Turkey and Fixings Please

Our family is a little crazy. A combination of the number and ages of the children, the mixing of our personalities, and my level of effort (or lack of) to parent all contribute to the craziness. Who we are as a family can be a little overwhelming, come over to my house for a visit or come with us to a restaurant for a full experience. Maybe I slightly stretch the truth, but people often stare at us when we go places and sometimes I feel like a walking circus. I think here in Japan many people take interest in our family just out of curiosity. My kids have strange habits and have received many types of reactions, like when they were eating random weeds out of people’s yards and their little friend copied them on a walk home as her mom was telling them in Japanese (very kindly, but adamantly) to stop. I did not need to understand all of her Japanese to see the look of astonishment on her face. I won’t get started on Kitty’s pet rock or the fact that I am the loudest parent shouting at her kids at the playground. We make people uncomfortable by giving gifts at random. We cook dinner for guests, and the kids are not shy so you never know what will happen. We say yes to any invitation, not always knowing what we are getting ourselves into. Loren and I also like to make big plans, keeping faith that God always has our back.

A recent example is the Thanksgiving turkey party we hosted at church. Our church here in Japan was looking for more ways to build community and have fellowship. We were wanting to find opportunities to invite people to church and to show our hospitality. We got permission to host a Thanksgiving dinner at the church and the prayers and planning began. We quickly learned Japan is not very conducive to cooking a traditional Thanksgiving meal, especially for a large group of people. The ovens are small, the cookware is different, and we had to track down enough “foreign” ingredients (like pumpkin and herbs) to fit our menu. There are no premade pies or boxes of stuffing, so we had to make everything from scratch by quadrupling recipes. There were many obstacles, but we pressed through knowing God would provide everything we needed. We spent weeks tracking down pie pans, ordering the wrong size silver wear (mistaking centimeters for inches), and converting recipes to the metric system. Finally everything was found or improvised and we worked for seven hours the day before with helpers. Some to watch all of our children, some to chop! Despite the language barrier, we managed to bake six pies and dice and prep the whole meal using hand gestures and Jenglish (a little Japanese and English mixed together). For the big day we had sixty people attend, about half church members and half guests. Our pastor preached on thanksgiving and Loren said the prayer before lunch. Before we feasted, I took some time to explain the dishes and how to eat them. Many people have seen a Thanksgiving dinner in the movies, but in real life the flavors and some of the dishes were new. Thankfully everyone really enjoyed it! The turkey was a huge hit, eating a whole big bird is a rare site in Japan. It was worth the effort, and I didn’t even have to do the dishes afterward because everyone helped us clean up. There were no major issues, except one burned apple pie. Loren and I both had friends attend and we were so thankful to share a meal with everyone.

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We have had many other adventures this past month, including a lot of running. I ran a quarter marathon and continue to train for a half marathon in January, Avalyn ran in a competition at school, and Loren ran a relay race with some friends from work. We got to visit a beautiful garden tended by a friend outside of the city, spending the day together and eating lunch in her parents traditional Japanese style house. We are now transitioning into winter and Christmas. Japan continues to be full of blessings and new experiences. Thanks for reading!

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