When I was 15, my parents let me paint my room. Being enthusiastic but ill prepared, I tackled the job as fast as I could. While the walls themselves looked great, I had managed to get huge strokes of paint onto the ceiling. That was when my dad came in and told me about something called painter’s tape.

To this day, the hardest part of painting a room for me is taping the edges of the wall. Taking the time to apply the painters tape seems to eat up hours with very little visible return. But, to do a job well, being mindful of the edges is essential. The time for big, visible strokes of paint will be here soon enough.

Getting ready for Japan right now feels like taping the edges of a room. While preparations in the fall involved speaking at Nealley’s Corner church and at the First Baptist Church of Westerlo’s Missions conference, our current to-do list involves applying for baby passports (and trying to get a baby’s passport picture!), writing letters to speak at churches, printing and signing lots of missionary-related paperwork, and of course, praying. Work, church, and family life all take a lot of energy, and sometimes we fit practicing Japanese in while doing dishes. And we remind ourselves that while writing a return address on 10 matching forms of applications doesn’t sound exciting, these are the details that are essential to doing our job well… And being able to bring our children out of the country.

We are hoping to get more speaking engagements lined up for this winter season and would appreciate prayers for juggling support raising, ministry at our church, and family life. And please pray that God would give us patience and faithfulness as we “tape the edges of the room”.

As always, we would love to hear from you, and hope that you are doing well this new year.

Love,

The Mackeys