Hello Everyone!!!!
First of all, to all the mothers, I would like to say:
Haha no hi omedetto gozaimasu!!!!! Happy Mothers Day!!!
Now, let me start at the beginning of all the pictures that I have.
First off, this is my mom eating…SUSHI!!! Just recently, like while the Lucas’s have been here, my mom has found that she actually does like shrimp sushi, which by the way is REALLY good. So in order for us to believe and for y’all to believe that she does actually like it, I just HAD to get a picture.

And this is one thing that you see a lot in Nihon. It is a gang. But not the type of gangs that are in the states. These types of gangs may be small or large or even somewhere in the middle. You never know till you see it. They are the bike gangs and are mostly made up of young people, like school age teens. This “gang” is small compared to some that we have seen. There were only 4 guys in this gang.

Moving on. These next few pictures were taken at the Mother’s Day/FaithPromise service, which went really good by the way. We had a combined service with the international and the Nihongo congregations.
So these first two are of Brother Yokoyama and Brother Lucas. Brother Lucas was speaking Eigo and Brother Yokoyama was speaking in Nihongo.


And this first picture is just of the white board that Brother Lucas was using with some scriptures, but I just took a picture of it because I liked the kanji on it. And then Brother Lucas after he had just got done asking a question waiting while Brother Yokoyama translated into Nihongo. And Brother Lucas had my dad go up there to read scripture.


And this is my mom and Sister Yokoyama. My mom got up and said a few things and Sister Yokoyama translated for her. I got a few pictures of that too because those of you who know my mom, she DOES NOT speak in front of people. But she surprised us all I guess.


And this is when we decided to honor the mothers. We had all the mothers come to the front. And man, we had a lot of moms!! I didn’t think we had that many moms but we do.



And this is the oldest mother which was Sister Yokoyama’s mom, Sister Hashizume, who is hachi-ju-hachi, or 77.

And the youngest mom, which was Sister Blessing Apedo. She was so happy when my dad asked who was the youngest mom and she knew she was the youngest.

And then the mom with the most kids, which was Brother Daniel’s wife, Sister Charity, who has five kids.

And now, these are from the rest of the service. Since it was a combined service, we had bothInternationals and Japanese praise singers. I do not know how many of you know all the Japanese people, so I will go through and list all of the them; both Japanese and Internationals.
This is of Sister Ikeda on the far left, Sister Victoria, and Bernice. And the next two are of Brother Arai and Brother Daniel.



And this is of Brother Arai, Brother Daniel, and Brother Ishibashi. And then all the women again.


And here is Sister Ikeda, with Sister Yokoyama behind her, Sister Igarashi on the organ, and Bernice. And then Brother Arai and Brother Daniel again.


And this is Misa, on the far left, and her mom, Sister Jackie, right next to her and then the four of us. Misa left on Monday, May 10th, to go to London to study English. She will be gone for about 6 months, then will be coming back to Japan. But she wanted her picture with us before she left.

And this is my mom with Tonya, a friend of Sister Lucas’s

And here are some flowers that are growing around our house that I thought were pretty.


And these pictures were taken the day Brother and Sister Lucas left. And let me tell you, that was one crazy day, but at the same time, it was funny. So here is what happened; Brother and Sister Lucas had some last minute things to do before they left, but first we had to eat. So we met them for breakfast and then went and did all the shopping and things that needed to be done. Well, we were supposed to be leaving to go to Tachikawa to the Palace Hotel where the bus picked them up by 11:30…but we didn’t start heading over there till 11:45. And when we got there, they had just enough tim to grab a quick picture, tell us bye, give handshakes and hugs, and jump on the bus. Then we got back in the van and realized that Brother Lucas had left his milk tea in the van and Beck didn’t want to run out there and give it to him, so real quick I got out of the van, ran the short distance to the bus (it really wasn’t that far, we were on the sidewalk where the taxi’s park and the bus was on the side of the road), and Brother Lucas met me there, took his tea, said “Arigato gozaimasu. Thank you SO much” and went and sat back down. By the time he was sitting back down, the bus was taking off. All four of us were like, “WOW!!! That was TOO close!!!!” But at least they made it!! Anyway, here are the pictures. I got one of Brother and Sister Lucas and my parents, and then a close up of Brother and Sister Lucas.


And this last picture, I don’t think I have put it on here, and I wanted all of you to see it. This was taken around late December last year. You can tell how warm it was out side even at the end of December. This is me, Beck, Kouhei, and their dog Aki. Kamata-san took this picture while we were all outside taking a break from running around, either playing tag or kicking a soccer ball around.

Well, that is all I have for now. I hope you enjoy it.