Urbana and New Year's (and monkeys)

Today’s coffee: some beans my mom got for Christmas

Happy New Year! It’s the year of the monkey, or it is in Japan, anyway. It’s still the year of the sheep for a few more weeks in the rest of Asia.

Wild monkeys on a roof near Lake Kawaguchi, last July. We saw them crossing the street on the power lines... and kept our hotel room window closed  after that...

We’ve just finished a week in St. Louis at Urbana 2015. I felt kind of bad for leaving our colleagues behind at the busiest part of the conference, but as wave after wave of tiredness hit me on the way to the airport, I think I made the right decision. I slept in my own bed last night and woke up in time to watch the first sunrise of the year (that’s a Japanese tradition), as the sun peeked through the familiar trees in the forest surrounding the house where I grew up.

This is the view from my parents' front porch. I could finally see the sun 40 minutes after it came up.

But I was so overstimulated from Urbana that I think it will take weeks to get un-wired…

I already look a little strained, and this was the first night...

A lot of good stuff happened, and a lot of hard stuff too. It’s not easy being an introvert at a conference with 16,000 college students, lots of flashing lights and loud music, and 6 hours each day of talking to students whom I was meeting for the first time, engaging them about missions and Japan and explaining over and over what I do and why I do it. I wonder how many of them noticed the deer-in-the-headlights expression or the slurred speech as I grew more and more tired and wired at the same time. I pray that God can smoothe over all my mistakes.

And yet it was a privilege to pray with probably 20 students and young adults who have a passion to show God’s love to the Japanese. I cried with a young Chinese woman as we talked about the way God has been using our Chinese missionary colleagues to bring reconciliation with Christians in Japan, overcoming a lot of painful history. Yesterday morning, we had coffee with Jeff, who was one of our InterVarsity leaders in Boston. It was so good to catch up, encourage each other, and fill him in on just how much he and his wife, Tara had equipped us for the work we’re doing in Japan. We also met Andrea, a new colleague, for the first time—she will be in Japan from February! Exciting!

Ironically, another wonderful thing that happened was finding a book called Introverts in the Church in the Urbana bookstore. (I felt like I should tell the people at the register to pray for anyone buying this book at Urbana, because they are probably struggling.) More about this book later, after I finish reading it...