Andrew got his traveling papers...he's leaving the MTC on Monday, September 29th! His new address is located under his picture over on the sidebar. Please write. He would really appreciate it.
Here's his final MTC email:
Dear Family,
Yes I did get my travel plans, though I don't have them on me right now. We have to be at the travel office ready to go 8 AM Monday Morning, September 29. I think we leave Salt Lake City at 10 AM Mountain Time, Arrive in LA 11 AM Pacific Time. We leave LA at about 1 PM. We fly to Tokyo and arrive September 30 5 PMish maybe. From there we fly to Itami in Osaka and arrive I think around 7 PM.
Don't send anymore packages. I'll buy anything I need in Japan. At the moment I'm busy worrying making sure all my baggage ends up underweight. We can have two checked bags, both 50 lbs, one carry on 22 lbs, and a personal item.
I called the bank today to let them know I would be in Japan for the next two years. The automated message before giving you numbers to press mentioned something about a Boeing Strike I think. What's that about?
Can I just say after memorizing a few scriptures in Japanese how easy I imagine memorizing scriptures in English actually is. When memorizing a scripture in Japanese I start off by writing it all down. I then go through and write the English meanings of the words under the Japanese ones. After that I figure out how it all fits together. A lot of sentences are written in reverse order of the English sentence. After that I finally start memorizing it. It's not as hard to memorize after I know what I'm saying.
Last Tuesday Elder Hinckley spoke at the Devotional. He had his own B's of missionary work. Be Civil. Be Happy. Be Bold. Be Prayerful. Be Obedient. Be Careful. Be Filled with Faith. Be Leaders (By your example), Be clean. He gave a really good talk. And he also kind of reminded of Mr.Rogers from Mr.Roger's Neighborhood. Though I can't even remember the last time I saw that show so I couldn't say for sure. Anyways after he finished talking about Being Clean he left about 10 minutes or so for people's questions. As could be expected I suppose most of the questions were wasted. When is this mission opening up? Are there any current plans for opening missions in China? And last and most confusing to pretty much every one there, Why is it so important that we're clean when we enter the mission field? Elder Hinckley had just talked about that so I'm not sure what the question was really about? Either the Elder was asleep, not very bright, or was trying to ask what the *real* reason was. I'm not sure.
Last night there was a Health and Safety Meeting for everyone leaving next week. The people serving in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, or Australia went to one meeting. Every one else went to the other. Most of the things talked about weren't relevant to Japan. What I really got out of the meeting is that I'm happy to be going to a place with clean water. Also it's a bad idea to leave a hamburger in a microwave overnight and then when you discover it the next day to just heat it up and eat it. I'm pretty sure I won't do that.
Sushi may or may not be okay. The speakers there when asked said eating raw fish was a bad idea. I'm pretty sure they'll tell us in Japan what's okay and what's not. From what I understand they actually have a list of Tea's okay to drink and not okay to drink in Japan. Though I can't remember what the difference is right now.
I will still have the same e-mail address in Japan. My mail address will be:
Elder Andrew West
Japan Kobe Mission
4-6-28 Shinohara Honcho
Nada-ku
Kobe-shi 657-0067
Japan
Good luck with finding that key. Don't stress out over it. Stressing won't help anything.
Sincerely,
Elder Andrew West.
7 comments:
List of Acceptable Teas
That's a list I want to see...
We hereby vow to write Andrew regularly (do we have to commit to an regular interval?) We ARE terribly proud of him. truly Japanese is not an easy tranferrable from english language to learn. But we know he is a bright boy & will do very well with practice. I know 2 words; only one I can spell even close: ohio. My uncle was a full-time missionary his entire life; most of it in Okinawa, Japan.
We will continue to pray for his success & safety as he serves the Lord. BTW, are you planning to go pick him up when he's done? Can we go too? :)
I really want to pick him up in Japan - and YES you may come. I will warn you - since he will be released in July that it is wicked hot and humid there in the summer. You may be used to the heat - but gosh the humidity is high there.
We'll have to see where Alex is at that time - he may already have left for his mission...you never know. He will be 19 in 1 year and just over 4 months. Wow, is that hard to believe! I'm sort of hoping he gets to go to Japan too - he took 3 years of Japanese in high school.
i love that suitcase pile. I can't remember which airport though, is it Portland?
Good luck to your missionary. You know when we were in elementary school and my mom was in college studying linguistics, she studied two languages. German and Japanese. If we knew then what we know now, we should have been helping with her homework.
I am absolutely NOT a linguist. I took one semester of Spanish in college and managed to just barely squeek by (I love the YouTube video of the "One Semester Spanish -Love Song" it has just about every word I learned in it).
There's always Rosetta Stone! Maybe we should start now, whaddya think?
Don't sell yourself short, Debbie. Look how good you are at English.
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