This past week has been full of pleasant surprises. Blessing number one came on Tuesday. After losing a family of three beautiful children (English students) on Tuesday, God blessed me with two new English students all at the same time, or within 24 hours. Also, my Tuesday Junior high class held pleasant surprise. There are two girls: Ran who is in 8th grade and Miyu who is in 7th. Ran stated that on Wednesday she wanted to make instant fried noodles (yaki soba) in the rice cooker. Ran invited Miyu to participate. Ran comes on Tuesdays and Wed. to learn English, Miyu comes only on Tuesdays. Miyu treats Ran with a lot of respect as Ran is the older one. Ran wants to break that respect and simply talk as equals, so Ran initiated this yaki soba party. It was a joy to see them talk about who would bring what ingredients, and that they wanted to come earlier to make it so we could eat and play games in English. It was truly delightful to see these two young women cutting and washing veggies, feeling comfortable together, and receiving dinner that was made by someone else. Tuesday was a Delightful Day.
Blessing number two came along on Friday; I now have my Japanese drivers license! God's hands were all over that. My prayers were that I could understand the Japanese and that I could accomplish this goal in one trip. My Japanese "mom" volunteered to come with me to driving school to make sure I understood the Japanese. The teacher called Koriyama to confirm that I could go to Koriyama for the test instead of Fukushima (much further and troublesome) as well as requesting information on the driving course and what skills I would be tested on. My husband was confident that I could do this, supportive that it would be OK if it did take three trips to get my license, and patient as he did the majority of the talking to the officer in Koriyama- that I couldn't have done. And, it started to rain as we drove up to the driving center, so I prayed that it would stop until after the test. It didn't rain until we headed home around 3 in the afternoon. I am thankful for the multitude of ways God answered my two simple requests.
Blessing number three is quite unexplainable. Three weeks ago I noticed something strange growing in my zucchini and cucumber pot; I pulled it out. Shortly there after, I spotted it ago and pulled it out again, but only getting the stem out and not the root. This caused me to wonder what it was. It looked like it would be tall with with leaves. The only thing that came to my mind was corn, but I knew we did not plant corn; we didn't buy corn. It surely was stubborn, for again, up it grew, this time Masato saw it and too wondered what it was. His suggestion was to pull out the root and plant it seperately to see what it was. He too was puzzled. At this time I also noticed a smaller version growing in my little oregano pot. Truly confused, and certain that it was a weed, I re-potted the larger version in a pot by itself. This week Wednesday a Calla Lily bloomed. It is beautiful. This made me wonder what a weed truly is. A weed is something that is not wanted. so, in this instance, was this Calla Lily a weed? But it is a beautiful flower. Then the question of science also pops up: how did it get there? We didn't purchase Calla lily bulbs. And I don't think that cross-breeding a cucumber with a zucchini results in a Calla Lily. Nevertheless, it is probably the most beautiful and welcome "weed" I have experienced.
As I sit back and look back over the past week, God has truly blessed me in a multitude of ways. Praise be to God!
