Golden Week Indeed!

It's a beautiful day, and I'm sitting in my new tatami-floor apartment with the sun shining in through the windows that are 3/4 the height of my wall. It's so nice!

I still have yet to deal with the kitchen, although my roommate made some progress either last night or this morning. I don't know which, but I know that there are few things in there now.

So, these last few days, like I've said, have been crazy!!! Last Friday, I left my apartment... the other one, mind you, at 8:30 in the morning and got home around 11... at night. During the day, I did a number of things, including making a special power point for the girls who were leaving and practising bass with our bassist who was leaving, aned cooking for approximately 20 people some Mexican dishes. I think it was a success, and it gave me pleasure to be able to cook something that everyone liked.

In the evening, the band had practice, and I went down there to snap some shots of the last practice with the girls. Mark and Yuiko's baby girl was down there too, and we were having a lot of fun playing with her and teaching her to dance (she's 2) while the band practised loudly in the background. Anyway, it was during this time that I was jumping around and I jumped up and came back down on the corner of a metal case that carries pedals for guitars. I was more worried that I broke it (the box), when the initial throb of pain went away. Mark was like, oh, are you okay? I was like oh yeah, and then I looked down at my foot.

I had a pretty deep cut in it and it was starting to bleed. Debbie came down and I asked if she had any Neosporin. So, she took me back up to her place, and cleaned up my foot, since is was on the sole of my foot and near the outer edge. I'll spare you mose of the details, but I did have to clean blood off the stair.

Fun times!

Afterward, we went to Shinyurigaoka and had street performance. We had conversations with a few people and passed out flyers. So great!

Saturday, we went and prayer walked and passed out flyers before Fuse for a few hours and then had the Fuse event. It was pretty packed in our place! We had 35 people there, and a few new people! Saki debuted on piano, which was pretty cool, especially since our pianist was leaving! Afterward, we all went to karaoke and got to see a few personalities come out as we sang together. LOTS of laughs and tons of bonding moments. That was another late night getting to bed.

Sunday! Wow, Sunday was a long day. I left my place at like 8:45am or something like that and we went to a baptism in a place called Aikawa. Fabiana, who comes to the Fuse and who is also a part of the Brazilian church started by PAZ. Through a "team effort", she came to know Jesus as well. Sunday she got baptized, along with another girl, and Debbie, from our team got to be part of baptizing her since she was doing discipleship with her.

It was a great big celebration with lots of food, as it was a big Brazilian barbecue as well... and wow! It was great!!! Delicious. I also caught up with my friends from the Brazilian church that I had met last year. I got my share of talking in Spanish as it's pretty interchangable... not completely but we can certainly understand each other, and a few people who speak Portuguese also speak Spanish itself. I felt very content.

Well, I baked during the day... the sun was out and it was beautiful, and I was out in it to show it! I came home slighly lobster-ish, but very happy. I think I got home around 7:45pm from it, and I was sooo tired. I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to do including packing, since we were moving. But I was so tired that I felt like I couldn't even concentrate or function. So, at 8:11pm, I turned off my lights.

And at 8:41am, I got up. I was SO very tired. But anyway, I spent my morning packing and then went to the Indian restaurant with a group since that's where the girls wanted to go and it was their last day. After packing some more, in the evening, I went to Hannah and Amy's goodbye party and we packed the place and had lots of food and shared memories. We prayed for them, watched the slide show and the girls cried, of course. The party dwindled down, and I ended up staying the night there (though at 1:30, I ran back to my house to get my stuff)...


And after 3 hours of sleep, I got right back up to start the day by getting ready for a breakfast for 20 something people who were coming to see Hannah and Amy off to the train station. We did, and then I rushed back to my house to cram pack all the things that I had yet to pack. In an hour, I was ready and then were like... oh no-- the kitchen!

We ended up getting most of it packed, and the guys, who had only slept 1 hour, stayed to help. What a group! We were sooo tired, but they made heroic efforts and didn't complain once, even though I was moving to a 2nd floor apartment, where you have to squeeze past a washing machine to get to it. And I do mean there's about 18 inches of space to get past-- so they had to lift things.

But I really felt blessed by them.

Anyhow, we ate back at the church and So-chan (my roommate) and I saw them off at 4ish in the afternoon and we went back to our place to unpack most of what we'd just packed in the morning (ok, not all of it).

We had the Fuse planning meeting on Skype at 7, which was nice since it was such a long day. And afterward, all I wanted was a shower and sleep.

Now, the girls who had lived here before showed me how to use this shower, but for some reason, it wasn't working the way it was supposed to... and it does involved gas and lighting something.

I'm pretty sure everyone knows my aversion to anything gas related, and so I called Debbie and... off I raced on my bike at 9pm to go shower at the church.

It felt so wonderful to be clean and I came back to the house to finish up some things and to sleep. It felt incredible to lay down and to close my eyes and relax and know that I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn today.

Anyway, that's a catch up of the last few days, and today I'll go clean the other apartment and we'll celebrate Debbie's 22nd birthday this evening with sushi and games, etc. Today, I believe, is also the end of the holiday week and so, we'll also return to our normal schedule tomorrow.

Even though it was a holiday, it felt so crazy and not at all a vacation! Although, I have no reason to complain, I felt it was an excellent last few days and I've gotten to know more of our group and hang out with them. One of the new guys coming to the Fuse has been there at all the events of the last few days and he's just so excited to be part of the group. I really can't wait to see what God's going to do with him when he gets to know Jesus more.

Wonderful people! I love the Japanese and I can't wait until I'm able to talk to them more in their own language instead of depending on English. :)

And, as promised, here's another upward umbrella... notice that both are turned inside out! Dedicated to Vonda.