Costco, Himeji Castle and Some thoughts on Primary

The long lost blogger has returned.  After nearly two weeks I’m finally getting around to posting something.  This week has found us enjoying our new schedule and our new coworkers.  Tonight we went over to Jessica Tew and Kiera    apartment.  They are old BYU-I roommates who decided to come to Japan and teach English.  They work for another school in the area and attend the Marugame LDS branch with us.  We ate American hamburgers, Jell-O, potato chips, and sliced vegetables.  Lori and Deron came along as well, and brought there adorable four month old little girl. We played PIT, speed-scrabble, and watched Callan turn a large Tupperware bin into a bed for him and his stuffed doggy.

Last week on Monday, we used the last day of our five day train pass to make one last trip to Costco, and see one of Japans oldest, coolest castles on the way.  We made the trip with Ramey and Kelley Walther who also teach here in Marugame at Gem School.  While Himeji Castle was the main tourist destination of our trip, all of us agreed that even if the castle hadn’t been open, we would have made the trip anyway just to eat some Costco pizza.  Unlike Japanese pizza, which is as small as it is unsubstantial, and is covered in such bizarre ingredients as corn, shrimp, mochi (pounded chewy rice cakes), sunny side up eggs, and Vienna sausages, Costco pizza is large, greasy, and covered in American favorites like pepperoni, sausage, green peppers, and tomatoes.  After nearly six months of Japanese food, the greasy treat was a welcome change.  In addition to the pizza, we shared a polish dog with relish and sour cruet, bought a dozen Einstein bagels, some Kellogg’s brown rice flake cereal, kosher pickles, raisins, cranberries, and 800 grams of butter.  In all we spent about fifty dollars American and couldn’t be happier.  

We’re coming up on six months this next week and can’t believe it is half-way over.  It has been difficult to be here, and though our experiences will be priceless, we will be excited to be home in August and back to life as students.  For now, we are focusing our efforts on being content with our situation, trying to get the most out of every day we are here, knowing that though it is not always easy, it is a once in a life time chance to be here at this time of our lives, with this amount of mobility.  

I was just released last week from the Elders quorum presidency so I can translate for Melissa in Primary.  It is sad to be out of the loop and in Primary, but nice to be able to spend all of Church with Melissa.  I am gaining a greater appreciation for the sacrifices made by the sisters who serve in primary year in and year out, with out the blessings of the support of relief society attendance.  Primary workers really must be Islands of faith, able to float seemingly alone as they dedicate much of their church experience to helping the youngest members in the branch have a good church experience.  Why are the most important jobs also the most thankless?  The savior said that when we are charitable we ought to act in such a way that our right hand does not see what our left hand doeth.  I doubt primary teachers have time to let there right hand see what there left hand is doing, because both hands are constantly busy teaching lessons, encouraging reverence, opening scriptures, escorting little bodies to the bathroom, wiping noses, leading music, making crafts, and prompting prayers.  It is no wonder that working with children requires so much charity.  The savior himself was a primary worker.  When his disciples would have sent the children away, he said suffer the children to come unto me.  He took the children one by one and blessed them, and that is exactly what our primary sisters do.