Stake Relief Society Meeting in Sendai

On Saturday, April 1st we drove to Sendai to attend the stake women's conference. Though, of course only women attend, four priesthood holders in the branch drove the sisters the 2 1/2 hours and waited in the parking lot for the sisters.  Good men.  This year, nine sisters attended from our little branch. 

It was a delightful day of mingling with sisters from all over the stake.  We were divided into groups- each represented by a different fruit.  I was in the raspberry group. 

Sister Smith- another senior missionary was in my group- so we could speak English together.  That was nice.

Those darn kiwis got four of my dear friends from the branch.  I sneaked over there and took a picture of them while we were making our crafts.

The activity was to make little hat magnets out of pet bottle caps.  They had little kits all ready for us- so even a non-crafty person like me could succeed.  We made them for sisters that were victims of the recent Kumamoto earthquake.  The dear sisters from this stake know what it is like to get support from others after such disasters.  Many of them experienced the horrific 2011 earthquake/tsunami. 

When our table was finished making ours, we lined them up to take a picture.  I texted this picture to my family and asked them to guess which two I made.  One daughter got both of them right and another got one of them.  What?  How?  Can you guess?

We then bagged them with a little note that we wrote.  Mine are the two in the corner- pink and yellow.

I took this picture when they came by to pick ours up.  This was only about 1/2 of them. 

We then had a delicious lunch of :

Japanese Potato Salad

Green Salad

And curry and rice, mugichau (wheat drink), and little gelatin cups

This is Hikari and her cute daughter feeding her. I posted about her in October as her husband served in the Hong Kong mission when Ken's brother, Don was president.  We visited them in Sendai while Don and Ada were here.  It is always a joy to see her at stake functions.

We then played a fun trivia game, with the tables competing against each other for who could get the most right.  No one got them all right, but ours and three other tables got only one wrong.  They had a grand prize for the #1 winner and smaller prizes for #2 and #3.  To determine who would get which prize, they had a representative from each table "jon ken pon."  This is how they solve all kinds of problems in Japan.  You see it all the time.  It's "rock, paper, scissors."  They have a little poem they say and everyone knows it and knows how to play it.

Sister Hirayama represented our table "Jon ken pon"

We ended up getting 2nd place treats- choco pies. 

We then sang "For Health and Strength and Daily Food" round and then viewed the Women's session of conference.  This meeting took place a week earlier.  They translate the proceedings and send a DVD to the stake units in Japan to view a week later.  They set it up to be viewed in English in another room for the English speakers- four of us (two sister missionaries and a little gal here teaching English.) 

It's hard to explain what a meeting like this means to the sisters here.  They are isolated from fellow saints- Christians in a non- Christian nation.  It means so much to them to gather and feel the strength of their sisters in the gospel.  It has forever changed how I view the Women's session of Conference.  I now understand how important the word "worldwide" is.