Apartment checks 6/27/2019

This is Elder Arnold serving in Nobeoka on his last transfer.  He will be returning home on July 12.  He served in Kagoshima for awhile and so we thought we better take a photo of him with us because we may not get another chance to see him the next few weeks after today's apartment check.  Elder Arnold is a natural salesman.  He has a gift of being able to talk to anyone.  After Nobeoka, we went to Miyazaki and then Miyakonojo.  Nobeoka is about 3 - 3.5 hours away from Kagoshima on the Express way depending on traffic.  Then we work ourselves back toward to Kagoshima through the other 2 places.  The next photo is a late lunch at a restaurant 焼肉福寿園  in Miyakonojo.  One of the meats for Sister Lee was a little bit chewy.  I didn't know we had to cook it ourselves.  My cabbage got burnt a little but it tasted good.  The taste in my opinion was about 3.5 but I think the price is little high for what we got.

Another photo of Takoyaki

So this photo was posted by one of the sisters.  I thought it was very nice and should belong here in the blog as well.  I wasn't the only guy there.  The young boy warmed up to me quite rapidly, especially when I gave him a small chocolate bar candy.  We sure miss our grandchildren.

District Council Luncheon June 25, 2019

Another wonderful meal from the kitchen of Sister Lee.  We couldn't find any black beans here in Kagoshima so we substituted with mixed beans.  Not in the pictures are lemon bars for dessert.  

YSA 6/23/2019 Tako mania

Sister Lee and I played host to YSA sisters for an activity at our apartment.  Kitchen at the church is not supposed to be used for cooking and besides it is way too small.  So voila, they asked if they can do it at our apartment.  The activity was to make Takoyaki, a Japanese dish.  At first I thought they were going to make tacos.  Well, it is not that Mexican dish.  You can google "Takoyaki" and find out more about it.  Anyway, Tako means octopus and the round plate has diced octopus on it.  It is cooked in a special ball shaped molded pan.  You pour the batter into the mold and place the tako and other items in.  As it cooks, you use a wooden skewer stick to turn the balls.  They asked me to try and with my Montana Café upbringing, it was no problem.  I mastered the technique soon enough.  BTW, it was delicious.

After dinner, they did a game, you know the one where you hold hands in the middle and then try to unravel into a giant circle without breaking the chain.  It took another 5 minutes or so after this snap shot before they finally succeeded.  The moral of the game was a daunting task can be solved if everyone worked together.

Member Visits 6/22/2019

On one of our visits to branch members, this is a rice field right next to the home of the branch member we were visiting.  The branch member wasn't home but another sister was there transplanting rice plants.  She talked with Sister Lee for a long time, giving me time to study the scenery.  I discovered there are at least 3 dragon flies that constantly flying over the rice field, 1 orange brown color and 2 black & blue colors.  There were butterflies as well.  The next photo, if you zoom into the corner of the bucket, one of the black & blue ones landed there, about 6 feet away from me, so I was able to photo it.  As result of long talk with the sister working in the rice field, the sister we were trying to visit came home so we were successful in talking with her for a little bit and allowed Sister Lee to present a small Happy Birthday treat.

At another sister's house, the next photo is outside in her garden.  I took a picture of one of her flower plants.

Elder Ehlert goes home and starts summer school

This is Elder Ehlert, one marvelous young man.  He served as a zone leader here in Kagoshima and did it well.  He has attributes that will make him successful in whatever he endeavors to do.  I am confident he will do well in his chosen major "Applied Physics" at BYU.

Why the blog inactivity?

Well, I was asked to give a talk in Sacrament meeting on Father's Day.  I received the assignment over a month ago.  This allowed me time to prepare so I can give the talk in Japanese.  Earlier post, I mentioned about the barber who is a counselor in the branch presidency.  Well, he was the one who asked me to speak, just right after he gave me my last haircut.  I tell you.  They are as sneaky as the counselors in the wards in USA.  Anyway, I wrote the talk in English, Sister Lee translated into Japanese, and I have been practicing it for the last several weeks.  The blog updates had to take a back seat.  The talk went well.  Sister Lee thinks maybe 90-95% understandability.  Well, I hope so.  I think I got a lot more white hair from this experience.

A day at the zoo

Still can't figure out why flamingoes stand with only one leg.  This photo has some ostrich and giraffe in the back.  This zoo is pleasantly nicely organized.  The price is really inexpensive, like 500 yen, but we had free tickets from our Welcome to Kagoshima packet.  So we only had to pay 300 yen for parking.

Usually when we see peacocks, we never get to see them strut their stuff.  This time, we saw not one but two and they both did it at the same time.  Wow, I hurried to get photos of both of them.

This huge tortoise just doesn't seem to realize there is a wall in front of it.

Do not walk and take pictures at the same time, otherwise you might end up in the pond.  This narrow path zig zags through the pond.

For a moment, we thought they were huge boulders but they are just hippos.  They sure do look like boulders when their heads are submerged in the water.

Baby giraffe!

This photo is for Mei, our granddaughter, who just loves her stuffed animal "White Tiger",  Well, this is the real McCoy, large but cute one.

Transfer day May 29, 2019

One of the joys of serving a mission as a senior couple is working with young missionaries who are so dedicated and hard working.  One of our tasks is help them move their luggage during transfer day.  This next photo is us with Elder Pauperio, who in this picture was going home to Brazil after successfully completing his 2 years of service.  At the end of his mission, he was serving in Naze on an island south of us.  Every 6 weeks for zone conference, he and his companion would make the long arduous trek from Naze, which consisted of traveling by 12 hour ferry ride (we have the honor of picking them up at the port) and a 3-4 long bus ride from Kagoshima to Kumamoto.  Then reverse route to go back to Naze.  Elder Pauperio is a fine young man, who loves to cook.  He loved eating this one Japanese dish with spinach.  He asked Sister Lee if she had a recipe for it.  She didn't bring one with her but we found one on the internet.  He also did a cooking demonstration and needed help to get the recipe of a Brazilian dish translated into Japanese.  Sister Lee gladly obliged.

This next photo is of 2 sister missionaries from Australia.  Sister Orth in the middle is from Brisbane and Sister Spilling is from Tasmania.  Sister Orth was transferring to Fukuoka.  All of these photos are just outside the Kagoshima Bus Terminal.

More weed pulling

Japanese in general do a very good job of keeping their streets, sidewalks, etc. very clean.  However, on these steps going down to the path along the river, weeds have overtaken the area.  One morning I pulled a lot of these weeds.  Only problem, I had nothing to put the weeds in to dispose of them.  On this particular stairway, I cleared at least one half to make it more walkable.  In doing so, look what I found hidden underneath a clump of weeds.  A regular size egg.

Potluch luncheon after Sunday service

Here are some photos of a potluck luncheon at the church after Sunday service.  I can't seem to lose any weight.  I wonder why.

Feels great to serve

We have a brother in the Kagoshima Branch that owns a barbershop.  He currently serves in the branch presidency as a counselor.  As a service, he provides free haircuts to the young missionaries.  For us senior couples, since we can afford it, he only charges 1000 yen, which is like less than $10.  He does a good job.  We want to pay more but he refuses to accept more, so we decided to pull weeds from the bushes in front of his shop.  We really don't have gardening tools so we went to the local 100 yen store (like dollar store in the U.S.), which didn't have the gardening tools we needed but we bought couple screw drivers to dig with.  We couldn't find any gardening knee pads either so we used card board boxes.  We did this on a Saturday that he posted at the shop that he was going to be closed, but to be safe from being discovered, we went early in the morning and finished weeding in couple hours before his usual opening time of 9:30 a.m.

Scenes from my morning walks

This is a shrine on one of my walking routes.  It gets too boring to keep walking in circles on a track so I walk around the neighborhood.  One morning when I walked past, I saw some students sitting on the ground inside the shrine.  I went in to take a closer look and found that it was an art class.  The students were on a field trip to draw pictures of the shrine.  I was impressed by some of their drawings.

 This is on a bridge over a river that flows out to the bay.  On the left there are rows of built in benches for people to sit.  Of all the times I passed here, I've only seen couple people sitting down there.  Kind of wonder if there are special events that occur on the river that attract people to come out and watch.  There is a path along the bank at the base of the benches that goes underneath the bridges.  I use it to avoid having to cross the busy roads above.