Day 40 Road Trip of Encouragement

Saturday October 10th, 2009

We were invited to an Oklahoma Christian Banquet this evening. So we talked with Obata-san and we are going on a Road Trip!  Encouragement and Adventure, GO!!! We were excited to take a road trip by ourselves. Just me, Paul and the GPS.

 

 

Here’s our chance to really test this thing out, on the open road. We left Haruna around 2:00pm and drove to Mito. Our drive there was beautiful.  We saw a lot of rural Japan, and some wide open spaces that reminded us of home.  Pretty rare in most of developed Japan.

 

 

 

 

We got to stop when ever we wanted and stay as long as we wanted. So cool. We stopped at one rest stop and they had fun food so we decided to take a late lunch break. I went to the restroom and this little old lady stopped me and was looking at my hair. All I could understand was “pretty” so I politely said thank you. Then she started to wipe her face with my hair. Not really sure what that was all about, but it was a funny story to tell Paul.  Soon we ordered lunch. Paul ordered something like a chilly dog. I took the safe road and bought a ham sandwich and Pringles chips. After lunch Paul went back into the rest stop store and got us some ice cream. Chocolate ice cream. Until now we really hadn’t found any GOOD chocolate ice cream. It was delicious! One our way out the little old lady from the bathroom waved at us from her car as she was leaving too. I really wish I had gotten a picture of her.

It took us about 3 hours to get there and we were an hour early. So we had a little time to look around. They were having the seminar in the top floor of a huge department store. We walked around a little, then soon found the place where the meeting was. We also found some friends we met last time we were at Mito church. The Thompsons are an awesome couple. They are here teaching English at a couple of schools, but they still find time to preach and teach the Gospel to whom ever they find. Allen was telling us how he had just preached a lesson on adversity to a homeless shelter. WOW. He is a very passionate guy. His wife Laura is so sweet. I wish we lived a little closer to them. I think we would enjoy hanging out with them. We met so many nice people. There were students there on the Pacific Rim trip, Japanese high school students looking at going to OC in Oklahoma, Alumni that work at Ibaraki Christian University, and a few missionaries from around Japan. It was a very fun night. We loved meeting all the wonderful people and having some time away from home.   Here’s Paul with John and Joel Osborne. They are brothers.  Joel is a missionary currently working in Sendai, and John is OC’s Director of International Programs.

 

That evening we went to the Carrell’s (American Missionaries in Matsudo) house to stay the weekend with them.