An Accounting Week

Wow, what a huge machine! Notice the porch in the background that might be all of two feet tall. This backhoe is not as big as a riding lawn mower but they used it for making a trench in the front yard of the house that is being built next to the mission home. It's the only picture for this week, since it was a week of intense office activity with no P-day.

President and Sister Tateoka were gone all week and we were left to take care of things here. The Church representative in Tokyo who is in charge of missionary visas came to help Mom learn how to help the missionaries. The head accountant from Tokyo spent three days here trying to teach me to be an accountant. I'm not sure the lesson took. We'll see if it is possible to reconcile the bank statement this week. So far, I have not been able to balance the bank statement, even with Ruth's help. They have a convoluted spread sheet that makes no sense at all. When I couldn't do it with Brother Osako looking over my shoulder, he just took over and did it, then told me to practice closing the books each week during the next month and try again to balance the bank statement. Maybe one day I'll know the difference between what they call a debit and credit and also be able to switch things between internal accounting codes without causing heart attacks in Tokyo.

Today we had an interesting experience at Church. We had a chance to spend about half an hour with President and Sister McArthur, who run the JMTC in Tokyo. Since the Japanese missionaries only spend 3 weeks in the MTC, that leaves the McArthurs 3 weeks before the next group of missionaries arrives (because transfers are on a 6 week schedule coming from Provo).
They use their extra time to strengthen the rest of the Church throughout Japan, since Pres. McArthur served as a mission president in the Fukuoka Mission and is fluent in Japanese. They are from St. George and she doesn't speak much more Japanese than we do. It was interesting to get their take on the Japanese culture and how the Church is doing here.

This week we need to put money in the missionaries' post office accounts for their travel to Sendai to meet with Brother Heaton, who is over the Provo MTC. When that is complete, we leave (probably Tuesday morning) to inspect missionary apartments in the central part of our mission. That should be fun!

We pray for all of you and know that you are in good hands while we are away. The gospel is true and we are very blessed to have it in our lives. Let's never take it for granted!

Love,
Dad, Mom, Grandpa, Grandma, etc., etc., etc.