Week #23 -- Well, let's just cancel that!

This past week was one for the books.  Almost EVERYTHING we had scheduled and planned on was canceled.  Why?  Because we didn't shower?  Because we lost our friends?  No.  We had a week of Typhoon-ness, COVID (not us), and flooding threats and landslides.   Say what?  Yes.

Monday was somewhat normal, we spent time on Atsugi helping both the Chapel and the Red Cross. We always enjoy going over to the Navy installation. And we had a nice FHE with our young adult and a couple of the missionaries.  We took them to our favorite Sushi-go-round restaurant. 

Meanwhile, Typhoon Shanshan started moving north... 

Tuesday, one of our favorite days, we went to the Temple to do our shift.  After our shift, we were supposed to connect to a Zoom conference that would begin the Mission Tour by the Asia North Area presidency. That included a day-long Zone Conference on Wednesday and some other events we were supposed to attend or tune in to.  Well, as fate would have it, our Mission Leaders came down with COVID, self-isolated, and then suddenly the Mission Tour --and all the associated events were canceled. 

So, our Wednesday calendar was empty. (Meanwhile, the storm kept moving north). We decided to go to the temple and actually attend an endowment session (to experience the new changes). We did, and we enjoyed it, and the rain started... nothing serious yet, in our area, so we braved the rain and enjoyed a nice dinner. 

Typhoon Shanshan landed in southern Japan and created a lot of havoc...we just had rain...lots of rain. So the scheduled service event we planned to support on Thursday was cancelled because of the torrential rain that began falling in our area. Our mission leaders started getting concerned about the deteriorating weather.  The weather alerts started suggesting an increased risk of flooding and landslides...  We did support our weekly effort at Celebrate Recovery.  

Another unintended consequence of Zone Conference being canceled was having the weekly district council put back on the calendar, except we had already committed to the Red Cross for Friday...so we missed our lunch with the missionaries... And the rain continued... By late Friday, a number of local communities suggested some people evacuate (not us) or at least keep an eye on the local conditions (for floods and landslides).  The missionaries were all advised to stay home... We checked on our local area missionaries and offered to bring them some food (and maybe some cheer), so we made a commissary run and took them all their favorite cold cereal... And we stopped at McDonalds on the way home...

The rain remained relentless so our planned event on Saturday was also canceled! Yikes.  We stayed home, like most everyone else, cleaned up our apartment, and ordered Dominoes pizza (Yes, we have that in Japan--and it's really pretty good)

We regrouped for Sunday and hoped the weather would improve.  Sunday, we did make it to Church in the morning, but the rain was having a big impact on the roads and was especially severe up in the mountainous areas (Camp Fuji).  We decided that it probably would be wise to not risk that drive and we missed our weekly trip to Camp Fuji.  

We stayed home the rest of Sunday and hoped for a break in the weather. And we started watching "The Chosen."  It's Monday, the sun is shining and most of the Shanshan foul weather has moved on...at least until the next Typhoon (we still have another couple of months for the season). 

We hope this next week will get us back to a more normal routine. We did manage to review our emergency procedures and we were able to help the young missionaries this week.  So, all in all, we made the best of it.