Monday, March 16, 2015

Ipads, Sendai Castle Site, Farewell


We received a shipment of ipads for the missionaries on Monday.  There's about 125 of them!  These ipads will be owned by the church, so the missionaries will use them while on their missions, but will not take them home with them.  We will have more information next week about all this.

Wednesday was the fourth anniversary of the Sendai Tsunami back in 2011.  We happened to be at the driver's license place that afternoon.  They asked everyone to stop what they were doing (waiting) and stand for a moment of silence in remembrance of those who lost their lives that day.

BTW, Elder B. failed the driver's test for some odd reason, but we did meet some nice people from Mexico and Nigeria and Alabama!  Maybe next time!

We have been trying to find a good time to get our hair cut in between lots of other things, and we finally decided to go on Wednesday before Eikaiwa.  This is what we found when we got there:


With a little bit of peer pressure:


Anyway, we got our hair cut without an audience and then on to Eikaiwa.

Transfers is next week, so we have been planning for that.  It will be extra complicated this time because there will be a mission conference on Saturday (ipad training), so everyone needs to be in Sendai and have a place to sleep and transportation!  It's going to be fun!

It is always great to participate in the planning for transfers and to recognize the Lord's hand in these decisions.  One of our elders was having problems and almost ready to quit and go home, but with his new assignment, for the first time he said he's excited!


On Saturday morning, we drove out to Ishinomaki and Tagajo to switch out some bikes.  Then we went to the Sendai Castle Site.  (The castle was destroyed during WWII).  We thought there was supposed to be a festival there, but the big celebration must have been on Sunday.


This is what it used to look like.



A little bit breezy!

And we met some nice people here too:


One of these ladies spoke pretty good English.  Her daughter lives in NYC!


After church on Sunday, we had a little farewell party for these two who are going home.



Complete with musical numbers



And tako yaki!  We brought some chili and corn chips.  Our Japanese (and American) friends liked that.  Another of our elders is being transferred, so we will have three new missionaries next week.

Sunday night, we went to the stake center for a fireside broadcast from Tokyo.  Elders Nelson and Evans and their wives spoke.  It was very nice.  Sister Nelson spoke about being "Covenant People" and Elder Nelson said we should be prepared with a short response when people ask us questions about different topics such as:

Heavenly Beings
The Godhead
"If you will obey His commandments, He will pay for your sins"
The Church
The Scriptures
Christianity
Marriage and Family
Religion in our Lives
Covenants
Temples
Plan of Salvation
Women in the Church
Humanitarian Work
Fasting
"Going hungry to help the hungry is sharing the burden in the Lord's way"
Unpaid clergy
Missionaries

He left an apostolic blessing for Japan to feast on the scriptures, have love at home, healing for the sick and afflicted, to be an example of believers and focus on the temple.

One more thing:


All our Arizona kiddos got together for an outing at the zoo this week.  Like Seth says "nobody look at the camera!"

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