The livejournal homepage informs me it has been 29 weeks since I wrote anything here. Oops.

A while ago, I created a new blog because I needed to have a blog that mission supporters could read...I figured I would have my nice "politically correct" blog on blogspot, and my blog where I could rant all I wanted on lj. However, I am actually horrible at maintaining two blogs.

If you actually do want to read about my life, you can find my much more regularly updated blog here.

Despite my absence in writing here, I still do come and read about your lives. Which is why I still have the account. :)

Here are the last 29 weeks in short form, though:
-Led 24/7 prayer at Hongo, and it rocked!
-Was visited by Liz and got to drag her around Tokyo (or was dragged around Tokyo? I don't know...) Witnessed Liz be the bravest I have ever seen her in regards to food in front of church members...only to be defeated by a convenience store's selection shortly afterwards. :-)
-Led 24/7 for another week with friend in Niigata over the summer
-For the first time, got to see someone begin to consider crossing the line and getting baptized. As it is one of my students, this has been particularly joyful!
-Had a prayer answered for another of my students. She and her husband have been trying to have a baby for nine years. Prayed with her about it, and a few months later she is pregnant!
-Deeply considered: life, God, community, identity, culture shock, "what Japan really needs", how to do mission work here, how to really help people, etc., etc., etc.
-Watched other people catch my vision for a significant prayer presence in the center of Tokyo...ironically not from me but from God. Praised God for what He was doing, felt a little bit hurt because I have to go home soon and am not part of what I've been dreaming about, became confused about the future.
-Discovered "free worship"...where you sing an improvised melody and words...fell in love with it.
-Took a Japanese test that was too hard for me just so I would study Japanese. Had a hard time explaining to the Japanese people that my goal was not to pass. They really didn't believe me...and all seem so sad when I tell them afterwards that taking the test was horrible.
-Had eleven people tell me I should go to Seminary (admittedly, one of them was joking). Told them all I was not going to. Didn't feel bad about doing so.
-Had my church ask me to consider applying for a job teaching English at the seminary in Hong Kong beginning this August. Tried to tell them I was not going to. Ended up telling them I would think and pray about it instead. Now I am preparing the application...

So, I am leading a 24/7 prayer week in three days. This has been exciting...it came up pretty last minute. I was thinking I would have a while to prepare and get people ready, and about two weeks ago I realized I really needed to lead 24/7 prayer right now. All explanations aside for now, tonight I got a phone call from England from the 24/7 Prayer organization to check on how things were going. I was a little worried about it, because I'm at the point where I have about 1/4 of the prayer slots filled and there are only 3 days to go. I'm feeling peaceful about all this, satisfied already that God is stirring good things up, even if we don't meet the 24/7 goal.

However, when the caller from England asked me how it was going, and I said, "I don't know, I have about 1/4 of the slots full" she responded, "That's really good!!!" And when I start talking about the rather haphazard attempts to draw in the local YMCA residents and the campus ministry group and the church located a couple blocks down from mine, she responds, "You're really organized!"

...I am not sure what to say. I feel like I'm at the point where I've poked a lot of people and I'm waiting for them to respond to come and pray, even if only for an hour. Somehow this has translated into me being organized? *chuckle* It is going to be very amusing to see how this week goes.

I would just like to say, taxes were always annoying, but at least I could figure out how to do them before I left the country. However, it does allow for very interesting situations.

There is a form I have to fill out that says that my income is foreign earned income. This makes it so I don't have to pay taxes, because you must make a lot of money to pay taxes if you aren't working in the States. However, it's been about a year of major confusion about this. Last year, I got confused about whether I had foreign earned income or not and finally just gave up and paid my taxes. Later, however, after 45 minutes on the phone with the IRS it was determined that I did, in fact, have foreign earned income. So, I have forms right now to file both an amended 2006 and a normal 2007.

I really wanted to do them online, however. But, the program was confused and claimed that I couldn't do foreign earned income. It did this with the extremely unhelpful "Verify all taxable employee income on Form 2555 is included on W-2 and Form 2555 entries are not duplicated". *blink blink*

I decided to try my luck calling the online tax filing company. And enter "Robert" who is living in Orlando and is from Puerto Rico and has some experience working for Mitsubishi. He immediately asked if he could call me "Pam", and when I told him I went by "Pamela" proceeded to call me "Pam" every time and then apologize profusely for forgetting even though I never corrected him. When he found out I was calling from Japan, he immediately said, "Oh, so it should be Pamela-san!" and explained to me that he wanted to go to Japan because he wanted to visit a geisha house. To which I was rather speechless.

However, once he got into my file, he saw my employer was the Lutheran church, asked if I was a pastor, heard I was a missionary, and "somehow" changed his entire attitude after that. It then became his God Given Duty to make sure I could fill out that form and not have to pay taxes, and it did not matter how much I tried to tell him that it was fine, that if I couldn't figure it out online I would just mail them, he refused to back down from his position of customer service. I felt like I was reassuring him. Honestly, I'm not so worried about it. But every time I tried to tell him that, he would take on this attitude of, "No! I am going to help you!" and leave me on hold for another ten minutes. All in all, the phone call took 59 minutes and ended with him giving me an impassioned speech about how I shouldn't worry about this money that I obviously had to pay the IRS because God or the church would take care of me, and that it was a scandal that I was in this situation trying to figure it out on my own anyway because it's really tough to "bring the Word of God to a foreign country", but I'm obviously a nice young woman who is doing a fine job, God bless me and goodbye.

I am amused. Which is a nice thing to be during filing taxes. Though I think I would have preferred sleeping from 11-12 tonight rather than waiting an hour for my kind, Hispanic telephone helper to give me the obvious "our program won't do your taxes the way you want it to".

I dropped my parents back off at the train station early this afternoon. It was a strange mix of emotions. I cried and, once they had gone, welcomed back the slight ache that I feel every time I open my apartment door and know that I am the only one living there. But I also walked around Ueno just feeling and enjoying the freedom that I usually have. No decisions needed to be made. I could wander, linger, be plan-less. Also free to pick up my normal life again. I suppose it takes a visit from someone out of Japan to get me to vacation in Tokyo. Usually I have to leave Tokyo to leave my life here.

The time with my parents was really, really good and needed. I'm pretty sure I just learned how literal the term "homemaker" is, because my mom walked into my apartment and made it a home. We spent most of the last day tag teaming between washing the floor, rinsing the floor, drying the floor, waxing the floor, and buffing it. My mom's estimated "three hours" for doing this turned into an off and on all day affair, but the floor looks absolutely beautiful. Many other things that have not looked beautiful in my time here look beautiful now. We also discovered that my couch is a hide-a-bed. I had no idea! I'm really excited about this!

Now I have a few wees without teaching. Lots to do! It's weird, but I often feel like vacation time is when I can finally do all the things I'm supposed to do. At least time to do the missionary type things that I feel most called to and the most joy in doing. So! People to support and connect with and enjoy time with. Global Day of Prayer news to spread. Planning for my Beginner Bible and Christianity Today classes for spring term. Conversations with "the powers that be" about whether or not they want to continue to work with me in Japan after my J3 term is up.

I was feeling a little nervous about the last one...recently my feeling of calling to stay in Japan after my J3 term is up has only continued to grow stronger, to the point that people ask me, "What are you doing when you leave Japan?" and I become momentarily confused by the question, until I remember that usually people leave once their term is up. Recently I've been hearing lots about God's faithfulness, especially in little things needed for one's calling. And so, I'm going to trust Him on this one. All I know is that I'm called here to do prayer ministry, and that could take a lot of different paths.

Yesterday my parents came to Tokyo! I actually must confess that, up until Wednesday, I was feeling pretty apprehensive about it. I need about one day a week without people the way my lifestyle in Tokyo goes right now, and imagining the next three weeks with my apartment no longer my own and traveling and showing people things and a packed schedule was feeling draining before they even arrived. Plus the best metaphor I could think of for showing Japan to my parents was that it is like introducing them to an abusive fiance--one who has stolen my heart but frequently hurts me. But I picked up my exhausted parents from the airport Sunday afternoon, and we had our first day together today. It has been truly lovely.

My mom, like any good American jet lagged in Japan, woke up promptly at 4:00am and stayed up. My dad and I slept to eight. I woke up to the sound of friendly beeping noises of my mom trying to figure out my microwave and realized that she had left the heater in the bedroom, which means she had been roaming about out of bed for four hours in a 46 degree environment. Silly mom!

We moved my table from the kitchen to the living room where we could sit around it better, leaving no counter space in my kitchen but a wonderful home-y scene in the living room. After breakfast the table had used tea cups and a book on it, plus a shopping list halfway completed, chairs turned at angles where they had been sat in rather than just tucked away underneath, my parents' journals and pens...I think it is maybe the first time that the apartment has really felt like home.

I am amazed at how much I am "fed" just by having people I have intimate relationships with in my house. It has been lovely to have tiny quarrels over how to prepare food or how to clean. Lovely to have to move around people and their stuff. Lovely to have people invade my space and do things without asking and go to sleep before I do and wake up before I do, lovely to have people who have opinions and desires and to have to negotiate and compromise and discuss those opinions and desires, lovely to be with people where we sacrifice for each other left and right, hold each other to making the sacrifices because we are free to complain to each other...that might sound weird, but it's how I feel. Thank God, they do not act like guests. I feel so free having them around.

Goes to show, I guess, that I am still "cursed" to not be a true extrovert or a true introvert. Really social situations exhaust me. Being alone exhausts me. But give me people I love in the same house as me...let me cook with them and clean with them and live by their side and I am energized.

I think I could go all of life without getting married, but I really hope I don't have to live alone ever again once my J3 term is up.

I should also say, wonderful additional blessings of having my parents visit...my mom has been cleaning to combat jet lag. So, now my microwave is clean, there are no stains on my table (she actually took cleaning spray, then bleach, and then a knife to my table, and it looks much prettier than before...I am in awe), my cupboards have been washed on the outside, my swifter sweeper has been cleaned out and figured out (I had no idea the brush was supposed to go in front of the swifter cloth), the fish baker oven type thingamabob has been cleaned out and was actually successfully used to cook fish...my mom is a wonder woman!

It is easy to assume that a Jack Pine Tree and a Black Pine Tree should be treated the same way when both of them just look like a little green pom-pom attached to the top of a twig. Unfortunately, this isn't true. My poor little black pine has been moved into intensive care, if not hospice. Probably hospice.

Last fall, I decided I needed to separate the two little black pine I had been growing so their roots would not become hopelessly entangled, plus I wanted to give one away. The one I kept had I long, windy root. When Jack had a root like that, cutting it back so that it wasn't all coiled in the bottom of the pot saved him. However, my new little guy did not like that at all, and lost all his green. My first move now that it is becoming spring has been to pinch off all the dead needles, leaving a pretty pathetic looking twig stump.

Of course, it's after I do this that I go digging on the internet for Black pine info and discover...
Black pines do not like drastic root cut backs (which I now could have told from personal experience) and...
Severe trimming back in the spring time is only recommended for strong nursery plants.

Oops.

My poor little guy. All's left is keeping him sheltered and hoping he'll pull through.

Last week when I left class on Wednesday, on of the beginner students let me know: "Next week...juice party. Please bring fruit or vegetable." She claimed absolutely anything was okay, except for bananas, which aren't juicy enough for her machine, so I went out and bought an eggplant from the convenience store early Wednesday morning. :P It turned out to be very fun, and a very Japanese kind of party. A.k.a the kind of party where we all sit in a circle and observe someone make food and toss out comments along the way. But she had this machine where you just stuff fruit or vegetables into a plastic tube and they get squished into juice. If the base of the juice is apple and carrot, you can put pretty much anything in and it tastes great. They were a little shocked and surprised at my eggplant, though. Hee hee. So, they put that in at the very beginning just to make sure it was alright. Probably the first and only time I'll be sitting in a group of people passing around a tupperware of freshly squeezed eggplant juice. We each tried a small spoonful, deemed it good for drinking and started adding other fruits and veggies. Meanwhile the Japanese ladies started playing with the remnants of eggplant, the little kind of dried out shredded bits, and, with a little salt, managed to make something fairly decent.

*twirly happy dance*

There are big snowflakes falling outside my window!!!!!! *moved almost to tears* (Okay...I'm a lier...I'm crying with happiness) I haven't seen snow in almost two years! Since whenever it snowed last at Olaf in 2006! YAY!!!!!!!

Hmm...my long distance communication is either dead or in the 'Critical Care' unit of the hospital right now. This is at least kind of a good thing...my Tokyo relationships have been really great these past couple months, and it is nice to have that stability. My supervisor and I can joke around a lot now...he frequently threatens to leave the Center all to me and I get to tease him about holding goat sacrifices without his permission. (this was the one thing he told me I was not allowed to do during Bible Studies, which means I have to threaten to do it all the time. ;) )

Life especially these past few weeks has been really amazing. For several months, I feel like I was trying to invent a calling here in Tokyo. It's not that I wasn't doing things...I was building relationships, having great conversations, learning things...but it didn't feel like anything was actually turning into anything lasting. Good things would seem to happen without any real change.

A few months ago, I was praying through a prayer guide and it ended with "Pray for some kind of 24/7 prayer in your city". I thought, "Huh...there has to be something like that in Tokyo." And thus, my true ignorance became clear.

For a long time, I'd assumed that other churches, ones that are normally more prayer oriented than my church, surely had a prayer presence in Tokyo. And some of them probably do. But it is really, really impossible to find any of them on the internet. And a lot of the organizations I can find are very evangelism focused, but don't say much about prayer. The more I learn the more I am like...what are you all doing?!?! Sending missionaries into one of the countries named "The Missionary Graveyard" to work themselves into the ground without even running after the Holy Spirit for help?!?! It has been very eye-opening.

In my digging around, I've discovered the international organization 24/7 Prayer...there are two prayer rooms through this organization in all of Japan. One is in Hokkaido (the northern island) and the other is somewhere near Nagoya. It seems a little odd that the largest city in Japan would not have one. Gradually, that feeling has grown into "I want to start one."

I kept that feeling entirely to myself for about a month. That month was spent pretty much being like, "God...are you crazy?!?! Are you stark raving mad?! Do you know how many people I would have to put together to get us to pray non-stop for one week? Something like 50! I don't know if I even know 50 Christians here, let alone 50 Christians who like praying enough to sign up for an hour of prayer at 3 in the morning! Have you seen people's work schedules here?! Have you seen your *missionaries* work schedules here?! And are you aware that I'm not actually allowed to lead things in terms of my contract with my church?" God was pretty silent through all of this, except that I kept remembering that, somehow, this desire made it back to the purest, most idealistic desires I had when I first came to Tokyo. Back before I started to "learn" what could and couldn't happen. Back when all I had done was study Japanese and observe the Japanese church and I somehow was thinking, "This city must start praying together." Pretty lofty thoughts for one hired to teach English and Bible to 40 some Japanese college students and professionals.

Do you ever have one of those moments or periods of life where you go around doing nothing, because the only thing you can think of that would really be worth doing is so huge you don't even see why you should start?

I started! It feels incredible. Mostly, it has just meant beginning to tell other people: "This is what I'm dreaming about!" And saying before God that I was willing to go for it all the way if it was what He wanted. Even if it meant staying in Japan longer than I had planned. And with the decision, I feel like an adventure has started. I met a girl on Facebook who lives in Hong Kong and tries to lead multiple prayer groups just for Japan each year. I went to a church within walking distance of mine and introduced myself to a pastor / missionary who leads prayer walks for Japan for the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association and I told him about my hope / calling for a prayer room in Tokyo. I was given permission to begin organizing a system to get all our Hongo students prayed for in a week by church members.

I think this year is going to be hard, but exciting. We'll see how things go.

The cockroach wars were brief and (mostly) harmless. I felt a little vindicated that every single one of my friends in Tokyo (or at least all the ones I talked to) also had cockroach sightings that week. Apparently the cooling down outside drives them inside. I scrubbed my kitchen down, got all my flour / sugar / etc. in air-tight containers, and proceeded to lay about ten little cockroach poison thingies all over my kitchen.

Two days later I was on the way to church and realized that there was a cockroach sitting in my hallway. But it was just...sitting. It made no effort to run even though I was pretty close to it. I wondered if it was dead and left it there. When I returned, it had gone belly up, six legs angling towards the sky. This made me actually feel a little bit of pity, but two very useful things happened because I actually saw a dead one: I realized that my initial report of "two inches long" was...a stretch. Though they are definitely more than an inch long. ;) It was also very useful to know that the cockroach poison was effective, and that I didn't need to panic or start smashing my apartment apart or anything like that when I saw one.

Other happenings of the past few weeks...

Our new people came! We now have nine new missionaries here in Tokyo studying Japanese. So, I am no longer new. I am now "sempai", so to speak. It's been fun to watch them, remember what it was like to be new, and how much it sucked to be at the level of Japanese where one still regularly confuses the word for 'grandmother' with the word for 'buckwheat noodles'. It makes me feel rather important and accomplished to be able to take them into bento shops and explain to the cashiers that, the reason they sound so funny is that they only started studying Japanese this week, and be able to do it all confidentially since they don't understand what I'm saying. Not that I'm usually that mean...;)

It is strange to have it be autumn again, also because it is the first time the seasons have changed into something familiar. Not that Japanese seasons are so outrageously different from America, but there were usually new fruits, new smells, new customs, etc. It's odd to be walking down the street and realize that the air itself feels like an old friend, whispering memories of my first few months in the country.

In other news, I twisted my ankle last Friday. Typing emails on my cell phone while hurrying down stairs in Tokyo station is now a forbidden activity. Thankfully, God was merciful and it only seems to be a minor sprain. In the meantime, things have to go ever so slightly slower than normal, which is probably a good thing.

Last night, I bought green tea scented toilet paper. Just wanted to share that with someone. ;)