A typical office day

One day a couple of weeks ago it was a typical day in the office and then all of sudden I hear "Uh Oh!" Jake broke Rev. Kevin's copy of Please Understand me. The book is still usable, but it now comes in 2 parts

Swords and Sand painting

After Rev. Kevin moved to the BSC in January we have been having what we call Director's Nite once a month. Every month has a different theme and it's always something new and different. In April the theme was swords and origami. We got to see his sand painting as an added bonus. 

Rev. Kevin showed off his 2 Japanese swords after we watched a film on the making of Japanese swords. It was pretty interesting. 

Here is Rev. Kevin and Beau showing the proper way to hand swords without killing each other.

Sugi and Jake also give a demonstration of the technique from a different angle.

ummm...it's the same sword I can't remember what it's called though ....

Above is Rev. Kevin showing everyone the Naginata sword.

Lacy was very fascinated by it since she actually uses a Naginata.

Showing off the blade of the Naginata though it wasn't a great picture.

Rev. Kevin's sand painting that he got from his dad.

*On a random side note: Have you signed up for the Young Adult Retreat IV in August?!? If you haven't you should! You will be having 2 super special guest speakers that will surely impress you! And you'll learn about how to create a more mindful community. Check the BSC website for forms or here

Chi Chi Dango making with Rev. Ikeda

*The following posts are catch up posts from the past few months. But as you know we've been crazy non-stop busy, so please excuse us while we catch up a bit.

The Fellowship Club was really blessed and lucky enough to have Rev. Earl Ikeda become minister of Moiliili Hongwanji temple. He has volunteered to teach us many of his talents, one of which is mochi making. ( I can't even remember if I ever even reported this here!)

In February he offered to show us and share with us his Chi Chi Dango recipe. We're sworn to secrecy though because he secretly or not so secretly someday hopes to open his own shop of mochi! In March, Rev. Earl Ikeda volunteered the Fellowships Club expertise and services to help make 2 batches of Chi Chi Dango for the Taste of Hongwanji Fair. Below are pictures to prove that we helped make at least 2 batches of Chi Chi Dango!

A finished batch of yummy Chi Chi Dango!

The baking process under supervision Jake measures out the sugar that needs to go into the Chi Chi Dango using Rev. Earl's scale not pictured.

Sugi stirs the flour while Rev. Ikeda adds more flour a little bit at a time.

Sugi stands by the pot of mochi cooking. You tend to spend a lot of time waiting for it to be ready. But it was a good time to eat and talk story!

Rev. Ikeda uses the mighty spatula to stir the mochi to make sure that it is cooked all the way through and that it's ready to be split and put into the pan.

Don't forget to thoroughly put enough corn starch on your baking pan so that your Chi Chi Dango won't stick to the sides. Maitri's friend ( I forget her name, I'm sorry!) did a super good job of getting corn starch evenly distributed on one of the pans.

Twirl and shove into the pan evenly. Corner, corner, corner, corner, middle. smooth, repeat!

After we finish the white layer, we then add red food coloring to the second half and stir like crazy to make sure it doesn't look patchy!

Sugi remembers to use the twirl and shove distribution of mochi into the pan technique.

Rev. Ikeda scrapes out the rest of the mochi from the cooking pan and then smoothes the mochi again trying to get rid of the air bubbles.

A finished pan of mochi that's waiting to be set over night. Sorry about the air bubbles. We forgot to bang them out until the corn starch was on top!I hope it tasted all right :)