Sunday, May 11, 2008

May 11 News

Dear Family and Friends,

We have survived our first earthquake!! Last Wed. night, in the middle of the night, we were awakened with much shaking and rolling. It lasted about 20 seconds. We found out later that it was a 4.0 quake centered in Mito ( I don’t know how far away that is). We had an aftershock that was much milder on Friday morning. Oh, boy!! I sure hope we don’t have any BIG ones!!!

I had a lovely Mother’s Day. The missionaries fixed dinner for us last night (Saturday night) since the Hills were going to be gone for dinner today. They made us three kinds of fried rice: regular (pork), chicken, and curry. (Curry is very popular here). They also made us Gyoza, which is like Pot Stickers, only different. I hope to learn how to make them before I leave, though I don’t know if I can get the ingredients in America. We had watermelon (very expensive here—paid for by the Hills) and brownies for dessert (always a favorite for a choc-oholic like me!!) We look forward to Skype visits with our kids tomorrow morning (Monday morning for us, Sunday afternoon/evening for them).

As you know, Jim has had to work long hours to try to do the financial stuff, usually getting home at 10 or 10:30. But Friday night I went to bed without him. The next morning he told me he got home about 11:15. He has been trying to do the month-end reports for April. Since he had only done one other month-end report (actually, he just mostly watched Elder Iida do it), he could not figure out all the amounts and where to put them and what they meant, etc. He spent hours and hours on Thursday and Friday. Finally, he prayed for help, pleading with the Lord to help him understand what he needed to do. As he started back into the documents, he started seeing connections and the figures became more understandable—both what they were about and what he needed to do with them. Though he got home so late, he also felt pretty good about how to prepare the reports. Truly the Lord takes care of those who are trying to do His work. How grateful we are for the blessings of the Spirit to help us do what we need to do.

Our phrase for this week is: “O, genki des ka?” (How are you? Genki is pronounced with the G like in Good, and the en like in den, and ki like in key) The response is: “Hai, genki des.” (I am fine). So the missionaries will sometimes say: “Are you genki?” It’s really funny—I am very genki? So now I ask all of you: “Are you genki?” I sure hope so.

We love you all and hope that everyone is genki!!

Love, Jim & Pat

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