April 20. 2003 (Easter)

Sunday, April 20, 2003 (Easter)
Dear Family and Friends,
It was great hearing from every one of our immediate family during this past week. We are happy that everyone is doing well. Ray and Rinda, congratulations on a new grand-daughter. Thanks for your e-mail, Sherisa, we’re so glad that you like school so much and that you are being diligent in your studies, that will serve you well. We have had beautiful weather for a day or two and now rain, rain, rain. Hiroshima is so beautiful with many flowers out in bloom. The azalea’s are particularly pretty. We surely hope you are getting some spring rains.
We have enjoyed Pres. Bank’s daughter and family here. They are leaving to go home tomorrow. Pres. Banks has tried to spend as much time as possible with them and they have seen some of Hiroshima’s sights. He had to go to Tokyo for three days last week, and left yesterday to visit one of the Stake’s Priesthood meetings and will be back tonight.
A while back, a lady called Mom and wondered if we could come and talk to her English class. We planned and prepared thinking it would be a whole class of school children. Thurs. afternoon we met them at the Hiroshima Granvia Hotel. When we got there it turned out to be besides the teacher, a middle aged women and two twenty-ish year old women. None of them (including the teacher) understood English very well and luckily we could keep the conversation going by using Japanese, here and there. Mom showed them some pictures of the family and they enjoyed seeing them and talking about the family.
On Friday, Sis. Gollaher (Mom’s cousin) held a little luncheon for Sis. Jackson who is going home, Thurs. and invited Mom. I walked her over to a store in our main shopping area to meet Sis. Gollaher and we ended up on the wrong street. It was about time to meet so I hailed a taxi and had them take us there. She had a good time and I walked right straight back to the Mission Office. It is funny how easy it is to get turned around on these streets, especially when you are in a hurry. It is a good thing we aren’t trying to proselytize and find our way here and there.
One of the members of the Bishopric in our Ward is a medical Dr. He has made arrangements for Mom to go to the Hiroshima University Medical Center to get her annual cancer-scan. It is scheduled for next Wed., so yesterday we decided we better go find out where the medical center is located so we wouldn’t need to spend time looking for it Wed. (Wed. is one of our busy days when all the new missionaries come in.) A public bus took us right to it and since it was raining we decided to stay on the bus and come back home. That was a hard one for the bus driver to understand, but he complied with our wishes.
This next week we will have 10 new missionaries coming in and 5 returning home. Friday transfers are scheduled, this comes around every 5 weeks, at which time about one third of the missionaries are transferred. With arranging all the money and purchasing train tickets and plane tickets, and transfer schedules for everyone, it becomes quite a job for all of us.
We continue to be concerned about those (especially the ones in our family) that are serving in the Iraq crisis. From what we can hear it soon should be over. In a way it is nice to be out of touch of so much war, etc. Occasionally we buy an English paper and get news about the war from another countries point of view.
We are doing well and enjoying ourselves here. Until next time,
Love from the Roper senkyoshi’s, haha and chichi