Church

This posting is extremely long overdue as I actually located a church the first weekend I was in Hamamatsu. Another English teacher and I were "reading" a map that had a cross on it, but were completely unsuccessful in locating a church. So we asked the nearest pedestrian where the closest church was. She "happened" to be a member and lead us right to the building (in the opposite direction of our map. Come to find out, the cross was for a wedding chapel!) Although, I visited several churches, I have felt most at home at the first one even though it is totally in Japanese. Slowly, ever so slowly, I am relearning the basic components of a service -- hymns, the Lord's Prayer, Apostle's Creed, etc, and even though I still can't understand a word of the sermon, there have been several elderly ladies who have taken it upon themselves to translate as best as they can. Every Sunday, I have a designated "English" speaker sit by me. Their dedication has been most appreciated, although, I must admit I do miss being truly "fed" by the pastor. In the meantime, I have learned that Christ's love spreads beyond any language barrier.

Changing the subject completely, but on the note of food, the church had a bazaar recently and I offered to help. At first I was supposed to be the official "spoon passer-outer" but then someone realized that additional assistance was needed in the kitchen, so they assigned me to making yaki-soba (a fried noodle dish of sorts). It was quite an experience for me to attempt to follow a recipe in Japanese with only Japanese-speaking guides, and it humored many of the church members to see me attempting to fry noodles with chopsticks (they are slippery little buggers!) But all's well that ends well as nobody received gastrological pain from my cooking (at least I didn't hear about any hospital visits!) and several said it was the best yaki-soba they had ever tasted (of course, they could have just been being polite ;-)