It's a beautiful day here in Fukui - the sun is shining, birds are chirping, no snow, no rain....Spring is in the air and the sakura and Hanami parties are just around the corner. All in all, we survived the winter more or less intact, although I must say that the bark burning capital of Japan really was based in Fukui for a few weeks in January. Talk about cold....BBBBRRRRR!!!!!!!!(as I am from Canada, I think that I do know cold when I feel it, regardless of what the thermometer says!)

I also have to admit that right now I am playing hooky from some of my other responsibilities. In an attempt to continually entice people to come to the cafe (either to come for the first time or once that hurdle has been cleared - to get them to come back), I routinely have to hit the books(that would be "cookbooks") and plan what this week's or this month"s menus will be.....and to be honest - at this particular moment my heart just isn't in it. So I thought I would make good on my promise that I made in the last newsletter to y'all about quarterly newsletters and get crackin' on Volume 2, No. 2!(I must say that it's a little more enticing to work on it now that I don't see my breathing congealing in the air as I sit up here and type - unlike December's!!) Della's Note: I have to admit that a few days have passed since I wrote the above stuff. It's now almost the end of April and there is definitely no snow here! As a matter of fact, it's starting to get a bit on the hot side already - Yikes!!! (RAY'S NOTE: While Della was in Sendai, it got CHO BERY HOT here. It's almost the "sweat standing still" season.)

Going to try & follow the same format as last time, so here goes!(By the way, I suggest a cup of coffee or a mug of tea be on hand as you sit back and read this - it will no doubt take a while to wind your way through the latest antics of the Bunkyo crew!...you wouldn't want it any other way, would you?)

Fax Machine... (+81) 0776-22-6315

Remember what I said about Bunkyo buying a fax machine that works? Well, technically speaking it does. It works really well inside of Japan(The Faxes at FBC and here are on really good terms) but outside is another matter! While we can receive, we can't send. It has to do with the phone line and the public phone in the cafe......ah well, at least we made some progress in today's electronic age with the Home Page being up and running. And besides, who doesn't like to get an envelope with a nice stamp on it and an exciting letter inside it, instead of a flimsy piece of paper that just anybody can read....if they can decipher the smudged handwriting?

CHINESE FELLOWSHIP NEWS

The Chinese Fellowship continues to be genki and enthusiastic. On December 21, 1996 they held a Christmas party here at the Bunkyo and invited many other Chinese people from around Fukui to come and attend. About 80(give or take a few)people filled the church that night. It was partially catered by yours truly, with the able assistance of Geovanna(I think her most important contribution to the event was that she kept me sane while the food was going out - yesch - what a job!)

Also, the Chinese Fellowship will soon be having their own Chinese pastor! Ko-sensei is from Taiwan and is currently studying Japanese in Tokyo. The Chinese Fellowship is eagerly awaiting her arrival back in Fukui.

JAPANESE FELLOWSHIP NEWS

The Japanese Fellowship had a baptism take place here at the Bunkyo in April. The 11 year old daughter of one of the JF members decided that she wanted to be baptized and they held it at Party Club! What a testimony to the other children!!! Party Club continues to be a big draw and about 30 kids are coming to it every month(it's on the second Saturday of each month.) Laura continues to help with teaching kids English(and does a wonderful job) during Party Club and I continue to help out with the feeding of them afterwards.

PIZZA PARTIES

As an outreach to some of the high school students in the area, the cafe is hosting a "Pizza Party" on a Friday night, once a month. It's really hard to get young people anywhere near a church in Japan, so this is a great opportunity! Liz has been inviting her ESS students to come and they have! Our latest "Pizza Party" was on April 25. Twenty nine students showed up for pizza and English! Wow!!! It was more than we were expecting, but the Kitchen Crew managed to turn out pizzas fast enough to keep a revolt from happening(it wasn't the students that we were worried about so much as some of the ALTs who had come to provide the English aspect of the party!), but it was a close thing!

"This Old Church" With The Hansons... (oops....Hansens)...

Well, mass de-construction, madness and mayhem have reigned here at the Bunkyo for the last 3 months or so. It began with the Bunkyo Swamp in January and just kept on going from there. If the Hansen and Hanson Construction Company were a private construction company and not a non-profit one - they could have made a killing. As it was, the only one who almost got killed was me!(Someone hit me in the head with a couple of planks....after they'd sprained my thumb when they dropped some floorboards on it....)

It all started one day when it was decided that the cafe needed more storage space, specifically - shelving units. Ray was called in and consulted about this, but then began to have some questions about the stability of the floor that he was contemplating putting the shelving units on! Specifically, the flooring of the original room(from here on in that's what the middle room between the cafe and the church will be called). It had an alarming tendency to go "spronnnggggg!!!!" whenever someone walked on it(and not just heavy-footed gaijin either)! It also went "spronnnggggg!!!!" in some places more than others as well!! After some mental seesawing back and forth between "Let's get those shelves built" and "Let's see why the floor is acting like a trampoline?", Ray's natural curiosity won out and the floor was ripped out!

The crew for this enterprise was partially experienced(members of the famous wood-debarking episode: Ray, Della, Memo) with dealing with the unexpected at Bunkyo and a poor unsuspecting soul(Rafael) who will never believe what his simple offer of help led to........The Bunkyo Swamp!

Yes, it is possible to have a swamp without having a marsh or bog in sight for miles around! After a concerted effort of flooring ripping, board levering and ax wielding - the underside of the Bunkyo was revealed to us - and it wasn't a pretty sight. Sometime within the last 2 years the pipe connecting the cafe's kitchen sink to the sewer line - broke. Yes, broke. Thus after an unknown quantity of time - the Bunkyo Swamp was created. EEEEEUUUUUUHHHHHH!!!!!!!

It was mainly located under the cafe kitchen and had done no damage there, but it had made its presence felt elsewhere......The ground under the kitchen and the original room is nothing more than dirt and the reason for the rather alarming sag to the floorboards was discovered to have been because 1) the soil under the supports supporting the floor beams had turned into mud and they sank or 2) because the water from the Swamp had rotted them out!! So - basically - there wasn't much actually supporting the floor except the beams themselves!!

As you can imagine, this did not make anyone happy. The plumber was called in to fix the pipe but was unable to replace it because it was so old that it was incompatible with the cafe plumbing that was installed 2 years ago! His solution was to use some sort of plumbing tape and reconnect the 2 pipes that way. When questioned about this method of repair, his basic reply was to the effect, "It's O.K. It won't rot.".......there are some things that still take a person by surprise here....

After the "repair" was made, the process of supporting the beams and strengthening the floor began. What a job! People were constantly being sent off on errands to get one thing or another, with one particularly memorable trip being to get some concrete(cinder) blocks to stick under the beam supports.....the end result was Della and Rafael locating what the Boss wanted and taking them back to the Bunkyo - in their backpacks, riding their bicycles! A 20 pound rectangular concrete block is not the easiest thing to move around at the best of times, but on a bike it adds new meaning to the word - balance! And although according to Memo we looked like 2 very old people who had to help haul each other up the step to get into the original room and assist each other with getting our backpacks off - that little expedition went off fairly smoothly.

Among other memorable Bunkyo Swamp episodes was "The Pin and The Paper Clip". After having ripped the old floor boards out, any nails that were left behind in the cross beams had to be removed so that the new floorboards could then be put down. The only problem was that the nails were so old that when you tried to pull them out with either a hammer or a crowbar - the nail heads would come off!! That lead to the decision to use a hacksaw and just saw the nails off flush with the boards. This particular task was assigned to Rafael, who was doing just splendidly until.......the pin holding the hacksaw blade in place fell out....and so did the blade!!

Ray and Rafael were discovered digging through the dirt looking for it when yours truly returned from another assignment. I joined the search for the pin, but had as much luck as they did finding the darn thing. But when in doubt - pray. So, we did. We never did find that pin but I did find a paper clip that had been down there for who knows how long that Rafael managed to "MacGyver" it into place and used it as a replacement pin! Never doubt the power of prayer and don't be too quick to pass something by that doesn't look like the answer you were expecting.....you just might be passing by your own "paper clip" solution!

From start to finish, the repair and replacement of the floor took 3 days. They were long, hard, dirty, tiring and ultimately - very rewarding. The floor that's down there now doesn't look any different from the one that we so enthusiastically ripped up(thanks to Olaug saving the finishing boards from the house when it was renovated), but we have the memories and the pictures of what we did....and the final piece of proof is that you can jump up and down on that floor anywhere you want to and it won't go "ssspppprrrroooonnggggg"!!! Ray did and I have the picture to prove that too........

After the floor was back in place, Ray got started on the job that he had originally been contracted to perform - the shelves. His crew on that one changed a bit with Donna joining the team and Rafael departing from it. After turning the original room into a temporary carpenter's shop with sawdust EVERYWHERE, they managed to complete that project......well, sort of. The shelves are up and you can use them, but they're still missing a few things, like doors and paneling on the outside.

But Ray has a good excuse. Before the sin of pride could take hold, he and his crew were launched on yet another mission: the upstairs office/guest room! Yes Jo - it's finally been done! On February 11, 1997 Ray and Memo began this project and started by tearing down the bedroom/corridor wall. With a lot of time, effort and dust(you wouldn't believe what that wall was made from!)- it was accomplished and a rather cheerful guest room emerged. it's been used quite a lot since it was "finished" (a lot of things around here get "finished" to the we can "use it as it is" stage, with the hope that it will be really finished later (RAY'S NOTE: It will be!!!)) and many people have said how nice it is. This room will double as a guest room and also as an office were Aslaug, Onoyama-san and I can work out of. As a matter of fact, that's where I am right now.

Ray says he now plans to get back to those shelves, but I don't know......something is always happening to those plans..... (RAY'S NOTE...Della shouldn't write letters just before a school break...the doors and paneling are now finished thanks to Golden Week vacation.) But seriously, Ray (and of course his assistants ) has put in a lot of time and hard work into making the Bunkyo a place that will more fully meet the needs of the people here and they really were a blessing.

NEWS FROM OLAUG and ASLAUG

They are both doing well and of this addition to newsletter(April 28) are on their way to Karuizawa for a few days of well deserved rest and relaxation. Let's hope and pray that they get them.

NEWS FROM DELLA

Well, now I can talk without using the editorial "we" all the time, although I think I may have slipped a few times.....gomen.....

The cafe officially started on January 27 with the following taking part: Della - Cook Rabbit, Memo - Official Bread Baker(oishii - yo!), Liz - First(and Faithful) Server and Arash - First Customer.

It's been going for 3 months now and is slowly starting to take off. The Fukui grapevine is finally beginning to do its job and word is getting around. It's open for brunch on Sundays from 11:00-3:00 and Monday nights from 5:30-9:00.(Actually it is Monday night right now and I should be downstairs taking care of customers, but I have snuck off and left my very able body of volunteers in charge while I try to get this out to you.) We had our biggest brunch crowd ever with 19 people yesterday! It was pandemonium there for awhile as it was just Michelle and I on duty(we could really use your prayers for more volunteers for the cafe), but we managed - I think.

I'm still learning a lot of things and find myself wondering exactly how it was that I got here at times, but all in all - I'm still really happy to be back here again. On a more personal note - my Mom has started going to the church I went to when I was back home in Canada! I almost fell off of my bed when I read that in one of her letters! But she is going and I give God praise for that! I have also been praying ever since that she will keep on going and that in time she will not be going because she desires a social contact, but because she desires a spiritual contact. So - to everybody that prayed for my Mom when I was back homeand still do so - progress is being made!

Golden Week starts tomorrow and I am to Sendai to see Lois. There's been talk of fajitas and you all know what that means - extra hours on the treadmill and stair master!!

ALUMNI NEWS

EDITORS NOTE: For privacy reasons, I have cut this section. Most of this information is available on the members' page so take some time and check it out. If you are a current or former Bunkyo member and would like to submit/update your information, please fill out the submission form on the members' page. We hope to hear from you soon.

Love and prayers from all of us here at the Bunkyo!

©1997 Ray Hanson. All rights reserved.