We’ve all made it safely to Tachikawa. The unfortunately thing is, we didn’t get breakfast on the plane! We were all looking forward to it, since they only served three meals. I supposed we were expected to sleep for the remainder of the flight.
But as we got closer to Japan, passing alongside Hokkaido, we had to fly over the thunderstorms that swept through the country last week. That means turbulence! Since we were in the third to last row in the plane, boy did we feel it. At one point, Mike and a stweardess had to search the back of every steat to find an airsickness bag, just in case.
From there, it was a long line through customs and we finally made it to the money exchange. Mike was able to procure us tickets on the direct bus to Tachikawa, while Carolyn and I attempted to rent a SIM card so we could use my iPhone with a local number in Japan. Well, it turns out that at Softbank, you can’t use rental SIM cards with iPhones. They just don’t have that information anywhere on their rental website. Sad times! Either way, I could use my phone here, if I wished, but I didn’t sign up for an international plan. Instead, we just rented a handset, and made the calls we needed so people in Tachikawa were ready for us.
Oh, but then it’s 5pm in Tokyo. Rush hour traffic set us back almost an half hour, and we took the strangest route coming in. But thankfully, we actually had a cell phone this time! So, we met Yoshie at the bus stop, loaded up and finally got dinner at Denny’s. Yoshie can never pay for meals there, becase we know how to block her in the corner so we can get the bill!
Finally, around 8:30pm, we met up with our families at church, found out that Mr. Tanokura became a Christian and was baptised two years ago (I never knew! He was one of those husbands we prayed about for years.) and got to meet, Sho-kun, the Ootomo’s premature son, who last year was fighting for his life while resting breach in a waterless womb. Now, his legs are so strong, he’d rather try to stand and walk than crawl. Praise the Lord! In case you didn’t know, his name actually means “testimony”.
That’s about all I can write at the moment, as I’ve got to run off to church for service. After that, it’s cleaning day. (We missed the hanabi last night.) and then VBS prep time. We found out that there another girl who’s a missionary in Saitama from a Holiness church that’s able to come down and help, so I think we’ll certainly have enough summer workers now.
Thank you all for your prayers. Hopefully we can get some pictures going today.
