Something doesn't fit here.

In a country full of Japanese style homes, here is one that is little bit out of place.  An American style home with 2 dormers.  We visited several families on Sunday, Feb 24 and this photo was taken just outside of the home of the Nagayama family.

Visiting branch members

Last Sunday, Feb 17, after church Sister Lee and I followed Bro. Furue and went to 6 member homes.  Since he is familiar with where everyone lived and knew them, he could introduce us to them.  We caught 4 at home.  It took awhile for the brother at this place to answer the door because he hurt his back caring for his aged mother.  Since his back hurts, we didn't stay long.  We were going to visit 3 so Sister Lee baked 3 banana breads.  This week, Sister Lee baked 8 banana breads so we should have enough if we somehow go to similar number of member homes.

Clearing lot for new building

This is across from our apartment, a view on the balcony just outside our front door.  The workers had already demolished the old house that was there previously.  Only thing left was this tree.  I thought maybe they were going to leave the tree but then one day I heard chain saw buzzing away and knew immediately they were going to take it down.  So this photo shows one worker sawing away.  Another worker is in the tractor controlling the arm to keep the tree from falling onto next building, and another worker pulling on a steel cable to pull the tree toward the cleared lot.  Soon afterwards, after the worker who was doing the sawing went toward corner of the lot near the white truck, with one big nudge from the tractor arm, the tree came crashing down.  Next day, the tree trunk was gone too.  The next several days, they have been trucking debris away.  As construction of the new building starts, I'll take occasional photos to show progress.

Cookie night

Sister Lee helping Sister Takahashi with cookies.  These young sisters tend to bake cookies so they can have some to share with church members when they go visiting.

Farewell, Elder Palu

Elder Palu, self-proclaimed King of Okinawa and of Kagoshima, promised he would return when he is fully rehabilitated from his knee surgery.  He is a fun loving young man, who loves Sister Lee's cookies.  He loves to give people nicknames and he nicknamed me Mastah Bruce.  So in this farewell photo shoot, I gave him my wicked punch.

Shabu Shabu

Here are our young missionaries after lunch at a local Shabu Shabu restaurant.  We hold a District Council on Tuesdays during weeks when we don't have other meetings, which I think is about 3 times out of every 6 weeks. This is Elder Palu's last opportunity to eat Shabu Shabu since he has to go home for surgery on his knee (detached PCL from playing rugby) and lengthy rehab.  He promised to come back and finish his mission as soon as rehab is done.  This is his favorite place since for a price of just under 1000 yen, you can eat as much as you can within 1 hr.  The food is OK in my opinion.  I like all you can eat as much as anyone else, but the food itself is nothing special.  We've been there twice now and the items are the same each time.  Would have liked it better if there is some variety.  Additionally both times, something upset my stomach.  I am hoping for some other eatery to explore this next time.

Narrow driveway, narrow stalls, stationary obstacles

Here is the Toyota Corolla that we use.  Most parking in Japan is done with backing into stalls.  The parking spot at the apartment that we have been assigned is right next to a concrete wall.  On the other side of the car is a black car, which is almost always there.  So that means I always have to back into between 2 stationary objects, which I hope I can keep stationary.  In front of our parked car, smack dab in the middle, is the pillar that you see in the 2nd photo.  So I always have to pull into either side of the pillar and then back, snaking around the pillar and between the black car and concrete wall.  It's not too bad when there is no cars on any one side of the pillar.  However, if I come back in the evening, then most likely both stalls next to the pillar will be occupied by vehicles and it is really hard to see the concrete wall.  I have talked to the apartment manager (i.e. Sister Lee has talked), no way I can speak and explain this in Japanese.  Anyway they will install some reflectors so I can see the corner of the wall when backing up.  If you noticed, the side mirrors on the Corolla is withdrawn.  I love that capability to allow more room to walk around the car.  Too bad our car is older model.  The van that I rented will automatically close the mirrors when you turn off the car, but our car, you have to push a button to open or close.  I often forget to push that button.

Isa Community Center

Here Sister Lee was given the assignment to teach a lesson on tithing to a 90 year old sister who is interested in joining our church.  Originally the lesson was going to be at our church, but then found out there was a conflict.  So we travelled to her town Isa and because her place is just a tiny hut, we used the community center.  After the lesson, I took some pictures of the exhibit that was there at the community center.  It was a pretty long drive to get to Isa 1.5 hours one way.

Branch Building

At zone conference, we divided into our districts and were given the assignment to put together a lego kit at home and come up with a plan of how to build up the local branch that we go to.  Our particular kit was to make a pink flamingo.  Other people got different kits.  Ours turned out pretty well.  The legos are really small.  The completed bird is only about 4-5 inches tall.

Zone Conference Happy Birthday Song

At our first zone conference on Jan 31, during lunch, we sang happy birthday to these missionaries.  Zone conference was great.  I rented a 8 passenger van to transport Sister Lee and me along 5 other sister missionaries, one of which, Sister Berg, is in the above photo.  Sister Berg is a granddaughter of the Hennefers, whom Sister Lee & I worked with at Mt. Timpanogos Temple.  The Hennefers asked us to watch over her.  I didn't expect we would actually have the opportunity to interact with her but for now she is in the Kagoshima zone and so we do have that opportunity.

Aloha Night

Aloha Night - Open house night at the Teaching Station.  Elder Palu, born in USA, grew up in Tonga, and now hails from American Fork, performed some Tongan dances and haka.

Stove Fan Hack

This fan over the stove at our apartment had a broken switch.  It will start if you push the switch down but it won't stay down. So after a second or so, the switch would pop back up and the fan shuts off.  Sister Lee would stand there by the hot stove and manually press down on the switch and keep it down so the fan would keep working.  I thought "How can she cook with one hand when one hand is occupied with pushing the fan button.  I relieved her a few times and I said to myself "This is ridiculous."  We can't have 2 persons standing in front of the stove.  So I came up with idea of holding the switch down.  I cut a strip of magnetic tape, put a 1 yen coin under the tape to keep it rigid, then place the coin on top of the switch button, and finally hold the tape in place with 2 magnets.  To turn off, lift one of the magnets off the tape and the switch pops up and fan shuts off.  This was a great temporary solution until the apartment management company replaced it with a brand new fan unit (the old unit was obsolete and no parts were available).

Kagoshima Branch Church Building

Here is a photo of the church building in Kagoshima.  Very narrow road going up to the church.  Quite scary.

A view of active volcano Sakurajima from a window in the church building.  We were told that during winter months, the winds tend to blow toward the East but during summer, winds change to going West, so we could get a daily dose of volcanic soot.  Remains to be seen how that will affect our laundry, shower schedules.

A big welcome to Kagoshima

This is Sister Furue (facing us) and Sister Ikeda (back to us), who prepared a welcome feast for us at our apartment.  There were a lot of food and the young missionaries helped bring our luggage to the 4th floor where our apartment is located.  Sister Furue is the wife of the current branch missionary leader and Sister Ikeda is the wife the current branch president.  It was a wonderful surprise welcome.

This photo you can see Sister Ikeda's face, who is directly behind me.  The young missionaries are in the back.  The other 2 couples are the Baileys and the Rickards.  The Baileys are standing and was released from their mission toward the end of January.  The Rickards are the financial and office secretary at the Mission office.  They will be going home some time in August.

Huff & puff

After connecting flights at LAX and Tokyo Haneda, we arrived at Fukuoka Airport, where we were met by Mission President Spencer Mack and his wife, Sister Jane Mack.  Elder & Sis. Bailey also came to the airport.  The Baileys have since gone back home to Idaho.  We proceeded to stay several days at the Mission Home, which was build as a lower wing underneath the Fukuoka Temple.  The photos shown here are taken from a hill going up from the Temple.  The first one shows Sister Lee climbing the steps, way ahead of me.  Besides Sister Lee being in much better shape than me, I was slowed by taking some photos, like the photo of the Temple looking down the hill.

Departure for Japan

The day finally arrived to go to Japan.  Jan 11, Friday morning, caught a shuttle from the hotel to SLC airport.  It was so early in the morning that there were no airline attendants at the ticket counter yet.  So we did a selfie to record this precious moment.

Close Call

We got a winter storm at MTC.  You see those tire tracks going toward the building?  I looked out the window to check the conditions and saw a vehicle rolling down toward that van and building.  At first I thought the driver had better straighten out his approach.  Then I saw a guy running along side of the vehicle.  It turned out that the guy must have forgotten to put the parking brakes on, and the vehicle starting to go downhill without the guy in the driver seat.  As you can see, the driver got in the nick of time and stopped the vehicle inches away from crunching the parked van.  Too bad I didn't have my camera to video that entire scene.

Small World

You never know who you'll bump into at MTC.  Here are some familiar faces.  Even though we didn't get Katie Gurney as an instructor in any of our classes, she was in a couple of group sessions.  Katie was the oldest daughter of one of our former Bishop from 33rd Ward.  She watered our plants when we went on vacation when we first moved into the ward.  Now she is just grown up.  Then we met the Robinsons.  They have served 2 missions and currently doing volunteer work at MTC on Thursdays.  Wonderful examples to the rest of us.

Some of our wonderful MTC instructors

MTC wouldn't be MTC without teachers.  Here are 3 of our wonderful instructors, full of enthusiasm, spiritual and with deep faith & testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ and His teachings.  The part of presenting lessons were grueling for both Sister Lee and me, but these teachers made it all worthwhile.  These instructors were Sis. Trommlitz, Sis. Monroe, and Sis. Benedicto, from left to right (if I remember correctly).

Double Agents

We found our twins.  Both of us wore nearly identical trench coats.  He saw me wearing mine on the first day we entered MTC so he dug his out of his luggage and wore his on the 2nd day.  Good thing we are serving on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean.  People might have a hard time telling us apart.

MTC Training Buddies

These are the Spears.  Elder & Sister Spear were our companion senior couples for the first week of training.  We practiced presenting lessons to each other.  They are now serving somewhere in state of New York.

MTC Class Break

Here we are with a break between classes at MTC.  We put on our smiling faces in spite of the very grueling classes.  Our first week at MTC was on learning topics from the manual "Preach My Gospel".  The 2nd week was on training to use various software for Mission Office work. 2nd week is only 4 days so that people can leave to go to their missions on Friday morning.  For us it was way early, 2-3 a.m. so we can catch our 6 a.m. flight to LAX.

At the MTC World Map

We found the missionary world map.  It's tradition to point out on the map where you'll be serving.  So here we are pointing to Kagoshima, at the southern tip of the main islands of Japan.  As you can see, it is going to be a very long flight from USA to Japan.

Arrival at Provo MTC

We have been super busy on our mission.  I am now attending to catch up on what's happened ever since we started.

Here we are at Provo Missionary Training Center on December 31, 2018.  Every new missionary get photographed outside when they first arrive.  We had just picked up our welcome packet and about to check into our room.  We remained at MTC for nearly 2 weeks.