Missionaries Japan Rusty and Brenda Carney We've made it a year in Japan!!!
January 13, 2009 we boarded a plane heading for Japan. In some ways it almost seems like yesterday, and in other ways it seems like a lifetime ago. But, praise the Lord, we have been in Japan for one year! As we reflect over the past year it humbles us because we know we could not have survived this transition without the grace of God and the help of His people. But it also excites us to see how much we have learned and grown in our understanding of Japanese and Japanese culture over the past year!
One of the shocks we had in the first couple of months came as a surprise. Brenda, having spent two years in Tokyo as a single missionary and having a good working knowledge of Japanese, found it a huge adjustment coming back as a wife and a mother! Rusty’s culture shock came about 4 or 5 months into our first year after we started language school.
One thing we’ve realized while being in language school is that most days we feel like we’re not learning anything. Yet we just continue plowing through the material and trying to memorize the kanji and vocabulary. Now, looking back after 9 months, we can see dramatic improvements in our language ability! We have both learned the Hiragana and Katakana characters as well as around 250 Chinese Kanji characters used by the Japanese. Also, both of us recently gave our first speech in Japanese to our colleagues and teachers at the language school. Praise the Lord for how He is helping us in this area!!!
We are currently attending the Koinonia Church in Ebetsu. It is a Free Will Baptist Church with a national pastor. We are the only “foreigners” attending that church at the moment so every Sunday we are getting a lot of good language practice!
Our daughter, Grace, has been a real trooper through all of these changes. For about the first two months after we got here, she asked to play with her cousins or grandparents from the States almost every day. However, she has gradually come to love all of her “Aunts”, “Uncles” and “Cousins” here—especially Josiah Snow (Nathan and Linda Snow’s 2-year-old). Grace will turn 3 on Feb. 3rd. She is growing by leaps and bounds, both physically and in her English/Japanese language skills. She opens up many opportunities for us to meet other people everywhere we go. This year we are planning on sending her to a Christian Kindergarten/Pre-school that is about 10 minutes by car from where we live. Many Japanese children start at that age, and we feel that it will be a good thing for all of us, as it will give Grace friends to play with, and give us more opportunities to use the language.
Thank you all for your prayers for us over this past year. All the classes we took before we came to Japan warned us that the first year for missionaries on the field is the hardest! There has indeed been a lot of stress, but the Lord has helped us find a way to cope, and begin to groove out our nitch here in Japan. May He continue to mold us into the people He wants us to be.
Thanks again for supporting us, and praying us through!!!
Rusty, Brenda and Grace
Some of the pictures are of things we've had to learn over the past year such as: how to sort our trash, which buttons to push on our washing machine, and what are we eating?
I also posted some pictures of Grace and Josiah Snow. The first picture of them was taken shortly after we arrived, the second picture was taken last month at a Christmas gathering. My, how kids change in one year?!