Luncheon after District Council Mtg

Once again we had the luncheon at our apartment.  It was smashing success.  Main dish this time was lasagna in a slow cooker.

Sisters Orth (right) & Spilling (middle) all thumbs up with the food.  Sister Orth herself ate at least 3 pieces of chocolate chip banana brownies.  

Elder Jacobson (left) & Elder Ehlert (right) & Elder Helm (hands only) flash signs of approval on the food.

Elder Howell shows off cheese sticks.  He loves to eat all kinds of bread so he thoroughly enjoyed eating these.  As you can see, nothing left on the plates of Elder Helm and Elder Howell.  Elder Helm had to cover himself up from laughing too hard.

Anniversary

No big celebration.  We just had dinner at a small restaurant about a block away from us.  On Google maps, this restaurant was rated 4.8, so I thought we would try it.  One half of restaurant had 3 tables where patrons would sit on the floor and the other half, people sit at the counter facing the cooks.  The food was good.  Main dish was different, but both of us really liked the salad.  The only negative I have with Japanese restaurants is that they still allow smoking in public areas.

Branch Home Evening May 13, 2019

We were asked to present the lesson for this particular home evening.  We obliged by giving a lesson on Family History with emphasis on using the tool Memories, an app on smart phones and a feature on familysearch.org.  It is free and can be used to store photos, documents, and recordings of stories.  These memories will then be preserved for posterity.  It already became of use for Kaiya on a school project on immigration.  She was able to download some photos of Uncle Jim from Memories on familysearch.org to go along with the narrative.

Game night

We had a YSA game night at the teaching station on May 11.  We played a card game spoons, some sort of tag game with people using a unique sign to identify oneself.  The player in the middle has to touch anyone sitting in a circle before the person gives his sign and make the sign of another person to pass it on.  I did OK with the spoons game but old age certainly didn't help with speed in passing it on to another player.  Afterwards, Sister Lee was surprised by receiving a bouquet of flowers from the young missionaries.

Hospital visits 4 & 5

Since visits 2 & 3 were emergency visits, the receipts we received were without details and the charge were just estimates.  So visits 4 & 5 were to go back and get the detail receipts and settle the final bill.  In the case of Elder Patient, there was a refund.  In the case of Sister Pat, had to pay more.  These visits were done in conjunction of apartment checks, since the hospitals were close to the apartments.  While at the first hospital, I took advantage of the break to use the restroom.  When I was done, I pushed the button on the side of the wall, thinking that was the flush button.  Oops, no flush.  I did find the flush handle behind the toilet lid later.  So what was that button I pushed?  Well, you guessed it.  A few seconds after I pushed that button, I hear someone talking outside my stall door.  Even though I didn't understand what he said in Japanese, I knew he was asking if I was OK.  I came out and said OK both in English and Japanese.  I should have said that I was testing to see how responsive they are.

Hospital visits 2 & 3

Visit #2 was scheduled to take a sister missionary (Sister Pat - fake name) to get medication to knock out a cold.  Her cold was exacerbated by her asthma.  We thought with all the new drugs she will be taking, she would be fine in no time.  However we got phone call in the evening that conditions are not improving, so off we went to take her to the nearest emergency hospital.  The emergency staff gave her couple / 3 sessions of vaporization, which helped her breathe better.  Then another set of medication was prescribed.  It seems like she is on the mend now, still has a nasty cough but frequency seems to be less now.

Hospital visit 1

On May 6th, we had interview day.  During the morning session of District training, one of the Elders had a near collapse because he was unable to breathe.  Fortunately, he finally was able to breathe and training continued.  For purpose of privacy, I'll only refer to the missionaries with fake names.  He (Elder Patient) is from Brazil, so fluent in Portuguese, little bit of English, and beginning to intermediate in Japanese.  At first we were going to take him to a hospital to have him checked out but that would require bringing another Elder (Elder Buddy) along to help translate between Portuguese and Japanese but we would have to wait until Elder Buddy finishes his interview.  Elder B is also from Brazil so fluent in Portuguese but has been serving a lot longer so very good in Japanese and has picked up English as well.  Additionally May 6th is a national holiday in Japan and thus only certain hospitals are open and only for emergency situations.  As we waited, Elder Patient seemed to be OK, so perhaps better if we waited until next day or later to go to hospital.  Everything was going fine until later that evening, we got phone call that he had another episode of difficult breathing.  We rushed down to where he was and took him to nearest hospital opened for emergencies.  I dropped them off and went to park the car in the hospital parking lot.  When I got into the hospital reception area, they had completed filling out the necessary paper work and soon afterwards they took him in for examination.  Hospital took a cardiogram and some other test and reported that his heart and lungs are fine.  Doctor diagnosed that he had a condition called Intercostal neuralgia where his chest pains were result of a nerve being compressed, possibly by his own young body still growing.  Sister Lee related how the communication went on in the exam room.  The doctor would talk to Sister Lee in Japanese, Sister Lee talks to Elder Buddy on the phone, then turn phone over to Elder Patient where Elder Buddy would explain things in Portuguese, get response from Elder Patient and then resume conversation with Sister Lee.  Sister Lee, upon hearing the response of Elder Patient from Elder Buddy, then talks back to the doctor.  This communication went on until all the symptoms and diagnosis and issues were discussed.  Altogether, the bill for that emergency visit was less than 6000 yen, which roughly translates to less than $60.

Baptism

Remember that sweet 90 year old lady that I posted about back in February.  Well, her son baptized her on 5/5.  I was asked to give a spiritual thought during the baptism program the night before.  I scrambled to put together a short talk and then proceeded to translate it to Japanese with Sister Lee's help.  I was going to say it in Japanese but time ran out.  I just didn't have enough time to practice saying it.  So we fell back on original plan, which is I say it in English, and Sister Lee translate into Japanese.  Since the Japanese part is already typed up, Sister Lee just had to read it.  A member came up afterwards and said Sister Lee sounded so professional (she didn't realize Sister Lee had a cheat sheet).  So maybe next time I'll finally give a talk in Japanese. Afterwards we were invited to a member's home along with the sister who got baptized and her son for dinner to celebrate her baptism.  When I get copies of the some of the photos taken during dinner, I'll post them.

Zone conference May 1

This is our third Zone conference.  I am happy to report after intense studying of Google maps the night before, I finally managed to get onto the Expressway without getting lost.  The zone conference is actually a conference for 2 zones, namely Kumamoto zone and Kagoshima zone.  The morning session starts at 10 a.m. and supposed to end at noon.  Then we break for 45 minutes lunch.  We typically don't end on time, as there are a lot of stuff to cover that applies to all the zones.  Mid way into the afternoon session, the 2 zones separate and have training as prepared by the respective zone leaders.  The following photos shows Elder Curtis, blindfolded is weaving himself through a maze by following directions from his companion, Elder Walters, who is standing with arms folded (3rd person from right in bottom photo) and can see the obstacle course.  There are small packages of crackers along the course that he needs to pick up along the way.  The obstacle course was illustration of the zone theme for these next 6 weeks, "Be not afraid, only believe."  Idea here is that we with physical eyes may not see what lies ahead, but we can place our trust in the Lord to help guide us through.  Listen to the promptings of the Holy Ghost.

Sakurajima Visit Part 1

Here we are on P-day, April 29, 2019 riding the ferry over to Sakurajima Island.  This is the island where the active volcano resides.  It used to be an island by itself but it got connected to the main Kyushu Island with lava flow from the eruption of 1914.  The ferry goes so slow that there is no way anyone would get seasick which is just perfect for me.  The main purpose of this excursion was to visit some church members that actually live on the island.  I can't imagine living so close to a live volcano.  Living in an apartment less than 10 km away is plenty close enough.  Summer is approaching and according to the locals, the winds tend to blow west during summer months so we should be getting more and more ashes.

There was a line of cars to get onto ferry, long enough that we couldn't get onto the first boat that was already docked at the pier.  Ferries run every 30 minutes so thankfully we made it on the 2nd boat.  There are 2 tiers on the boat for cars.  We were directed to go to the upper tier so had to drive up a narrow ramp, which was an adventure in itself.

Unfortunately this particular day, it was expected to be 100% chance rain.  We decided to go to the visitor's center first since it was really close to the ferry terminal.  At this moment it was just a drizzle.

As we explored the area right next to the visitor's center, we came across a foot bath place.  There were a few small overhanging pavilions so we sit without being rained on and soak our feet.  It was wonderful, so soothing to our feet.  For those of you who grew up in Montana, remember the hot springs.  It is just like that.

 The next couple photos are of 1 family, the Kume's, that we managed to visit.  They were super nice to us.  Being a cool rainy day, they served some hot chocolate and herbal tea with some small chocolate candies.

 Here we are going home.  We missed getting onto 2 boats but finally got onto this one but we just barely got on.  I was at the end of the bottom tier.  We plan on going back since we skipped going to two sights that would have given us a good view of the volcano (the closest would be just 2 km away).  With the rain, there was really no use trying to see the volcano sine it was covered in rain clouds.