Church in Kobe

We spent the afternoon and evening with Kellie, our friend who is a CMS missionary in Kobe. She is still in the language learning stage of her assignment, which is a long stage when learning Japanese. After she comes home for 6 months next September, she will be a full fledged out-of-language-school member of the KGK which is a student group in Kobe. Her church had a bi-lingual christmas service in the afternoon, then a pot luck dinner, kris-kringle and movie in the evening. The pot luck dinner was interesting. For a lot of the Japanese it was the first baked turkey they had ever seen or tasted (cooked by another CMS family from Melbourne). For us there were also many different "normal" japanese dishes. I have never had turkey and gravy with chopsticks before! Then there was a movie, for the kids in Japanese. So we all went to a little room and sat on the floor and talked. We were joined by a few of Kellie's English students who wanted some practice. The problem was, they were 14 year old girls who do not talk to boys at all. However, the boys don't have the same issues and the i-pads were a sure way to start a friendship so by the end of the half-hour, both boys had a couple of good conversations with people they had never met before and they thought it was a good night. The Kris-Kringle was funny. We all got a present, then someone played jingle bells on the piano and we passed the presents around until the music stopped, sometime changing direction when we worked out what the Japanese was for that, and then we got the present we were left with. All edible, so we don't have to carry them home! Looking forward to spending the day with Kellie tomorrow. Bed relatively early in a room with only 3 beds all pushed together. Going to be an interesting night...