April 6, 2010

Dear Family,

Communicating never looked so fun. People are laughing at me all the time and slapping me on the shoulder. I think Portuguese and Japanese are just funnier languages than English. Or at least that’s what I tell myself every night. Things are going well though.

Now to answer some of your questions before I move on to what I had to say. First I didn’t get to see general conference. America is that only place in the world that gets to see it that week. It’s now being sent out to all the countries on DVD and I have to travel to Kanazawa on Sunday to see it.

My buss ride to Takaoka was like 4 hours and I was with 3 other elders including my new companion. They always bring trainers into the mission home to take us out. It weird just being with one other missionary now but it’s all good. So we are the only ones in our city and we live alone. The next closest ones are an hour away by train. My mission president will be replaced in June. He is super cool and way relaxed. The new one we hear is super strict. It’s going to be a rough transition.

Oh boy do I have stuff to tell you about the food. So we’ve eaten at the Brazilian restaurant 4 times. We ate at an Italian buffet. We also ate at a super classy French restaurant. It was about 20 dollars a plate. We eat out all the time. Members also gave us three grocery bags full of food on Sunday. To do some cleaning today I cleaned out the freezer and threw out tons of meats. I don’t know what brother Lyon was talking about. All I eat here is meat. It’s ridiculous. Also, I did order a bike this week. The only one that would fit my 192cm frame was $500. Sorry. It’s more expensive than we had thought.

Once again can you make sure my email is distributed? Also, can I get the email addresses of the people that you send it out to? It is okay for me to email them. Also, could print this out (because I don’t: have the capability right now) and maybe send it to Kaden and Jordan? I’m sorry...I’m so needy. No hurry on it. I just want to maintain communication with them.

Foods that I have tried here:

• Pig parts bean soup from Brazil
• Crazy expensive hamburger (without a bun) from France
• Mellon Fanta
• Lots of gross rice stuff
• Japanese Pizza. Mushrooms and rice everywhere. GAAA
• Mellon ice cream

Interesting observations:

• People here love America more than we do. (I love America)
• Grandpas here wear sick headphones...it’s awesome
• Medicine here is strongly influenced by Doctor Mario and has two distinct colors on each side of the capsule
• Cars over 5 feet long seems to have back-up beeps that are only on big trucks in the US
• They like to jam chocolate in the must unwarranted places. LIKE MY BREAD.
• Drinking fountains here suck. You know the ones at the church for the kids? That’s like the height of all the ones here. Back problems.
• The mission home and the MTC are the number 1 places in the world where unwarranted high fives and hugs are given. Also the words *way* *sooooo* *jazz* *epic* are over used.

Final observations:

• I am a dangerous person to have in Japan because some poor girl was staring at me in the mall yesterday and ran smack dab into something.
• If one child sees me and I go knock on a house then I came back and there is a whole mess of them.
• Hymns being sung in Portuguese, English and Japanese together sound terrible.

I’m having a hard time with the work but not like it sounds. I want to be doing more. It seems like we aren’t as effective as we could be. I’m trying to do better and my companion isn’t lazy but we just don’t use our time as well as we can. Things are going really well though. We are teaching lessons and the languages are super difficult but slowly coming. I’m doing well. I’m just trying to work hard and figure out what the Lord is trying to teach me and what He wants me to do.

Please send email addresses next time and keep sending great letters. I’m glad everything is going well. Hopefully next week my letter will be better and I can spend time on things that you probably care about more. Have a great week. I love you all...but seriously, repent :)

Love Elder フトン