Episode 43: In Which Jessica Goes to Church Alone and Visits Sister Albrecht

So yesterday was Sunday. Andrew had to work...cuz they put him on the schedule. So, I got up, made him breakfast while he was getting ready, and sent him on his way with a toast and egg sandwich and a glass of milk. Then I went back to bed.

When I woke up later, I realized I had forgotten to make Andrew lunch...and then I felt sad.

I got ready for church and I rode my bike there since Andrew had the car. It was a nice day...but lonely cuz I was going to church all alone.

Church was good, except that I learned that you should always choose the back pew when you have the chance, or the devil child WILL sit behind you and WILL kick you in the head. That's two weeks in a row!!!

We learned about Matthew 13's the parables of the sower and the wheat and the tares. I learned that wheat and tares look exactly the same except that if you ingest even one tare, it'll kill you. That's pretty intense. I agree with the sunday school teacher, that parable just got a lot a bit deeper.

Relief society was ok. I think black ladies make the best sunday school teachers. This week's teacher was different from last week's, but they were both black and both hilarious. We learned about the Word of Wisdom...which I could work on in terms of the "dos" of the Word of Wisdom. That is the plural of "do" not the spanish number two by the way.

Finally church was over (that meant that Andrew was coming home!) and I went home. I had just finished changing when Andrew came home. After going to church alone, it's ten hundred times happier to see your husband's face. :)

I finished some thank you notes...yes, I'm still writing them. *sigh* Don't judge me.

Then we headed out the door to go to the Albrecht's house. Sister Albrecht is home. I thought she had come home from Japan ahead of President Albrecht but then I learned that sad truth. She's been home for a few weeks now. She came home to help her daughter who was having complications with her pregnancy, and was home when the earthquake hit. The priesthood leaders in Japan won't let her go back now...so she's stuck in America.

Suddenly, going to church without my husband didn't seem so bad.

She invited all us missionaries over last night and gave us a run down on everything that happened in the mission as she knew it. She passed out copies of the transfers (what missionaries went to what mission and which ones went home) and an excerpt from President Albrecht's journal the week of the earthquake.

I don't know anyone in the mission any more so I didn't take the lists, but I read the journal entry in bed last night. Reading it made everything so much more real to me than the news ever could. I could picture it perfectly, my lively city of Tokyo, a deserted ghost town...and it made me really sad. I was reading it out loud to Andrew and I had to stop several times and get a hold of myself.

There is some good to this though. The church has begun opening up the missionaries apartments to displaced families from the Tohoku Region. And Sister Albrecht, even though she wasn't there, saved the mission with her food storage. :) They had enough to feed 160 missionaries until they were full for at least 2 days. And they still had leftovers. President says it was much like the feeding of the multitudes with a few fishes and loaves of bread. At first they didn't think they had enough for everyone to have even one serving, but many people got seconds and even thirds.

No one knows how long President Albrecht will stay in Japan, or how long the mission will be closed. He's probably there until at LEAST conference because he's helping in the Church office building with President Stevenson. But we don't know past that. In the meantime, the ward missionaries have taken over the teaching of investigators. Once the mission opens up, this will help the mission so much because the members will have an idea of what they are capable of as a ward.

So...that's good news. I'm still sorry I complained about going to church alone though. At least Andrew and I are still in the same country...