Lost but not Lost

A week of adventures. We spent 8 hours yesterday looking for the temple in Fukuoka and never finding it. We did see a lot of pretty scenery and even a glimpse of the ocean. We were also looking for Costco and apparently drove right by it unawares. The Costco here sits in back of a big shopping mall and cannot be seen from the road. Since Kyushu (our part of Japan--it is an island) is made up of many hills and mountains, it is hard to see very far away. Reminds me of driving around Becky's place in Pennsylvania. Or the Palouse, although with a lot more trees. 

We wanted to attend the temple, but ended up driving home instead. It is normally about a two hour drive from our place to the temple, according to the members. We also found out, today, that the temple is very hard to find. Next time we will have our GPS unit, even though it is in Japanese--written and spoken. 

I have been resisting getting a GPS unit, since it is not in English, but now I am ready. As the navigator, I was lost most of the time:) When we found the road to the expressway home, we took it! There is a building right by an on-tramp to the expressway that has 'Kyo-wa' written on the side in great huge roman letters.  In other words, easy for me to read. 'Kyo-wa' means 'Today'. When we passed it for the second time, I thought, "Look, there are two of those buildings in this area." Very soon I realized it was the same building and by the time we passed it the 3rd and 4th times, we just laughed, "Ahh, there's kyo-wa, again." We had accidently found a loop of expressway that completely went around Fukuoka and allowed us to pass the same spot many times. We had a great day anyway. We have hope for Costco, since we actually saw the shopping mall it sits behind. We will try for the temple another time.

Tonight we were part of a discussion with an investigator's friend. The friend is a Christian and was concerned about what the investigator was studying. When someone already believes in Christ, that puts us way ahead of the game here in Japan. The elders showed them the film about Christ's life and death and Doubting Thomas' story. I found out that the film does not have to be in English for me to cry. Both women were very touched. The investigator has a baptismal date already set. She kept explaining things to her friend. I was able to follow along with the scriptures in English and actually made some suggestions that apparently were helpful. When it came time for my one-line testimony in Japanese, I was able to pull enough words out of my head without reading the testimony out of a book beforehand. The testimony was really really (probably another really) short. But true and all my own words. And the Japanese was accurate also. (I asked afterward.) So the investigator's friend is now also an investigator.

I had been feeling a little put out about yesterday. There are so many things we could have been doing, but when I saw the film of Jesus' life and death and gift for us, it put my life back into perspective again. 

Our YSA group is dwindling. This is to be expected. However, we need ideas. Would any of you please send me ideas of activities you and/or those you know have been doing? We really need small, fun activities and not huge region wide ones. The young single adults are used to great big things happening every few months, but the idea of just getting together to go do something, this idea is new to them. So what did you do last week that was off-the-cuff and fun? All ideas accepted. Thanks in advance.

We found a park for walking around. Even though we got lost finding it, we located it on the map so that we can go there again. Dad is sending some pictures of us in the park. A kind person walking past us stopped to take the picture. 

Hope your week was good. It is starting to warm up here. I'm not too sure what I think when the weather is practically shirt sleeves sometimes and it is only February. Usually it gets down to almost freezing during the night, but warms up quite pleasantly in the day, especially if the sun is shining. It doesn't always rain. 

I found a new Hyaku-en (dollar) store with really nice dishes. So now I have tea mugs (for mugi-cha--a barley tea) and saucers and rice bowls that are pottery instead of melamine. We hosted three meetings at our apartment last week and needed to upgrade our presentation. The missionaries are very accepting of everything, but when it came to hosting the stake president and his wife, I felt better with real dishes. 

Love, Mom, Grandma or Kandie, take your pick