Where Everybody's Crazy

No, seriously, you want to read this one.

My blog is really a surrogate short-term memory. If I don't blog, I can't remember what I've been doing recently. And it has been a fairly hectic few weeks.

My mother was here for three weeks, which was great, and I have a much tidier house and garden as a result. We then spent three days thinking about what sort of orientation programme our new missionaries should undergo - on the condition that the new missionaries coming up with the plan should also go through it themselves! We've come up with a programme which should hopefully be as challenging as it is informative, and will also be a stimulus to the rest of the field as well as the new missionaries.

It feels like since then the past two weeks have been a blur, because from there, my schedule went: pastor's meeting; media team meeting; meet up with an old friend from Oxford who was passing through the area; weekly meeting with pastor; day off; preaching and church vision meeting; preparation for missionary conference plus time with Henrietta; climbing a mountain; (it was the Midori no Hi - Green Day - holiday so the church did something involving being out in the greenery) two more days of conference preparation and another weekly meeting with my pastor, and that takes us up to today. This is why I haven't been blogging much.

Today I played football. No, really, don't laugh. We had an Argentinean professional coach over, who's in Japan to set up soccer schools and share his testimony with the kids he teaches. Our numbers today were swelled by the soccer team from Omi Kyodaisha School which (ObVories) is the school set up by Vories.

I'm presenting about Vories at the missionary conference, and I need to take some more time to look over that. I'm also preaching tomorrow, and I suppose I need to take some more time to decide what I'm going to say...

(I've started blogging in Japanese again; click the 日 button below if that's something that concerns you...)

One wedding, two fake weddings, one dedication, and, today, an exorcism. I've nearly collected the full vicar set. Oh, and today, "visiting preacher", which I think is worth a few points.

How the heck did this happen? I'm sure that some time in the not too distant past I was a computer programmer whose biggest problem was the most elegant way to code a particular algorithm. Now I'm saying "visiting preacher" like it's part of normal life.

It feels like a year since last Sunday. I honestly can't remember all of the things that have happened in the last week, which means I probably need to blog more. I've preached four - different - sermons in the past two Sundays. Last week I was also a "visiting preacher" in Kusatsu church, and preached at our Latin group in the evening. Monday, a Japanese lesson in the morning and some time to catch my breath in the afternoon. Tuesday, a few of us from church went to the Vories exhibition, which is why I came back blogging all melancholy. Wednesday: I have no recollection. Thursday, trying and failing to write a sermon; played go in the afternoon. Lost. Friday, talking with Takahashi-sensei in the morning, and then off to western Kyoto to be a foreign guest at an English school's end of term party. Saturday with H, and then today, preaching at Kyoto Ai No Church in the morning, and our English service in the afternoon.

I'll try to write some kind of analysis of all this later, but for now, I've frankly had enough.

It's been an up and down week in the life of Nagahama church.

Last Sunday I broke down at the pulpit while preaching on Amos. I was not expecting to do that, particularly since I'd already given the sermon once before in English and once before in Japanese without incident. Which just goes to show, even if you're preaching to yourself, eventually you'll start to listen.

And then I had the privilege of conducting the dedication of the daughter of a couple from English service:

Surely one of the best perks of the job.

But then on Friday we had the funeral of a still-born baby. Yeah. Not much else you can say about that.

Today was fantastic. Lots of stuff just fell into place. We had an Argentinian pro soccer player, Ignatio Medina, come to give a testimony and talk about a sports outreach thing he's doing in Osaka, a soccer school attached to one of the churches there. He gave quite a long but very encouraging talk, not just about himself and his work but also encouraging people to use their gifts and their abilities for God's glory.

After the testimony I remembered the words of Bob Moffett about a particularly moving worship time we had in college: "Please don't spoil it with a sermon." And Takahashi-sensei, to his eternal credit, didn't. There was plenty of value in what Ignatio said for one service.

Ignatio gave a quick soccer workshop in the afternoon, to the delight of Japanese and Latin American kids alike, and then popped down to our local sports stadium to talk his way into hiring it for a decent price over Golden Week so he could run a soccer school here in Nagahama too. Result.

I, meanwhile, got talking to a bunch of professors from the Buddhist University of Osaka, who were in Nagahama to do research on multiculturalism and ethnic diversity - because of all the Latin stuff we do they contacted the church to come and interview people. One of them came along to the English service.

Now, I didn't know he'd be there, and in fact I hadn't really taken in that they'd be in church at all, because otherwise I'd have made a bigger thing about it. But in my sermon I talked about how God had promised to bring together a country from the lame and exiles of all nations, (Micah 4:7) which my new Buddhist friend obviously found very interesting.

I also shared some personal stuff about forgiveness which opened the hearts of a few people, some of whom had been coming to church for a long time but hadn't particularly opened up about their own lives. And Mr Takizawa, who's been coming to English service for a couple of months now, got to meet a pro soccer player, so that was all good.

Now this week it's back to the grindstone after a fairly free few weeks, with a missionary meeting tomorrow, a pastors' meeting Tuesday, a housegroup on Wednesday, and preaching twice on Sunday. But hey, today was worth it all.

PS, check out my luridly coloured photos of Nagahama. They are really photos, I promise you.

Speaking of snow...

And of course many others.

On Wednesday I got back from a rather good holiday in Hokkaido with some Bible college friends. I seem to have brought the Hokkaido snow with me, because for the past three days I've had to dig myself out of my house.

Well, that's what I've been telling everyone, but it's not true. For the first two days, I've had to clear the area in front of my house to fulfill my social obligations. In parts where it normally snows really, really heavily, the council comes out with snowploughs, but in places like Nagahama, the way to get the snow cleared is good old-fashioned Japanese guilt-tripping. You really don't want to be the only one in your neighbourhood who is letting the team down by having a snow-covered patch in front of your house. My pastor was telling me on Friday how embarrassed he felt to have snow in front of the church when everyone else in the street had cleared their bit.

Hey, I don't like it, but it works.

So Friday and Saturday I was just keeping my neighbours happy. Today, though, I really had to dig myself out of the house. Last night was the first time since getting back that the roads were clear enough to cycle on, but it snowed an awful lot overnight, (the weather warning says 20 inches in the past day) and I literally could not get out of my house without some shovelling.

And not only did I have to dig myself out of my house, I had to dig myself into church at the other end. Or at least, join the work party clearing out the church carpark.

The snow is falling much more heavily now than this morning, and the weather forecast says it won't stop all week.

Through my various trips to Japan, I'm now aware of most of the things which catch out the unwary foreigner. Things like the stealth public holiday, where you go into work and wonder why you're the only person there. But this is my first New Year in Japan, and it's completely got me.

The first hint that something was not right came on New Year's Day, when after our church service someone said to me "Have you got enough food in?" We had a severe blizzard on New Year's Day, but I didn't think I was going to be cut off. I live five minute's walk from the supermarket, for heaven's sake.

New Year's Day was deadly quiet, what with the snow and with everyone celebrating at home with their families. And yesterday was very quiet as well, but fair enough. I stayed at home and relaxed.

And now it's the third, and I'm fed up of sitting at home relaxing. I got stuff to do. The snow has gone now, but the city is still deadly quiet. All the banks and post offices are shut, and I have a grand total of 90 yen to my name. Not that there's anywhere open that I could spend it - the tourist shops are open because, as always, we have coachloads and coachloads of visitors, but everything else is shut. Now I see why I needed enough food in. (I have, thankfully.)

Will normal service return tomorrow? Or will this country lay dead until next Monday? And what on earth is everyone doing for all this time?

My first time cooking Christmas dinner, with all the trimmings - turkey, gravy, bread sauce, little sausages in bacon, peas, carrots, sprouts, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes; mince pies; Christmas cake.

For fifty people. And it all worked.

My thanks to Delia Smith, Alton Brown, and iCal.

They told me not to send out a prayer letter at Christmas, because nobody ever reads them. So instead I'm going to dump the unprocessed contents of my brain onto the blog:

• I have spent the past three days cooking. No, really, cooking. In fact, I have been staying over at church to get all the cooking done. I laughingly agreed to cook Christmas dinner for the church a few months back. As Jeremy Clarkson would say, "How hard can it be?" Well, quite hard, but it's going OK. The mince pies worked, the turkey is pretty much prepared and just needs a few hours in the oven in the morning, and then it's on with the vegetables. Maybe, however, "Perhaps we need a Christmas cake as well" was not a good thing to think at the last minute. Tomorrow it will be all go.
• I am really very proud of my mince pies.
• Friday and Saturday was just me cooking, but today I had "help" from some of the ladies in the church. Trying to get across culinary instructions in Japanese was ridiculous, and it would have been more efficient to do it all myself. But it would have been so much less relational. There's the Christian life right there.
• I took a break from cooking on Friday to write today's sermon. I gave a very liberationist Christmas message - it's just a product of my certain strange way of seeing the world. Everyone can see if they think about it that the shepherds were dirty, smelly, homeless people sleeping on the hills, and that the magi were Gentile foreigners, and that Joseph's family in Bethlehem (Of course he had family there, it was his home town, that's why he was going there) would apparently have nothing to do with him because of the shame of him being a father out of marriage, but you don't often get to follow all that through in a Chrstmas sermon.
• The strange thing I'm finding is that the further I go down the liberationist route, the more positive feedback I get from the congregation. I shall think about why this is and follow up later.
• Today I saw a one-day old baby and her mother. There is no finer sight in the world.
• I am very, very tired. And I still have another turkey to brine.

At 83 years old, Mrs Hiratsuka today accepted baptism. As she said in her moving testimony, "My sins have been washed away; I have become a child of God."

I've been using Mrs Hiratsuka as an example in my sermons recently, because I've been preaching a lot about the believer's joy. We often talk about being "born again" until it becomes a trite phrase, but to see someone of her age rejuvenated and full of joy reminds me why we say it.

And it reminds me why I'm here.