My friend Natsuko recently asked Eric and I if we have a particular liking for insects.  No, and no, we replied.  Eric has recently shared as an icebreaker response that he has a fear of insects.  Well then, as children, she continued, did you both like them when you were young?  No, and no.

It IS odd that all three of our children love critters so much!  In particular, Olivia…  I try hard not to grimace too much at their pursuits.  Here’s our family’s latest hunts and consequent finds/friends:

Last week our whole family had a chance to experience “Doctor Fish.”  A small tank is filled with fish that nibble on the dead skin on your feet and ankles.  We all giggled through our ten-minute session!

And then this afternoon.  Right now, sitting on our dining room table, are two very-alive kabuto-mushi.  (Japanese stag beetles.)    If the name doesn’t scare you, the photos might.  Our friends the Fujiis brought them over.

These two guys are our new PETS.  Olivia tried to get Molly and the big one to play together.  BAD idea.  We’ll keep them separate.  And continue to thank God for ALL creatures, great and small.

(Written on the bullet train last Friday;  posted on Monday)

I am returning from the memorial service of my  friend Rikako in Tokyo.  She was 45 years old, and has left a husband and two beautiful girls. 

 I first met her two  years ago when I spent the day visiting her with her sister, my good friend, Yumiko.  On that day, Rikako was dealing with the return of her cancer.  Yumiko and I shared with her that day the hope of Christ, and it was an amazing privilege to be a small part of her decision to become a follower of Jesus.  The three of us rejoiced together that day. 

Four months after that, our two families met (see photo) when she and her daughters came to Kobe to see her mom.

 Here’s what I wrote about her on the blog two years ago:

We have talked on the phone at different times, but it was such a treat to meet her today. The woman I met today is a different person than she was four months ago. She has hope; she has joy. She is not afraid. When I asked her what it is like this year to go through the Obon holidays, she said it very different…now she is praying and singing praise songs throughout the day, and she just has a thankful heart. It was such a joy to be with her. Her two girls are beautiful, and they have enjoyed the chances to go with their mom to church on occasion as well as to pray together every night before bedtime. 

Today, her funeral was a church nearby where she attended when she was able.  The pastor would often visit her at home and spend time in fellowship and worship as Rikako’s cancer became worse. 

I learned some new cultural things about funerals this week.  A neighbor friend offered to prepare for me the traditional envelope that you give at Japanese funeral with a money gift inside.   She put our name and address on one side under a short Japanese phrase, the amount of money on the back with the first number just hidden purposely by the folded flap.  I was so thankful to have the “right” cultural present to take with me today!

Alas.  Late last night that neighbor friend called as she realized I was attending a Christian funeral.  She said, “you can’t take that envelope to a Christian funeral!”  I was confused.  Why not?  The phrase that is traditionally written on the front means, basically, “that her spirit will come back during the Obon season.”  Obon is a Japanese holiday coming up in August in which many return to their hometowns in order to celebrate the return of their ancestor’s spirits.

Eric and I laughed pretty hard.  I would NOT have been presenting the right cultural present at this Christian funeral!  Thankfully we found out in time, and I was able to use a simple white envelope that my friend Yumiko prepared when I asked her today…

I debated what to wear, and was thankful for our friend Yas’s advice to go with the all-black classic dress, rather than the jacket/skirt that was black with a bit of color in it. Phew.  Good call.  EVERYONE really was wearing all black (I wasn’t sure since this was a Christian funeral). I also wore pearls, as did most of the women attending.

At the church, we were handed clear veneer slippers to put on over our dress shoes.  I realized the church didn’t have enough slippers for all the people who would be coming in, so instead the funeral directors had provided these alternatives to protect the church floors that are only used to slippers gracing them.  Another new experience!

It was so good, and so hard, to see Yumiko and Rikako’s daughters.  What a huge, huge loss.  My heart has hurt so much for the premature death of this special lady.

As I was sitting in the pew listening to the organ playing “Amazing Grace,” it occurred to me that this event – the funeral – is the bottom line.  The tears ran down my cheek as we sang “What a Friend we have in Jesus.”  Because either all that we believe about  eternal life and trusting in Jesus is 100% true, or else 100% of all that we are about here in Japan is a joke and has no meaning.  There’s no other option.  Either God’s promises are all real, or none of it is. 

As I listened to the wonderful female pastor give a message in the most polite of all Japanese, the message was not lost even on my ears unaccustomed to this formal language:  The same God who is holding Rikako right now is wanting to love us. Her text was from I John:  “Perfect love casts out all fear.”  That the perfect love of our Father is able to take away our fear of sickness and even of death.  She herself teared up several times in the midst of the message.   She kept telling the participants (mostly nonbelievers from the family’s community) to not forget one thing when they leave:  that they are loved by their Creator God.

His promises ARE all real.  In that church in the midst of so much grief and sadness was the presence of our Lord.  I sensed His lingering there, longing to get the attention of the 300 or so who were sitting there trying to figure out this church thing.  And I prayed that they could see past the “churchiness” and the formal Japanese to the message that was so real for Rikako,  that is so real for me today:  God loves us each so much.  He loves the Japanese people.   And if it’s worth living for, it is certainly all the more worth dying for.

I could easily write a thousand words or so about our latest 3-day camping (and sightseeing) trip—but I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.

We began with a one-day driving trip to get to Noto-Hanto, a large, very beautiful peninsula in central Japan.

We stopped in Kanazawa, one of the few traditional cities in Japan not destroyed by the bombs of WWII.  We enjoyed shopping in the downtown market for fresh fish to grill that evening, as well as – fresh sushi for lunch. Olivia enjoyed the whole fish experience a bit TOO much, and didn’t make it to the restroom (extra outfit #1).

On the peninsula, we drove along a famous beach with the rain pouring on both sides.  The elements didn’t ruin our fun—our kids were the first to plunge into the Sea (extra outfit #2).

The first night it poured and poured through the night, but I had such a wonderful sense of being secure with my family in this tent off the Sea of  Japan.  There really is something special about being as close as possible to a huge force of nature (like a rain storm) without getting wet.
The next morning was quite ominous, so we put off our beach outing and went to a great aquarium nearby.  Just as we were out petting the penguins, the rain starting pelting on all of us (extra outfit #3).

We had a wonderful afternoon on both Sunday and Monday at the beach – swimming, collecting shells, playing in the sand.  And, we discovered, you can’t have a real outing at the beach without — cup ramen.

(Did you know that in a recent survey Japanese voted this the best invention of the 20th century?  Truth).
During our time at the campsite, the kids went bug-hunting… Owen made great friends with the boy in the campsite next to us… we talked and laughed and shared with our friends the I. family…. And of course you spend a lot of time preparing, cleaning up, and talking about the meals.

At night, we did fireworks and roasted marshmallows (extra outfit #5)—and of course made S’mores, which has become a favorite of the I. family now.  (This time we used coconut cookies because we can’t find graham crackers here anymore!).
I tried to do one load (extra outfits #1-5) of laundry at the campsite but the dryer never really worked.  We’ve spent the last few days catching up on laundry, drying out our damp tent/sleeping bags, and continuing our busy summer schedule.  But how wonderful it is – laundry, clean-up and all–to stop our normal lives and allow the silent witness of God’s Creation to touch us. (The last photo is Owen’s essay for summer homework of the camping trip.)

Wow- today was a rough one!  It started and ended pretty painful.   When we arrived at Annie’s yochien (kindergarten), she started clinging to me and did NOT want to.  She started screaming when the school principal took her from my arms and carried her through the school yard to her class.  I just stood behind the gate and watched, and prayed.   She cried for quite awhile at school, I found out afterwards from her teacher.  I have NO idea what set her off, but with her personality, once she is set off…things can get dicey.

Tonight, bedtime was -ouch.  Owen was over-tired I think from Japanese writing class after school and sports club.  He and I struggled together through his homework- math word problems that he had a hard time understanding (because of language).  In the process of going to bed he pushed Olivia, wouldn’t say sorry, and things just got worse as he pulled his bed apart.  After I came downstairs, he was up on his bed sobbing for me to come back.  We hugged, he said I’m sorry, I prayed with him, and we put his bed back together.  Ten minutes later Annie came downstairs crying — at first I yelled at her to get back in bed- she went upstairs sobbing.  I stopped in my tracks, realizing that my response was inappropriate.  I said I was sorry,  took her back up, prayed with her.   As I write this, I have my fingers crossed that they are all, at last, asleep.

Man- it has been a rough day to be a mom!  We have had a lot of house guests and ministry obligations recently, which our children generally enjoy, but I wonder at times if we need to figure out  how to better connect with our children during these busy seasons.    There are also a lot of hellos and goodbyes. Today they said goodbye to our good friend Paul.  We also have a friend Allison staying with us who the kids have really enjoyed.  Owen keeps asking if it’s her last day with us – it is almost like he needs to prepare himself to say goodbye to her.  Our children are incredibly fortunate to have so many friends and family investing in their lives, but it also might be wearing on them in ways that we cannot always see.

I recently finished a really helpful parenting book — written one hundred years ago!  It’s called “Hints on Child Training” by H. Clay Trumbull – and there were several chapters that caught my attention, in particular.

One chapter near the end was called, “The Place of Sympathy in Child Training”. Trumbull takes the perspective that most parents can easily give love, but many parents miss out a great deal on not showing sympathy to their children.  Sympathy used today may be a slightly different definition– perhaps more like empathy.  Here are some quotes that help explain what he means:

“In his joys as in sorrows a true child wants someone to share his feelings rather than to guide them.  If he has fallen and hurt himself, a child is more helped by being spoken to in evident sympathy than by being told that he must not cry, or that his hurt is a very trifling matter.  The love that shows itself in tenderly blinding up his wound, in a case like this, has less hold upon the child than the sympathy that expresses a full sense of his pain…

“In order to sympathize with another, you must be able to put yourself in his place, mentally and emotionally; to occupy, for the time being, his point of view, and to see that which he sees, and as he sees it, as he looks out thence…. How the child ought to feel is one thing.  How the child does feel is quite another thing.  The parent may know the former better than the child does, but the latter the child knows better than the parent.  Until a parent has learned just how the child looks at any matter, the parent is incapable of so coming alongside of the child in his estimate of that matter as to win his confidence and to work with him toward a more correct view of it…. to stand with the child and point him to the course he ought to pursue, is more likely to inspire him to honest efforts in that direction, until he comes to think and to feel as his parents would have him.”

There is so much more good stuff in this chapter.  One more quote:  “It is a great thing for a parent to have such sympathy with his child that his child can tell him freely of his worst thoughts or his greatest failures without any fear of seeming to shock that parent, and so to chill the child’s confidence.  It is a great thing for a parent to have such sympathetic thoughts of his child when the child has unintentionally broken some fragile keepsake peculiarly dear to the parent, as to be more moved by regret for the child’s sorrow over the mishap than for the loss of the precious relic.  There is no such power over children as comes from such sympathy with children.”

What do you think?  Reading this – again- reminds how much growing I need to continue to do. This idea of sympathy has really challenged some of my standard quick reactions to my children.  There are times when instant discipline is necessary; but far too many times I have lost the opportunity to come along side and understand what is going on in their hearts.  There is much that happened today that I simply don’t understand– and perhaps they don’t understand either.  But I can keep learning to listen better…to sit with them in their places or confusion… tosay I’m sorry…. to love with a greater inclination towards sympathy.

If you think of it, pray for our family this busy summer, as our children continue to adjust to school, friends, homework, clubs all in a different language.  Here are a few fun photos this past week of these treasures God has entrusted to us.

the weekend was all about the princess!  On Saturday Annie had a big performance at her Japanese kindergarten in celebration of “Tanabata Matsuri”, which celebrates the myth of a princess and her star-crossed lover.  All the classes did a few different dances, with the children wearing traditional Japanese summer outfits.  Nothing could be cuter than a few hundred five year olds dancing in unison wearing bright-colored yukatas!

Here is a video of the song she was most excited about it– it’s one of the theme songs from Pokeman.  Even though she’d had strept throat the 4 days before the festival, her previous days of practice payed off and she certainly enjoyed it.

On Sunday we celebrated Annie’s fifth birthday with several American friends and two Japanese families.  It was great fun– we had several Italian dishes complete with Fourth of July napkins, plates, and tablecloth from our friend Maho.

Annie was given a TInkerbell DVD and outfit  from her Auntie Beth:

…and we decided to go with the Tinkerbell/princess palace theme for her cake, as well. Eric had made a special cake topper with Tinkerbell and 3 of her fairy friends that were attached to a spinning top that moved when the candles burned.  (Unfortunately, it also burned a bit as the candles burned, but the general effect still worked!)

The REAL princess – and her sibling and two friends – were  thrilled…

and we loved celebrating special days with special friends.

The past ten days our whole family has enjoyed having our friend from Fuller days, Cindy Frost, visiting with us.  She’s been a great sport– willing to eat and experience many kinds of things. One night we were invited to join two other families in a special Osaka-region dish in which you deep fry all different foods prepared on skewers.  We at around for hours skewering, frying, eating, and enjoying the company.

Cindy also had a one-night home-stay with a family from our community.  The wife and daughter are believers, but the father is not.  It was a great joy for everyone when Mr. I. decided at the last minute to participate in our house church on Sunday because Cindy was there.  It was HIS FIRST TIME.

One highlight for both Cindy and me was returning to the place where we had ministered 14 years ago — the site of the Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe.  I remember sitting in Cindy’s living room with a group of Fuller friends after watching our weekly ritual, ER, when the news came on with the first photos of the devastation.  The Lord seemed to stir my heart in an unusual way — I sensed Him leading me to take a break from my current studies and bring a team to do relief work.

One month after the huge tragedy, ten Fuller students/colleagues and I left during our spring break to spend eight or so days doing relief work.  Five of the team members had counseling training and were able to do some PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) counseling;  all of us did a lot of things we had never done before.

We stayed the first night in a church in Nishinomiya (on the edge of Kobe) that was to become the mother church of our current ministry!  Here we are enjoying cold Spam (an American church had sent a whole shipment for earthquake relief but no one was quite sure how to prepare it).

We then spent a week staying in sleeping bags in the church in the middle of the worse of the quake – Kobe Christ Glory Church.  None of us had ever seen such devastation.  Over 6400 people were killed in the earthquake;  100,000 homes were destroyed. More people died from the subsequent fires than from the actual quake.

The church served 3 meals a day to over 200 people who found themselves without homes or kitchens… we learned to LOVE miso soup and how to chop lots and lots of tofu.  It was a wonderful experience in which we partnered with Japanese also working to bring relief, and even found ourselves performing at outdoor concerts for the homeless!

Eric, Olivia, and Cindy and I went back via GPS to Christ Glory Church last week, about an hour from our home here.  Upon arriving, we discovered that the church building has moved about a mile away from the previous site.  We had a nice visit with some of the church staff who remembered the “Fuller students wearing green sweatshirts”.  One of the members took us to the street where we had lived and ministered.  Here is the airplane view of how it looked after the earthquake:

It was hard to recognize as the same place!  The church has been replaced by a large electronics store and parking garage:

The park where there had been hundreds of people living in tents is now a hot springs resort.

The shopping arcade is still the same, but filled once again with new stores and the bustles of shoppers.

On the outside, there is no sign of the disaster of only 14 years ago.  But people still remember.  And we will never forget.  It’s an amazing privilege to be a splash of God’s grace in the midst of pain and devastation.

We have just finished a very full few days with a team from Imani Baptist Church in Kentucky.  They came to participate in an annual gospel concert in Osaka as well as a gospel concert that we had in Sanda on Sunday.  Because of the swine flu issues and numerous other problems, the ticket sales for our Sanda concert as of last week were very low.  But we were so thankful at the concert on Sunday that the room filled up with almost 200 people (including staff and volunteers), with at least 25 of those being friends from our neighborhood, English classes, and school community.

In addition to the American gospel team, several other well-known gospel singers, and the main organizer Jaye Koyama, there was also a special “fellowship choir” for family members from Sanda, including Eric and our kids! Two of Eric’s elementary English students also sang in the concert.

Here is a 2 minute video with a few clips from the fellowship choir, led by Jaye.  The first half in part shows  the –discomfort– of being helpless parents either sitting in the audience or singing in the back row, out of reach of your children, when their dancing shoes take over… Overall though it was a wonderful collaboration and showed the power of Gospel music  to touch the heart (you can see the choir members crying in the midst!).

There were surveys which about half of the attendees filled out.  It was really amazing to read their comments:  “The tears started flowing and I couldn’t stop them.”  “I am not a Christian but I felt God’s presence throughout the concert.”  “I want to bring all of my friends to this concert if you do it again.”  There truly was a wonderful sense of God’s spirit stirring through the auditorium.  Please pray with us for our friends who were clearly moved by the event and experienced a touch of God’s presence.  We feel that salvation is close for two of these friends – please pray!

We had the pastor and his wife of the Kentucky church stay with us for the last two nights and thoroughly enjoyed the fellowship and time together.  The children really loved them too, and were sad that they were leaving already this morning.

Each team that comes over to work with us brings their own special peculiar interests in Japan and the culture here.  We were greatly amused by this team’s love for Japanese…. shoes!  One of the members brought five pair of shoes with her from the U.S., but then also bought five pair while she was here.  Our homestay had to buy a new suitcase to fit in her new purchases!  Annie couldn’t get over it – Eric teased them about helping the hurting Japanese economy.

Here is the team, as well as a celebration dinner after the gospel concert.  Olivia, like her older brother and sister, is also quite crazy about Jaye!

We love ministering as a family — at times putting on our dancing shoes —  with so many partners from various places as we share the amazing news of the Gospel!

Owen’s first grade experiences have provided many firsts – for him and for us.  We have been very grateful for the prayers and encouragement for his adjustment; and also thankful for Owen’s ability to jump into this new rite of passage with great fervor and flexibility.  Here are a few firsts:

1)  The first two months of first grade in Japan are spent learning the Japanese written language of hiragana.  Owen has faithfully done his practice worksheets sent home every night and we’ve loved watching lights go on as he has been learning.

Every night, his teacher has sent home a printed sheet that has their homework listed, their class schedule for the next day, and any announcements a well as what they need to bring the next day.  I was so moved two nights ago when he pulled out his assignment book, and for the first time, HE had written out all of his assignments and class schedule (in formal settings, Japanese write from right to left, vertically):

Isn’t that awesome?  Parents have to stamp with our name seal that we have read the assignments (bottom right corner- you can make out the red seal)…. I stamped with pride!

2)  Owen is learning (still in progress)  how to make his own playdates…Yesterday after school his good friend Sou. rang the doorbell and came in.  Owen didn’t realize it but they had made arrangements (all in Japanese, of course) to play at our house yesterday.  We rolled with it.  This afternoon, Owen was sitting at the table doing his homework and his friend Y. came walking in expecting to play.  Another surprise for all of us.   So, we still have some work to do on this one…

3) No lunch ladies at Japanese schools- nuh-uh.  Or, I should say, the kids themselves are the lunch ladies.  Every other week, half of the class is responsible for picking up, serving, and cleaning up lunch for the rest of the class.  Each day that week during lunchtime, they don their “uniforms” during lunch (the very uniform that has got me ironing!), including masks over their faces.  A few of the kids bring in the long tray that has 30-person servings on it, some of the kids serve it out to everyone, they all eat, then some are on clean-up duty.  It’s all very orderly, and quite impressive.  Look at this handsome guy trying on his uniform for me:

4)  School Janitors  are also, in essence, non-existent.  The kids all have cleaning duty.   All kids have to take cleaning cloths to the first day of school!  The sixth graders teach the first graders how to scrub the floors, the bathrooms, the toilets… even how to properly wring out their cloths.  (now- can we transfer some of that knowledge to the home front??)

5)   Today was a really BIG first.  Owen had finished scrubbing the floor before lunch, and he was walking to the lunch pick-up room.  Suddenly Y. from the other first-grade class came over to him.  Their two years of Kindergarten they were in the same class…

when we left for the U.S. she gave him a frame photo of herself that he kept by his bedside wherever we went.  She came over to him and planted a big one on him.  On the lips!  First grade, first kiss.  Between cleaning duty and lunch duty.  What a -sweet –  learning curve!

My friend Christine send me this email and I thought it was worth sharing with you as it made me smile A LOT:

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX),Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated,
‘If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.’

In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics :
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash…….. Twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single ‘This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation’ warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask ‘Are you sure?’ before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You’d have to press the ‘Start’ button to turn the engine off.
PS – when all else fails, you could call ‘customer service’ in some foreign country and be instructed in some foreign language how to fix your car yourself!!!!

This week several things have stood out to me…

Lighning Bugs!  hotaru!  On Monday and again tonight we walked down to the rice fields below our home  with some neighbor friends and celebrating summer starting by looking for fire flies.  Hotaru are a summer icon in Japan, but more and more rare in the suburbs.  They only last a week or so, and it has felt fairly magical to walk among them twice this week.

YESTERDAY was a very full day with a very full house.  Kindergarten gets out before lunch on Wednesdays, so I had over the three moms from our camping trip and their kids for lasagna crockpot lunch and a play date.  When Owen came home from school later, we had 4 moms and 7 kids.  Then, two of the moms older kids came over to play since it was raining and they couldn’t go to the park.  Then the mom of a friend in Owen’s class called and said Owen had invited her son over to play- was that OK?  And then another mom called with the same question… So there were a LOT of kids here!

And during those six and a half hours I realized:  I was really really enjoying my time with these three friends, and I felt like I could totally be me without worries.

 And that led to…

Me telling them about Annie’s recent comment.  Last Sunday I pulled out the iron and ironing board to iron Owen’s school lunch apron and hat (he brings it home every other weekend for me to wash and iron).  Annie came over and with a quizzical look pointed to the iron and said, “What is that, Mommy?”  She didn’t know what an iron was.  Busted Mom!

So, I’m telling my three friends this story, we are laughing, and then one of them asked, “So, do you iron their lunch mats after the kids are in bed?”  The lunch mats?  (Lunch mats:  Square, bandana-like handkerchiefs that they put their school lunches on.  They each take one every day to school).  Me:  “The lunch mats?  Do you — do you all iron your kids’ lunch mats?”  Three cautious nods yes.  And then one of them asks:  “What about Annie’s smock?”  (Smock:  She takes this every Monday, laundered, to wear all week long.  Thin cotton; easily wrinkled).  Me:  “So, do you all iron your kids’ smocks every week too?”  Affirmative.

We laughed, and laughed, and laughed.  You know what?  they laughed with me; they laughed at me.  It was great!  It was very funny.  Two and a half years I have been a Japanese yochien mom.  It never OCCURRED to me that I should be ironing their daily lunch mats and smocks.  But what I loved was — my Japanese friends laughed at me. That sounds cold- but it was a huge compliment.  Normally our Japanese friends would be worried to laugh too much — there would be sort of that awkwardness.  But around our table we greatly enjoyed the moment.

Tonight — I’ve been ironing.  Imagine that.  I have to start storing it on a lower shelf.  As I calculate it, even having missed out on the last two and a half years of ironing, I am going to get pretty good.  And once I’ve got the thing out, I might as well keep going.  I ironed our dish towels, too.  And thanked God with a smile for His continued grace and work in my life.  It’s been a fun week.