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Headed for Armenia

 Good Morning All, Well, you may not know it, but you’ve been reading a pre-programmed blog for the last four weeks. I didn’t mean to abandon you, but wasn’t sure if I’d have internet, so I set it up before we left to make sure we’d be covered. Now it really is the 31st of May (at least where we are, in transit from South Africa to Armenia). I think we were a little ‘weirder’ than we thought when we started this trip a month ago. We have been battling with some issues (not bad but sort of confusing and draining), and I think we needed some help. When we got onboard the Oceana cruise ship Regatta, we were immediately hit with the opportunity to lead both the sea-day Bible studies along with the Sunday services.  Tony even got to help in some of the Catholic gatherings and has had some real “heart to hearts” with folks from the Jewish community here. He was in heaven, doing what he loves to do among ‘like-minded’ people; but for both of us, it’s been a real healing experience. A...
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Former Enemies, New Brothers

 With Memorial Day just around the corner, I'd like to tell you a story about someone most of us would have considered 'the enemy'. His name was Kojima and he was a Japanese soldier.  He was rough and brutish, the perfect stereotype of those killing machines we knew either from actual experience or the war campaigns that were popular at the time. He had a wife.  It had been an arranged marriage, and he pretty much hated her.  But the feeling was mutual, and as she stayed behind in the home of her in-laws, she was forced to gather with them every morning before the family shrine and pray for his safety. On the outside, she was the obedient wife, but in her heart as they prayed, she always murmured under her breath, “Let him be killed, and make it painful.” But we didn't know Kojima then.  We only met him as he and his wife were volunteer custodians at our first church in Yokohama. He was sitting with MY father, also a veteran, eating watermelon and praising God t...
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Using Every Circumstance

 Way back in 1981, we had settled into our new career in Japan and had finally finished our requisite two years of language school. With great fanfare, we were deemed “fit to do life and ministry in a Japanese world".  I have to confess that to this day, I haven’t been able to fully understand all the big words on my graduation certificate, but I don’t want to talk about that. We moved north, out of Tokyo and up to a nice little town of one million people.  Keep in mind that we were moving from Tokyo, population about 40 million, so to us it was like a quaint village by comparison. It's about halfway to the top of the main island of Honshu, and it goes by the name of Sendai.   We had been assigned to start student ministries, so with thirteen major colleges and universities, Sendai was the natural choice.  Our sons Trevor and Nathan came with us, of course, and that set the course of their lives.  Five-year-old Trevor was enrolled into preschool, and e...
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Hats Off to God

Many years ago, Tony bought a hat. It was 1991, the year we spent in Colorado while our son Trevor was being treated for leukemia. After several weeks sitting by his bedside, a friend came and 'kidnapped' Tony, taking him up to the mountains to go skiing. Tony protested, insisting that he couldn’t be away that long, and besides, what father would do something like that while his son suffered?  He ended up going, and by evening, he told me that it probably saved his life. What a blessing, to step away from reality, if only for a few hours. Every time we see our friend (whose name is Mark), we thank him for the way God used him that day.  At the ski lodge that day, Tony bought a hat, similar to what he used to wear all the time when he lived in Texas. He and Mark agreed that it was good to look back at those days once in awhile.  Years passed. Many years. After eight months in hell, we said goodbye to Trevor, took his ashes back to Japan as per his wish, and tried to carry ...
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About Siblings

 I'd like to talk about siblings for a moment.  I have one sister and Tony has none. But actually, he did have “siblings”, in a way, because Tony's folks had a love for young people and always had a few 'strays' living with them.  As a result, I've never seen any aspects of him being an only child, but I'll let him tell you about all that. I have a sister, Sherry, just 6 years older than me. Sometimes blessing, sometime pain, but always part of our loving family, as I’d like to think you would agree when thinking about your own siblings. I have lots of memories of wanting to be 'big' and get to do 'big girl things' like she did.  She got to go to movies with friends, sometimes spend whole summers with the cousins etc.  One year she even 'got' to go to boarding school, although in thinking back, I’m not sure it was a mutually agreed decision at the time.   But it turned out to be a good thing, with the result that when I got to go 4 years ...
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Alaska?!?

 I still remember sitting cross legged on our bed for weeks and weeks counting up $20 bills.  We were fairly newlyweds, still in college, but we had decided that we would take off and 'see the world' when we had enough saved up.   That was about 55 years ago and believe me, our definition of “the world” back then did NOT go beyond the borders of the United States. Our world was much smaller then, and so it wasn’t entirely unreasonable that we just might be able to pack up the car and see just a bit of it.  And that’s what we did in the summer of 1971. We looked over our ’64 Ford convertible, took a deep breath and decided it could still handle the road. It had done okay for our honeymoon (Ask us about the bear in the tent that trip if you haven’t already heard it); it could do it again.  Finally with a fist full of $20 bills, we packed up and headed for Vancouver, where we planned, if possible, to head in the direction of Alaska.  We had neither the ti...
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Sowing and Harvesting

  I happened across an old familiar parable the other day. It’s the one about seeds and the different kinds of soil it falls into when it’s sown. It shows up in three of the four Gospels.  You know how it goes.  There was a farmer, and he broadcast some seeds.  Some fell on good soil, some on rocky, some on bad.  Some sprouted and grew, but with lack of water and nourishment they were soon taken out.   After this morning, I would like to add my own “Australian version” of that parable.  ALL of my beautiful little green tomatoes, showing so much potential for harvest, were just getting ready to turn a nice rich red when something, most likely a possum, came under the cloak of darkness and wiped out my entire crop.  To say I was angry is an understatement. It’s not just the tomatoes; it’s the injustice! I bought the seedlings. I prepared the pots. I watered faithfully every morning. It’s just not fair!  And the rage doesn’t stop at the gar...
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