Yonezawa

In the mountains of northern Japan about 2 1/2 to 3 hours drive southwest of Sendai is a beautiful isolated city of about 94,000 people called Yonezawa. We have a set of elders there who were having difficulty installing a new clothes dryer so we went with the Tateokas to see what we could do. While there we took a few pictures of this secluded spot.

Just as we arrived a the local park, a wedding celebration was in progress so we stopped to snap a photo or two.

This park is the site of a famous castle that was ruled by Kamisugi several hundred years ago. It's a beautiful spot, but the castle is long gone.

Not all of the chapels in northern Japan are beautiful modern church-designed facilities. This one is a typical small store that has been turned into a chapel. In spite of looking like a store, it seems quite functional and the church is growing here. Missionaries have had good success
recently.

We found a delicious lunch about midafternoon when we were finished working with the elders and then as we passed through the mountains on the way home we stopped at a fruit stand to buy large delicious white peaches.

As you can see by this photo, we succeeded in installing the dryer! The elders were glad that we came. We washed the drapes, cleaned the windows, eliminated the mold, relpaced the burned-out lights, and hauled away a van load of garbage. They had 3 quart-sized containers that contained used cooking oil. We had fun saponifying it so that it turned solid and could be thrown away. Out of the 30 plus apartments, we have cleaned all of them except 3 or 4.

President Tateoka is doing a great job and the number of people who are joining the church is about double of what it was last year. We've had more baptisms in our ward since we last posted and we are keeping very busy in all aspects of our assignment. It's hard to realize that we are down to the last 5 weeks before we come home. We're trying to get everything done, but assignments seem to pop up faster that we can dispatch them. I guess that we will finally just turn the work over to those who come to replace us. We will do one more post before we finish our mission.

This has been a great experience and we're very glad that we came. We've met a lot of very wonderful people, have experienced a new culture, and we've come to greatly admire the hardworking young missionaries that are the heart and soul of the mission. We've learned to get around in Japan, but are far from being fluent. In fact, we are more reluctant to speak Japanese than when we first came because we now know how easy it is to make mistakes.

We send our love and hope things are going well for you.

Love Mom and Dad