Time with Friends

We had more friends visit us in December - yay! :)

Vincent & Bonnie came for a few days after Vincent's business trip in Tokyo. We were so happy they decided to tag on a few more days to their trip and fly down to Hiroshima to spend some time with us! :) Many of our Japanese church members were so surprised and happy to see Bonnie again (Bonnie came for VBS in August). Bonnie was able to reconnect with a couple of the young adults here and even went to a monthly English praise night downtown. Vincent got to meet some of the people that Bonnie and the summer missions team reported back on and see the churches too. They got to experience a normal Japanese worship service which was a first for Bonnie too as the Japanese churches had made changes to their normal service to accommodate for the American visitors. They even joined us for a team meeting and provided the corn bread to go with the meal! :)

Jessica T. (in pic with us) and Anita (in pic below reading with Juhee) came down to visit us from Tokyo, where they were missionaries with Cru (CCC). Jessica's grand-mother's grave site is in Hiroshima so it was a meaningful journey for her as she ended her many years of service in Japan and returned back home to CA.

It was great to be able to chat with the ladies till late at night and swap stories and experiences about being missionaries in Japan. Despite having traveled all night for two nights straight in night buses, and walking/hiking mi~les from early in the morning, they were still willing to keep me entertained. :)

Juhee and Sungjae loved playing with them too! Anita actually read a book to Juhee that we'd received months ago but hadn't read to her as it's in Japanese. XP

Jessica & Anita actually answered a prayer request too... A few days prior to them coming, I randomly really craved bagels. They're hard to find here and expensive so we haven't had any since moving to Japan. They were supposed to bring dessert for dinner the evening they arrived but they brought dessert in the form of omiyage (souveniors) from Kyoto (where they'd just come from) and lots of different kinds of pastry for breakfast the next morning - including a bagel! Guess who ate the bagel. It was heavenly. :) (I shared - a little bit. ;))

Juhee was over the moon that Jessica went to the bus stop with her early that morning. :)












As always, it was wonderful to have real friends that we could really connect with and communicate with. Times like these are precious and an immense blessing. :)