19 years ago this week

... I landed at Narita Airport.

• I did not even know that in Japan people still take their shoes off inside houses.
• I could barely say "konnichiwa," and even that was laughable, according to the American boys about half my age.
• I had never seen homeschooling in action, yet I was about to start pitching in with the homeschooling.
• I had never lived in a city.
• I had never ridden a train (other than as a tourist).
• I had barely eaten fish - and certainly not seaweed!
• I had never bowed as a greeting, and almost collided with the pastor when he came to meet me, and at the same time that he bowed, I stepped closer and extended my hand for a handshake.
  
• I had hardly met a foreigner - and now I was one!

19 years later, I take my shoes off at multiple front doors each day, I ate rice wrapped in seaweed with fish in the middle for lunch toay, I have learned to survive in a city, I have been squished on trains more times than I can count, I find it odd to shake hands, I am still laughed at by the children playing outside my apartment when I greet them with, "konnichiwa," I have taught more English-as-a-foreign-language classes than I can count, and successive generations of missionary kids have survived my attempts at supplementing their schooling.

And I am still a foreigner! And will be, no matter where I live, until I reach that city.

... having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.