Welcome to Aomori

Today was a good day, we started with prayer and breakfast and then Aaron and myself went outside to cut loads of wood for the wood-burner  It’s old construction wood and it is good to see it being recycled; the wood-burner is kind of necessary at the moment given how cold it is here and while all of the heaters (they don’t call them radiators) run on kerosene, wood is readily accessible and needs to be gotten rid of.

After this we went and bought and cooked all of the things need for a Caesar salad and It came out good. I then went to the church cafe for a card making workshop. A very delightful young lady called Sonya who is very creative and well equipped to make handy craft type things was teaching people how to make valentines day cards and I joined three other people for that workshop.

I made one of these but I’m not saying which one.

This was followed by a coffee and some cake and here I met a delightful young lady called Tomoho who spoke English and is into some of the same anime as me, mainly Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei; she has the original mangas!

In preparation for the evening I cooked for Martin and Ruth and made a creamy Chicken, Leek and Potato and they said it was good although I still haven’t been able to gauge when they are saying it’s good and when they actually think it’s good. After eating we went to another town to have an English worship service, and the people I met there were lovely, they all had their own stories behind how they ended up in Aomori and it was just really nice to be with them. One of their customs at this worship service is that whenever there is a guest they each have to ask them a question to get to know them better, which a great way to get to know a person quickly. They quickly found out that I prefer the city life but I will get on while I’m here in Aomori.
We sang some songs together and Martin took lead in talking to us about about mourning as Christians from the beatitudes. It was very insightful I’ve never sat down to think about mourning before and I’ve definitely learned something new. It is good that I mourn because I am apart from Angela for so long, it is bad that I mourn because I cannot play video-games any more, it is Godly that I mourn because I am a sinner unable to meet his standards.

Coffee cake is cake that you have with coffee, not coffee enhanced (flavoured) caked.