I’ve missed being here in the Sheep Pen, writing about the things that are on my heart. Around the end of August, I wandered off into other pastures and just kept wandering. It feels good to come home!

One of my sojourns was travel to Japan. Last year my daughter Lisa was invited to teach English and Folklore at Ritsumeiken University in Kyoto for the fall semester. At the end of September Dan and I went to Kyoto for two weeks. It was a marvelous opportunity to see a part of the world I would never see otherwise, especially since Lisa was taking our two grand daughters with her. Back in the spring when we first learned they were going, Dan didn’t want to go and actually asked me, “Why would we want to go there?”as if there, Kyoto, Japan, would be no more interesting than a car trip to Costco on a Saturday morning.

I   not so sweetly announced that I was going anyway with or without his company. With that, he quickly changed his mind and then in true hubby fashion spent weeks and weeks planning the itinerary, making reservations and reading websites for everything Japanese. His efforts were well worth it. We had a great trip, truly memory making and again in true Gabbert manner never sat very still. During the 12 days we stayed with Lisa in her tiny Japanese apartment, spent 2 nights in a traditional ryokan in the mountain area and then stayed in Kyoto and Osaka at several hotels. The suitcases were never far away and never unpacked.

Our son Chris and grandson Christopher also came, overlapping a week with us. Sometimes our family members can’t even visit each other here in the states because of the distances, but there we were five thousand miles and 15 time zones away as the crow flies, negotiating a foreign country. I feel greatly blessed that three of our grand kids had such an educational experience with the bigger world. I know they’ve been impacted by it already. The girls are learning Japanese in school. Christopher got his dream wish to ride the Bullet Train. Today Lisa told me that during last week’s fall school vacation, she, Gretchen and Bridget visited Hiroshima and the Peace Memorial Park. The past horror and future hope depicted in the memorial affected them hugely. They will return home changed, more compassionate and hopefully never forget their own blessings.

There’s much I’d like to write about my Japan experience before the details fade, before the busyness sets in and the holidays take over.  Chris and I took hundreds of digital photos of the overcrowded city, the beautifully sculpted gardens and the arching red Shinto temples, of the shopping areas and of course, food arranged like art work on the table. It’s been a chore to sort, discard and arrange the pictures into files on my computer, but amazingly pictures do speak a thousand words of narrative. They also make for sloppy, neglected writing!

Visiting the Buddhist and Shinto temples gave me a rare insight into the spirit of the Japanese people, into their religion and the demands of their religious practices. Two weeks do not make any one an expert on a nation or people, certainly not me, but the Lord showed me His love for the Japanese people by imparting a special love for them into my own heart. As I seek Him for more revelations in this particular area, I’m asking the Holy Spirit to move and breathe His life over the region. And to gift me with words to write “a good theme” such as the psalmist:

My heart overflows with a good theme; I address my verses to the King; My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Psalm 45:1

After our trip, there was an unexpected “side trip.”  After 27 hours of traveling through 4 airports and an overnight in Boise to crash, we came home to New Meadows and Dan had a stroke . I can only thank God that we were already home, close to local hospital care and that he was immediately treated. It wasn’t a lot of fun that week, but I am so thankful to God who is ever present, ever watchful and ever protective of us. There were no “what ifs” because God had taken care  those  dangerous possibilities. Our friends and church family prayed a lot for Dan and for me. The miracle happened for  Dan is already healed and healing; he’s almost back to normal. It might be a little wake up call for both of us.

But that’s another story narrative for Sheep Pen.