Hello again friends and family,
It has now been 3 months since I last posted and nearly 4 months since I moved to Japan, so my promise in the last post to give a briefer update the next time may be hard to keep, even if for no other reason than that I don’t quite know what to highlight or how to organize any of my various thoughts and experiences…But I suppose it might make sense to start with my struggles first.
Early in June I had to go to Korea for a few days for visa reasons (long story), which gave me the opportunity to stay with a very close friend I met through leading a discovery-type Bible Study in university. Though I won’t go into details here, spending such quality time with my friend and her family and in Seoul and even studying a bit of the Korean book she sent me a couple of years ago…it made me wonder if I’d made the wrong choice in moving to Japan. Actually, I feel like that’s not quite right. What it did more so was make me feel discontent with my current situation, with thoughts running through my head along these lines: “In Seoul there is someone I know and love that I could be pouring into right now, and there are many others I could reach out to from there; in Miyazaki, I am not investing deeply in anyone, and how can I, when the language barrier is so big? And judging by how easy it is to learn Hangul and how much entertainment/resources there are in Korean, it would be so much easier to self study (Why are there so many kanji…? T_T) And even though I live here, spending the vast majority of my time at a school where all the adults speak English and the only Japanese you can hear is key phrases from 4-year-olds is perhaps the job situation least conducive to learning a language that one could have. And-“ etc., etc.
Petty complaints or otherwise, the sum of my thoughts came out as this: I felt I could be doing something meaningful and useful in Seoul, and I felt useless here. I’d helped a bit with music and talked in English with many teens during an Easter event, and I’d helped organize some games with other foreign teachers for an “English Fun Day” with local high school students (and I of course really enjoyed both, since I love working with older students:), but it felt like so little. And as someone who greatly desires to be able to have meaningful discussions with Japanese people, not even being able to have a basic conversation with lovely old ladies trying to talk to me when I went for a walk or the friendly clerks at the bank trying to ask me some questions about myself — not bank related, I could tell, but that was as far as my understanding got me — was really getting under my skin. I felt something like an ill-equipped mountaineer at the base of Everest, and in 3 months time I’d barely moved an inch.
Needless to say, this put me in a not-so-great place mentally, and as is my eternal weakness, I did not immediately take the time to put everything aside and pray about it. For about three days I felt frustrated, stifled, and entirely discontent. I guess it’s more evidence of how blessed I’ve been that I can’t remember feeling the same way at any other time in my life. I knew what I was thinking wasn’t healthy, I knew I needed to take time to work through these frustrations and talk to God about everything, so on a short workday, I wrote “Quiet Time” on a full list of things I needed to do THAT DAY. I didn’t get to half the list, but I did not shirk on that much-needed time. Below is my favorite spot in Miyazaki:
On sunny days it is where I go to hang laundry out to dry, but on quiet evenings this balcony serves a much better purpose. This is the spot where I go to look at the night sky, listen to the rain, sing praises softly, think about life and all its complexity and difficulties and beauty, and pray. “Lord, you know I would be perfectly happy to die tomorrow, because then I would finally know. Then I would see face to face…But if it is to be a long life, mine, then please move mountains through me. I am weak and small, but you can do anything. Please use my life to move mountains.” “Lord, help me to love others like Jesus, to speak words of life as I interact with my students and coworkers and everyone around me, and to be an unmistakable light for Christ. To love, breathe life, and be light, Lord. Please help me to be like Jesus.” These prayers and others like them I have prayed multiple times on that balcony, and by the end of my time with God that day, they were the prayers I prayed again. My discontentment faded as soon as I started talking to God, because as really has always been the case, His presence was the only answer I needed.
My favorite quote outside the Bible is this one by C.S. Lewis: “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face, questions die away. What other answer would suffice?” Like so many nights before, it became immediately clear on that night that as long as Jesus remained the central focus, as long as I desired to know and follow hard after Him, it didn’t matter where in the world I was or what circumstances were seemingly preventing me from doing what He wanted me to do. Because truly, if my faith, hope, and love are in Christ, then His work is being accomplished in my life. The Great Commission may be to make disciples of all nations, but the Greatest Commandment has always been to love the Lord with every part of you. And the second is like the first — to love your neighbor as yourself. So that is what I asked the Lord to help me do. And with my thoughts finally refocused, I prayed about other things too, including asking for help with language learning, as that had been the biggest source of my discontentment. I came to realize that being able even simply to try to learn this new language is a blessing, for not everyone has the education, money, motivations, etc. that I have. So I asked for help as I try.
Lo and behold, new opportunities began lining up to meet me. In the last few weeks, some Japanese friends from Kearney have been awesome enough to have weekly video chats with me and help me practice Japanese. In addition, I have now learned the name of one of my nearest convenience store’s clerks, and she and I have been able to have multiple conversations (brief and basic, yes, but conversations!). Furthermore, a local pastor who always drives me to Sunday night MICF meetings — Miyazaki International Christian Fellowship, the wonderful community of believers led by Al and Rhonda Juve who were responsible for the above-mentioned Easter event and English Fun Day — has offered to help teach Audra and me Japanese one or two nights a week starting in August. And since I will change from full time to part time in August, I may even be able to take some Japanese classes from Miyazaki University (a friend from MICF who is interning at the university is looking into this for me). Lastly, on Sunday I met a young Korean woman at church who started teaching English at Miyazaki Municipal University in April as part of her PhD program. We met up this week, and she has offered to see if any of her students would be interested in doing language exchange with me, and in the meantime, to help me out herself (both her high school and college education were completed in Japan). Her university is even within walking distance of my apartment. =)
Needless to say, the Lord provides. I don’t know if every one of these opportunities will come to something, but I do know that I can look forward to meeting more Japanese people and learning more of their language quite soon, and that is something I’m very thankful for. The night before I left for Japan, after all of my family and I had eaten together, my dad sent me off with this verse: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). It's a simple verse, but a powerful one. Looking back after these last few months, after a time of feeling useless and discontent, I'm glad it's the verse he chose. After all, something that God's hands have crafted in Christ Jesus is bound to be used for His purposes somehow. :) Whatever good works God has for me in this next phase of my first year in Japan, please pray with me that I would walk in them, just as I was created to do.
And on that note, here are a few more praises/prayer requests:
Thank you all so much for your support! I will try and send an update sooner next time. Also, though I’m a bit too…philosophically inclined? for the, as one missionary termed it, “dog and pony show” that missionaries sometimes feel they have to put on when updating their supporting churches, I do realize that it’s nice to see pictures and learn about the people and events we’re involved with, so I will try to include more of that in my next post. Thank you again for joining me on this journey in Japan through your time and prayers, and God bless! =) And for any of you who ever saw the Veggie Tales episode where Madame Blueberry hears Junior Asparagus sing his “thankful heart” song, I will leave you with my struggles-inspired balcony reprise -- sung more slowly and softly than the original, but to the same tune and with the same feeling of simple praise...
I thank God for this day, for the moon in the sky, for the love that He shares, for the knowledge I can try. For I know that He cares, and He listens to my prayers. That’s why I thank God every day. That’s why I thank God every day.
In Christ, with a thankful heart, Anna Faeh
Things Hoped For