One Week Already?

The week has flown by, but every day of the week seemed so long and chuck full of things to do. We have been hardly able to hold on for dear life! Today was our final zone conference of this round. As with children, each zone has a different personality, and the Sendai Zone was no exception to that rule (see attached). But again we were so impressed with these fine young missionaries. Where to begin? Sister Maki, is a third generation member of the Church. Her grandparents went to the World's Fair in Osaka in 1970, picked up the Book of Mormon in the Mormon Pavilion, read from it on the train on the way home, their interest was piqued, they were taught the lessons from the missionaries, and joined the church. That was when I was in Japan the first time. Now in the third generation from them, their granddaughter is a missionary in Sendai. When she told me her story, I became very emotional. (imagine that!) I love to ask the kaishudan (conversion story of the missionaries and their families, especially those from Japan. Always inspirational.



President Sugawara, stake president of the Sendai Stake attended the Zone Conference and spoke/bore his testimony. He joined the church as a young man (17 years old), his father joined 2 years later, but his mother was not baptized until she was 86 years old. He has a lovely singing voice, so I invited him to sing with Pam. They sang "I Am A Child of God" (of course). They sang the first verse in Japanese in unison, the second verse was sung by Pam in English, then he sang the third verse with Pam joining in on the chorus. It was absolutely beautiful, and the missionaries loved it. Pam is winning the hearts and minds of missionaries with her singing voice and her natural love for these great young people. I don't mind saying that I am a bit jealous that they are already looking foward to seeing her more than they are to seeing me! LOL

At the conclusion of today's zone conference as a welcome gift to us the sisters and elders sang a medley arrangement of "As Sisters in Zion" and "We'll Bring the World His Truth" in Japanese. It was awesome. I had a hard time not picturing our grandsons and granddaughters standing in their position in from 6 to 21 years as missionaries. A wonderful thought.


As I review my notes from my interviews with the missionaries, I am struck with how many children are in the Japanese member's families. Check this out (in order of interviews for those that I rememberd to write it): 3, 7, 3, 3, 6, 6, 2, 4, 1, 4, 4, 10, 3, 3, 3, 6,3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 2, 6, 5. A typical family in Japan has from one to three children. So you can see that the active Japanese members of the church are a peculiar people. It seems that most of the parents of these Japanese missionaries also served missions.

I received permission today from Elder Stevenson to start weekly service days in the devastated areas of our mission. It will be coordinated through Brother Seza whose professional job is to arrange for volunteers to do this sort of thing. What a happy coincidence that he is also a counselor in the stake presidency! So next week we start on Tuesday with half the mission participating followed by the following week with the other half. This will continue until the need for such manual labor abates. Needless to say, the missionaries are very excited and appreciative to be able to do such work. We will also be getting little tags to add to our name tags that say "Gambaroo Tohoku" meaning "Let's get going, we can do it, Tohoku" where Tohoku is a word that literally means northeast--people know that to mean the part of Japan that is the Sendai mission.

Tonight we picked up our three new elders at the train station--the airport is still not open for connecting flights from Tokyo. The connections were late, so they didn't arrive until 10:30, then we came home, fed them some yummy soup, had brief introductions (the Assistants were there, too), and sent them to bed in the adjacent missionary apartment. It brought back memories of last week when we came dragging in so tired and so unsure of our surroundings. It's amazing what one week will do!
It's a great work. I love my companion! She was very worried about the food and arrangements tonight and tomorrow, but it is going swimmingly! Before you know it, they will be gone and we will be welcoming the seven departing missionaries to our home. It's a wonderful cycle. We are blessed to be part of it.