GOTTA GET TO THE AIRPORT...

Hurry, Joycie! Actually, I was going to post this on the night of the 18th, but I was so sleepy, I took the photos out of my camera then forgot where I put them and have been looking all over for them. Anyway, it's about the afternoon I wanted to hurry to the airport...

YATTO! Finally! My sister got here on Wed. afternoon. It may not sound like a big deal because I see my sisters quite often, but we thought about it, and well...ALL THREE OF US GETTING TOGETHER FOR CHRISTMAS...it's been 41 years!

The last time that happened was when we were all single and joined the mission board! After we got married and had families on opposite sides of the ocean, it was virtually impossible to get together. Now that our kids are grown, Joyce, June, and Janice are getting together again!

Sisters. You don't notice how special they are until you think you can't get together for 40 years!

Yeah! The same God that sent the Kawasemi on my walk back from the clinic Mon. and the Blue Rock Thrush after Christmas shopping yesterday sent my sisters and me together for Christmas this year too--He is Great and controls the universe yet so Kind!

No, this photo isn't touched up at all; if you live here a while, you get used to the blue thrushes and don't notice, but God really has endowed them with more light and color than other feathered friends.

WHILE WALKING AROUND TENGAN

The papaya tree? Yes, many have them growing in the back yard. Even with the Typhoon wind and rain, the papaya seems ok. It was a cool and exceptionally windy day today too, and my sister Joyce invited me to come along and hand out church Christmas fliers.

Nearby was a church member's home. Joyce had given her a gift from a U.S. Christian bookstore. It was a fitting gift, she said, as she'd spent hours on her garden. I wondered how much care God spent with us, painstakingly trying to make us creations of beauty to glorify Him

I prayed God would anoint the work of our hands and was reminded I was in Okinawa as a low-flying plane passed overhead. And as I continued going from house to house with the red sheets of paper, I noticed on the rooftop a rock thrush, blue-rust only in Okinawa.

Oh--my camera was out of juice; I'd forgotten to charge up before I left the house today. The flowers in Okinawa look so robust! I had to take a photo of the bloom in front of my unsaved cousin Kazue's house 3 mins.' from our home--I hope our church member neighbor keeps up her gardening if her blooms turn out anything like this! And as a bonus, God showed me one of the last homes had some papayas for sale too. Some industrious person was going to be not only fruitful, but profitable too.

BIRDS FOR NOW IN OKINAWA

My son may've thought I was crazy when I dashed outside with my camera in the middle of the night. Had I heard the song of a nightingale?  Well, not exactly.

It was the blue rock thrush I heard calling. The thrush, in mainland Japan, is a dull brown, but here in Okinawa, it's blue with copper-colored undersides...that is, that's what I was expecting when I jumped out to see the bird. But in the light of the street lamp, its blue shading looked barely gray around the shoulder...looked mostly brown, actually...what a disappointment.

 I've seen the same type of bird on the exact same wall in the daytime sunlight, and...see what the color looks like? This is a photograph taken in Jan., in the daylight.

I remember there were waterfowl, heron, some carp, butterflies and dragonflies, in that river that runs in front of the house. There were lots of flora and other wildlife there too. If only temperatures would come down so I could go out to see them! (But maybe there's still more work God wants me to spend time doing at the house, and He knows if it gets too nice out, I'll lose my head and stay out too long....)

I just wrote my Buddhist friend in Iwarsuki, a bird lover, to whom I'd been looking forward sending pictures of the Okinawan Kawasemi (I know there are some.) But I sent her these instead, saying they were the best I could do for now--they were framed pictures of the bird, hanging in my stepmother's old study. 

How'd it go..."Two birds in a frame are worth one in the bush...or something like that?"