Day 13

Today was a slow day, thank GOODNESS. But because of that, this will be a relatively short blog.

The group of 48 kids plus leaders split up into 4 (and a half) groups to go to church and present fireside meetings for a bunch of different wards around the area. I went to the Chiba ward in the Chiba (chee-ba) stake. It was great. They actually have two wards in the building that were combined for our meetings - a Japanese ward and a Spanish speaking ward. CRAZY. It was craziest when we were sining "I am a Child of God" simultaneously in 3 different languages. But because there are different languages in that ward they already had little machines we could wear for someone to translate for us during the meeting, which was nice. Church was very peaceful, good a nd hopeful today - just what i needed!!

The fireside went well. I sang a duet with Kevin Jenson on "I Know that My Redeemer Lives." Afterwards they had a feast for us. The downfall to the schedule is we met at 7:45, sat on a train for an hour (which usually has millions of people a day thru the station, but not on a sunday thank goodness..) and then had church for 3 hours and then a fireside immediately after for about an hour. Lots of sitting - but the dinner afterwards was AMAZING. The members brought tons of food and it was so delicious. I had Wheat Tea, which is very popular here in japan. Lots of people say it tastes like cigarette water, but ...i sort of liked it. It's a very..wheaty flavor.

I made friends with some little girls, and then a cute woman came to me and she said my singing at the fireside and at the concert last night was beautiful and then she went on and on about how she wants a daughter like me and how i'm her new daughter and it was seriusly adorable. I gave her a present because i was so tickled that she was so kind :)

LUCKILY our group is the first back to the hotel so i get to go sleeeeeeeeeeeeep all evening and night. (which is good because i woke up stuffy with a sore throat today! Bah. Gimme one o' dem' face masks!!)