Church and Skiing

Wednesday, July 12

This morning I was up early and ready to go. Teresa asked if I wanted to go with her to their church’s Bible study and prayer group. Since I won’t be with them this Sunday, I thought it would be a nice idea. Teresa gave me a tour of the building which has been added to a house that was renovated to be the Sunday School and youth rooms. The group that gathers for the Bible study meets a bit early and cleans the entire church.

There were 21 people gathered. It was a variety of ages (from HS to grandparents) and about ½ men and ½ women. There was a study of Matthew 15:10-20. We sang “Rock of Ages” and “Amazing Grace.” There is this cute little digital machine about the size of a phone book and they punch in the number of the hymn and it plays the music to sing with. There was also a passage that the pastor used to think about the text that was written by Wilbert Shenk. We then broke up into small groups and then gathered back together to eat our lunches. I tried natto (soybeans) in a sushi roll. We also we given some pickled veggies to try along with squid (both the body and an “arm”). It was all good!

This afternoon we picked up the kids from school and went to the Sapporo Winter Sports Museum. We took a lift up to the top of a ski jump and then looked out over the jump that they used in the 1972 Winter Olympics and now use as a training jump. There were actually a few people practicing, so we got to watch about 3 jumps from the top. We then went into the museum where we got to “practice” on things like speed skating, ice skating, bobsledding, crosscountry skiing, and hockey. The highlight was doing a virtual ski jump in a simulator machine and then seeing the “replay” on the screen.