It's been a week already that I have been trying to write. Time disappears as quickly as the sandcastle on the ocean beach. Which by the way we had the opportunity to go the the ocean for a few minutes this week. We went to find rocks to take to our English class. I collected a few awesome shells as well. We taught our students, who are non-members how to pray and they each decorated their own prayer rock to take home. I will post a picture. The students loved the idea. We had two English classes this week. The other class we taught them English words & definitions. If the students got them right, they got to play "tick tack toe". A couple of them had a rousing compition.
      It was transfer week so we spent three days moving missionaries from the ferry to the airport to the office. They are long days ,usually about fourteen hours with only three hours a sleep each night. Stan does all the driving and navagating of the spegetti bowl of roads in this concrete jungle.
   We cook for two district meetings on Wednesday's now. We also eat with the office couples three times a week taking turns cooking. We are enjoying amazing meals and wonderful conversations with friends. Last Sunday we had a dinner with the office couples and the President & his wife. We are building some really awesome friendships. We are so blessed. One of the office sisters is Japanese. She made us a heavenly salmon salad, wontons and fried rice. Yummy !
     Th President assigned us to take 20 young missionaries to the temple on Tuesday. Stan drove "Appollo" the 15 passenger van.  The missionaries name everything. Reminds us of home. Our family named everything from our cars, to our pets, to rooms in our house. We had the Russian applesauce factory, High-ho silver the car and the "Dukes Room ", named after the Dukes of Hazard tv show. We also had the opportunity to attend the temple on Friday evening with one of the office couples. We love love the temple and hope to be officiators again in the Idaho Falls temple when we return.
     A cute Chinese less active sister who we visit gave me a wig. She was very kind and thought I might need it. She kept telling me it was real hair and very expensive. The Chinese people are fun to be around. They are so animated when they talk, bowing over & over , putting their hand over their mouth when they laugh and waving their arm while tapping their head when trying to think of the English word to say. A couple of the students in our class are teaching me to write my name in Chinese. I will post a picture. They are also trying to teach us some words but end up laughing at our pronunciation.
     We met two wonderful sister missionaries on our travels this week. One from the Ukraine and one from Hong Cong. They were both going home after completing their missions. We saw a miracle at the airport with the Chinese sister. We arrived at 10:30 pm to get her checked in and through security. Her boarding pass said she could check two bags at no cost. But when we were at the ticket line the airport worker said she must weigh her carry-on & her purse. They weighed 14 kiagrahams instead of the 7 kiagraham limit. They were charging her $150 for the extra 7 k. So we opened her bags,,unpacked, moved, shuffled things right on the floor in front of everyone. It was embarrassing.  She finally filled a bag of clothes for me to take back to the office to donate to another missionary. By this time it was almost midnight. We weighed the bags again and it was still too much weight. The cost was now $100. I called the President to ask what we should do. He said pay the extra $100. A minute later, a airline employee walked by and asked about our problem. She looked at our missionary tags and said : " you may take all of it, two checked bags, a carry-on and a large purse for only $32." What a miracle. The Lord does bless his missionaries.We also took care of five incoming sisters from Spain, Denmark, Utah, China, Phillipines. The first evening they arrive and spend all day in trainng then we take them to the Hotel and stay overnight with them. In the morning we return them to the mission office where they will have more training & be assigned their companion. We help with their meals at the mission office as wheel so we get a chance to get to know them.