How Far We've Come

Dear Family, 

This week we welcomed another 29 new missionaries bringing our complement up to 200.  We also said good-bye to 5 who are going home. It was poignant to join them in a testimony meeting, dinner and temple session (where I was privileged to officiate) the night before their departure, especially so because they included three wonderful

with our dokis: Sisters Watanabe, Shigihara and Takabori

Japanese sisters whom we first met in the Missionary Training Center 17 months ago.  We little knew then how much we would come to love them - our lovely Japanese granddaughters.  As I joined my large fleshy hand with the thin, brownish hand of my associate in the temple, I thought how far we’ve come in 70 years since as a young boy I hated the Japanese.  As Pat and I joined our testimonies with those of the young missionaries, we realized more fully how much our lives have been enriched by association with them and how anxious we are for their success as missionaries and for their welfare and happiness as they return to civilian life.  It also became more clear to us how very much we love Japan and the Japanese and we are beginning to realize how much we are going to miss them.

Monday, October 14, is Pat’s birthday and the Japanese have cooperated by identifying it as a national holiday, Sports Day. We plan a picnic excursion with our son Dan and family to Nokonoshima Island in Hakata Bay, which promises spectacular views of massed Cosmos flowers amid fall colors.  In this bay the Japanese twice repelled the invasion of the Mongols under Kublai Kahn in the 13^thCentury.  Legend has it that the Mongol fleet of 400 ships bearing 140,000 warriors was dispersed by the timely arrival of a typhoon, or what the Japanese call a divine wind.  You may recall that in World War II the kamikaze warriors were conceived as the divine wind that would again save Japan.

Our time is winding down here. Our replacements have been identified.  The Kobersteins, who are serving as leadership support missionaries in Kumamoto, will be transferring here in two weeks.  We will overlap two weeks with them before we depart so we are trying to get our act together for a clean handoff. We also received permission for a quick trip north to Nagoya at the completion of our mission and visit with our grandson, Matt Naylor, serving there as a missionary.  We have prepared a list of a mere 1000 vital things we need to complete before then, so our final month here ought to be interesting.  To show you how trunky we have become, last Saturday we drove to Dazaifu and toured the Kyushu National Museum, visited the shrine and Zen Temple there on a rainy autumn day. 

Dazaifu Shrine

Zen gardens

We remain your faithful far-eastern correspondents, 

Mom and Dad.