Week 45 It snowed!!!...at Camp Fuji

 Hello friends and family,

We had a great week trying to touch all the bases and make it to another blog. As always, we stay busy and do our best to focus on "the work" for two old missionaries. We are doing reasonably well. When we go to bed at night, we are still waking up in the morning.  

We spent some volunteer time at Army Community Service this week. Kim's shift included viewing the Chiefs/Bills game. The TV is always on in the lobby, and everyone was watching. We don't have "regular" TV in our apartment, so watching it was fun. My whole childhood there was always one game or another on in our home. I learned the rules of most sports, but I still don't understand rugby. 

Early Tuesday morning, I attempted to make mini cinnamon rolls for the Red Cross coffee cart. They ended up being like a pull-apart bread, but they tasted ok. Cinnamon rolls aren't easy to make a mini version of. 

We also served in the temple again on Tuesday. In a couple of weeks, the temple is closing for cleaning, so we will have to find something else to do on Tuesdays for those weeks. We love serving there when the missionaries come. What a blessing for them to be able to attend every 6 weeks. I don't remember Kourtney and Bret going that often. We love our Temple Tuesdays. 

On Wednesday, we presented a framed print that the McDermott Foundation offers for free to present to chaplains in the military. We learned about them at the MTC and happily presented one to our Garrison Chaplain, Damon Saxton. He was happy to receive it and has a spot on his office wall for it. We have two other prints that we will present to two other chaplains that we work with. There are about 6 or 7 here in Zama and one in Atsugi. The prints are so beautiful. 

District  Council this week was steak fajitas with all the trimmings. It seems no matter how much food  I make, the missionaries finish it all off. Sister Melton brought a tuxedo cake from Costco, and they finished that off, too. It's fun cooking for them, but often a lot of work. 

Friday night was a Relief Society social at COL Hunter's home. It was a great turnout, and we all got to know each other better. And, as always, plenty of yummy snacks. I'm trying to avoid the sweets, and there were plenty. Willpower? Working on it. 

On Saturday, it was our turn to help clean the chapel. We had lots of helpers, so it went pretty fast. Since it was our Pday, we decided to go to the Machida Shrine Sale. It is held on the 1st day of the month. Fifteen years ago when we lived here before, I was the buyer for a gift shop here on Zama that sold what we called "vintage Japanese" items. This Shrine sale was one of the places we purchased things. It was an absolute blast from the past seeing all the same stuff for sale.  I got one real bargain, an obi (the sash worn around a kimono) for 100 yen. (65 cents). I plan on using it for a table runner in the apartment. Not a bad find, eh?

Near the Shrine sale, there was a Buddhist temple nearby. We walked around the grounds and Elder Nelson got some great pictures. And I would love to know why the little statues wear hats and scarves. 

To finish the week, we drove up to Camp Fuji to do sacrament services for our one Marine there. We weren't sure we would go because it snowed there all morning, but it melted off by the afternoon, so we headed there. It was fun to see some snow, and we enjoyed our meeting. We had a great discussion about prayer, and he shared some of his hopes and dreams with us. He is a great young man. 

We hope you are all staying warm and dry. We are doing our best to do so here. Thanks for all your love and support. And we hope the groundhog did what you wanted him to. They don't do groundhogs here, so we aren't sure when winter will end. 

Love you forever, 

Elder and Sister Nelson