The reason I started this blog years ago was to share with you some of the nitty-gritty of our missionary life. You know, the stuff that isn't really prayer letter worthy. Some of the strangeness and struggles of making a go-of-it in a foreign place you call home.
Now our life is nothing compared to those dusty missionary biographies, blazing trails through swamps and jungles. Or snake bites and sleeping on cement floors. It's the little things that drive me a bit crazy. The inconveniences of daily life that speeds up that sanctifying process. The daily nitty-gritty that God uses to build faithfulness in this self-centred servant of His.
Here is our beautiful, big home. Not a day goes by that we don't thank God for it. An incredible blessing that is a refuge offering respite. But, if you look a little closer you will find a few things that aren't so pleasant. Things like mould and cleaning windows.
We have had problems with mould at all the places we have lived in in Japan. The houses and apartments just aren't made well. And before long you will find black fuzz growing in the back of dark closets, along walls that don't get sunshine and around the edges of windows that are daily damp with condensation. But, it can be and is cleaned with a little work and an array of popular, Japanese, bleach-based cleaning products. My favorite is appropriately labeled "Mould Killer".
Another cleaning dread is the windows and sliding doors. Since they aren't air-tight dirt settles in the crevices and espeically in the MANY runners. Old toothbrushes and a pile of rags can finally get these babies clean, and of course a few final sprays of my beloved "Mould Killer" comes to the rescue.
