English, Backup, Movie Stars, and more English!

Talk about a 180 from yesterday! We had a great day as a family and got quite a bit done for the center today. We had a visitor whom Dan met yesterday while canvassing with Kai. She knew we didn't have any quilts, but wanted to come practice her English. I really enjoyed that... it's been a long time since I've really been able to sit down and "teach" conversational English. Our new friend, Miho, has a 2 1/2 year old boy and a little girl who is one week older than Niko. I believe she is planning to return tomorrow with her grandmother now that we got another big shipment of quilts!

Dan and I folded several hundred fliers for the center to be handed out tomorrow. Pastor Wordell brought up a small army to help us... two high school students (Yoshua and Brianna), a college student (Naoyuki), another young man who works as a kimono maker (Taro), and the college student's father (Sato). They unloaded about 135 quilts and helped me sort them by size. Tomorrow we are expecting an influx of people at the center, as word has been spread that we were getting these quilts for Wednesday. The extra hands also means we will be able to go to each of the temporary housing units and give out information about hours, etc. It is going to be awesome to have so much help for a day... they can only stay until about 3 p.m., but I expect we will get a lot done in those few hours!

After we got the "shop" set up with the quilts, we headed over to have some udon. Unfortunately the shop was closed tonight, so we tried out a ramen shop at the eatery village. Good stuff. AND they had the signature of Ken Wantanabe on the wall... you know, the famous Japanese actor (The Last Samurai, Inception, Batman Begins)? Well, anyway he had been there about a month earlier and left his signature on the wall (common in Japanese restaruants when famous people eat there). But, it was even cooler because he's designed his signature to look like a samurai! I was VERY impressed. (And I made the restaurant owner laugh really hard when I told her to tell Ken hello for me!) :o)

After we got the boys down, Pastor Wordell came over to our hotel room for a meeting. It was so great to talk face to face (directly, not via Skype!) Tonight was the longest amount of time we've spent with another gaijin for a few weeks. It was nice to not have to think about the "easy" way to say something or search for a Japanese phrase to express our thoughts, be able to voice our concerns, give our suggestions for changes for the center to help upcoming volunteers... I very much enjoyed our hour and a half with him. He's a very easy person to be with and understanding of our struggles and occasional frustrations. It is also very comforting to know his congregation prays for us every week... we are so supported, even by complete strangers. Thank you, God!

Tomorrow morning we will be at the office for set up and a devotion at 9 a.m., so I'm going to keep this short tonight, but I'm excited to see what tomorrow brings...many more pictures and stories, I'm sure! Goodnight, all!