June Rain

I promise! No more pictures of flowers for a while. This is a picture of a parking lot, not a picture of flowers. We've heard that June has been an abnormally wet month at home, so I thought I'd share just a few pictures about our rainfall. Sendai averages 46 inches of rain per year with most of it coming during the summer. In May we get 4.25 inches, followed by 5.43 in June, 6.29 in July, 6.86 in August, and then 8.6 in September. That accounts for over 30 inches during our rainy season and it makes the flowers bloom.

My sweet wife tells me it takes all kinds of people to make a world, but that I'm in a class all by myself. However, I learned something else this week about the weather and need to share. We had rain every day this past week, sometimes heavy, but mostly a slow drizzle or a mist. When it finally got wet enough, and the humidity was near 100% I noticed that the water droplets on the fences would stay for more that a half hour after the rain ended before they evaporated. Furthermore, I learned that the water is most abundant near the bottom of the verticle pickets and that rust sets in. Thus, the title for this picture is going going ----.

And this one is gone. The bottoms of the pickets have disappeared, a victim of water followed by rust. Now you know the rust of the story.

Another new experience this week was a game called ground golf. Here you see Ito san getting ready to hit the ball. He's one of our our Eikaiwa students and I went to watch him play on Saturday morning between rain showers. The game is a combination of golf, miniture golf, and croquet. It's played on a large playground using golf rules with wooden balls a little larger than a regular golf ball.

Before they begin, they put out the holes which consist of a wire base that serves as the hole with a short flag sticking up that shows the number. They space them just like in regular golf so that there are long and short "fairways." The players get good and can control the ball quite well on this uneven surface. Regular golf in Japan is very expensive and this is free. They were having a great time.

We completed transfers a week ago and have two new office elders. This is Elder Kawabata. He's very polite and can speak some English but has a difficult time hearing the words at the normal speaking speed. I'm sure this will improve after he's been here a while.

This is Elder Takami and he doesn't speak English. He's the commissarian and we work together so I've got to get courage to say more in Japanese. I have Elder Kawabata's problem of hearing Japanese words spoken at normal speed, only my ear is much slower. Well, it will be an interesting next few weeks as we work on communication. We had another baptism in our ward this past weekend and baptisms are up throughout the mission this month.

Dad didn't mention that he spent half a day on Friday helping Sister Tateoka clean out the garage. We've collected old appliances,etc., from missionary apartments and brought them to the honbu and stored them in the mission home garage. It is very hard to dispose of things in Japan. We have to call the waste disposal people (which we can't do as we don't speak Japanese) and have them come give us a quote for the cost of disposal for each item (stove, microwave, bike frame, etc.) and then we have to go to a store that sells the stickers and buy the stickers. We then label the items with the correct sticker and call the waste disposal place again. They will give us a day when they will come pick the things up. It's kind of time consuming and we need the help of the elders to finish it. We took all of the items that were still good and made a list so other missionaries can request those things they need. We hope to have the garage cleaned out this week. The Tateokas will have several guests here for training the following week and would like to have a clean garage.

Zone Conferences start tomorrow, so it's been busy at the honbu. We enjoy the interaction with the young missionaries and are learning a lot. We hope we are being of service. We love HeavenlyFather and our Savior Jesus Christ. We want more than anything to help build up the kingdom here in Japan. We are still trying to learn Japanese. I am helping the sisters this Friday and they want me to bear my testimony in Japanese, so I have to get busy. I did it when we first came but I didn't really understand what I was saying. Now, I hope to do a better job.

We love you all and thank you for the calls and cards for Dad for Father's Day. He's the best and I'm glad you let him know you appreciate him. We love you all and hope you DADs had a wonderful Father's Day as well.