Sunday, Sunday, Sunday... minus the sun (yay rain!)

(Funny moments included:) Today was BEAUTIFUL! It rained all day. The only time I worried was when cars passed me. I hoped they weren't going to play, "Splash the gaikokujin (foreigner)." In any case, I woke up this morning 2 minutes before my alarm went off. I got up and started the water heater (I'm trying to test how fast "soon" is - since M-s said the water heats up "soon"). I left enough time to give it 30 minutes to heat up. I laid on the heating pad until a little after 8h00 then got up and showered. Yatta! 30 minutes was good - next I will try 20 minutes. Anyway, I showered and got ready for church. I got up extra early (church starts at 10) because I had a 46 minute walk ahead of me. I got ready as quickly as I could (but as I mentioned before, doing stuff is hard when ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, etc) and I ended up leaving my apartment at 9h05. I'm so blessed to have an iPhone as Japanese streets are typically not named. Neighborhoods have names but streets don't. DAH. So I held out my phone like a divining rod and off I went. When I got to Takamatsuno-ike, this is what I saw:

Takamastuno-ike

Closer pic of the birds

Then the birds approached me - they're probably trained to come for food but I didn't have any! It's Fast Sunday!

Gorgeous! The church, according to my iPhone was right on the water. I walked to where the pin was in my map and walked around the area. I couldn't find anything that looked like the place and so I asked a guy for help. He explained in Japanese that he didn't understand English. I showed him my Book of Mormon but he still had no idea. So I went back to the road and stopped a woman power-walking by for help. By that time I had looked up the address on LDS.org and she was able to take me right to it. She also did not speak English, and she power-walked the whole way (sheesh it was hard to keep up with my lower back all seized up and full of pain), but she helped me find it. I thanked her, bowed, and gave her a chocolate that I had in my bag. She tried to turn it down, but she did a great service for me and I needed to show my thanks. Because I had been lost that little bit and I had walked a couple block too far, I ended up being 2 minutes late. I hurried inside and went upstairs. I sneaked into the small chapel and was immediately greeted by everyone sitting nearby! Then one woman came from across the room to sit by me. :) She introduced herself (that I caught) then she told me something that is still a mystery to me. I think it was probably her calling and she kept pointing to my Book of Mormon and then herself.. actually it may have been something else but I'll get to that. Anyway, I understood maybe 5 words in the whole meeting! However I did not have the same experience I had had on my mission. (I cried my first Sacrament meeting because I didn't even understand the Sacrament prayer.) I just felt really at peace and tried to catch as much as I could of what people were saying. I counted 39 people in the room. 10 were children, and 4 were missionaries. The only other gaikokujin I saw was one of the missionaries. Come to find out, he's a zone leader who is leaving in May. Everyone was using him as a translator so they could talk to me. :) I felt very loved.. and also like a mother hen with all these small people buzzing around me. :) lol Oh and during Sacrament meeting, right before they turned the time over to testimonies, the branch president said something and.. you know in movies when there's a "CREEEAAK" and suddenly everyone has turned around in their chairs and is looking at you? Ya, that's seriously EXACTLY what happened. I have no idea what he said, but suddenly the entire room was looking right at me. It was probably like, "When I say go, we're all gonna stare at the tall, new girl. Ok? Go!" LOL In any case, the girl sitting next to me motioned for me to get up so I stood up. She said, "Namae? Name?" I stammered out, "Ann. Carairu Ani. Ann Carlisle." I was feeling a little like, "DUH!" inside my brain at that point so I finished up with a "Nihongo ga manabitai kedo.. sukoshi wakarimasu." (I want to learn Japanese but I understand a little. - at least that's what I was trying to say.) So I quickly sat down after that (I expected that in RS but in Sacrament!?) In any case, the meeting was great even though, as I said above, I had no idea about what people were talking. At the end of the meeting, some of the adults and all the kids (and I lumped teens into the kid group too) went away. The rest of the adults had a quick announcements section and the one other gaikokujin there came and sat by me. He was like, "Oh sorry! I could have translated for you!" So I got a translation of the prayer and announcements but then it was time for RS. I was confused about it at first but thought, "Sunday School must be afterwards." So off I went to RS. There were 9 of us. Including me. And they tried to include me in the lesson, which was very sweet. We read excerpts from the manual and you should have seen when it got to me. I figured they would skip me! So there was silence, and I looked up and went all wild/wide-eyed and shook my head. LOL They laughed at me and skipped me from then on. At one point during the lesson, they put us in 2 groups. Everyone in my group just stared at each other. I think they felt badly that I wouldn't be able to contribute. One of the ladies sitting next to me spoke some English so I figured I should start. I gave my thought to her, she translated it and then the 3 of them were able to chat away. I think that the woman who had sat next to me in Sacrament meeting and was next to me in RS (Youko Shinoki, Rika is the one who translated for me) was telling a story about her birthday the day before. Her mother was in the story and anothe woman, but that's all I got. In any case, after the lesson was over, they said the prayer and everyone kept their heads down for a long time after the "amen." It was kinda weird. At first I thought I had misheard the amen, but everyone looked up after a minute or two and started talking. Everyone was really just sitting and chatting and I wondered if we needed to change rooms for Sunday School. Pretty soon the men drifted in but they started talking as well. Church is only 2 hours long! The Elders wandered in and the one from the U.S. (dang it I didn't even get his name!) was doing translation for all the ward members. They invited me to a ward activity on the 29th and one of the ward members told me how she has this huge house and they're having a RS dinner there on the 28th. So I have plans for the end of the month! YAY! On my way out, another ward member caught me and gave me these two HUGE apples (I have big hands, and they're the size of my palms!) that she got from her father-in-law's farm. Turns out that the reason Iwate is more sparsely populated is because it's Japan's farmland. It's also the reason you can get a lot of the best food here. :) I felt badly as I didn't have anything to give her in return, but I ate one of the apples after I broke my fast and it was AMAZING. I mean it was a little bit because I was hungry but this apple was incredible! Here's a picture of them:

This picture doesn't really do them justice - these apples are BIG

One of the ladies asked me how I'd gotten to church and I acted out walking and she asked me if I wanted a ride home (saying "drive" and acting as though she were holding a steering wheel). I gratefully accepted. She told me to wait five minutes (gofun) and went back upstairs. I chatted with a few ward members in broken English and broken Japanese then with a translator when that Elder came down (he's one of the zone leaders so he probably won't be here every week). I told him that if he and his companion wanted to stop by at any time, they were welcome to come by. I told him I lived alone and that I knew mission rules and we could hang out outside. (Then I could use those drinks I bought!) And I asked if they would bless my apartment because I'm worried about insects and spiders. He laughed at me at first, but I hope I was able to communicate to him that I was serious. He then proceeded to tell me about a spider the size of a dinner plate he saw in another part of this area. Gee thanks Elder. Sheesh he's going to give me nightmares! In any case, Sunday was really great. A couple ward members speak English ok and they were just so very kind to me. They were so excited to have me there it was impossible not to feel loved. Now I'm at home, I ate one of those apples, some leftover curry, and some chocolate and now I'm laying on my heating pad. I don't have any other plans for the day but today was awesome. I feel great about how everything went. :)