July 11, 2010

Dear Family,

Well darn, I actually don’t think I have a lot to say this week and I don’t have a lot I can reply to. I assume more letters are being written right now because I came a little early this week and Hooton’s tend to wait until the last minute to do stuff.

After emailing last week we went and did some shopping. I wrote Kaden a letter that he better appreciate because it took me two hours. I was then excited to go take a nap then I heard Elder Wilson’s watch beep from the Futon room and I realized it was 6:00. It was okay though because we then went to ward sports night. It was way fun. The two Japanese Elders from Numazu came and there ended up being like 16 people there. The biggest down side though was that it was not air conditioned. It was incredibly hot. My hands and feet started to get wrinkly (like when you are swimming too long) because I couldn’t find anything dry to wipe my hands on. I even carry around a towel with me and that got too wet as well. Another draw back was that this member who married an American (who was also there) brought her little sister and her friend. It was okay though. I played semi-organized volleyball for the first time in my life I think. It wasn’t really fair because it was in Japan. When I jumped my face went above the net. Luckily I only got spiked in the face once (It went onto the other side though score one Tyler’s nose). I slept well that night (after I rung out my skin like a sham wow). I think my descriptive writing is getting better. Sister Clemens would be proud of me.

Oh also last P-day Elder Wilson got his haircut and a dude was paying for his haircut and I said “suteki na.....” I realized I didn’t know the word for haircut so essentially I said, “That’s a good looking.” I think he understood what I was trying to say. He spoke a little bit of English to me and then we started talking about sports and he said that he is a kick boxer. I told him that my friend getting his haircut was into MMA. He gave me his card and we met him later that week. He showed us a boxing gym in Fuji. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet some younger people there and talk to them (we have enough old people investigators right now, we need young priesthood holders). The dude doesn’t have a lot of potential. He just couldn’t comprehend not drinking alcohol. Literally he couldn’t. He kept saying, “not even a little.” He was fun to talk to though.

We also went into a big cultural center last week to try to find people. They always have concerts and stuff. We went into an art gallery and we were just walking around and a guy came up to us and started trying to speak English with us. We talked to him about some of the paintings. He said that he studied the Bible a lot in Japanese and English and he loves to study stuff in both languages. We continued to walk around with him. He asked us how each pictures made of feel (most of them were of Mt. Fuji and the area around it). We then got to a nude painting and we tried to just hurry along but he asked us what we thought. It was quite awkward. We just made statements like “Its a woman...she’s naked.” But anyway, we went back yesterday (Sunday) and found him again (he was the artist of some of the paintings so he was there all the time) and we gave him a Book of Mormon in English and Japanese. He was super excited and asked if we had meetings. We gave him our flier and he even wrote down the day and time of our Sacrament Meeting (it’s weird, that Sacrament Meeting is the last hour of the block here). So that was a good experience. It’s fun finding the people that are prepared.

The biggest event of the last week was “Meet the Baird Family Taikai” (conference). It was pretty scary because we heard a lot of stuff about him before hand because we were the last conference to be held so stuff leaked in from other parts of the mission. Things are totally different but luckily it comes from the Prophet and not just from President Baird. Less people are upset that way. So we only have zone conference once a quarter. We have interviews once a quarter. Also, all leadership positions will have 4 day training sessions every other month for the next little while as they implement a new curriculum. It’s way intense. They made new “District videos.” These are videos of real lessons with real investigators. We had seen some from before (I had to watch them before I went into the MTC) but this time they show bad examples and stuff. We only watched one at the conference but it was really painful. One investigator thought he couldn’t go on dates for a long time.

President Baird is (as every missionary will describe him) an intense person. He yells....a lot. He is passionate to say the least. I’m okay with it. I can handle stuff like that. He had me stand up and read a bunch of stuff. He was yelling and crying at one point. He kept asking me questions. It was interesting. I started to become good friends with him after the conference. He was a Human Resources Consultant (I think). So I was lucky to have taken interest in my father’s job prior to my mission. I told him that dad was an Instructional Designer. I shared some of my thoughts on the new training that will be happening in the mission and quoted some statistics that dad talked about all the time. He put his hand on my shoulder and whispered to me (also like he was crying) “your father is a brilliant man.” He can teach you how to be an extraordinary missionary. Listen to every word that he tells you.” I said, “I’ve recently realized that. I only wish that I could have known that through my teenage years.” I like the President a lot. I think we will get along well. I don’t have any problems with his authority. He will be a lot different but I think he will be really good for the mission.

I’m going to send this off and read an email and then write some more.

Love Tyler