Sakura - Cherry Blossoms

This week's highlight was the official appearance of the Cherry Blossoms!  They only bloom for a couple of weeks and so it is celebrated and is certainly beautiful.  We posted a lot of pictures of them on Facebook - see link: Sakura

We continue to strive to meet people, discover ways and places we can engage as Military Relations missionaries and we are making slow and steady progress.  This week we have met in various places and with various peoples enthusiasm and some not-so-much interest -bordering on antagonism. I won't be specific, but not all are excited to see us here.  I guess we should expect some opposition since that has always been the case with being a missionary for the Church and Christ.  

Our first attempt at P-Day was mostly about laundry, house cleaning, and groceries. We may try and venture out more this next week. I should mention that we are slowly getting a handle on the mystery of garbage sorting.  So far, we have had no rejected entries! 

Camp Fuji is a USMC training site located about 90 minutes from here. We know that routinely, units of USMC Marines go there for extended periods (6 months or so) and do tactical training. They don't have a regular Church service for them. With the MRM missionaries from Yokota AFB we made arrangements with the Camp Fuji chaplain (US Navy) to hold a social/devotional on Wednesday. We weren't sure how many, if any, LDS service members might come.  None this time, because during the week they are all out in "the woods" training.  

We went armed with smiles and cookies and ended up just meeting with the chaplain and then giving away all the treats to "random" Marines at the nearby food court. Those who wandered by were happy to find some "homemade treats." We even discovered on young Marine who was a member from the Ogden Utah area.  We decided we needed to try again on the weekend. 

We went to the Camp Zama "Newcomers" event which occurs biweekly. We were interested in seeing/hearing who briefed and who attended. It was interested and those in charge were not very interested in our participation. We will let this one alone for the time being until we can meet a few more potentially interested sponsors. 

Thursday day night we volunteered supporting the local "Celebrate Recovery" gathering at the request of our Camp Zama chaplain. It wasn't a big group, but certainly a worthy event hosted by some great folks so we will likely continue to do this one weekly.  Sister Nelson's cookies were also included! 

Bringing some joy to our District missionaries.  Weekly, we attend our District's council meeting.  There are eight of us total. The meeting is mostly in Japanese and mostly focused on teaching stats and some "role-playing" to improve teaching techniques. Most of that is not applicable to what we do, but we are there to support these young missionaries. The district meeting is usually followed by a district lunch.

On that note, Sister Nelson made, and we brought, lasagna, salad (complete with Olive Garden dressing), bread sticks and rice-crispy squares. Our district missionaries were VERY HAPPY!  Feeding these missionaries maybe a regular event because A: we can and B: it brings them a little bit of joy. 

Cherry Blossom Festival was on Saturday.  Camp Zama opens up the post to anyone for a day to walk on and enjoy the blooms, eat at the Exchange food court and many other food offerings set up by various organizations.  There was also live music, stuff for kids, and it was all very festive...and crowded. The official estimation was maybe 10,000 people.  

And, the weather was nice too.  For our part, we just walked around to be seen and meet who we could.  We met a few more members in our wanderings. The local Japanese particularly like the American food offerings. The Popeye's Chicken store in the Exchange one first prize as there was a line taking almost 90 minutes for those determined to get some... 

For walking and walking all day at the Cherry Blossom festival, we treated ourselves to a visit to a restaurant we had frequented when we were stationed here 14 years ago.  I am still not sure what the name of the place is, but it is a "kaitenzushi" (sushi-go-round) style restaurant. It was very good and we had our feel of mostly sushi and it cost us about $35. We probably would have paid at least double that back in the US. We will certainly be back. :)
 

Camp Fuji visit II was Sunday. We had had been in contact with one USMC Marine was an LDS group leader and had asked us to come on Sunday and have a sacrament service with them.

We took our branch's Elders Quorum president with us and we successfully met with a total of four young Marines. We shared a couple of talks (via Youtube) from General Conference, had sacrament and shared testimonies and later, some cookies that Sister Nelson made. 

For it's part, MT FUJI, decided to stay mostly hidden in the clouds while we were there.

Note: this week included a number of food/treat offerings that Sister Nelson made... It started out with a lot of frustration, but she persevered, with some tears,  and finally mastered how to use our Japanese cooking appliances... a little trial and error, but she finally made cookies, lasagna, and more this past week.  

We also enjoyed watching General Conference, here and there, when we had some time.