Monday, September 17, 2012

Getting closer...

Well, things are starting to look a little brighter than they were in my last post! We were approved for the apartment I had mentioned and will hopefully be moving in on Friday. Unfortunately we've been running into many situations where something can't happen until such and such happens, but such and such can't happen before this other thing happens... and so on! Right now, we can't get the keys to our apartment until Bobby's "foreigner card" comes. We applied for it last Thursday and they said we should get a post card letting us know we can go pick it up in a week... which should work out fine, but we have our doubts! Please pray that we'll get his card before (or on) Friday so that we can move all of our belongings into one spot! (Right now they are spread out in various locations)

We also bought a car! We got an amazing deal thanks to one of our co-workers... Just because we know him, the seller took off about $1000!! Again, we are waiting for things to happen before we get the keys, but are hoping to have it by the end of the week. We sure will be thankful when this is all behind us!!

I must confess I am enjoying this "down time". It is nice to have time to just sit and read and have longer devotional times. Before I know it, we'll be into a routine and I'll be studying Japanese 30 hours a week! :)

Well, since we have a 7:00 am team meeting tomorrow, I better head off to bed! Thanks again for reading and praying for us!

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Trying to settle...

Hello from Japan!!
We're finally here! It's certainly good to be back (aside from the ugly humidity that we are NOT used to yet!!) :) We enjoyed our first few days back in Japan visiting with friends that Bobby knows from seminary (they now live about 2 hours south of us!!). We had a great visit with them and are so thankful for their friendship... super excited to be so close now! They have 2 little ones... an almost 4 year old girl and a 1 year old boy which of course adds to the fun when we're together :)

Anyway, we're now back in our area (about 10 minutes outside of our "homeland") staying with our incredibly gracious co-workers until we find a place of our own. Unfortunately, the things we had counted on happening very quickly (finding a home and a car) are taking a lot longer than we were hoping and it looks like it will still be a little while before we'll be on our own. There's just a lot of technical things getting in our way... [for example, the company we want to rent from requires us to have a guarantor that has to be 1) family 2) living in Japan and 3) Japanese... none of which we have! so we will most likely have to pay a company about $600 to be that person for us!] that are making things go slower than we had hoped, but we are trying to be patient.

Apparently I'm not nearly as patient and as flexible as I thought I was! Definitely something I need to grow in. I'm struggling with a "poor me" attitude and I don't like it because I know it shouldn't be there... but it's hard to get rid of! I know the Lord is taking care of us and all these delays are not a surprise to Him, but it's taking a while for me to accept that. It's no fun living out of suitcases in someone else's space... especially after having spent the last 3 1/2 months in a similar situation! I know our co-workers are happy to have us and are providing wonderful hospitality, but it's no fun feeling like we're invading their space/routines. The good news is, they were expecting things to take this long, even though we weren't!! :)

But, like I said, the Lord is taking good care of us and I have no right to complain. He has been and still is so very good to us and this is just a good reminder to me that I need to keep my mind on things above... which I will confess is much easier said than done for me at the moment! ;)

On a little different note... I'm realizing that I did a terrible job of blogging this summer! Here's some pictures on Facebook for those of you who haven't seen them yet... http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151107260317437.490843.517722436&type=3&l=503540be02

I'll try to update more often once we're all settled in... for sure will post pictures once we have a place to live, but no guarantees how often you'll hear from me once I start my full time language study! Thanks for keeping up... and being patient! Thanks for your prayers too! :)