2nd transfer

It's transfer week.  So we had an "Open house" at the teaching station to say goodbye to 3 missionaries who have served well here.  Sister Lee is in charge of providing the refreshments, either by assigning others or prepare them ourselves.  This time Sister Lee decided on hamburgers / cheeseburgers.  Since we couldn't find hamburger buns, Sister Lee baked them herself.  Then we went to a store named A-Price and found they sold more US products but they tend to be pricy.  We actually found they did have some buns, but they were like 300 yen for a bag of 5 buns.  That's like 50 cents per bun without the meat.  So we continued with plan A, with homemade buns.  The ground beef was expensive too.  We used a scale to make sure every patty stayed around 60 grams.  We ended up making 32 patties, which was my contribution since I learned that from Montana Café.  Unfortunately I didn't have a Chinese butcher knife to make quick work of flattening the patties.  I was going wait until everyone had their chance of making their burger but then I realized people didn't know what to do.  So I made the first one so people can see how to do it.  The photo above is Tom, one of our English conversation class students.  He followed the example of putting the burger together but didn't catch how to eat one.  As you can see, he got everything stacked on the bun but then started to eat individual ingredients separately, starting with the lettuce.  I then demonstrated to him how to eat the burger in a stack.  Then everyone started eating them in like manner.  We did have three extra buns left over, so 3 people ate only the meat.  Maybe they were the late comers who didn't catch the demonstration.

Here are the 3 missionaries who left.  Sister Shibahara was transferred to Ube. Elder Sueldo, who is Peruvian with 1/16 Japanese, was raised in Japan so he had Japanese down pat, fluent in Spanish as well, and learned English during his mission.  He was my translator when Sister Lee wasn't around.  He served faithfully and well and now is home preparing for university studies.  Elder Howells from Georgia was transferred to Miyazaki, fairly close by so we will still see him occasionally during zone conferences and apartment checks.