Day 94-99 Lots of fun at the Kindergarten and Paul’s preachers meeting.

  Thursday December 3rd, 2009

    This month we were able to go to the kindergarten a lot. Paul joined me December 3rd. We wanted to introduce the kids to Paul. The kids loved him! We continued with what they were working on. American food! Something we know a lot about. We made up a game where they had to order from a menu and tell the waiter what they wanted in English. It was cute. Most of the kids ordered hot dogs and usually ordered 3 at a time. We had fun interacting with them.

Saturday December 5th,2009

    We returned to the school for the kids’ Christmas Play. When we walked into the room a lot of the kids started yelling our names. They were excited to see us. The kids sang “Winter Wonderland” and acted out “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and “ The Nutcracker.” It was so cute in Japanese. One thing that was really different was all of the audience was sitting on the floor. They had a floor heater, so it was nice and toasty, but something completely different than an American school.  * again we can’t publish any photo’s with the children on our public Blog.*  

Monday and Tuesday December 7th and 8th, 2009

   On Dec. 7th, I (Paul) attended a 2 day preachers meeting in Hakone with Brother Obata and many of the other preachers in Japan. This was the first night Stacey and I had spent apart since coming to Japan. We went to a Hotel that had an “Onsen” (hot springs bath.) The focus of the meeting was to study about the roots of the Restoration movement and some preachers from the “Christian church” also attended. We learned about our common roots together and worshipped together (in acappella.) In the evening most of the preachers and missionaries all went to the hot springs bath. It’s a kind of community bath divided by gender, where you wash first and then then get in the natural hot springs water to soak after you are clean. It was a very different experience but many of the Japanese men complimented me on being brave enough to try out the experience. The Japanese believe that this kind of fellowship removes all barriers. Well there were definitely were not any “barriers,” enough said. The meeting itself was very informative and one of the missionaries even translated for me. The bath was a relaxing experience and the mountains we were in were beautiful. It was good to spend some time with just the men for a few days but even better to be back at home.