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Building Bridges

One of my favorite parts of the YouTube community is the interaction you get with people. I love building bridges between people, and even though we’re enjoying vacation in America, it’s been especially fun to bring our Japanese viewers along for the ride, so to speak. Many have never had the opportunity to travel abroad like this, so they can via our online family.

With all of our videos, people become more and more curious about the missionary life. Being a missionary is about the broadest vocations that I can think of. Missionary can mean a social worker or disaster response, it can be a doctor or nurse serving in a missionary hospital, it can be an accountant or administrator making things work behind the scenes (think my dad or my good friend John) or an orphanage. It can mean running a coffee shop or it can be a church-planter who lives abroad and helps get things started (think us). It can mean a traveling speaker or evangelist, or a local pastor — and the list goes on and on!

But perhaps the greatest thing all missionaries have in common is that they live internationally, inbetween two (or more) cultures, building bridges and traveling frequently over them. As missionaries, we give up a normal life in our home country to move to another place and figure it all out there. Our main priority (after God) is people! Serving them and helping them in whatever capacity God has made us to serve. In order to do that, we have the support of many people all over the world.

Since one of a missionaries’ main priority is people, it means that traveling to see those people also becomes a priority — whether it’s in our home country to see family, friends or supporters (like this trip we’re on now) or when we’re living abroad, traveling, getting to know people and places, adapting to a new culture and serving. All of these elements go into being a missionary. A good missionary can feel just as at home in one culture as another.

Often, we give up things like new cars, big homes and other nice luxuries in order to have money for trips, hotels and ministry. Our priorities help us channel our resources of time, energy and finances accordingly, and we’re always striving to make the most of what God has given us, because we will all be accountable to God for what we did with the lives that God gave us. My prayer is that we can live our lives well before God and help others do the same!!

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Lives

Reutter Family Vacation

It’s a rare thing these days, being able to get together with your whole extended family — especially when that family lives overseas. But after so much has happened in 2020 and 2021, we were so thankful to be able to have a most memorable vacation in the Smoky Mountains, Tennessee. Not only did we have a special time together, we captured it in these videos.

The first video captures are arrival in Tennessee, our extended Reutter family reunion, the fun we had, and last but not least my mom’s 70th birthday celebration! The fun continues in the next video when we enjoyed the beauty of the area in some of the best ways.

A happy family isn’t something that just happens. It’s something that you have to fight for. Our family is not perfect — nor is our extended family. But we are all so blessed and thankful to God for all of his love and blessings in our lives. While living in Japan takes us further away from family than we would like to be, we are so thankful for a family that values getting together and makes space and time for it.

So many times I find out that our family gets together as much or even more than families who live close to each other. The fact the you live close to somebody physically does not mean you will automatically be close to them emotionally. Living far away, you have to make a conscious effort to be close to others — FaceTime calls, care packages, social media and planned vacations are all ways that you can be close even when far away. And these days, that is more important than ever.

These days, it doesn’t matter if you live near or far away from your loved ones, you are as close as you want to be.

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Summer in America

This Summer we’re going on an epic trip to America to visit friends and family, so there won’t be as many posts as normal here, but if you want to see what’s been going on, here are a couple of videos to watc. Enjoy!

And if you want to see what happened, then watch this one next!

Stay tuned, because over the next several weeks we will be launching videos from our time here in the States. But don’t worry, we’re not planning on moving back to the States, we are coming back to Japan soon!

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Lives

The Summertime Dilemma

Summer is the time for a break, for something outside of the normal. It’s the time for camps and retreats, for expeditions and travel, for festivals and celebrations, and that is certainly true in Japan. But all of this leads to a problem…

Western countries enjoy long vacations, even up to 3 months, but in Japan it’s 5 weeks for grade school and one week for regular salary men. This condensed vacation means that a lot of summer activities happen while people are still working and kids are still in school. When it is finally vacation time, all the major locations are PACKED with people. And the way that Western culture and Japanese culture deals with these two things is very different.

Many westerners (myself included) prefer taking their kids out of school in order to vacation when it’s not high vacation time, in order to avoid the crowds. However Japanese society highly values perfect attendance and not missing any work/school, so many people here would never even think of taking their kids out of school or missing work. They just plan ahead, pay the extra prices and book way in advance.

And we are stuck in the middle. In fact, living anywhere overseas you will always find yourself stuck in the middle. Inbetween two cultures. In-between value systems. In-between societal pressures, work pressures and family pressures. And if your family is multi-cultural, you have these pressures inside the family!

How you do with all of these things either builds a stronger family culture or crumbles it. We’ve done our best to walk a balanced line, but what is balanced to us may be way off to others. What seems proper for us would be improper for others. For example, we take our kids out of school if there’s a chance for a great vacation, or when it’s time to do a stint of work in the U.S. But we prefer not to do so much that our kids get behind, miss work or feel like they aren’t keeping up with school.

That’s just one aspect, but a proper balance will lead to a healthier family. Too much work and study is just as bad as not enough. Becoming a mature person means learning what is healthy for you as a person and as a family, and with God’s help walking that path. The Bible lays an incredible foundation for living in a healthy way. It shows us the way to walk, and as we walk it, we discover the healthiest way to live. What God has for each and everyone of us is as unique as we are, and what God has for one person is completely different from what He has for another. But each person is valuable and each journey unique.

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Lives

Japan’s 6th Grade Trip

Japan is a land of traditions that go back hundreds, even thousands of years. One of them is a trip that all 6th graders take to one of Japan’s historic sites. Becca and Anna recently went on their trip to the historic town of Nikko. Nikko is famous for its’ temple that’s over a thousand years old, tremendous waterfall and monkeys.

So when the Friday for the trip came, instead of heading to school they headed to the train station where a special train reserved just for them was waiting. This train carried them away to a bus that was waiting to take them on the rest of their trip.

When Saturday came, Ruth and I could hardly wait for them to get back and see how it went! We went to a park near the station to hang out and wait for them to get back. We were so excited to see them and get the scoop — how was Japan’s 6th grade trip to Nikko?!!!