We made it through the year! We have learned to take just one day at a time. If we look at the entire month, or even week, it feels overwhelming. One day at a time works for us! The weather was beautiful for most of the month, but it dropped into the low 30s at night near the end of December.

We saw this beautiful tree several times as we walked through Arisugawa Park during our morning walks. Fall in Tokyo is the end of October and November and it is beautiful. Living in Hawaii for so long has made us appreciate a beautiful Fall.

Tokyo has been quiet, as far as earthquakes go, for a few months, but we have had some big ones recently. We were in bed one evening and around 11:15, it started. Steve was sound asleep, but Laurie couldn’t fall asleep that night. At first, she thought maybe she wasn’t feeling well, but as the shaking grew and the building started to creak and moan, she realized it was an earthquake. It seemed to go on and on. We learned it was a very strong earthquake, located in the ocean up near Sapporo. A couple of weeks later, it was early evening. The ground started to shake again, all the glass in our apartment rattled (one whole wall is windows the entire length of the apartment), and Steve’s chair rolled around in his office. We discovered that the earthquake epicenter was about one hour away from our apartment. Tokyo has been disseminating information, trying to prepare everyone for a very big one. It can be unsettling, but we are doing our best to prepare ourselves and our missionaries.

We had a busy December trying to fit everything around the holidays, but we were able to have a Christmas Open House at our apartment for all the Senior couples serving in our mission. We are blessed to have 22 couples. Ten of those couples are with the Area Office, which is included in our mission. We didn’t think we could fit 44 people in our apartment at once, which is why we decided to have an Open House, allowing them to come and go as they pleased. They all came together, we all fit in, and it was a wonderful evening eating and visiting with each other.

One weekend when Steve had Coordinating Council, Laurie was able to go to the Imperial Gardens with Tokie Hiyama, her missionary companion from 45 years ago. It was beautiful, and they loved spending the morning together. Sister Hiyama lives in our mission boundaries, so Laurie has been able to reconnect with her. We have learned from the missionaries in her ward that she isn’t always active. The Sisters invited Sister Hiyama and Laurie to spend a P-day with them last week. They had a great time.

These are two of our past Assistants to the President. Hayu Son is from Australia, and Alexander Dahl is from Tennessee. Hayu is dating one of our returned Japanese sisters and was in town for the holidays to visit with her. Alexander, who returned fairly recently to Tennessee, was back for a baptism. Prior to his returning home he baptized Pa-chan and he returned to baptize her sister, Mei-chan. Coincidentally, these two former companions were both in town the same weekend, so we had them over for Sunday dinner. It was fun to spend time with them. We have always said Hayu was our trainer. He was the Assistant when we arrived and we didn’t know anything. He helped us acclimate to the mission culture and sometimes even drove us around the mission at first.

We had Zone Conferences a couple of weeks before Christmas. We wanted it to be a bit special for the missionaries, so we had a special dinner served. Following lunch and the spiritual part of our Zone Conference, we played a missionary version of Family Feud. The missionaries loved it. We ended by showing them a favorite Christmas movie for our family, Mr. Krueger’s Christmas. Because it was an older movie, we weren’t sure how it would be received, but they really liked it.

Last year was not the best Christmas in Tokyo South Mission. When we first arrived, we were told many times that during the holidays, our missionaries shouldn’t do any proselyting because families would be spending time together and we would be interrupting that, etc. The Mission Leadership Council came up with the idea to stay in apartments, thoroughly clean them, and try to read all of Preach My Gospel as preparation to set annual goals. Bad idea! All key indicators in the mission fell; missionaries were homesick and discouraged, companion relationships suffered, and the fast start for the new year we had hoped for did not materialize. This year the Mission Leadership Council decided to keep Christmas as a regular proselyting day. The Area Presidency provided a nativity set to every missionary, asking them to prayerfully choose who to give it to. Another woman from the Azabu Ward made a couple hundred stockings, stuffed with goodies, which she requested the missionaries give away. We told them to call their families in the morning and then go find the people on the streets who were alone for Christmas, share their love, light, stockings, and nativities. The vast majority of our missionaries reported that it was the best Christmas they have ever had. They saw miracles, made friends, and just felt joy turning outward.

New Year’s is a big holiday in Japan! Everything closes down for days. Many businesses and homes puts something similar to the above ‘wreaths’ on their door or outside their homes. On our morning walks, it is almost an eerie feeling because no one is in our part of town. Of course, if you go to places where there is shopping, it is packed.

Laurie has been able to help the nearby Sisters teach a woman, Nana, from Thailand. That has been a real treat for her because usually we are just doing ‘administrative’ responsibilities. It’s amazing to meet people from all over the world who God has led to Japan to find the gospel. Our missionaries are currently teaching people from all over the world. We also heard this week that a young man from Turkey who was baptized a little over a year ago (I wrote about Ethem in an earlier blog) recently baptized his brother. Ethem is currently living in Korea, trying to start his business there.

We didn’t have this picture to post in our last blog, so we are including it here. These are the Mission Leaders and Area Presidency from the Asia North Area who have become our friends. Three of the couples in Japan will finish their missions in 2026. We will miss them.

We look forward to this new year and all the exciting adventures that await us. We are grateful to our dear children and grandchildren who support us and cheer us on from afar. We miss them dearly, but we also realize that God has truly blessed them in our absence. This has been an experience that has stretched us in so many ways. It has been difficult but rewarding. We often tell people that “we go to bed exhausted, but at least we wake up tired.” There are days when we walk out the door wondering if we have anything left in us, but the minute we get with our missionaries, their energy floods into us, and we can get through the day. We continue to love Japan more each day!