Sports Day / Bar B Q / Ishinomaki Concert

Monday October 13 was a holiday here.  Besides being Columbus Day in the US, it was Sports Day in Japan.  We're not exactly sure what that means, other than that the mail was not delivered, but they did have a lunch in Tagajo for the Relief Society.

We had our staff meeting an hour earlier than usual, then we headed off to Tagajo for lunch.

The sisters were busy helping in the kitchen.

And out of the kitchen.

Sister L has great chop stick skills!

We had noodles, salad, yogurt and about 5 kinds of tempura.  Vegetables and chicken and shrimp!  The Tagajo sisters really know how to do lunch!

It started raining in the afternoon.  There were warnings about a huge typhoon heading towards Japan.  It rained all night, but by Tuesday morning, it was clear and beautiful.  We wondered if it was just because we were between storms, but it stayed nice the rest of the week.  We have dodged another storm.

President Smith did interviews of the office staff plus the elders that live upstairs.  Which means, we got cookies from Sister Smith!

On Wednesday, we had our English class at Tagajo.  We had a pretty good turn out again.  Sister I and I had the children's class.  Afterwards, we played a game with Halloween characters as the theme.

Thursday was an interesting day.  We normally go out to the Wal-bro factory in Kakuda for English on Thursday afternoon.  But Sister Sakamoto had asked for help from the missionaries to help her harvest her garden and she wanted to feed us too.  We were afraid it would cause a conflict, but decided to go to her house anyway, even if just for a little while.  But, we received a phone call telling us that they needed to cancel on us!  We were so happy for that little tender mercy.

So we helped Sister Sakamoto harvest the rest of her corn, and her sweet potatoes.

Meanwhile, Sister S started the fire for her outside kitchen.

And she put everyone to work chopping vegetables.

And making pizzas.

And soup.

And dutch oven chicken

And Brother Sakamoto came home with boxes of seafood.  The freshest scallops and oysters you'll ever want.

And roasted sweet potatoes.

I think we worked for about 20 minutes, then we cooked and ate for a couple of hours!

When we got back to the office, everyone said we smelled like we'd been camping.  But it was worth it.

We learned another new trick this week.  Someone sent Sister Shitami a 30 kilo bag of rice.  It needed to be husked so it can be cooked.  We found out that there's a milling machine in the parking lot of the place we like to go for vegetables.  It's kind of a farmer's market outside a restaurant supply store that has some American foods too.

We call this the Green Market because the sign is green and we have no clue what its real name is.  The farmer's market is just outside in the front.

The rice mill is in the parking lot.  You pour the rice in, and it processes it and sends out the polished rice.  We didn't know what the little building was for.  It kind of looks like an little ATM place.  It only cost 300 yen to process the whole bag (about $3.00).

On Saturday, we went to a little town called Ishinomaki.  It is on the coast and was hit hard with the tsunami.  The church helped re-establish the fishing industry here.  They held a concert here on Saturday.  Some women from Tokyo came and performed.  They are all very well trained musicians and members of the church that go around Japan doing performances.

They started out with "Ave Maria"

And did some show tunes (My Fair Lady), some traditional Japanese music and a few children's songs.  The pianist was extraordinary.

Then they brought some of us onto the stage with an old Sergio Mendez and Brazil 66 song that reminds me of "Empanadas".  I made Sister S go up with me.  Then they sang some Japanese song, so I just smiled sweetly until they let us go.

Elder L was very helpful to carry the flowers and pink suitcases for them.

At the end of the concert, our Stake President asked everyone to come up onto the stage for a group photo.  Someone is trying to get photos from missions all over the world with people holding Book of Mormons.  (See The Book of Mormon Project on FB)  If I get a copy of the photo, I'll pass it on.

So, we had some beautiful music and a good time with our member and missionary friends.

And I thought we'd have a boring time just going to the office every day!

Sunday morning, we got word that our Daniel has broken his arm again (!)  He was at his brother Michael's Eagle project and fell on the same one he broke before.  Poor Dano!  And two eagle projects for his two brothers in the same year!

And Heather's little Paisley Grace got a bump on the head this week too.  Be careful out there!