Monday evening we hosted our first Single Adult activity at our apartment. We had two missionaries and one member who brought a non-member friend, so it was a great first start. We aim to reach more of our single members and give them a place to gather, at least weekly.
Tuesday is our trip to Tokyo to serve in the Tokyo Temple for the day. We always look forward to and enjoy our Tuesday Temple experience. We especially enjoy seeing the missionaries come through. Most everyone we work with is Japanese, so my Japanese gets a good workout and Kim does a lot of smiling and nodding. The Japanese people are always so kind and patient with us.
We are helping quite a bit with the Red Cross, both at NAF Atsugi and Camp Zama. At both locations, the staff directors are leaving and relying upon volunteers to carry the load until they have backfills arrive. We are also slugging through the paperwork and prerequisite training to be able to volunteer at the Health Clinic. We are doing the online (about 5 hours worth) training to be able to take the Red Cross CPR/AED course this coming Saturday. We also are doing some online courses covering computer security and HIPPA (yuk). And, as we are finding out, nothing happens fast, today, or even tomorrow...and everything takes a lot of time.
Our Red Cross efforts this week included doing another briefing during the Camp Zama "newcomers" orientation. We are looking good in our Red Cross shirts! I think we wore them three different times this past week. We also got our official USO t-shirts and name tags in the mail.
This past week was transfer week for the young missionaries so we have said goodbye to a few and welcomed a few new ones into our district. Our weekly district council meeting that we attend featured Sister Nelson bringing spaghetti with meatballs, salad with Olive Garden dressing, and garlic bread! The 14 missionaries in our district made pretty short work of a lot of food. They really enjoy the break from Japanese food and are always very thankful.
Later that day (Friday), we hopped on the train and headed for downtown Tokyo and the Temple again. This time, we met our Camp Zama Branch youth, a few parents, and leaders for a youth temple trip. We took the train instead of driving and it was actually a nice break from the traffic stress, but it involved lots of standing and walking. We experience one of the most crowded train rides to date on our way home. Before heading home, we took the time for a Friday night date night dinner at the "Tiger Gyoza" restaurant. We are still amazed at how inexpensive it is for us to eat out in Japan because of the current exchange rate.
Saturday, bright and early, we donned our Red Cross shirts once again and headed to NAF Atugi to help with their Family Fitness Day. We caught a break from the rainy weather and it was a beautiful, but HOT, day. Our job was to hand out cups of ice-cold water, so we had lots of visitors to our table!
Sunday we attended church and later made our weekly trip to Camp Fuji. It makes for some great fellowshipping opportunities, but also a lot of driving. On the way home from Camp Fuji we did the traffic jam crawl so our trip home was long...
We are alive, well, and trying to be patient with each other and how long it takes to get places, how long it takes to get things done, and patient with the fact that not every week is going to be super exciting. Still, we are grateful for our blessings, our health, and the privilege of serving the Lord as missionaries. The Church is true and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone...even if they don't know that yet.
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