Yeah, I know

Yes, I do realize it has been almost two weeks since my last post. Here is a sort of quick update on life since Youth Camp-with no pictures available.

The week after camp was the missionary/Japanese pastor's family retreat. We had a great time talking, studying, laughing, and enjoying fellowship together. One pastor and his wife just had a baby in June so I got to hold her-sort of distracting during the sessions:) We also went to Meiji Mura one afternoon-about the hottest day of August. Meiji Mura is a sort of open air museum. Buildings from around Japan built during the Meiji era-late 1800s-have been taken apart, moved and reassembled here. It is a great place. I went there the first time about 11 years ago during my first year here in Japan and loved it then, too.

This week I spent 4 days in Tsu, just arriving home about an hour ago. I went to help prepare for the Kramers, Tom and Lois, who have come for three months to fill in until our new short term missionary arrives. First we had to clean out the storage room so that we could put more furniture into it. (We is Luci Lengefeld and myself with Bill Lengefeld helping as the garbage patrol.) Since it appears we will only have one short term missionary coming we decided to close the second apartment providing a need for more storage space. Luci and Bill had asked a friend to help bring the furniture over to the Center so 'all' we had to do was put it into storage.

Wednesday had us cleaning apartments. First, we cleaned the apartment the Kramers are living in. Then, we headed over to the second apartment for final cleaning duty. We are really thankful that Becky was such a a good cleaner on a regular basis. We didn't have to do much scrubbing to get things cleaned up. Everything that day just took longer than we had anticipated which left us little time for cleaning up ourselves and buying groceries before Kramers arrived! But, it all worked out. We were really happy to see Tom and Lois get off the ferry from the airport!

Thursday was spent preparing teaching schedules and then calling utilities to get things shut off for the closed apartment. Thanks to Ayako we got all but one phone call made. Then the Kramers did the great challenge of the day-taught a class just 24 hours after arriving! I went with them to talk with the man in charge and just to make sure they arrived safely. Tom had taught the class two years ago when they were here so basically knew how to get there. I taught the class when I was a short termer so I knew a few of the students-they were very surprised to see me! We had a lot of fun.

Today was spent in red tape. We went,first, to get alien registration cards which went quite smoothly. Then we went to get cell phones. Here's where we hit the snags. Because they did not yet have the alien registration cards they could not get cell phone contracts. So, after several hours of that we were finally successful. In the middle of that I also got to call class contacts and make sure they were all ready for Tom and Lois to start classes next week.

Well, I guess that was probably more information than was necessary, but, that is what has been going on for the past couple of weeks. If you made it this far, thanks for reading!:)