Sunday, April 12, 2009

Our Man in Japan

"I know enough Japanese, English, and Handwaving to explain pretty much anything I need too."

Dear Family,

Last Monday Night we had a pizza party with some investigators at the church. Elder Bahr and I made 7 pizzas and it went well.

This will seem hard to believe but sometimes people give us wrong phone numbers. In the past this was really a pain because we didn`t always know whether we had a wrong number or not and could waste some time calling it. However now that we have cell phones we simply dial their number there on the spot in order to give them our cell phone number. This insures that we have the right phone number. Last week someone tried to/accidentally gave us the wrong number and was surprised when we dialed it. Really if people don`t want to give us their phone number we`re fine with that, just say so and don`t bother making up a fake one.

Elder Matsuoka and I taught the first lesson to a 7 year old American boy last week. Since Elder Matsuoka speaks little English I ended up teaching most of that lesson. It was probably the first time I`ve taught the entire first lesson in English since the beginning of the MTC. The three missionary lesson pamphlets (The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, The Plan of Salvation, The Gospel of Jesus Christ) are good resources for young children learning the gospel. They explain all the basic important doctrine in one place very simply.

On Friday when we left the apartment we both felt that there was someone sitting in the park that we needed to go talk to. When we went there we found some guy sitting down who we approached. He actually surprisingly recognized us as Mormon Missionaries. (That`s unusual for Japanese people, though almost all American or European foreigners recognize us) We had a good talk with him, apparently he had gone to a Christmas Party at an LDS church some time ago. He actually was about to head back to Tokyo where he lives when we came across him.

On Saturday and Sunday we had General Conference. You already saw Conference so there`s not much to say.

Do you still have extra "roommates" and if so, how is that working out? It`s going well, I expect there to be 4 missionaries in this apartment for another 3-6 months. Elder Bahr my companion is good, he goes back home June 5, so he`s almost done. It`s fun to be in the same apartment as Elder Campbell (My MTC room mate), he`s a great missionary. Elder Murphy is from New Zealand and I think he came to Japan right before Christmas.

Would you like me to see if I can get some college applications for you? Sure, I`d like to see the applications for BYU and some of the closer Washington Colleges.

How's the language coming along? Are you still studying kanji? It`s hard to explain how much I understand. For the most part I understand what people are saying though there`s still a lot of less common words that I don`t understand, it`s generally enough to get the gist or understand when they explain it more. I know enough Japanese, English, and Handwaving to explain pretty much anything I need too. Yes I am still studying kanji. It`s similar to studying Latin roots of a language sort`ve, except it`s necessary to know these Latin roots in order to read things.

Have you eaten anything interesting/new lately? I can`t think of anything. Though Corn Soup is really common here. I`m actually drinking some as I type this. Besides that at the apartment I learned another way to eat eggs. Fry an egg over easy and put in a bowl of rice, add a little soy sauce, stir it up and eat it. Oh yeah I did crack a raw egg into my rice last week wondering if it would cook some, it didn`t cook really but was good nonetheless.

Well that`s all there is to say this week I think.

Take care,
Elder West.

PS Hello Bradley Ferel take care until next week.

No comments: