July 20, 2003

Sunday, July 20, 2003
Dear Family and Friends,
Today Mom gave a talk in Sacrament Meet. on Eternal Marriage. She had some very good thoughts based on the teachings of Pres. Kimball and Pres. Hinckley. Bro. Kiribayashi (Dr.) translated for her and it went very well. She said she is relieved to have it over as she has been working on it for two weeks. Our other meetings were also very good today. In our High Priest group, we studied from Chapter 13 of Pres. Tailor’s writings on the Keys of the Priesthood. Bro. Gollaher gave a wonderful lesson in English and one of the Elders translated for him. He has had a lot of experience in the Church and a wonderful knowledge of the scriptures. It was an excellent lesson (and interesting to hear it in both Japanese and English).
Yesterday was an eventful day to say the least. We left at about 8:00 AM on the Shinkansen. When we got off the train in Fukuoka, we looked down at the street, there was from two to four inches of rain water everywhere. They said it had rained all night and the lower elevations of the city were submersed. When we came down the escalator to the main floor inside the station there was water everywhere! People were taking off their shoes, rolling up their pants/ladies holding up their dresses etc, and wading in ankle deep water. Some were trying to walk on their heels. Mom and I just couldn’t bring ourselves to take off our shoes and wade in that muddy, filthy water so we waded with our shoes on, after the water went down some, to get out of the train station and there was no place to go, water everywhere. So we just waited a while and finally they allowed a few taxis to come into the parking area. People were lined up everywhere to try and catch a Taxi. As luck would have it one of the Taxis pulled ahead of the others and we hurried over and jumped in and the driver agreed to take us to the Temple. One other lady came over and wanted to go too but when she found out where we were going, she backed off. We were fifteen minutes late for the Temple session but since we had made reservations ahead of time, they held up the session until we got there. We attended two very good sessions and were through about 2:30 PM.
We had plans to go to Costco to get some more supplies to bring home. We had the address but didn’t know how to get there. When we got back down town, two men took us under their wing and stayed right with us until they got us on the right bus going to the right place. We finally got there and filled our small suitcase and a big bag with our groceries, and then got back on the bus for Fukuoka Station. The bus got in a traffic jam and we were well over an hour getting back to the station. The water had all been cleaned out and with clear skies we had no problem with the rain. We got home about 10: PM. Mom said, “This bed looks wonderful. And I feel just like our older girls felt when we got back home from Samoa at 3:00 a.m., they patted their bed and said “ Oh, this feels so good”. (We got into San Francisco in the morning without sleep, drove all that day and most of the next night without stopping because the starter went out on our car and we were afraid that if we stopped somewhere on the Nevada desert, the car would kill and we couldn’t get it started again.)
We plan to feed the Office Staff on Thurs. for Mom’s Birthday. Sis. Banks has insisted we have it in their Apt., so that will be really convenient. We are going to buy Pizza (Pizza Hut Pizza, no less), and Mom is making salad and I will help with the dessert. We lugged a case of root beer home yesterday ( the elders favorite drink) for the occasion. We should have a nice time.
One of the main ways the Japanese advertise, is to have people standing in conspicuous areas passing out small packages of tissues (Kleenex) with the name of company and what they are advertising on the outside of the packages. I started collecting them and now have over 50 packages in my office. They would be handy to have at home but not worth the space in the luggage. Mom keeps trying to get me to quit collecting them because they’re running us out of house and home. Another interesting custom in Japan!
We thank you for keeping us informed and pray that you and your families will be well. So long until next week.
Love Ropa Choro and Ropa Shimai.