We are loving the winter weather so far in Tokyo. We have been told this is not the normal cold weather. There are still leaves on the trees and some trees are still a vibrant red. We still have not gone below freezing and the temperatures during the day are in the 50s and low 60s. It’s absolutley beautiful here. We are loving Tokyo more and more each month! Some of you might know that we were disappointed when we learned we would not be living in the old Mission Home in Kichijoji but instead we would be living in the downtown bustling area of Tokyo. Our feelings have changed! As we serve, we see more and more the wisdom of living in our apartment in Azabu.

We mentioned in an earlier post how we never saw dogs in Japan when we served here 44 years ago but it seems everyone has a dog now. They push them around in strollers and really spoil them. We haven’t had the nerve to take pictures, but now they are dressing them up for the winter. I have no idea how you get clothes on some of those dogs. There are so many dog stores that dot the city too.

This is a photo from our Christmas morning walk. Leaves are still beautiful on some trees while others are bare.

As mentioned earlier, we live on a six week cycle. It starts with new missionaries arriving on Thursday, Friday they get their companion and all the missionaries returning home come in Friday and fly home on Saturday. This transfer was thrown off a bit because the Church put a black out period for traveling during the holidays. All missionaries returning home had to be home (it takes 30 hours of flying for our Brazilian missionaries) before the blackout period started so we had to send our missionaries home Monday. The black out period only applied to those going home, not to those arriving from the MTCs. That left us in a bind because we had several missionaries without companions until theirs arrived. Oh the joys of navigating a mission!

We feel that God continues to send us amazing missionaries. The group that just arrived consisted of 3 Japanese, 3 Filipino, 3 Brazilians and 1 American. New Missionary Orientation becomes a little difficult because the non-Japanese don’t speak enough Japanese to understand, so it needs to be taught in three different languages. It gets more and more difficult to send our older missionaries home. The first group we had only known for ten days so there wasn’t a lot of emotion there compared to now. The longer they are our missionaries the more difficult it is to say goodbye to them at the airport. We love our children but had no idea the love that we would feel for the missionaries we have been called to serve with. They are like your own children, some are experiencing difficulties, some are more obedient, some need more attention that others, etc., but we just can’t help but love them the minute we meet them at the airport.

On Christmas Eve we had missionary meetings at the apartment for most of the day but that evening we decided to walk to see the lights in Roppongi. It is about a 30 minute walk, one that we walk two or three times a week for our morning walk. Six weeks ago we noticed electrical boxes at the bases of all the trees that line the street. We looked up to see them covered in lights. After talking about it for weeks we finally made it. It looked a lot different than our morning walks. At 6:30 am there are a couple of other people on the street there but Christmas Eve was packed. Dozens of police were there to help with the crowd. It was beautiful to look down the street and see all the lights and the Tokyo Tower in the distance.

There is a restaurant about ten minutes walk from there that I’ve been wanting to visit since we arrived. In the summer it is too hot to walk there and but mostly we have been too busy. We decided to finally check it out. Most restaurants in Japan are small so seating is usually tight and hold between 15-20 people. Because it is popular we arrived to find a line. They told us it would be 10-15 minute wait and we decided on Christmas Eve we had nothing else to do so we would wait. They were so kind to bring us out a cup of hot broth which we held in our hands to keep us warm. A couple of men joined us and we started visiting with them. They were visiting from Rome, Italy. We shared with them that it was our 40th wedding anniversary this last year and we had planned a trip to Italy and Switzerland, until the Missionary Department took our passports away in order to get visas for us to come to Japan. While we were chatting the waitress came out and asked if we were together. We told her no, that we were just visiting. She came out a few minutes later to say that if we were willing to eat at the same table together she could get us in right then. We all looked at each other and decided to eat together instead of wait outside in the cold. It was a delightful evening. We tried a variety of things, mostly dim sum type food. It was such a relaxing evening – something we have not experienced for about six months now.

Other than a missionary experiencing a bike accident, our Christmas was a restful Christmas. We read the entire chapter of Luke 2 and realized we had never read the whole thing at Christmas time because we always have little children around. In the past, we had always wondered what our first Christmas alone would look like. We found out! We do miss our children and grandchildren but they are all being so blessed while we serve that we cannot complain.

Our greatest gift this month has been the blessing of another adorable grandbaby, Manamea. Tanner has waited his whole life to be a dad and he and Mariah are loving being parents. They can’t get enough of her! So happy to have her in our family!