A pictorial tribute to Dad on Father's Day

Happy Father's Day, Dad! Since you gave me a hard time about not posting enough, I thought I'd get back at you by posting pictures of you! However, in all seriousness, we really appreciate how much effort you have put in to 'be there' for us and our children throughout our lives. We are so fortunate to have so many opportunities to rub shoulders with such a great man during our time on this earth. We are not nearly the photographers that Kristi is, but here are a few of the fun pictures we've captured over the last several years when you've been there for us.
We love you!

You were so surprised Ryan graduated, you came all the way to Buffalo to be sure A Saturday in South Bend with Ashley and Ryan

Christmas morning with family

Spending a week with the grandkids while Janny and Ryan celebrated 10th anniversary

Teaching your family the gospel

A week with our family before leaving for Japan

The twins at preschool 'graduation'. We're certain you would have been there if you were here! They still pray everyday for your safe return.

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.

June in Sendai

The weeks are flying by! It's hard to believe that early summer is here and that we only have a few months left. It's time for another of our busy weeks when transfers occur. This week seasoned missionaries return home and new ones come to take their place. Unfortunately the new ones are never enough. The mission is slowly losing missionaries and by the next transfer President Tateoka may have to close one or more areas. Our mission is having more success right now than we've seen since we've been here. There are currently about 25 investigators with June baptismal dates. We don't put in many pictures of missionaries since you don't know them but I pulled this one out because Elder Gary Stevenson, pictured above with the Tateokas and the office elders, has been announced as our new Area President. He's been to our mission twice so far and this past weekend he came to speak in stake conference. We really enjoy him and so do our missionaries.

Japan is truly beautiful in spring (and every other season) and I've been taking a few pictures of landscaping. Here is a yard with lots of space between plants.

Here is another landscape where they've made every inch count. When we get home we've got to do something in our back yard. It may be corn if economics stay tight. Do you think we could make corn look like this?

I couldn't resist a photo of this small legume tree with beautiful yellow flowers. There are so many different species of flowering plants that we're always seeing a new one.

This close up reveals the characteristics of these beautiful flowers.

This is the Red Cross Hospital about a block up the street from us. Medical procedures are handled very differently in Japan. Doctors have offices in the hospitals and there are almost no private offices or clinics. After you make an appointment at this hospital, you go to the lobby and line up to get a number and put your hospital card through an automated reader. Next you sit in a large lobby in front of the assigned doctor's room until your number pops up on a monitor. Since neither the urologist, his nurses, nor the receptionist speak English, it is a challenge to understand what they are telling me. (That's why I take Brother Hamamoto with me.) As long as they don't put me in the hospital, it's okay. Hospital stays are measured in weeks here rather than in hours like they are in the U.S.

We hope that you are all well and look forward to posts from you in the future. In the meantime, know that the gospel is the most valuable thing in our lives! As we have been assisting the missionaries in teaching discussions in the last couple of days, we've realized even more how blessed we are to have it. Stay close to the Lord and follow the counsel of the Prophet and other leaders. These are times when we can't be too close to the Spirit. We love you and pray for you daily.

By the way, we are pleased to let you know that Don Price is recovering. It is a slow and very painful process, but we are thankful to hear that he's doing better.

The Boots

I've been telling you I would send pictures of the boots, so here they are. They go everywhere. Daniel prefers them over anything else. I've been wanting to practice taking pictures since I went with Stephanie and this is what I started with. Sorry to have to post them on the blog, but I wanted you to see them Mom and Dad, and the files are too big for email.

We had to have treats so make this happen.

Pictures from Kristi's Visit in May 2009

One of the places we visited with Kristi was the "Site" of Sendai Castle. There are many "sites" of castles in Northern Japan, but not many castles left. This was taken just as we were hiking up a path to the area where the castle was once located.

This is in the same area as the above picture. We are at the bottom entry way to the castle site.

Children in Japan (and everywhere--really) are just beautiful. Kristi took lots of pictures of children. We saw this little girl when we visited one of the small islands at Matsushima.

This home is in our neighborhood. They celebrated "Children's Day" while Kristi was here. The carp hanging on the pole let people know they have boys.

We took this picture at the airport when Kristi first arrived. Matsumune Date was a famous lord in Northern Japan. He is the man who built Sendai Castle and many other things in this area. He had a huge estate at Matsushima.

Speaking of Matsushima, we've posted pictures from here before. There are over a hundred small islands in this bay and it is one of the favorite tourist sites in Japan.

This is on the boat ride out among the islands. We had a beautiful day for our visit. It wasn't too hot or cold. It was fun to treat Kristi to edamame ice cream while we were in Matsushima.

Earlier in the week our friends, Nezele and Susumu Matsune, took us to a craft village near the beautiful Michinoku Park. Dale is making friends with a bear we found there.

We loved having Kristi here to see where we live and what wonderful opportunities we have to share the gospel with people we meet. Last week we had the chance to invite some of our friends and acquaintances to hear the BYU Wind Symphony in downtown Sendai. We were pleased that our tutor and her husband were able to come with us. Also, Ito san (one of our older English students) and his wife came, and then several others from our English classes. The concert was very good. The audience was a little too polite in the first half of the concert, but by the second half and the end, they were clapping and clapping. We were amazed at how many people, after the concert ended, wanted to have their pictures taken with the members of the group. Dale spent quite awhile taking pictures for people. All in all, it was a very good missionary tool.

Time is flying by. We've been in Japan now for over a year. We've grown to love the country, the people and sharing the gospel. We can't teach full lessons by ourselves but we avail ourselves of every opportunity to help with people who speak English or to have our testimonies translated for us. Life is good. We miss all of you but there is truly no other place we would rather be right now. Heavenly Father is mindful of all of us and we feel His tender mercies in our life and know they are in yours also.
Next time, Dad will post, but I don't want you to think I don't have things to share with you. He does all the photography, for which I'm thankful, but I get the benefit too. We love you all and hope you know how much we appreciate your thoughts and prayers.

Trip to the East Coast Part 2

I hope that you can make sense of these pictures, because they are all scattered. I'm still not sure how to make things the way that I want them. Blogging is kind of hard!

Okay, as you can tell, the one at the very top left is the Statue of Liberty. We got to go up in the pedestal. It was pretty neat. Next to it is Independence Hall. I had to take a picture of that, especially because it was in National Treasure 1! Up above is the Signing Room inside of Independence Hall. To the left of these words is the Liberty Bell. We went there before Independence Hall. Underneath is a picture of a beautiful flowering tree in Central Park. If you've seen the movie Enchanted, then you should know the building below. It's the one where they're on the roof, and it's really steep, and they're sliding down it. Below that is Emma, Molly, Maeve, Joseph, and Benjamin on some rocks in Central Park. Emma had to pose for the camera alone too. Beneath that is Molly, Emma, and Maeve on the Staton Island Ferry. Underneath that is Emma buried in sand at the Jersey Shore, and a picture of her and Molly is beneath that one. There was a huge Toys R Us in New York City, and there was a huge lego Empire State Building (pictured down) as well as a lego Statue of Liberty. The store was one of Benjamin's favorite parts, besides seeing Joseph. We also ran into my Young Womens president and her family at a gift shop in Philadelphia too. Benjamin was excited for that, because her son is his friend.

Kristi Comes to the Land of Samari Warriors and Flowers

We were excited to have Kristi come to visit us for a week beginning May 2, 2009. We hardly gave her time to get over her jet lag before we began to catch up on the family and life at home. Then we exposed her to life in the mission offfice, as well as to members, investigators and to numerous sights in Japan. We were very surprised and pleased when the Matsune's came to church last Sunday since they had been transferred to Tokyo about a month ago. They had returned on vacation and took us to see traditional woodworking in Japan and to a beautiful large park. Only a few of the photos from that outing are included.

Kristi became a pro at office work and then we were invited by Sis. Furukawa to come to her home for a photo session in traditional Japanses summer attire. What wonderful members we have here! When the photos were finished, Sis. Furukawa gave Kristi the kimono as a gift.

During the latter part of the week we went to inspect missionary apartments and along the way had a chance to see a reconstructed castle that had originally been built hundreds of years ago.

This castle is in Aizuwakamatsu in the south central part of our mission. We had great visits with the missionaries as we helped them with apartment improvements.

On Saturday before our English class, we went to the west side of Sendai to see a 325 foot tall Buddha. Afterwards, it was great to take Kristi to meet our English students and although she said that she didn't want to say anything, she willingly participated in the class.

After church this morning we drove to the Sendai airport so that Kristi could return to her family. She is now crossing the Pacific Ocean and should be home in time for her children to wish her happy Mother's Day.

Dad has done a great job, but he wanted me to add my thoughts. I just echo what he has said about our visit with Kristi. She has learned first hand how thoughtful and kind the Japanese people are--especially the members here in Sendai.

I want to thank all of you, our family and friends, for the thoughtful things you do for us and for your support and prayers. I've enjoyed the calls from family for Mother's Day and look forward to hearing more from all of you. It was wonderful to have Racquel post pictures of their trip to New York/New Jersey. The time if flying by so rapidly that we, too, will soon be returning home. It will be bitter sweet. We will work hard this remaining 6 months to try to share the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ with the people here in the Japan Sendai Mission.