The Salty Gaijin
The Salty Gaijin
2024 Reflections: The Year of God's Provision
Happy 2025, everybody!
In this special New Year’s episode, Brittany gives a little life update while reflecting on the past year. 2024 was a year of change, full of challenges and blessings. But more than that, it was a year of God’s provision. Brittany shares how God worked in her life this past year, and how blessing can be born out of trials and hardship. The lesson: when you step out in faith, God shows up for you.
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Music by Oleksii Kaplunskyi from Pixabay.
Music by Jiwon (Musician) Nahee (Graphic Designer) from Pixabay.
Brittany: Hey everyone, this is the Salty Gaijin Podcast and I'm your host, Brittany Linder. In this special New Year's episode, I'll be looking back and reflecting on my life in 2024. Though it was full of change and many challenges, it had no shortage of blessings for me.
2024 was the year of God's provision. I detail all the ways God took care of me this past year and also share some of the fears and anxieties I had in the midst of it all.
But there's good news. God redeems it all.
Now let's go ahead and get started with the episode.
Mina-san, akemashite omedetou gozaimasu! Happy New Year everybody! This is Brittany Linder and I'm your host at the Salty Gaijin Podcast. And today we are doing a special episode. It's going to count as a regular episode, but it's not the normal format where I have a topic that I talk about and I talk about the social implications and the biblical implications.
I'm not doing any of that today. Today is a life update episode because I haven't done a life update blog post or Instagram post or anything in a long time.
And honestly, a lot has happened this year and I thought that with all of my friends doing year-end reflections and thinking about the New Year and looking back, I thought that now was as good a time as any to do the same for myself in my life.
Also, very quick update. I'll get into more of the details of some of the challenges and some of the blessings that I've had this year. But just one major life update is that I'm no longer in full time ministry.
That's right. If you follow me on social media then you will have seen that I am no longer an English teacher. I'm no longer working at Shukugawa Bible Church as a full-time missionary and I will actually be starting a new job in Japan in Osaka in January this month.
And so I'm going to be a real working person in Japan working for a company. So that's very... There's a lot of feelings, but it's ultimately very exciting to start this new phase of life here in Japan.
I'm still going to Shukugawa Bible Church, like, on Sundays and participating in ministry events and just general fellowship there. But I am not a full-time missionary anymore.
So that's probably the biggest change that's happened this year. I've been working at Shukugawa for five and a half years, which is a long time. Usually, the missionaries work for a two-year contract.
And yes, coronavirus had some effect, some influence on that, but ultimately that's just where God wanted me to be during that time. And so I'm super thankful and feel super blessed for that time serving.
And I wouldn't have traded that experience for the world. And I'm looking forward to this new phase of life. And so now we can move on to some of the challenges that I've had this year.
So this year 2024 was full of so many challenges for me. And I mean, everybody has challenges, I know. But for me, like, year felt especially challenging just because there were so many different things going on.
Previous years have been hard because missionary work is hard. Like, if you haven't listened to my Overwork in Ministry podcast episode yet, like, go listen to that. I talk more about how people in ministry tend to overwork, but that was still like doing the same thing.
Like, I was tired and I was busy, but... But I was doing the same thing. Like, there wasn't very much change. But this year there was a lot of change.
This year I was, well, starting the year, I'll just go chronologically. That's probably easiest for me to just go from the beginning of the year to now. So the first half of the year until mid-July, which is when I quit.
At the English school, I was just, like, up to my ears in work. At the English school, I was the head teacher still. And we were trying to get new teachers to come, new missionaries to come in.
I was trying to wrap everything up so that everything was organized as best as it could be for me to hand off the head teacher role to my co-worker. And it just, it was busy.
And when you work in ministry for that long, and especially in our English school, when you work there for a long enough time, like, you do just start to like, feel like, okay, it's...
We're getting to the time where I need to move on, I need to do something different. And of course, God willing, you'll move on when God calls you to move on.
And then of course, just all of the drama at the end of saying goodbye to my students, that was really hard. And on the one hand, I have a lot of experience saying goodbye to people because I moved around my entire life.
Like, the story of my life is saying goodbye to people, honestly. Like, the day that I don't have to say goodbye to someone will be probably when I see Jesus in heaven, then it will just be hellos. Nothing but hello for eternity, which would be great.
I would love to not have to say goodbye. But it was, it was still hard though, like you know, the last week and you got all my students giving me gifts and thanking me for being their teacher.
And I really loved my students, I truly did. And I, it was really hard to say goodbye to them. But I tried to also encourage them and say, I'm still in Japan, you might see me around town.
If you ever come to church, you'll definitely see me at church. So hint, hint, nudge, nudge, come to church. And just had some good times, good fellowship with my students, eating out, and sharing stories.
And some of my students cried, which made me, like, almost cry. Like I can stay strong at a goodbye, but if the other person cries like it's all over for me, I'm gonna cry.
And people that I didn't expect to cry were like, ready to cry. I was surprised and really moved and touched by them. And so that was really, really challenging.
But also there was like a big weight lifted off my shoulders of finally being done. There's a huge weight lifted off but at the same time this crippling fear of what comes next.
Because I didn't have a job lined up, I didn't have anything worked out about what God wanted me to do next. And so it was absolutely terrifying. I was so scared. I quit.
I had nothing after that. There was just nothing. And I've never been in a position where there was like nothing ahead of me before. It was like, like people say the world is your oyster, like you can do anything, the world is wide open to you, like anything could happen.
But I don't think many people actually have been in that position where your life is actually just so open, like, blank slate, there's nothing in front of you. And I have to tell you, it's...
It's scary. I, I don't recommend it. If you can put a plan in place at every point in your life, do that. It's so much easier and gives you so much less anxiety.
But I had decided to go back to the US for two months this summer, from July, mid-July through mid-September, to spend time with my family, to have a type of sabbatical, if you will.
Although I have to say I kind of failed on that front. I was not very spiritually in touch with God at that time. Kind of regressed to how I behave when I am with my family and stay at my parents' house.
So I spent two months with my family and it was a good time. I needed the rest. It was really good to have zero external expectation put upon me. And that was really necessary.
But it was also really challenging because I haven't lived with my family long term in literal years. I haven't lived with them, like, full-time for an extended period of time since I left for college, because I...
I left and then I was out of the house. That was it. I left at home for maybe two months one summer after I graduated from college. But that was about it.
I've been on my own ever since. And so coming back to live with them for two months was challenging. I didn't have a routine set up. I haven't lived with my siblings who are now, you know, high school students and grown in...forever.
Their personalities have changed. And I butt heads with one of my sisters, like, kind of a lot. We get along really well. We just... Our personalities are too similar. And so we really know how to, like, rub against each other in the wrong way.
And so we had a few fights and that was stressful. And I was seeing sides of myself that I hadn't seen in years and just was not happy with what I was seeing from myself.
I needed to relearn how to deal with people, which is crazy because I thought that I could manage my emotions, I could manage my behavior and have calm, reasonable conversations with people when there are problems because that's what I've been able to do my entire adult life.
And then I go home for two months and then me and my sister have screaming matches like three times in the two months I was there. Like, what? I couldn't.
I was so frazzled, I couldn't believe it. We're good now. Don't worry. Like, it was good. It was good to have. And we both were learning how to deal with each other.
And we've come to an understanding now of what each person is like and what we need when we are in those situations. And so it's all fine. It's all good.
But that was something I was not expecting to deal with. I had a lot of fear and anxiety also about coming back to Japan, because even though I knew that God wanted me to be in Japan, that much was clear, I didn't know what God wanted me to do.
I knew that I would have to find a job. And I was terrified of the job-hunting process in Japan. And I was terrified of going back to Japan because they had that earthquake this summer that kind of made everyone start thinking about how the big one is going to come in the next 30 years or so here in Japan.
And I got to tell you, earthquakes are one of the most terrifying things to me. I've experienced a few here, not big ones, but a few. And I just, I haven't been so scared in such a long time.
Like there was the Noto earthquake in January earlier this year or last year I guess. And I felt that here in Nishinomiya. And it was terrifying to feel your apartment complex just swaying back and forth for like 30 seconds to a minute.
It's freaky. And after that other earthquake happened this summer and all of the talk about the big one coming in Japan in the next 30 years, which I already knew about but hadn't thought about in a while, I began to have this extreme anxiety about coming back to Japan and living in this place that has these earthquakes that absolutely terrify me and are dangerous and why am I doing this?
And it's because God wants me to be here.
And there are so many things that I love about Japan. But while I was in the US I just could not remember what they were.
I had gotten so comfortable in the new routine of laying on my parents' couch all day for days on end and just could not bring myself to. I couldn't, I didn't feel the desire to go back to Japan.
I didn't. I could not remember what I loved about Japan. And I couldn't remember why God wanted me to be there. I remembered that God wanted me to be there.
I just couldn't remember why, like, for what purpose.
And it was awful. I, it was terrible. I. I had a round-trip ticket because I knew that if I bought a one-way that I would get stuck in the US...that I would never come back to Japan, or it would be insanely hard to do that.
And so I... God protected me by making the round-trip ticket cheaper than the one-way ticket. And I had my round-trip ticket. So I had my return ticket to Japan.
I had to go back. I had the ticket which was a good fail-safe. But my God was I scared. And there were... There was so much crying. I. When I walked back into my apartment here in Japan, I just bawled for like an hour.
I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to be here. I was comfortable with my family. I missed my family. I realized how much I missed my family and all of the things that I missed out on with my siblings growing up and coming back to Japan was just not something I wanted to do at the time.
It was so painful coming back. But thankfully I was able to reconnect with my church family here and was reminded of why God wanted me to be here, and so I'm doing better with that now.
Now coming back to Japan, though, I had to jump full force into job hunting. And job hunting in Japan is so different than job hunting in America. I'll get into more detail about the differences in a different podcast episode, I think, because I think it's a big enough topic that I could use a whole episode.
But there were so many moving pieces. Preparing resumes and CVs, all in Japanese, doing job interviews in Japanese and just getting, like, rejection after rejection after rejection. And I know that it's not unusual to get a lot of rejections when looking for a job, especially in Japan, but it sure feels demoralizing when you get another email that says, thanks, but no thanks.
And I was applying for all sorts of different jobs, jobs at hotels like front desk work, anything that was kind of bilingual, using English and Japanese. I didn't want to do teaching. I did not want to teach English.
And so that might have been the easiest job for me to get, but I knew that that's not what I wanted to do. And so I had to focus on office-type jobs and hotel-type jobs and customer service and like you have to customize all your documents for each job.
And working with my friend who was helping me prepare for doing job interviews in Japanese, and she's checking my business Japanese on my documents. And it was such a headache.
I was... Had to buy a suit, had to get a photograph for my resume. I had to buy a special bag for the interviews because everything is so specific here.
And it was just a more time-consuming, a more stressful, a more expensive process than I expected.
And so that was really stressful and took up about...
I did the job-hunting thing for about three months maybe.
No, no, no, wait, maybe two months. Two months. I was doing, like, full-time job hunting for the most part.
And then on top of all of that, I had no income at all. I did have some money saved up over the years in investments, like stock investments, and some money like my last paycheck from church and some money also from church.
And my grandparents helped me out a lot too. But I... I quit my job in July and we're in January now. And in these nearly six months, I have not had any income.
And so that's also been very challenging because I've spent all of my savings and I fundamentally have no money. It's been crazy living for six months with no income, with no money or...
Well, there was money early in these six months, but towards the end, here like right now, no money. And thinking about how am I going to pay my bills, how am I going to pay for my rent, how am I going to buy food?
How am I going to buy all of these things that I need for job hunting? How am I going to pay for all of this other stuff that I need for changing my visa?
And all of this stuff that you just don't realize you have to do to get a job in Japan until you're doing it? And it's been a heck of a time.
And so this year has been full of so many challenges and so many worries and fears of what's going to happen, what am I going to do? How am I going to pay for this?
What kind of job am I going to get? Will I even get a job? What happens if I can't find a job in time? Do I have to go back to the States?
But God wants me in Japan. How is this going to work? And it's been...
It's been a heck of a year. It's been a heck of a year, full of a lot of different feelings. But with as many challenges as I had, I'm also happy and grateful to say that in every single challenge that I've mentioned, there have also been enormous blessings from God.
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Now let's get back to the episode.
So as far as the blessings go, let's start at the beginning again. Working and saying goodbye to my students. I realize how deep those relationships were and how much of an impact I made on these people, even if they have not become Christians.
I have at the very least perhaps planted seeds and given them at least a wonderful connection to a Christian. And I'm just was so moved by all of the wonderful things that my students said as well as the church. The church expressing their gratitude for my work and service.
And I have a wonderful relationship with my previous bosses and church members because of it. I'm so grateful for that. Being in the US for two months was full of blessing, of spending wonderful time with my family.
I got, I was able to go to my sister's wedding in August, which I was worried I wouldn't be able to with. Working at the English school, I fostered a deeper relationship with my siblings that are still living at home...
My two youngest sisters and one of my brothers. Living with them and having really deep, meaningful conversations with them about faith, about life and growing up, and watching anime late at night with my youngest sister and going door dashing with my dad and listening to sermons with him and talking about faith life and even going to see my mom's new job at this ballet academy, this ballet school she works at.
It was so important to have that time to reconnect with my family and to foster those relationships and to do ministry there. So I did a Bible study with them while I was home.
We started reading through some key stories in Genesis and the Old Testament and really got to see a lot about what God was teaching my siblings and what God was revealing to them, even in the sporadic Bible studies that we did.
And I'm so grateful for that time to just be and to just exist with my family and to get to know them all better, even through the fights. I'm grateful for the job hunting process because my Japanese has improved so much in these few months doing all of these business emails and business documents and things.
My Japanese, my business Japanese has improved a lot. It's not perfect by any means, but it's improved so much. And I realized that I was able to communicate and do things that I didn't think I was able to do before in Japanese.
And so really thankful for all of that. And I'm thankful that I found a job, that I'm starting a job this month, and that I will one day have income again and I won't be broke.
And I'm thankful for my church here and the ways that they've supported me these few months with job hunting and finances and just the fellowship. Re-establishing those relationships. And I'm thankful for the ways that I've been able to serve in return.
Christmas season and November with Thanksgiving was really busy and I participated in so many different music ministry opportunities, which I really enjoy. I enjoy singing, which is something that I've always enjoyed, but have only ever been able to utilize the last year or two.
But so thankful for all of those opportunities and all of those early morning band practices on Saturdays, which I do wish they weren't so early, but I enjoy the practices.
I enjoy meeting up with them and singing with the church band. It's really great. So, so many blessings and all of these different things and all of these challenges. Like blessing was born out of these challenges.
But I think what I'm most in awe of this year is actually God's provision through everything.
God provided wonderful, meaningful relationships in America as well as in Japan. I feel closer to everybody right now, my family, and my church here in Japan.
God's provided everything that I need for a job, provided the necessary Japanese, the necessary skill, provided all of the necessary clothing and accessories, and provided the job. God provided the job.
I had prayed and asked that God would make it very clear what job I should do because I can't make decisions very well. I just don't trust my judgment for a lot of things.
And so I had asked God, God, close every door that you don't want me to go through and only open the door for the job that you want me to have.
And God was very thorough. And I had a lot of no's and I only had one yes. Just one yes. And that's the job that I'm going to be starting this month.
And I think it's going to be a job that. It's not my ideal job by any means, but I think it will be something that, that will suit me, that will suit my needs at this point in my life.
I need a bit of a social break from people and from being, you know, emotionally on and engaged and socially engaged all the time like I was in the English classes.
And to be able to just relax in an office setting for a little bit, but also develop my Japanese skills at the same time in a bilingual setting.
And also God has provided for all of my financial needs in these six months. I don't know, like, it's crazy where it comes from. Like the ways that friends and church members and family members have been so generous these six months.
Like, I have not wanted for anything. I'm not living a glamorous life. I'm not buying everything that I feel that I want or might even need to some extent. I'm being pretty frugal.
But everything that has been necessary has been paid for somehow by someone.
And I knew that God would take care of it. But that doesn't mean that I'm not still worried, because I know the money will come from somewhere, but I don't know where or when.
And it's just really amazing to see how God is doing all of the things that's necessary to ensure that I do stay here and that I'm able to do what he wants me to do here.
Paying for my bills, paying for my rent, paying for all of the things that I needed to get ready to work, and just taking care of me. And I'm thankful not only for God's provision itself. Of course, I'm thankful for that.
But I think what I'm most thankful for is actually the fact that I can see God's handiwork in it. Like, it's not just on the surface of, like, wow, look, I got money from this person that can pay for this.
Huh, neat. But I'm thankful that I could recognize it as God's work in my life, that all of these blessings were God's work in my life and were God taking care of me.
It's really shown me in a really tangible way what God's faithfulness and what God's goodness looks like in our lives.
And though I personally feel like I haven't been as connected or as in tune with God these six months because routine is very important to me. And since I quit my job, I haven't been able to establish a new routine with God yet.
And so I felt a little distant personally compared to before.
But God has been gracious and has helped me to see the ways that he's been in my life these six months and this whole year, and the way that he's been working and taking care of me and guiding me and how his hand has truly been in every moment of my life this year.
And I'm just so grateful for that. That's what I'm most grateful for this year, is the opportunity to see God's work in my life and to recognize it as God's work in my life so that I can give glory to the one that truly deserves it. That I'm not just lucky.
I'm not a lucky person. That's not what it is. It's that God is looking out for me and God is taking care of me.
And that's what God does when you are faithful to his will for your life. I was afraid to come back to Japan, but I did. I didn't know what to do, what I was going to do in Japan, what God wanted me to do.
I was afraid of so many things.
But even so, despite that fear, I still knew that I wanted to follow God's will for my life. And all I knew at the time was that I needed to stay in Japan.
I would do what I could, you know, applying for jobs and everything. But ultimately everything else was left in God's hands.
And I'm just so, like, floored and just so in awe of how when you do what God wants you to do, when you are faithful, even when you feel afraid, even when you're scared, even when you're anxious, even when you have doubts, if you still choose to be faithful and to step forward with faith, God does take care of you.
And God does get you where you need to go. And that is something that he's shown me quite vividly this year. And God's done this for me many times in my life, but this time does feel bigger.
The stakes felt a little higher this time. And so I'm just, you know, glory be to God. Praise be to God. God is wonderful. God is good. God is faithful to you
when you also put your trust in him. God doesn't let you down. When you decide to trust in him, God shows up. That's what I've learned this year. If you trust God, God will show up.
And you don't have to be perfect with your trust and be like, yep, I think everything will turn out just fine. And feel like you don't have a care in the world.
If you don't have a care in the world, like, wonderful, more power to you. That's awesome. I hope one day my faith can be there. But for those people out there that are listening, that feel less confident in their ability to live a life of no fear or a life without anxiety, you know... God knows that we are fearful creatures.
God knows that we get anxious and that we worry about things. And even Jesus was afraid in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed before his death and asked God, even, take this cup from me if it's possible. If there is another way to bring salvation to people that does not involve my death, let's do that.
Jesus was scared to the point of sweating blood. That's the type of stress response that he had.
But even in the midst of that fear, Jesus still said, but not my will, but your will be done. Jesus still said, I trust your plan, I will follow your plan, despite how I'm feeling.
And I think it's okay to feel those things. It's okay to feel afraid and to feel unsure.
What matters most is that you still make the choice to trust God, even with your fear, even with your anxiety, even with your worry. Because God will show you that he will take care of you.
That's what gives us confidence as we grow in our faith. That's where that fearless confidence comes from, is all of those opportunities where you decide to trust God despite your insecurities and God shows up. And you can take that experience with you into the next one.
And the more often that it happens, the easier it becomes to have that full confidence. And so yeah, this year, you know, was crazy. This past year was crazy. But God was there the whole time.
And I'm just so grateful that God was there and grateful that I could see it so that I can carry this experience into this next season of my life, that perhaps one day I can be able to take that blind step forward without fear.
One day maybe. But for now, we'll just work on obedience and faith. That one I think is a good one.
So then what comes after 2024? Well, that would be the year 2025, which is the year of the snake. For anybody who's interested in Asian culture like that. As a Christian, it doesn't really mean anything even to Japanese Christians.
But it's, uh, what I'm seeing everywhere here in Japan right now, is all these snake decorations. Woohoo. Congratulations year of the snake people. But yeah, 2025. What's in store for 2025?
Well, you know, I have absolutely no idea. I don't know what 2025 has in store. I know that I will start a new job and that I will need to adjust to that new job and create a new routine with this job and this new phase of my life here in Japan.
But beyond that, I really have no idea. That's what I'm wondering about myself. What will my ministry look like in this new phase of life? Because even though I'm not a full-time missionary working in a church, I still am choosing to live my life on mission as a working person.
So one phrase that we often use in Christian circles is a tent maker or a modern-day tent maker. And that's calling back to the Apostle Paul, actually, in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul was a full-time missionary.
He traveled around, planted churches, discipled people, and was integral to the development and the birth of the early church and even to Christian teachings now. You know, half of the New Testament was written by Paul, but he did not accept donations or offerings from people to fund his ministry.
He worked full-time as a tent maker. He would make tents everywhere he went and he would sell them. And that is how he sustained his life, to travel and to do ministry.
Now that's not to say that it's wrong to accept offerings as a full-time missionary. You're actually biblically, totally, fully within your rights to be supported by the church. That's why so many missionaries nowadays do fundraising before they go on mission.
That is how it is for most people that do mission work. But Paul, just as a personal choice, wanted to do it differently. He wanted to earn his own wages while doing full-time ministry.
And that is a personal choice that a person can make. And so I, in Paulean fashion, am also choosing to work full-time to sustain myself while I do ministry in my free time.
And so I'm trying to think about what my ministry will look like then. My ministry in church, working with the other single working people, providing discipleship and fellowship opportunities with them. My Bible study with Kaori, my friend, and with Rei, how will that grow and develop?
What other ways can I support the people in my church here in Nishinomiya? Another thing is what will my ministry look like for Salty Gaijin? Will I be able to post episodes more regularly or write more blog posts?
I make no promises because I have no idea how I will feel once I start working. I would like to. And it's such a dumb thing to say and talk about because I've had six months of no work, six months of no job, and I have been not making a lot of content at all actually and have just kind of been bumming around, which, sorry, I should have made more content.
But also at the same time, there was just no motivation. I have ideas, but when I get around to thinking about recording a podcast episode, it just suddenly feels like so much work and I, I can't do it for some reason.
Now I know why, which I'll talk about in a different podcast episode soon. But it's been a challenge to make content. I've been working so hard for five and a half years and apparently, I needed like half a year of, like, not working and doing nothing to finally start doing stuff again.
It happens. It happens to the best of us.
But yeah, I don't know what's going to happen in 2025. I have no idea. But I would like to step into this new year trusting in the Lord's goodness and in God's faithfulness.
I'd like to carry all of these memories and feelings and experiences and things that I've learned from this past year... I'd like to carry them forward into 2025 so that whenever I face a hardship this year, that I would remember that God has my back if I just trust him and step forward with faith.
That's what I want to do this year. I guess that's my New Year's resolution. I don't do New Year's resolutions, actually, because I never keep them. But I think this might be a good rule for this year.
This is something I think that is worth trying to do, worth trying to accomplish.
And I want to encourage all of you as well in whatever is going on in your life.
Go ahead and just trust. Remember God's goodness. Remember that God desires good for you. Good doesn't always happen to us because our world is broken. And that means that bad things happen sometimes at no fault of our own.
But that doesn't mean that God isn't still good, that God isn't watching you and that God won't take care of you. But we need to have faith and trust that he will take care of us as we try to follow his will for our lives.
Have courage. Have faith. Step forward, when God calls you to step forward. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to have doubts. It's okay to be anxious about it. But take that step.
Trust me, if you take that step, God will be there with you. And God will take care of whatever needs to be taken care of for you.
Just trust.
And so that is my life update for the start of 2025. I'll have a few other little reflections coming up on social media and maybe a blog post. We'll see how I'm feeling,
if there's more I want to delve into specifically. But just wanted to give you all an update for what's going on in my life, some of the crazy changes that have happened, and what my life will look like moving forward because that will of course change a bit of my content.
And so I wish you all a happy new year. Happy 2025. I wish blessing-- I wish? I pray for blessing and growth for all of you listeners and that you would all know the goodness and the love of God this year.
And so, yeah, you all take care, everyone. I'll catch you next time. Ja ne!
Thank you for listening to the Salty Gaijin Podcast. If you're interested in hearing more about my daily life in Japan? You can follow me on Instagram @saltygaijin or Twitter/X @thesaltygaijin.
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