindfolds work pretty well for this crowd. When I plan the games I try to connect them to the Bible story (animal-themed Memory for Noah's Ark--'cause the animals went in two by two!), but sometimes it's a bit more of a stretch (for the story of Jacob and Esau, everyone wrapped yarn around their arms to make them "hairy" while blindfolded "Isaac" ran around trying to find them).

"Pin the Jesus on the Donkey."

Last is the craft portion, which is actually the hardest thing to plan with the wild age variations, though by the grace of God we haven't had any total busts. The kids have especially taken to the origami projects we've done... and thus, according to some parents, I've created origami fiends out of some of them (and devastated their parents' memo pads in the process, I'm sure). Then it's a quick prayer and a preliminary clean-up before everyone heads upstairs for the service at 6.

It's really a gift to be able to serve in this way. The kids are, of course, fantastic, though the sheer variety of kids in our little class presents some unique challenges. All the same, it's absolutely a privilege to be a part of these kids' spiritual development, to hear them enthusiastically shout "Jesus is alive!" when I ask them why Easter is such a happy day, to hear a parent tell me the next day that his nine-year-old son is starting to ask deep and thoughtful questions about the Bible. We're not big on resources or numbers (though the felt-board set is pretty sweet), but God still sees us through.

Right now, after briefly flashing forward to the New Testament for Easter, we're in the Old Testament; next Sunday we're going to talk about Jacob wrestling an angel and then make our own angels out of paper plates with hand-traced wings. Please pray for this ministry, and for the kids that come through our doors every first and third Sunday.

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."
Matthew 19:14 (NIV)

At the end of the first year.

Spring break is almost over and I can hardly believe I'm already approaching my second year of teaching. Unexpected (but not unhappy!) things have arisen and my duties have increased quite a bit from this point last year. Even so, God has taken care of us and provided for our needs at church and at school.

Fukuoka Tower.

The paradox of blogging about my experiences in Japan is that the things about my life and job that I thought I'd write more about are so mundane to me now that I'm afraid I'd bore you with the details. Inputting 300 students' grades into an Excel spreadsheet and vacuuming dead leaves from the houseplant I keep forgetting to water do not an interesting blog entry make. But on the other hand, if I only blog the Kodak moments, it'll give you a severely incomplete picture of my life. Being a foreign missionary has taken me halfway across the world, and recently up to Fukuoka for a JELC Kyushu district meeting, but missionaries are no jetsetters. (We took the 2½-hour discount bus, not the 30-minute bullet train.)

Day's end at Myoken-ura in Amakusa.

And that's what I've found J-3 life is like: long weeks full of scrambling to make grade deadlines and design Bible studies for college students with little to no Christian background, punctuated by sporadic getaways with friends to Amakusa to watch the sun set over the ocean, all with a liberal coating of prayer. It's never boring, but it does make figuring out what to blog about kind of difficult.

Sakura trees near downtown.

I've been debating about what kinds of entries I should write next. Luther High School history? Another food post? (I don't subsist on just yakisoba anymore.) A day in my life? J-3 program history? Crazy student stories? Strategies I've found for getting green tea stains off white coffee mugs? (Rub it with baking soda and a little water! It works every time.)

So, my question, as I head into my last year as a J-3: what do you, the reader, want to hear about? Let me know in the comments or via email; I really am interested in hearing what's interesting to you. Meanwhile, I'm going to sort through my photos of the blooming cherry trees around Kumamoto Castle and scrub the mildew out of my shower drain.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV)

Recent excursions: Suizenji Park and Yamaga.

Been busy lately, lots of craziness with the end of the school year and preparing for aforementioned changes. But while I repeat Isaiah 40:31 to myself, here are some photos of the blessings I've received in the midst of it all, from those precious days off.

Tuesday, February 11 was a national holiday, so I went with Brent to see the plum blossoms at Suizenji Park in town. Some trees were in full bloom; others were just barely starting to bud.

Plum trees.

A sure sign that spring is coming.

Suizenji Park, Izumi Shrine at center.

Then, last Saturday, Caroline and I were graciously shown around the town of Yamaga, an hour or two north of Kumamoto, by her friend. Yamaga was in the midst of their annual "Lantern Romance" festival, when the whole downtown area is decorated with paper umbrellas and cut-away bamboo, which are all illuminated at night.

Umbrella display before dark.

Kongōjō Temple in Yamaga, set up for the festival.

The local junior high held a charity concert in the town plaza to support the city of Fukushima.

Bamboo with candles in them like this lined the main street.

Some were arranged into shapes, like this...

...or this!

Bamboo and umbrellas illuminated.

More umbrellas and bamboo lanterns.

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40:28-31 (NIV)

Winter break highlights and Happy New Year!

With the new year comes many changes, not the least of which is a brand-new Kumamoto J-3. We welcomed Brent into our little family at a party a couple of weeks ago (which, incidentally, marked the halfway point for Morgan, Caroline, and me). He's still in orientation but will start full teaching at Luther when the new school year starts in April.

Yōkoso, Brent! (From L to R: Morgan, Patrick, Brent, me, Caroline.)

Other highlights from the past month:

Attending a Christmas Eve service in California.

Technology is astounding.

Well... not quite. But thanks to mobile technology, spur-of-the-moment ideas, and the fact that my home church has Wi-Fi, I was able to Skype into my home church's 7pm Christmas Eve service from Japan at noon on Christmas Day. (Special thanks to my older brother, who held the tablet over his head the whole service so I could see.) It was a surreal and moving experience, singing with my home congregation in California in the early afternoon Japan sunshine. I even managed to close my curtains and dig a candle and holder out in time to join in the final candlelit rendition of "Joy to the World."

Boxi Rocks!

Not your usual rock band. Or your
usual pastors.

This is the rock band founded by Sekino-sensei, pastor of Tokyo Lutheran, featuring two pastors and a seminarian who's currently serving in Kumamoto. "Boxi" is an alternate spelling of bokushi, Japanese for "pastor." They had their first Kumamoto live show a couple days after Christmas at Murozono Church, one of the Lutheran churches in town, and I thought they were going to bring the rafters down! Guest vocalists included Murozono's pastor Nishikawa-sensei (a former seminary classmate of Sekino-sensei) and Luther's chaplain Choi-sensei. I bought a t-shirt after the concert (no CDs yet, unfortunately). Their logo is... interesting, to say the least. The design on the bass drum is actually the emblem of the Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church:

Luther on bass, Calvin on guitar, and... Jesus on drums.
(Does anyone recognize the one on the left? We haven't been able to figure out who he is.)

Costco!

Look familiar?

Thanks to some generous friends, I had the opportunity to visit the Costco warehouse in Fukuoka, a two-hour drive from Kumamoto, at the end of December. It's almost like an exact replica of Costco in America, except the prices are higher and there are of course many more Japanese goods for sale. But it's the only place in Japan to get distilled white vinegar, peanut butter, Orville Redenbacher popcorn, and Costco muffins. Yes, those Costco muffins.

Fitting a Costco haul into a Japanese car is
a photo-worthy accomplishment. (Hi, Katie!)

It was also a startling reminder of just how long I've been in Japan. We had pizza for lunch at the food court and at first bite I was overcome with such nostalgia that I started to cry. (It was delicious, and with the exception of the distinctly Japanese cheese, tasted exactly the same as home.) Everything was the exact same size as Costco in America, but after a year in the land of tiny cars and a 12-inch "large" pizzas, everything seemed gigantic. It's going to be an interesting transition at the end of my time here.

This year has started out pretty well, if busy. There are still many changes a-coming, and now that I have a full calendar year in Japan under my belt, I have a new resolve to make the most of this last full calendar year as a J-3. There are several ways I hope to step up this year in my faith and service as a missionary. Please pray that God's will be done and that we are able to be strong and courageous to do the work He's called us to do this year.

How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!
Psalm 133:1 (NIV)

First Kumamoto Christmas.

Some days, being a missionary is a very spiritual experience, a tough and yet fulfilling job as a witness to God's work in the world.

Other days, being a missionary means dressing up like this:

"Santa-chan kawaii!"
("Miss Santa's so cute!")
-the church ladies

During the postlude of the very moving Christmas Eve service at Kuwamizu (in which I distributed candles and sang in the choir), I was quickly ushered into a Sunday School room and stuffed into that Santa dress, already wearing several layers underneath, to lead the people out to go caroling around the various baby, child, developmentally disabled, and elderly homes of the Colony of Love and Mercy. As I stood behind the doors to enter the sanctuary, a church lady went over my lines with me. After the service was over I was to rush into the sanctuary and in my loudest, cheerfulest voice, declare in Japanese, "Good evening everyone! Merry Christmas! Now we're going to go caroling! Please take one of these--" (hold up a candle) "--and gather at the athletic ground! Let's go!" After repeating the lines back to her three or four times--I kept forgetting to say the all-important "Merry Christmas"--she started to ring some sleigh bells and motioned for me to make my entrance.

I think the congregation was as shocked as I was. We stared at each other for a second before they started to ooh and applaud. I took a deep breath and said my lines in probably the loudest Japanese I've ever spoken. (Fear of making mistakes means I usually speak Japanese in a really quiet voice--my volume that night apparently really impressed Pastor Sumimoto.) And then I ran out the door and while waiting for everyone to gather bantered with some kids who recognized me from Sunday School. (It was mostly just them saying "Laura" and me saying "No, Santa" back and forth.)

We had just sung "Silent Night" at one of the homes when the church lady who'd helped me put the dress over my three layers took my arm and rushed me back to the Sunday School room. "Are you going to be on time to the English service?" she asked. "You should probably go change back into your regular clothes now."

"I'm okay, I'm okay," I said as I was escorted along. "I've got an hour still..." But still I found myself back in the Sunday School room with a bowl of hot pork soup and a steaming cup of green tea, which I gratefully devoured before hopping on my bike to Kumamoto Lutheran for the English Christmas Eve service.

Japan's general disregard for the true origins of Christmas bemused me last year and distressed me this year. I've talked before about how secular Christmas is here. It's more or less equivalent to Valentine's Day in the U.S. in level of importance, widespread unawareness of true origins, romantic associations, and confectionery sales. I said in my Christmas Eve entry this year that Luther is still open for extra classes and club activities on Christmas. And while J-3s didn't technically have to be at school on Christmas Day, we did have to opt out of something scheduled for that day. It left all the (all Christian) native English teachers a little taken aback, to be asked to attend something on Christmas at a Christian school.

The message at the International English Christmas Eve service that night was given by a former J-3 who still lives and teaches here in Kumamoto, and touched on that very point. We all know Christmas is more than Santa Claus and ho-ho-ho and mistletoe and presents to pretty girls. But... in truth, at its very heart, Christmas is not about generosity or spending time with loved ones either, as noble as those things are. The meaning of Christmas is God's greatest gift, a gift you don't get bored with one day later, a gift that plants itself in your heart and stays with you all year round. The meaning of Christmas, at its very core, is the coming of God's Son, the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

I'd had a potential blog entry swimming around my head about my frustrations with Japan's widespread ignorance of the sacredness of Christmas and how Santa and his reindeer fly up the side of the Tsuruya Department Store downtown, but if you want a Nativity set you have to bring it in from another country or make it yourself. But it's not my goal as a missionary to open a market for mass-produced manger scenes in Japan.

The message was a much-needed grounding for me. Jesus' love is so far beyond the confines of an annual 24-hour period, so much deeper than the relative mere warm fuzzies of familial love, so much more powerful and wild than a serene Nativity scene would suggest, so much more generous than anything you could put under a tree, so much more fulfilling than the best homemade Christmas feast. The Son of God! God-made-flesh! He came as a baby, born in one of the dirtiest, smelliest places on Earth because God wanted to reconcile us to Him that much. That's a big deal, yo! A bigger deal than having to report to school on December 25, that's for sure.

It's another bolster to my faith, one of the several I've accumulated since landing here almost 14 months ago. Praise be to God for His love and mercy that was born so long ago and is still with us today. Merry Christmas!

Deceptively placid but still appreciated manger scene borrowed from the eclectic collection
at Kumamoto Lutheran to loan to local families in transit who don't have one of their own.
(Note the extra Magi and Joseph.)

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6 (NIV)

Advent events.

It's the afternoon of Christmas Eve here in Japan, which for the missionary community is the calm before the storm. Each of the five Lutheran churches in Kumamoto City has its own evening Christmas Eve service tonight, and there's also the late-night International English Christmas Eve Service at Kumamoto Lutheran.

Christmas tree lighting at Luther.

It's really the calm in the middle of the storm, when I think about all the Advent- and Christmas-related activities of the past month or so. Along with three Christmas parties, I've been to two Christmas tree lightings, one at Luther and one at the Colony of Love and Mercy welfare organization attached to Kuwamizu, complete with carols and candlelight. We were given candle holders out of empty soda bottles, made by cutting off the bottom of the bottle, turning the whole thing upside-down, and securing the candle on a screw driven through the cap. It's a pretty neat idea, but of course, the candles melt the plastic pretty easily. Many of the kids spend the entire service tilting the bottle to melt the plastic here and there, making interesting and possibly slightly toxic modern art.

Caroling with the third-years.

On Friday, the last day of school before winter break, I woke up at 3:30am to participate in Luther's annual Christmas caroling, where all the seniors gather in a nearby park at 5:25am and sing songs like "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World" in Japanese while walking back toward the school, the students holding candles in those homemade PET-bottle holders. The local press came out with all their cameras to cover it, which was a little distracting. Still, it was a really cool thing to be out proclaiming the true meaning of Christmas, even with the cold.

My desk at the end of the day. The yellow citrus
fruit is called a yuzu, and was handed to me by
the school groundskeeper as we returned to campus.

After warming up with a delicious breakfast of hot pork soup and rice balls back at the school cafeteria, it was time for the Christmas services. The Luther J-3s (Morgan, Patrick, and me) were tapped to play the Three Wise Men in the school Christmas pageant, and when Patrick wasn't available, they recruited the school's Australian exchange student. We were outfitted in tan shawls as our costumes and spoke our lines in English. ("We Three Kings of Occident are," we'd joked.) The service ended with the "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's Messiah, which the students had been practicing for the past week, and then afterward was a performance by the handbell choir and a secular Christmas medley from the music-specialty seniors. The whole service took an hour-and-a-half, and since the chapel is only big enough to hold a third of the student body at once, it was held three times. (Our poor chaplain!) That afternoon was staff Christmas worship, and then finally it was time to pack up and go home for winter "break." ("Break" is in quotation marks because the school will still be open all week for club activities and required extra classes--and yes, that means Christmas, too. Thankfully none of it is anything the J-3s have to be at school for.)

Presenting gifts to Baby Jesus.

On the English Service side of things, last Sunday we had the annual children's Christmas pageant. It's my first year helping with the International English Sunday School, but the kids are old pros. They called out the parts they wanted to play before I'd even cracked open the book to review. Our usual Mary, a five-year-old girl, was sick that day, so I stepped in as a last-minute replacement. During the pageant, some of the adults joined in, too. (We had more adult angels than kids, I think.) It was a lot of fun.

And now, after a quick costume fitting yesterday (I'm playing "Santa Claus" tonight for the kids around the Colony of Love and Mercy--this should be interesting) it'll be time to crown all these activities with a celebration of the true "reason for the season," a reason most Japanese people are actually almost entirely unaware of. Please pray for the Good News to be spread by churches around the country tonight.

I'll close with the words from the postcards Kuwamizu has been distributing to invite people to tonight's service:

"I humbly offer you this love."

You often hear, "I want to spend Christmas with someone special."

But, in fact, the one who says this is neither me, nor you.

It's God who says it.

This Christmas, please come to church.

"I want to spend this Christmas with you," God says, and is waiting for you.

Kuwamizu sanctuary, decked out for Christmas.

But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord."
Luke 2:10-11 (NIV)

Reflections on a year (and some) in Japan.

Autumn ginkgo leaves through the window of a practice room at school.

It's been one year and four weeks since I first stumbled into a tiny apartment in Tokyo, full of awe and wonder at Japan, hopes and dreams for the next 29 months, and fears about just what I was getting into. (The night before I left, I sat on the couch in my parents' house with a sudden case of the cold feet that brought me close to tears. Moving across an ocean? Being a missionary? Who does that?)

"Squid guts." They were really salty.

The second semester of the school year is well underway and I've been alternately too busy and too writer's-blocked to think of a good way to commemorate my one-year Japanniversary on my blog. I wanted it to be something deep and funny, something that would show my growth as a person or at least show off some of the weird/cool stuff I've eaten/done (in short: jellyfish, shark fin soup [both unknowingly at first], and something our hosts called "squid guts"; gone to a cat café, had a soda at a restaurant where there was a warm foot bath under the table, and caught sight of the emperor's motorcade as it passed through Kumamoto).

This cat at the cat café just stood
here and stared at everyone like
this the whole time.

But the truth is, God sent a very broken person to Japan that night in November 2012. I'd had a hard year and was full of doubts, insecurities, and anxieties accompanied by an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation that was really just self-importance. I was kind of hoping my service in Japan would fix some of those things and turn me into a confident, compassionate, generous, maybe even Christlike person. But looking back on the past twelve months, it seems that my time here has only highlighted my weaknesses.

It's a point I touched on back in August, with English Summer Camp. I often wonder if I'm doing the whole "mission" thing right, with my stumbling attempts at explaining why the Bible is important to a student about to go abroad and my too-long morning chapel messages that make everyone late for first-hour class. Am I here because God wanted me to be here, or am I here because my Japanophile self wanted to be here?

Ginger ale and a foot soak.

I ask God that question a lot, and I never seem to get a straight answer. Maybe it's a question it's useless to even be asking, like those "nonsense questions" C. S. Lewis talked about in A Grief Observed.* (Been on a C. S. Lewis reading binge lately.) Last night was a good reminder that I'm just grateful to be a J-3. It was Thanksgiving and I had delicious nabemono, homemade hot-pot, with a long-term missionary in her cozy apartment while we just laughed and talked together.

I'm a J-3 who bumbles and flounders and hesitates in her attempts to walk with God, and as long as I'm here on Earth I don't think I can get much better than that. Thank God the God I serve can make something out of someone like me, even if I can't see it yet. (You are working on me, right, God? ...Sorry! I'll get back to work...)

Trick-or-treating around school with the junior high English
Speaking Society girls. They make my Wednesdays.

*"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask--half our great theological and metaphysical problems--are like that."
C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, from the collection The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (HarperCollins, 2002) 685.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
2 Corinthians 12:9b (NIV)