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.