BARBECUE!

Ok, I’ve tried to figure out how the Picasa thing works but it’s gonna take me a while. So, I’ll still embed the photos this time. This was the [fantastic] barbecue we had yesterday w/the English group.

I met them at the Kawauchi clock tower, and led the way to Smile & Carol’s place, which is adjacent to the campus.

That’s Betty (L) and Christina (R) up front, Akira (the other Akira) behind Betty. The three guys in the back from L-R are Kenji, Takahiro, and Wataru (Ransom). Kenji and Takahiro are both graduates of Tohoku who were involved in CCC last year. They were both led to the Lord by Elton, and it is cool to see that they are still following Christ after 4 years.

Once we got to Smile’s house we set up the BBQ grill and started sterilizing the grilling prongs.

Inside, Carol and a girl I had not met, Nozomi, were cutting up veggies. (Nozomi means “hope” btw. Pretty cool.)

Elton’s children, Hitomi and Ken, were running around being mischievous. Everyone loved them, of course, it was like having 10 babysitters. Ken has terrible allergies and his face was all red and scratch looking. It was the worst allergies, I had ever seen, I think. But, he still managed to have a really chipper attitude, I think.

 

I then proceeded to just go around and take snapshots of various people during the barbecue. So: here’s Akira in some very deep conversation. I think it was with San-san

And HAHAHAHA here are the hilarious Chinese girls – they are such crackups!!

Ransom, barbecuing away… (here! Have some intestine!)

Takahiro keeping the grill hot

Yuko, a wonderful girl who is CCC staff and the first fruit of Elton & Noel’s ministry here

San-san excitedly waving the yaki-soba noodles around

Kenji – this guy was really cool, I got to talk w/him for a while. He became a Christian through meeting Elton on campus. When I asked what he did now, he very proudly told me he worked at a taxation office. And, when I asked him how he landed that job (because his major was in English, not anything like that) he very enthusiastically went on to explain how difficult it was to get that job. Anyway, I guess they have different mentalities about that taxation work in Japan. Cool guy!

At first, the barbecue was kind of free-form. You just sort of grabbed your vegetable or meat of choice, scewered it, and held it over the grill.

Anyway, like I said there were a lot of people, good times to be had by all.

And the kids probably thought it the equivalent of disneyland…

We finished up and parted in good spirits after taking a group photo. 10sec timer, so I got to be in this one… I’m not sure where Noel is, and Yuko left early, so she’s not in it either, but I think everyone else is.

And, one thing I’ve realized after writing recaps of events like this, is that it’s nearly impossible to retell an event and capture the essence of it, if you follow perfectly follow chronological order. Quite a few of these photos are not in chronological order. Strangely, this has slightly altered my understanding of how the gospel accounts were put together. Or, at least, my own attempts to record an event help me understand better some of the discrepancies of order between many events recorded in the gospel accounts.

~ by timu on May 4, 2007.