July 27, 2008

Dear Family & Friends,

It has been pretty quiet around the office this week—Jim went with President Hill, his wife, and the two Assistants to three Zone Conferences. They were gone Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. So I got caught up on a lot of stuff and Jim got behind. So each evening he would stay at the office until 10:30, and he had to do some work yesterday (Saturday) also, but next week should be much calmer and he will be able to get more done.

Our word this week is: jishin (geesheen) which means “earthquake.” You have probably heard on the news that Japan has had a couple of 6.0+ earthquakes in the last month or so. We have had no damage here, in fact we didn’t even feel the one up north, and the other Jim felt but I slept through it. So yesterday for our dai bo-oken, we went with the Relief Society sisters (5 in all) to an emergency preparedness center sponsored by the Tokyo Fire Department. For 2 ½ hours we watched and participated in earthquakes, fires, smoke drills, and resuscitation (CPR). They had an actual earthquake room where you could feel up to a 6.0 earthquake. We were sitting at a kitchen table and felt the room start to shake and had to drop to our knees and crawl under the table as completely as possible. We were told not to sit down but to stay on our knees as you had more control that way and to hang on to a table leg. It was really scary!! But we survived and lived to tell the tale! We practiced using a fire extinguisher, and how to bend over and follow the wall when the room was filled with smoke (if we stood up too high an alarm would sound), how to give two quick breaths and 30 compressions on a dummy (I think in America they say not to give mouth-to-mouth any more, just the compressions), and watched a movie about what happens in an earthquake. It was all so interesting and made us very aware of the things that we need to be able to do and think about. One thing Jim learned was that fire extinguishers need to be replaced a lot more frequently than he thought. (Check yours!)

It’s funny how people get used to things. The parents of the new missionaries who just came out emailed us after the earthquakes to find out how their children were doing—but none of the parents of missionaries who had been here longer than 2 or 3 months. Probably because their children had told them that they feel tremors all the time but are just fine. Of course, we hope we will never have to use any of the stuff we learned!!!!!

We hope you are all “genki”—we love you miss you—

Jim & Pat