!!LIFE – IT’S HAPPENING!!

Today is Sunday May 24th; right now it is (unbelievably) 4:56pm (the day seems to have flown by). It’s cloudy and pleasantly cool. We had a nice time at church this morning – although, as usual, we understood very very little of what was going on. We do know that it was the church’s one year anniversary. Usually we stay for lunch, but today we left after service because we wanted to go shopping for some of the things we’ll be needing for Claire’s coming baby brother or sister. This, as everything, proved to be more challenging that expected simply due to the fact that things are done a little differently. We accomplished a little less than we hoped, but that’s ok – such is life right?…… anyway – enough about the minutiae of today. Let me fill you in on a bit of the last month and a half.

Visitors :

Friday we picked up Suzanne (Gina’s sister) from the airport. She’ll be staying with us for the next couple months. It will be great to have her to help when it comes time for the baby to come.

My Hoogerbrugge grandparents also arrived the same day for a three week visit.  Last night (Saturday night) we all went out to a restaurant called Kappazushi.  It’s a fun restaurant where the booths are all lined up along a half height wall that has a conveyor belt on it.  The conveyor belt brings all kinds of sushi so you can just pick what you want and grab it as it goes by.  You can also order any of the items from the menu on a little touch screen and it will be brought to you by a little train above the conveyor belt.  It’s actually pretty fun, even if you find uncooked fish unappetizing; there are plenty of other options from which to choose.

After dinner everyone came back to our place for some banana splits, coffee, tea, and fun hang out time.  It’s SO great to have more family nearby, and our get together last night was very cheering. 

 

Church:

The last time I posted I mentioned that we had visited a church called Ushiku Midorino Chapel.  It was the second of  four churches we would visit.  Well, we finally made the decision to settle on Tsukuba Dendoujo as our home church.  It is a Baptist church that meets in a home.  We had been praying for guidance on which church to make our home and it feels very nice to no longer be wondering and wandering, visiting and evaluating.  This was the first time I had ever been in the position of choosing where to go to church.  I found that I really don’t like being in the position of more or less evaluating the merits of each church we visit.  Despite the fact that it was a legitimate activity, something we needed to do, it made me feel like I was being so judgmental.  In fact each of the churches that we visited are great churches, filled with people who believe in and love the Lord Jesus, but we needed to try to choose which place would be the best fit for us, and where we could be a blessing to serve.  We are very glad to be a part of the fellowship we now attend.

Yochien:

Claire started yochien (Japanese two year kindergarten program) last month.  It has been a great experience for her to meet friends and begin her language study.  I’m sure it’s been challenging for her teachers as they help her struggle to understand what’s going on, but she is thoroughly enjoying it and we are glad to see her learning. 

Claire's First Day at Yochien

Yochien has also been an opportunity for Gina to get to experience Japanese culture as a stay at home mom:  First of all –  PTA means something altogether different here than what we were used to.  It is mandatory, and it is quite a time commitment.  Fortunately one of the other moms speaks English and is sometimes able to help Gina figure out what’s going on.  The second major cultural experience has been the preparation of obento lunches.  Some of you may have been following along with Gina’s facebook ”obento creations” photo album.  If not, I highly recommend it.  Through Claire going to school we also made some new friends:  Claire’s friend Kay’s dad is English and her mom is Japanese – so she is bilingual and able to help Claire through the day.  Claire and Kay became fast friends.  We are so blessed to have met the Mayers family: Thomas, Izumi, Kay, and little Emma.

Claire, Kay, and Emma at Thomas's band's gig.

Trauma:

Wednesday May 13th, at about 8pm, Gina began to have a very severe asthma attack. Her inhaler was rendered useless, as was her nebulizer machine (I’m not sure if you are familiar with this, but it’s a machine designed to deliver a more potent and continuous dose of breathing treatment for more severe asthma attacks). So here we are, the nightmare is happening.  She had a similar asthma attack two years ago almost to the day and honestly barely made it through alive.  I had rushed her to Corona Regional and they had to intubate. She passed out when we arrived. She barely was able to walk up to the counter and was all blue and lost consciousness.  SO – that night, at about 8pm we begin the replay, but in a foreign country. I called 119 and tried to have a conversation with the operator and convey enough information to get an ambulance on the way.  They came within five minutes but seemed in no big hurry.  I urged them that she needed to be taken to the hospital immediately.  Finally they carried her out to the ambulance. I was thinking – “great, finally!  There’s a hospital 10 minutes away… in an ambulance, maybe 5 minutes.”  But this was wrong. I learned through this very scary situation, that here in Japan they don’t have the same concept of an emergency room as we have in the US.  The ambulance had to call ahead of time and see if the hospital would accept Gina.  So we sat in the ambulance for about 20 minutes right in front of our home.  All the while I’m watching my wife FIGHT for every breath – she is being tormented with the panic, and the fight of her life.  And no matter how much I beg and plead, the ambulance tech’s (can’t call them EMT’s because they seemed very limited in emergency care ability) didn’t do a thing.  It is by the hand of God and by the prayers of our family and friends and Claire and I that she is alive.  The attack miraculously improved slightly while in the ambulance.  I say its a miracle because once these attacks get going, they never stop on their own.  They usually just gain more and more momentum and get worse and worse until there is some sort of medical intervention.  If yesterday’s attack had progressed in the same way that the one two years ago had - she would not have made it; especially considering that once they found a hospital to accept her (the first three they called said no) it was about a 30 minute drive away.  Thankfully, she made it to the hospital and the attack was able to be stopped with some meds rather than having to intubate as was the case last time.  She was released a few hours later.  Praise God.

Two days later Gina returned to the hospital for an appointment with the doctor and received some new prescriptions to hopefully help prevent a repeat.  We know that there is no guarantee of the effectiveness of the drugs.  The last attack is a case in point since neither the inhaler nor the nebulizer helped to stop it.

But the thing is – you know that feeling when you almost get creamed by a crazy driver.  And you just sit there for several minutes realizing your life was almost over…. even now, a couple weeks later, it is still sickening for me to think about.  The thought of such a situation ever coming up again is cause for real concern in my mind.  We did some more research and found out that this is a big problem in Japan.  Many many people have died because hospitals simply turn them away.  And not always because they are too full to accept or so busy that they can’t get to everyone – they literally just choose to turn people away.

Please pray for us regarding this – to say the least we are shaken; not exactly feeling full of peace.  We see that God’s hand was on the situation in rescuing Gina from what could have happened, but

 

Baby Update: (or Medical problem #2):

Last Monday Gina went to her doctor appointment and we learned that the baby had not grown in the last two weeks since her previous appointment.  The doctor seemed quite concerned and referred her to the Tsukuba University Hospital (the same place that took Gina for the emergency just the previous week).  Of course at this point we were feeling like “when it rains it pours”.  Why are these things going so wrong?!?!  After the appointment with the new doctor – we felt a little better as he seemed less concerned about the baby’s size, and confident that they would be able to handle the situation if there is a problem.  Nevertheless – we are a bit uneasy and continually praying that the Lord will keep our baby safe and healthy in the womb until the right time.  We certainly appreciate your prayers.  We’ll try to keep you posted on how things go from this point forward.

 

Going forward….

We have been enjoying Claire’s time at school as good language study time for us as often as possible, and just this last week we also began a language class that meets once per week.  It’s just me and Gina and the teacher – $10/person for a 10 week class.  Pretty cheap, huh?  The lessons are all given by volunteers.  We are hoping to start a Friday night English Bible study on June 5th.  Since it will be a while before we can effectively communicate in Japanese, we are hoping to reach out to those who can speak or at least understand some English.  There are plenty of people who are interested in learning more English, and we hope that perhaps a Bible study will be an opportunity of which they would like to take advantage.  Ideally, it won’t be long before someone coming to the English Bible study would be willing to translate so that it would become a bilingual Bible study.

 

God bless you, faithful readers, friends, fellow believers, pray-ers.

p.s.  it’s now 9:42pm and while I haven’t been working on this straight through since 4:56, i’m so bad at blogging, you see why i procrastinate on updating – it’s such a huge project because i’m so slow at it. sorry