Swine Flu

As you may have gathered from Karen's posts, I am still here in Japan. Unbelievably our school goes until June 30. This is some sort of compromise with the Japanese school calendar. Because of that compromise we get a nice 3 week break for spring break in March and another week in May for Golden Week. It's more like a year round school calendar than I'm used to. Well, anyway, I have been alone here in Osaka. The first order of business was to give the sermon at our English worship service. The topic was "Loving God With All Your Mind" and it went very well. It took a little while to get used to stopping after every sentence to wait for translation but after three services I had it down. Many people came up to me afterwards (and are still coming weeks later) to say how much they got out of it. It was also broadcast in streaming video on the Internet so Karen and the kids (and anyone else for that matter) could watch. I'm even told that there is a video archive. See if you can find it. http://kansaiconnect.com/church/

Immediately after the service it was decided to cancel the planned pizza party. Why, you might ask. Well, swine flu had hit Osaka on Saturday night. The pastor said that if we had known about 12 hours sooner church would have been cancelled as well. About two hours later the official word came down, the mayor had cancelled school for the city. FOR THE ENTIRE WEEK! I have never had this happen before. Yes there have been snow days. Even several days in a row. Here though, we knew in advance that school was cancelled for a minimum of one week. A surprise working vacation. I did get out and about but the streets and trains and buses were eerily empty. Very strange but it did seem to have the desired effect. So now we are back in school and in the home stretch. YEA!