friendships renewed and brand-new

I had a friend visit me from Tokyo today. I met Midori in Wheaton last year through Christ Community Church. She has been receiving Pastor Mary Lou Codman-Wilson's sermons every week for many years and wanted to come visit the church in person. This gave me the opportunity to talk with a Japanese person as I was preparing to come to Japan last year. I was able to drive her around town to some shopping places and we visited the Billy Graham Center Museum. She told me then that she thought I would be a very good missionary in Japan because of my natural personality. That was really uplifting to me. I felt then a special kind of friendship with her. In her words from today, it was as if we had just said goodbye yesterday and hello today. We picked up right where we had left off last year.

Enjoy the pictures from our day!

I was super excited to find this Seattle's Best Coffee in Kobe only 15 minutes by train from my town!! I thought SBC was only in Tokyo! You may remember that I was a barista at SBC in Borders book store in Clarksville, TN this year. I'm a huge fan of the Organic Sumatra here. Way better than Starbucks (sorry, but it's true!). So, if I'm not home, you know where to find me!

After I left Midori at the Kobe train station, I had time to go to church at a place I learned about from the former short term missionary that lived here in Tarumi. This church is an international type church with a service on Sunday evening in both English and Japanese. It's a great little church with a lot of spirit and really genuine people loving Jesus. A young woman named "Sue" introduced herself to me and asked me to go to Mos Burgers for dinner. I'm excited to see what the Lord has in store for our friendship. We had an instant connection. She knows air quotes!!! Maybe you remember me using them in conversations in the past? I'm a huge fan of air quotes but have not had the opportunity to use them in Japan. I think we'll be great friends on this point alone! :)