Week 44 Still here and still serving.

Welcome to week 44.  Hard to believe, at least for us.  

We recognize that often our blog highlights events we participate in and usually lots of pictures of us with food... while there is a lot of that, what we don't usually have pictures of are the other parts of our routine that are more spiritually focused.  We enjoy the time we spend reading the scripture daily. We finished the New Testament and have resumed reading the Book of Mormon (4th time for this mission) and are also concurrently studying the Come Follow Me lessons for the Doctrine and Covenants. We make an effort to incorporate the available Institute Manuals into our study to add the background and context that add so much more to our understanding. And we have recently added a Christlike Attributes Study Plan that our son, Bret put together.  Thanks Bret. 

We spend a lot of time discussing what we should be doing and who we need to reach out to in our service.  There is also regular and daily time for prayer and pondering for guidance and prompting.  Beyond this are the opportunities during the week to share a smile or short conversation with someone we know and often someone we don't know. We look for opportunities to support, encourage, lift, and be a positive example to those around us.  

We often don't know who might be watching, or listening, or how we might have impacted their day.  With our Missionary Badge on whenever we leave our apartment, we are always on display as representatives of His Church and we have a prayer in our hearts that we can be seen as such.  Our health is holding up and we are blessed to be "out there" a good part of every day.  All of these elements of spiritually focused activity are some of the most special parts of our mission experience that rarely get captured in our newsy blog or pictures. 

Our week began with a US holiday (MLK Day), meaning most places we "volunteer" are closed. It frees up our day, but that isn't always what we want. We had a busy previous weekend so we got to catch up and clean up.  January here is quite cold so a nice hot "ramen" sounds good for dinner and we are always looking for an excuse to visit our favorite Ramen place.  

Tuesday, as usual, we headed to the Tokyo Temple for our day of service.  This time we had an extra event afterward, so we made plans to spend Tuesday night at the New Sanno Hotel.  Our Mission Leaders invited all of the Senior Missionaries over for a dinner get-together.  There were 16 of us in total.  Eight of us are Military Relations Missionaries and the rest do Mission Office Support, Property management, and Member Support to a Japanese unit. We are not part of the weekly letter report to the Mission President and such. During a regular week, we don't have much interaction with the other missionaries like us who are here, so it was good for us to get to talk with them and also to get to know our fellow Senior Missionaries a little better.  

Wednesday morning we made our way back to our Camp Zama area.  We have regular support ongoing with the Army Community Service and the Red Cross.  This week, Sister Nelson also offered to help our neighboring MRMs at Atsugi with a service project on the other base at the thrift shop.  Some of our young Sister missionaries also helped. 

Thursday we had some prep-baking to do for a couple of Red Cross events.  One unique event was helping the Red Cross test a dog and owner for suitability as an "animal visitation program" candidate...which means that the dog is well-behaved enough to be around people, including strangers.  The dog in question was a beautiful Husky female named Tipsy. She passed with flying colors.  We make ourselves available for any kind of service!  Later we supported Celebrate Recovery.  

Friday means District Meeting and District Lunch.  Lunch this day was "Sunday Dinner" pot roast and all the fixings. Easier said than done. We did much of the prep work Thursday evening, but the roast part did not cooperate because American "CrockPots" do not work as advertised with Japanese voltage... We had to do some last-minute oven roasting and such...but when it came time to serve, everything was awesome. Sister Nelson has learned to be flexible, adaptive, and creative in all the cooking and baking we do related to our service. (who knew that food and cooking would play such a big part of our daily routine and senior missionaries). 

We tried "Uber Eats" delivery and Indian takeout for our Friday night. (Sister Nelson still does not cook or decide what's for dinner on Friday) So we took a leap into the unknown...it was mostly good...a little naan, butter chicken, and curry-like stuff.  Saturday we declared a P-Day and spent most of the day dejunking and cleaning our apartment. We then took the train Saturday evening in search of a TexMex place that had been here when we lived at Camp Zama before. The place had moved, but we found it!  Mike's TexMex was alive and well and only about three train stops away!  Great food too. 

Sunday was a normal Sunday and a bit more relaxing because we did not have to make the trip up to Camp Fuji this week.  We enjoy going, but going every other week is even better. 

Going here and going there!