Tuesday, May 27

One Tuesday a month is a mama and baby event at Hongo, so we are invaded by about ten moms and their babies, this week including my pastor's new baby Aki (he's only a month old!), a set of twins, and Yuki (my pastors 3 year old son who is suffering greatly at the moment from "I am not the center of the universe anymore! syndrome").

I spent a lot of time with Yuki, trying to give him some attention. I've been working hard to only speak English with Yuki, but he's really struggling with it (I didn't see him for 2 months while his mom was having a baby). So, today I gave in and used Japanese. Our relationship was greatly renewed. We played a piano duet, I spent a good quanity of time being used as a tree, and we took out a globe and had fun pointing to different countries (I am pretty sure Yuki thinks he lives in Mongolia and that I live in Canada...but I suppose that isn't too far off. ;-) )

Mama / Baby days are pretty much the only time I talk to my pastor, and today was a particularly good discussion. We started out with awkward Japanese about how their baby wasn't sleeping at night, wondering when Shizuka (pastor's wife) got to sleep, etc. I can ask okay questions, but since I don't always have the ability to understand their answers, conversation tends to be a little difficult. But Shizuka asked me about what I wanted to do after Japan, and so I had the opportunity to tell her about boiler rooms. Which was difficult. But it turned into a wonderful conversation with Yasui sensei about churches without locks and without walls. He talked about how much he likes the idea about a church that is always open for prayer and a student center in Nagoya that does much more than English.

My Tuesday classes begin around dinner time with a group of advanced students. We always share about our weeks, and the highlight of this week's conversation is a student who has just returned from the island of Saipan (Saipen? Some island I've never heard of that is apparently a U.S. territory) where he and his wife tried scuba diving for the first time. Another older student usually travels to Okinawa, but vows to go to Saipan for his next trip. This class is made up of a young housewife, two students at the Tokyo University Agricultural College, a retired businessman, and a middle aged set designer who's currently working on a play that they hoped might go to Broadway, but it hasn't been popular enough.