We have proof that Spring is just around the corner. Flowers and trees are beginning to blossom and it is wonderful seeing the world come alive again. Japan is beautiful! We have a hotel booked for one night at the end of March in Asakusa where the cherry trees line the river. We thought we could do our morning walk there that day and then get home before lunch.

Our early morning walk is one our favorite times of the day. Steve calls it our ‘consulting time’. We are together a lot of the time but often we are also with our missionaries. If we are home, Steve is in his office catching up on administrative details or reading his 144 weekly letters from the missionaries. Due to his responsibilities, Steve is always in bed one hour or more after Laurie has retired to bed. In the mornings we are fresh and we can talk about things happening, or things that need to happen, in our mission. We are dreading that we are headed into the warmer, muggy summer days. We have loved our winter walks.

We learned this week that Japan is going to a four-day work week beginning in April. They hope it will be a helpful thing for families and that people will want to have more children. They offer incentives for people to get married and have children because the population is declining. Tokyo’s birthrate is now .99, which means that is the number of children a Japanese woman will have during her lifetime. It has to be at least 1.0 to replace those who are dying. The demands here are many, the salaries are not great and people don’t have time for a family. It is hoped a shorter work week may help that situation. The median age in Japan is 50 years old. It is 38 years old in the United States. The article said there were more dogs strollers sold last year in Japan than strollers for children. When we first arrived we attended a ward and they had a baby blessing. We could tell that it didn’t happen often because the mother-in-law and mother of the baby were dressed in kimonos sitting on the front row and they had their cameras ready. The father came up and as they attached a microphone to his suit, he bowed his head and started to pray. The bishop had to stop him and tell him he needed to wait for the other Priesthood holders to get in the circle. It was clear this is a rare event here.

In an earlier entry we shared how we had discovered one of Laurie’s companions was married to a Bishop in Kofu, the furthest area of our mission. They live near the base of Mt. Fuji and it is a good 2.5 hour drive for them to come to the temple. Still, they serve as ordinance workers there every 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month. We invited them for dinner after one of their temple shifts and it was so fun to visit with them. We should have taken a picture of the cookies they brought us but we ate them too fast. They are small chocolate cookies shaped like Mt. Fuji and are topped with white chocolate to resemble snow.

This cute little van was parked by our mission vehicles. We have noticed that rarely are their cars the same as the cars in the United States, even though they are Nissan, Toyota, etc.

Elder Brad Nelson, a senior missionary in our mission, snapped this shot of us at our last Zone Conference. They made a big deal out of the fact that we still hold hands at our age. Our feedback from our last Zone Conference has been positive. We focused on being more consecrated missionaries and feel our missionaries have taken that to heart.

This past Thursday was a roller coaster day for us. Laurie hadn’t spoken with her mother for a couple of weeks and felt like she needed to call before we left for interviews. She is 95 years old and has been widowed for 30 years. It is only natural she would like to be with her husband again and we always say that she wakes up frustrated when she finds out she is still here. When Laurie spoke with her she wasn’t doing well and said she thought it would be her last day on earth. That was a downer. Shortly after that we received the above picture of our dear friends, the Padilla’s, in Hawaii. We have been friends with them for several years and often invited them to attend church activities. Lizette was baptized first. A few months later, and shortly before we left on our mission, Gio asked Steve to baptize him. Gio later received the priesthood and performed the baptisms for two more family members. This is a picture of them after their endowment and sealing in the Laie Temple. That really lifted our spirits! Soon after, we received a call that one of our missionaries had wrecked his bike and was on the way to the hospital. Six hours later he walked out of the hospital with stitches, two broken elbows and a broken wrist. Things are complicated in the mission field. In order to get this Elder Scott home it has to be approved by several different people and since Steve was in interviews, Laurie did her best to take care of things. That was a downer. After interviews Steve gave Elder Scott a Priesthood blessing, we left him with our APs and headed to the airport to pick up Elder Schultz, a new Elder flying in from Brazil. The terminal number was not written on our report so we headed to the terminal that we have picked up every missionary since we arrived. After looking around for Elder Schultz we discovered he had flown in to another terminal. It was a bit stressful getting to him but the minute we met him we loved him. We were so thankful he spoke English, which isn’t common for our Brazilian missionaries. He is delightful! In the short time we were with him we really enjoyed watching him “discover” Japan. We could hear him in the bathroom giggling as the bidet worked its magic. He took two showers because he loved the shower.

What is a blog without food in it? Laurie discovered these delicious strawberry rolls on one of her explorations a couple of months ago. We have since served them to our Mission Leadership Council and eaten them several times. Steve has sworn off treats for the month of March and Laurie is pretty excited about that – she won’t have to share the goodies.

Our testimonies continue to grow as we participate in the gathering of Israel. God truly buoys us up to meet the demands we face each day. Our language is also slowly progressing as we speak often in Sunday meetings. We can’t help but see the miracles our missionaries experience each week. Two young men walked up to the church just as the missionaries were leaving. When the missionaries asked if they could help them the young men told them they were stressed about tests at school and had wanted to come and pray somewhere. They chose our church. A friend being taught by the sister was struggling and the sisters asked women in the ward if they would participate in the lesson, only to find that they had struggled with the same issues. Missionaries were teaching at the church when they heard the landline phone ring – something that just doesn’t happen. When they answered they discovered a man on the other end who had been staying at a hotel nearby and had been reading the Bible. He wanted to know more about what was written in it and so he looked up a nearby church. A friend, who had been a foreign exchange student in Utah, showed up to church asking for baptism. How blessed we are to share the gospel in Tokyo Japan.