Sakura, MLC, Conference

It is Sakura, or cherry blossom season in Japan!

Sister Imano has been helping us in the office since she completed her mission in Tokyo.  Now she is headed off to BYU-Idaho.  Her help has been greatly appreciated.  We enjoyed a sushi lunch on her last day with us.

The waitress measured how tall our stack of plates was to determine the cost of our meal.

It was time for MLC again.  We'll be sending six of these missionaries home in the next transfer.

The Smith's and the office elders have been busy distributing the ipads to the various districts.  They should all be distributed by the end of April.

The conference schedule is different here.  The Saturday morning session begins in Utah when it's about one a.m. Sunday morning for us.  So, we caught part of the Saturday sessions before we left for church, then watched the rest of Saturday when we got home from church.  We've been catching up on the Sunday sessions throughout the week.  We're so grateful for the technology that allows us to see and participate in conference.

We enjoyed finding our friend Lono in the Tabernacle Choir.  He and his mother came to teach us hula back in January.  It was also good to hear our Area President, Elder Ringwald speak in the Saturday afternoon session.  And Elder Aoyagi from our area presidency gave the closing prayer in the Sunday afternoon session.

On Wednesday, we played a fun game after English.  It's called "Bang, Bang".  Two people stand back to back.  When a Japanese word is called, it's a race to see who can say the English word first, along with "Bang, Bang".  

They tricked Elder A.  They called out an English word and he didn't know the Japanese word (for elephant!)

Elder H. was trying to help our little girl!

On Thursday, our visiting teachers came to take us to see the cherry blossoms.  It is a very short season, only about a week.  It was a nice sunny day for us.

Many of these trees are over 100 years old.

There's still some snow on the mountains.

There were lots of people out enjoying the beauty.

And lots of flowers are blooming too!

Then we had a nice Chinese lunch.  These are the starters:  chicken and pickled vegetables and in the middle, jelly fish (!)  Think gummy worms without the color and flavorings.

Then egg drop soup, salmon, dumplings and rice.  And almond pudding for dessert.  I have great visiting teachers!  We made it back just in time to go out to Kakuda for our English class.

Today we watched the Sunday sessions of conference.  In between, we had a quick lunch with the Tagajo members and missionaries that came.  We had "Taco Rice" which is a dish from Okinawa like tacos without the beans and chips.

We have a new poster for lessons featuring our own Tagajo Missionaries!  Aren't they cute!

The Smith's invited us and the Nagamachi missionaries over after conference for "a little Easter snack".

It was like Thanksgiving!

We can count on our Japanese missionaries to help us finish up all our rice!

And we had a great spiritual thought by our office elders about President Monson.  Another wonderful week!