Cooking lesson Visiting Teaching / Zone Taikai / Driving Test

My visiting teachers set up a cooking lunch at Sister Uchida's house on Monday.  Sister Smith was not able to go, so Alan got to come along with me.

Sister Sun made gyoza.  It is a meat and vegetable filled dumpling that her family makes in China for New Years.  Kind of like the tamale traditions at home.

This is a Japanese pancake/noodle dish (okonomiyaki).  You cook from the bottom layer up, then flip it all over.  First, a batter, then cabbage, bean sprouts, bacon, noodles, more batter, and an egg.  And flip it all over.

It was all delicious and fun!

Wednesday was our Christmas Zone Conference.  How many elders does it take to set up a Christmas tree?  We had a great conference.  We watched a talk by President Uchtdorf from the mission president's seminar.  He was speaking about the sacrament.  As a church, we don't celebrate Easter the same way that other churches do, but we really celebrate the atonement and resurrection every Sunday in the Sacrament.

President Uchtdorf said that you don't know if you've had a successful mission until 20 years or so after you get home.  If you're still active in the church and serving the Lord.  Do we still have 20 years?

We also watched the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day".  The elders had made Japanese captions so everyone could enjoy it.

The missionaries had made a cute video about how to take care of your trash too.

The Relief Society had prepared an amazing lunch for us.  But, we had to grab a plate and run.  Because,,,,,it was time for Alan's (second) driving test.

This is the course you have to drive on for the test.

Checking to see if you can handle Japan's narrow, winding streets.

It turned out that we'll get to go visit Japan's version of the DMV again.  Because the instructor didn't like the way Alan came out of the streets.  He said he swung out too wide.  And besides that, he looked over his shoulder before he turned on his blinker.  When we told some people about that, they said, "oh yes, of course."  Anyway,  we made it back to the conference in time for the wrap up.

And, then, on to Tagajo for our English class.  I showed the kids our daughter's Christmas tree she was working on.

Chelsea was making words out of wire "Joy, Love, Peace, Hope"

So the kiddos wrote words like that on their Christmas Trees.  Thanks for the great idea Gracie!

And in between everything else this week, we've been prepariing for transfers coming up next week.

We have 12 new missionaries coming on Tuesday night.  And 16 missionaries going home.

Sister C goes home on Thursday.  In Tagajo, we are losing two other sisters to new areas and picking up one new sister.  We are losing one elder, but picking up three.

After church, the ward presented Sister C with a card and photo and we had a little tako yaki party.

We took some apple crisp to share.  They all enjoyed it, especially our one sister who is gluten intolerant.  (We made one without flour).

And Alan mixed up a few bowls of oatmeal.  Last week, they were talking about the First Presidency message about the little boy who only wanted a bowl of oatmeal for Christmas.  Some people didn't know what oatmeal tasted like, so we gave them a chance to try it.