Our Man in Japan

Dear Family,

Sorry about not emailing last week, it was a holiday and there was a place to email. The week before I worked on my BYU application and the week before that no email.

So last week, Thanksgiving Day was transfer day. Unfortunately you can`t really plan much on a transfer day. I think we ate gyoza and rice for dinner.

Random things from the past month:

November 11- I was on an exchange with a Japanese elder, one of the contacts went pretty long because he was trying to convince the person to listen without using The Book of Mormon. I finally pulled the Book of Mormon out of the Japanese Elder`s little pouch (I had already given mine away) and testified about it and the restoration of the gospel and prophets. The guy then proceeded to tell Elder Kudo that he had never heard of the Book of Mormon and we should share that message right away. It was a good learning experience.

November 15-17- Our sink drain wasn`t draining much and we ended up washing dishes in the bathroom sink for a while. We poured drain cleaner, soap, bleach and stuff down to no effect. In the end we filled the sink up with water and I think the pressure fixed it.

November 23- Transfer calls. Elder Kimura is transferring to Himeji, the opposite side of the mission. I`m training again. I was pretty surprised by that call, I was expecting to train last time but wasn`t expecting it this time. We ate dinner at a member`s house in the evening. During the meal at one point the husband said `Honey, why`s there a crab in the microwave`. He opened the microwave and there was a whole crab sitting on a plate in the microwave. Apparently one of there kids brought it home. We ended up eating it. It`s the first time I`ve eaten crab brain.

November 26- Thanksgiving. Ate a few day old donuts for breakfast. Some rice and Tonkatsu for lunch. And some potstickers and rice for dinner. I also went to the Mission Home to pick up a new elder.

On the train ride to the Mission home a couple little girls were standing a little bit behind me on a really packed train. When the train finally stopped at a station I heard one of them saying `Nana... Nana...` and the other one was lying unconscious on the floor. She must have fainted. It`s very fortunate she wasn`t trampled on that train. A station worker ran onto the train grabbed her and ran off.

When President McIntyre was telling us who we`re training Elder Imai (The elder I trained a few months ago) and I were the last ones left along with two new missionaries. President McIntyre read off the assignments in a strange way that left us confused. But Elder Imai just was waving them over and so we assumed he had figured it out. Anyways we went over and hugged our new companions and welcomed them and then Elder Price looked at his letter and was reading it and saying `I`m Elder Price right?`. We realized the mistakes and switched companions and hugged again, but it was pretty funny. The missionary I`m training is Elder Johnson. His mom is Japanese and he`s lived on one of the airbases in Japan for about 10 years so his Japanese is pretty good. We`ve had a good few days so far.

Alright that`s it for this week.

Love you take care. I`ll probably be emailing weekly again.

Elder Andrew West.