Ninja Mom

The last few days have been really busy with Rosalyn’s birthday party on Saturday.  We did a simple style birthday party with elements from Latin culture and American culture.  So the food was a lot to do since if it’s latin, it basically has to be made from scratch.  But it was a lot of fun.

After that on Sunday I started working on a Bible study for a girl who’s interested in becoming a Christian.  I think she already believes in Jesus, but she wants to know more about Jesus and the Bible before she actually says it.  She even says she’s on her way to becoming a Christian.  Anyway, our church uses a book written by a Japanese that really explains things in a way that Japanese can understand.  It’s like a 12 step book to reading the Bible.  But as it’s written by a Japanese, it’s all in Japanese.

So, Sunday was spent in reading it and highlighting words I needed to look up.  Monday, I spent 6 hours with a cranky Rosalyn (teething I think, but goodness!  I even had to put her in her baby carrier and take her for a walk in the typhoon like rain so she could fall asleep.  But she still woke up when we got home!  I finally had to turn off the monitor and let her cry it out.  10 minutes later, she was out).  But I digress.  6 hours looking up words I didn’t know– not that there were that many- but just that I had to use my laptop to draw in each character, figure out the readings for it, enter the readings into my app on my phone that has a dictionary, then go to the next kanji to do the same and eventually figure out what the word or words meant.

Yeah.

Thankfully grammar is not an issue for me.  I can understand it and could even understand a lot of it the first time I did the read through.  Tonight after the email, I’ll do the final read-through so that I’m prepared for tomorrow.  She speaks decent English, but because this is so important, I need to be prepared in Japanese to explain things without sounding like a elementary student.  I mean, would you take someone seriously who was trying to share their faith with you, speaking like a 6 year old?  I don’t think so.

I’d like to think I can manage this at a 7 year old level.  Just kidding.

Speaking of which, I never filled you in on the tutor and her journey in faith (I say that in faith).  So, my study partner gave her the book of Mark which has been translated newly into everyday Japanese language.  The previous versions, even Christians sometimes have a really difficult time understanding because it’s in high and lofty language.  So a bilingual church here (actually the fastest growing church in Japan), one of their translators started working on a new translation for the Japanese. And it’s gotten a lot of great feedback!

That’s the background on it.  But anyway, a copy was given to her and the next week I had a solo lesson again with her.  She mentioned that she had been reading it and was so surprised that it was something so down-to-earth.  She said it had a thing in the back, like what to read in such-and-such circumstances, and she had some questions. She wasn’t sure on specifics so I couldn’t answer then and there, but she’s supposed to bring it to a future lesson so we can talk about.

Slowly but surely.