Sendai Japan Mission 2011-2014: DECEMBER IN REVIEW

Gary and I visited the Yamagata Ward on Sunday in December.

These are a few of the sweet sisters who were in Relief Society.

Sister Watanabe (in the hat) was recently baptized.

Gary and I decided it was time for a dental check-up and cleaning.

This gal Sato san is the Dental Hygenist who cleaned our teeth.

Dr. Sasaki is the dentist. He made our visit so pleasant for us because he made sure the entire staff could communicate with us by preparing phrases or sentences in advance that they would need to say to us. We learned that they would only clean your top teeth OR your bottom teeth in one visit-not both. We will return for one more visit in January. We were impressed with the modern technology they used in their practice. We will take a Book of Mormon and a dream catcher to them when we go back in January.

Sister Kanako came to our house for dinner one Friday night. In the middle of the evening, Sis Ishizaki came to the door and stayed the rest of the evening.

Sister Ishizaki told me one day she wanted to learn to make Cinnamon Rolls so I decided this night was as good as any to teach her. She is quite a talker and didn't concentrate on making Cinnamon Rolls for long but they enjoyed eating them at the end of the evening.

FHE on Christmas Eve started with replacing a few

light bulbs in the living room by Elder Elkins.

Sister Date brought her bells and taught the missionaries

to play a couple of simple Christmas carols.

The missionaries that played the bells wore gloves like a real professional

and played OK considering they learned and performed all on the same evening.

Sisters Date, Sugawara and Miura sang a song.

Gary is a welcoming host to the group. Watanabe San-the older lady sitting on the couch is a non-member who loves to come to FHE because she feels younger when she is around the missionaries. She is 89 years old and loves to wear her lovely kimonos.

The first snow of the year in Sendai.

These pictures were taken up the street from our house.

Moriya San comes to FHE but isn't too interested in the church right now.

She had a beautiful scarf on when she attended FHE this week and I told her

how lovely it was. She went home and knit me one like hers and

brought it to my house to give it to me. I love it.

In the front of our house we have a lighted nativity that we display during December. I almost sure it is the only nativity on display in all of Sendai. One morning, some little pre-school children came with their teachers walking by our house and stopped to look at the nativity.

Notice they all have the same colored hat in the group.

It is helpful for the teachers to keep track of them. Aren't they adorable?

This last little boy couldn't quit looking at the baby Jesus.

He had no idea what it was but he was really drawn to it.

I was amazed how much Christmas spirit we saw this year everywhere we went.

We went to eat dinner one evening in Ishinomaki at a mall with the Sakamotos.

This was a beautiful HUGE tree.

The food court at the mall had a KFC.

We did some Specialized Training with the Shimai in Kamisugi and Nagamachi.

L-R: Kimura, Hyoto, Miura, Takatsu, Saito Shimai.

I took two kinds of popcorn--caramel corn and

jello flavored popcorn for a treat. They loved it!

Sis Hyodo was asked to hold the two bottles of heavy liquid up in the air as long as she could. When she couldn't do it any longer, her friends held her arms up for her so she could do it longer. It was teaching how important it is to support the Bishop/Branch Presidents when their loads get heavy.

The AP's are great trainers.

This is one pan of Cinnamon Rolls I baked for Zone Conferences.

I estimate I baked over 200 rolls in December for different occasions.

We received several boxes of lovely things to share with the people of the Tohoku area to cheer them up. One box had about 300 christmas stockings with candy inside and a note from someone~we have no idea who~ in America who is still remembering that there are many still suffering from the earthquake & tsunami almost 2 years ago. The box in this picture had about 50 rag wreaths made by Young Women in Kobe area. We also received 50 CDs from a family in Orem of a benefit concert they did for people in our area who are still in temporary housing. They wired over $5000 to a bank in Sendai that will go to an agency who can help those people. (The family are the Palmers. Noria Palmer works at the MTC and taught Japanese to Gary and me before our mission. She is Japanese and her daughter, Mindi, is a violin major at BYU. Mindi has a cousin who is a beautiful singer and the two of them did the whole concert. I guess it was fabulous!!) We distributed all of these items at Zone Conferences for the missionaries to take them to anyone they thought would benefit from the gesture.

Sister Thomas made this oragami folded paper ball for each missionary to say good-by to them before she and Elder Thomas leave the mission in January.