Week 52 Lots of baking, and other stuff.

We can't help but count how many days of driving our car we have left...not many, but while we can and this week we could, we made the best of it.  

On Monday, Sister Nelson found herself working for Army Community Service and then attending a "Turkish Breakfast" event for a Sister in our Branch whose family will depart soon as her husband retires. (We can remember doing that). Meanwhile,  Elder Nelson was teaching a follow-up Family History workshop from a class given previously.  He will do three more classes in April.  In her spare time, Sister Nelson had lots of baked goods requests to shop, prep, and bake for.  Elder Nelson had lots of lots of photo and video editing to do from the previous week's Oliver production.  So, spare moments that were actually spare were indeed very rare this week; however, we also had time to feed a couple of our YSAs a nice dinner.

We made our weekly trip to the Tokyo Temple on Tuesday and had a wonderful time as we always do. It is quite refreshing to spend time serving others in the Temple, seeing the young missionaries, and also some of our fellow Senior Missionary friends. We also saw a very nice red Ferrari getting a ride into Tokyo.  When we got back home Tuesday, the baking and some more photo editing tasks were waiting.  This time, it was mostly about baking for a big Red Cross-sponsored Coffee Cart service for the Japan Engineering District HQ.  

Wednesday morning early we brought our baked goods - Oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, and some green marshmallowy treats made with cornflakes (actually were very tasty and popular). The Red Cross office brought the coffee and another volunteer brought a cute little doggy for petting,  It was a magic combination and the JED people cleaned us out in an hour.  Later, Elder Nelson worked at Army Community Service and Sister Nelson helped at the Zama Occupational Health clinic (both being our normal Wednesday gigs. 

This Thursday was another Camp Zama Newcomers Orientation event (every other week) and that ties us up from 0700 until lunchtime.  It is a great event for "showing the badge" and meeting people.  Afterwards, you guessed it, time to stock up on groceries, bake some more, and edit more pictures. Except today, we also jumped in to help a member of our branch who was flying out on Saturday, to clean his rental home so he could leave on time. This little "service opportunity" was not on our schedule or radar until late Wednesday night.  We made a bunch of calls and texts to line up more help and we committed to helping after our morning-to-noon volunteer commitment.  We helped scrub, sweep, mop, and more until nearly  1630 then we had to get home to get set for our normal "next."  Since we missed our planned baking window, Elder Nelson went solo to Celebrate Recovery and Sister Nelson tied on the apron and baked and baked some more. 

Friday morning we delivered our baked goods to the Zama Aviation unit that was having a special day of training. We provided the goods to go with the coffee provided by the Red Cross.  The unit commander was both touched and impressed with our service efforts on their behalf that he gave us one of their unit "coins."  See photo. After we snuck out of that event we headed into Tokyo to the Temple annex to provide a special delivery of candy to one of our Senior Missionary couples who planned to do something special for all the young missionaries in our entire mission.  While we were in town, so to speak, we stopped at the New Sanno Hotel for lunch and made a reservation for the weekend of our Stake Conference in May,  Friday was not over yet.  We had to hurry back so Sister Nelson could get a scheduled pedicure.  Elder Nelson made a post-office run and then helped our young sister missionaries move an extra Futon (Japanese bed) over to the young elders, who after transfers (today) were now a threesome.  That all made for a lot of extra driving and time...(good thing we have a car).  

On Saturday, our Stake had planned a special event for the not-so-young single adults.  A sister in our branch wanted to go and wanted Sister Nelson to go with her...so they did, and Sister Nelson hopped on the train for the trip.  The event was poorly attended, but all you can do is smile sometimes.  Later, this particular Saturday was supposed to be a special event at Camp Zama.  The annual Cherry Blossom Festival.  It is an open-post event, meaning all the local Japanese that wish to come onto the base with no paperwork and enjoy the day which includes lots of food vendors, live music and of course, the stunning Sakura blossoms...except this year, the Sakura (Cherry blossoms) didn't show up. Colder than normal weather delayed the scheduled blooming to maybe sometime this next week. We both helped at the Red Cross tent which provided snacks and drinks for the local Japanese First Aid station manned by the Zama Fire Department.  It was another long day.  But no baking was required. 

On Sunday we had our regular church services.  Our good Japanese friend from the other (Yamato) ward gave Sister Nelson a very nice Lacquerware box. He enjoys giving gifts and is just a genuine saint all the way around.   It was to be a relatively easy day; however, Sister Nelson discovered that the newly transferred young missionaries (Elders) did not have any place for dinner, and our day suddenly got more interesting.  We ended up making an emergency (ox is in the mire) stop at the commissary for a few things and managed to whip up a dinner for the missionaries at our apartment. This was followed, almost immediately by a monthly Zoom meeting that the Stake has with all of us Military Relations Missionaries.  The difference this time is that Camp Zama Nelson's are now the Senior of the Senior Missionaries, so it was our job to set up the Zoom and Elder Nelson's job to set the agenda and then keep the meeting flowing along with its 60-minute time.  

Sunday ended with two Military Relations Missionaries who were very tired, but in a good way,  Next week promises to be yet another amazing adventure.