Dear Family,
So I’m going back to Kanazawa Zone. That’s where Takaoka is. I will be in a district with Komatsu and that’s it. It really stinks being in a four man district. I’m not looking forward to that. Fukui get’s super cold during the winter. Elder Wilson left Fukui when I came to the mission. It was then closed when I left Takaoka because they had no investigators. So now Elder Momose and I get to go open it tomorrow night.
I will leave here tomorrow morning and go to the train station in Nagoya where we will meet most of the missionaries in the mission because a special trainer session is being held for missionaries that President Baird picked. We will go into the mission home and have a four hour special training session (mainly zone leaders, trainers, and people opening areas). I’ll probably leave the mission home around 7:00 pm and get to Fukui around 9:00 or 10:00 pm. It’s the second longest transfer possible in the mission from Fuji to Fukui. It’s going to cost me tons of money and I’m going to be exhausted.
Then I’ve got to deal with opening an area. I have to set up English class and meet with the ward mission leader each week and all that stuff. Geez I need better Japanese. It will be good though. I’m happy that I’ll be given a companion that’s motivated and an area that we can mold to what we want it to be. It’ll be nice to start from the ground up. Hopefully since I’m senior companion a lot of pressure will be put on me and it will force my Japanese to get better. Having a Japanese companion will help as well. I might write next week’s email through tears though. It will just be difficult because there isn’t a zone conference next transfer and I don’t think anyone is my district is a native English speaker. There is a Brazilian that is pretty good but not fluent. Oh well. My English will just have to suffer even more.
This week I officially became a normal Japanese missionary. I opened up the rice cooker and just started eating plain rice for a meal. I never thought I’d see the day. I realized a few good things this week. First, that someone that I housed into and I was the one that knocked on the door and talk to them, well they got baptized last transfer. It was in Kanazawa. He is Chinese (I swear the work will explode in China, those people are gold) and got baptized on the same day as someone that I taught a couple days later in Kanazawa. Elder Insch and I taught him lesson 3 and committed him to baptism when we were on a companion exchange. Also a man I taught in Shizuoka last transfer with our Zone Leader was baptized last week and confirmed yesterday. So I just need to work on people in my area now. I didn’t play a huge part at all but it was cool to participate in their conversion and see what it takes to get someone to be baptized.
This week I also learned the power and purpose of testimonies. It’s great to always back up what you say with a testimony. I think the real purpose of a testimony though is when an investigator has a bunch of little hang-ups they can’t get past then you just have to break things down very basic and explain the premise that if the Book Of Mormon is true then none of that matters because it testifies of the restoration which proves everything else.
We found a new investigator this week. I don’t know if he should be referred to as an investigator exactly but he’ll talk with us and listen a little. It’s funny because after we say something is always yells “uso!” which means lie. His main hang up is that he says he can’t believe that God created everything. We assured him that yes, God did create everything. We taught him some good things though and family is quite important to him. We tried to talk to him about how families can be together forever but we were cute off by his friend (we did the lesson in the lounge of a car repair shop with he and his two friends who were watching the baseball game on the TV next to me) who had a question about our church. The friends were alright. They had some good questions but not a ton of interest. It was awkward when some random woman walked in and said “ooh it Mormons.” She then started to list off the things from the word of wisdom which made us sound weird. Then the guy asked if we could get married. We said yes but after we finished our missions. He said, “you won’t be able to find anyone if you don’t drink coffee or beer.” I then said “uso!” to him and told him I’ve dated plenty of attractive women. It was an interesting conversation that only got more interesting because he then informed us that he once saw two UFOs in Japan. He then asked us what we thought about a scenario where our grandchildren visit us from the future in a time capsule. We played along for a while and then got back to the important stuff. He said that he’d read the introduction to the Book or Mormon and we explained the story a little bit. It all made for an interesting hour long lesson but for some reason Elder Wilson and I both have a fairly positive feeling about him even though he seems pretty.....well I don’t know the word in English but pretty muri. (Impossible maybe).
I don’t know what else to write about. We mainly did a lot of housing this week which I was happy about. We played Jenga in the big food court in the mall. We are Jenga pros now. We met this one guy who was stoked about our Jenga playing skills. He watched us for like a half an hour but he said he didn’t want to play with us. He and his wife and kid were pretty funny. Hopefully we house into him sometime. Other than that we just tried to meet people. Suzuki is going well. We really didn’t get to meet with her that much though. She is reading and stuff and will hopefully come to church this next week.
I spent most of today packing. It’s SUCH a pain. I hate it. I now have to go call the shipping place and wait around for them to come by the pick up my stuff. I found a contact case that I used probably the first month I was in Japan and I hadn’t opened it since. I was going to use it for when I transfer (so I don’t have to use the case that has the acid stuff in it) and I opened it up and the fluid was yellow. I then smelled it and it’s hands down the worst smell I’ve ever encountered. I felt sick for about an hour and a half after. I dumped it down the drain and left the water running and when we left the apartment it still smelled. I was amazed at how bad it smelled. Change your contact fluid regularly people!!
Well that’s all I’ve got. Maybe I’ll think of something in a bit. I’ve still got time, anyway. I love you all. Hopefully this coming week will go well and the work will pick up fast in Fukui. It should be nice and cool there until about October then it’ll start to get cold. Then again I come from Montana. Elder Wilson says he loves the cold and he said Fukui was way cold but he comes from Oregon where in the winter it gets down around the 30’s. That’s a joke compared to Montana. I’m used to super cold winters. I think I might be fine. It’ll just remind me of home. Anyway. Everyone have a great week. Love you all.
Elder Hooton
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Tyler teaching
We were followed home by a praying mantis that stowed away on Elder Wilson:s bike so we took it as a sign and started to talk to him about our book.
Tyler teaching
We found a praying mantis so we decided to take it as a sign. So we showed him the Book or Mormon.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
September 5, 2010
Dear Family and friends,
I wonder if this internet place wonders why they make less of a profit on Mondays because they have to refill the ice cream machine so much. Even though I’m stuffed, I refuse to pay money to email at a place that has free ice cream and not eat as much ice cream as my physical body can handle (my non physical body never gets tired of ice cream. I claim that it’s good for my soul). I have already eaten a bunch today which I will get to later. I’ve decided that carbonated drink with ice cream is probably too unhealthy for me so I poured natchan into my ice cream instead. It’s like the Sunny-D of Japan but it’s not caffeinated and its logo is just a creepy smiley face with a leaf for an eyebrow that is winking at you. It gives me the shivers but oddly enough makes me want to drink more. I’ll get back to you on how Sunny-D over ice cream tastes. I’m still not sure.
I’m sorry I’m emailing so late today. A member took us up to Mt. Fuji this morning. We left pretty early and we drove up to the fifth climbing marker. It’s the highest point you can drive to. It’s against the mission rules to go above six. So he dropped us off and said I’ll be back in an hour, go climb around and have fun. We climbed up to the sixth point in record speed. We cut the estimated time in half and I was even unprepared enough that I was wearing my dress shoes. I can now agree with that eccentric man at Dillards and swear by these shoes. Maybe it’s the injected whatever that he kept on raving about, but they are durable shoes. They just have a little dust on them. They didn’t even get scuffed up and we were going through tons of crap. People were giving us weird looks since I was in slacks and dress shoes but we were still booking it up the mountain. We estimate that it would take us two hours to climb the whole thing. It takes most people 3 or 4 hours to get up and about the same to get down. I will say going down was harder but still if I had proper shoes it would have been a cinch.
So after that we drove back down the mountain. I was reluctant to leave the cool climate at 7,800 ft. Now we are back down in the muggy hot climate. On the way back brother Mochizuki took us to Ideboku. Look it up. It’s the best ice cream on the whole dang planet. I had it the other day when we went with a member to an appointment close by (one of our investigator lives on Mt. Fuji essentially). I will stand by the statement that it’s the best soft serve on the whole planet. Now dad don’t let the term soft serve deter you. It’s sooo good. It comes straight out of the cow with sugar added. I’m pretty sure it’s really famous. You should look it up online and let me know. It’s super good. Some people say “oh I could eat pizza for the rest of my life.” Those people are not anchored in reality and obviously crap like jiggling fat will make it go away. But I will say that I could eat ideboku ice cream for dessert for the rest of my life. It’s soooo good.
Anyway after that we went to a Chinese restaurant. They are nothing like ones in America. It’s pretty much just Japanese food. I had some meat with rice and some sauce that was kind of like sweat and sour sauce but of course it’s not called that. Brother Mochizuki ordered the drink for us so I swore that I’d get his money’s worth so I decided I’d go for the Melon Fanta (you don’t have it in the States but I love it so). I was super sick before I even got my food. I then ate that and decided that I might die. I went to the bathroom and tried to free up any space I could by urinating. Then I just sat on the toilet writhing in pain. after about 5 minutes I felt like I could at least go back out. From there I slowly started to feel better. Oh I also drank 2 cups of vegetable juice. It was way delicious though.
So some good things happened this week. We ended up teaching Suzuki San all of Lesson Two. It was way great. We were just going to teach her a little lesson but we ended up teaching her and her son the whole lesson. It was cool because we gave her Alma 40 to read because both of her parents passed away when she was younger so we wanted to emphasize that families can live together forever. She ended up reading 40 and 41. It was so a great feeling when I heard that. An investigator that actually cared enough to read more on their own. We started to teach and she was understanding everything and re-explaining it to her son so that he could understand. I made a little mistake though because we needed a map of the plan of salvation so I pulled out the Lesson Two pamphlet from a case in my backpack. The case was left by the missionary that I replaced and he went home so he left all of his stuff so I just took his pamphlets and stuff. Suzuki San was having a hard time understanding the names of all of places and in Japanese they might not understand a spoken word but if they read it then they fully understand it. It makes explaining words like “Apostasy” much easier. We were wondering why she was having such a hard time. Then the son was like “hey is this Chinese?” I flipped it over and realized that I couldn’t read anything on the front of the pamphlet (I can read some kanji now). Turns out it was Chinese. I was impressed that they understood about 50 percent of it anyway. The kanji explaining the Plan of Salvation did look a little weird to me. I just thought. “oh wow I’ve forgotten a lot since the MTC.” Anyway, once we got that all straightened out I was reading a scripture to her and all the sudden this giant beetle smacks right onto my scriptures right in front of my face. I thought it was going to poke my eye out or something. The mom freaked out and got angry at the son (it’s his pet) for letting it out. It was kind of funny but it scared me.
I’ve learned a lot this week about preparing someone to go to church. At first it can seem weird, especially to someone that doesn’t have a grasp on Christianity. A couple observations are that we sing a lot, pray a lot, and we seem to randomly raise our hands. Suzuki San came to church and we forgot to mention those things. So it seemed a little strange to her. Every time we sang she looked over at me for the page number. I was like “lady he just said it in Japanese, I don’t speak Japanese you do.” I guess the vocab we use during sacrament meeting is difficult so I just showed her the page number and hoped it didn’t make for a bad experience. She caught on that the numbers were on the wall but only when it was time to sing our rest hymn when we all stood up. So that probably seemed weird and there wasn’t a slot for a rest hymn and I wasn’t listening so I had to ask someone next to me what the number was.
Elder Wilson bore his testimony and so did some of the youth (they do that every sacrament meeting). Then we had brother Nonaka give a talk. He is a convert and a good member so I was excited. He was aware that we had an investigator so I was hoping he’d try to help us out a little. His talk turned out to be on obedience. He then continued to say that he wanted to talk about the Word of Wisdom. I wanted to punch him in the face. We hadn’t gotten to any of the commandments yet with Suzuki so it was all a surprise to her. She didn’t freak out or anything and in the end she said it was fun (I don’t know how sincere she was). Luckily before she left the bishop’s daughters went and talked to her and tried talking to her son. They are really upbeat so it was good. People were really friendly so that was good as well. Suzuki actually knew the bishop because they both work at the same company but she didn’t know he was a member. I bet he feels pretttttty embarrassed about not giving her to us as a referral a long time ago. Anyway, it was good in the end. Hopefully she will be willing to come again.
So Sunday we visited a potential investigator that we’d been talking with. He started to bring up the fact that he remembers World War II and I thought “ah crap this can’t be good.” He says he remembers the bombs going off and I jumped in the conversation and asked “so how’s your car? You said before you were working on your car. Is it almost done?” I wasn’t quite so abrupt but I did try to naturally change the subject fast. I really did ask that though.
I saw a poster of Jack Bauer today and cried a little. I went up and hugged it. I don’t know if it was for the newest season or if there are already advertisements for the movie but it looked way sweet and reminded me of the good old days.
We saw a pizza dude get in a weird argument with someone that lives in our apartment. I guess the pizza guy kept bugging this family for reasons that we know not. He would just stand outside the door and ring the doorbell every so often. Then finally a guy walked out and just started walking away. The pizza guy followed him for I don’t know how far. They were just yelling at each other. The dude kept telling the pizza guy to just go away. Elder Wilson and I were standing outside watching the whole thing. They both left. The pizza guy came back and got on his moped and left. Then this really old guy came out of the apartment and kept asking us if the guy and left. We assured him that the Pizza guy was gone and asked if we could do anything to help. He just muttered a bunch words and then went in the same direct as the first guy that left. It was all really weird. He was nice to us though and I think he likes us. I want pizza.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a good week. I’ve still got some emails to read. Thanks to Katie and my friends, I got lots of letters this week it was great. I sent Alec a birthday package kind of late but can I get an email next week letting me know if he got it or not? I’m worried that no one might ever see that package again. Alec I didn’t put a letter in it. I’ll send one some other time. Yeah some friend I am.
Love Elder Hooton
I wonder if this internet place wonders why they make less of a profit on Mondays because they have to refill the ice cream machine so much. Even though I’m stuffed, I refuse to pay money to email at a place that has free ice cream and not eat as much ice cream as my physical body can handle (my non physical body never gets tired of ice cream. I claim that it’s good for my soul). I have already eaten a bunch today which I will get to later. I’ve decided that carbonated drink with ice cream is probably too unhealthy for me so I poured natchan into my ice cream instead. It’s like the Sunny-D of Japan but it’s not caffeinated and its logo is just a creepy smiley face with a leaf for an eyebrow that is winking at you. It gives me the shivers but oddly enough makes me want to drink more. I’ll get back to you on how Sunny-D over ice cream tastes. I’m still not sure.
I’m sorry I’m emailing so late today. A member took us up to Mt. Fuji this morning. We left pretty early and we drove up to the fifth climbing marker. It’s the highest point you can drive to. It’s against the mission rules to go above six. So he dropped us off and said I’ll be back in an hour, go climb around and have fun. We climbed up to the sixth point in record speed. We cut the estimated time in half and I was even unprepared enough that I was wearing my dress shoes. I can now agree with that eccentric man at Dillards and swear by these shoes. Maybe it’s the injected whatever that he kept on raving about, but they are durable shoes. They just have a little dust on them. They didn’t even get scuffed up and we were going through tons of crap. People were giving us weird looks since I was in slacks and dress shoes but we were still booking it up the mountain. We estimate that it would take us two hours to climb the whole thing. It takes most people 3 or 4 hours to get up and about the same to get down. I will say going down was harder but still if I had proper shoes it would have been a cinch.
So after that we drove back down the mountain. I was reluctant to leave the cool climate at 7,800 ft. Now we are back down in the muggy hot climate. On the way back brother Mochizuki took us to Ideboku. Look it up. It’s the best ice cream on the whole dang planet. I had it the other day when we went with a member to an appointment close by (one of our investigator lives on Mt. Fuji essentially). I will stand by the statement that it’s the best soft serve on the whole planet. Now dad don’t let the term soft serve deter you. It’s sooo good. It comes straight out of the cow with sugar added. I’m pretty sure it’s really famous. You should look it up online and let me know. It’s super good. Some people say “oh I could eat pizza for the rest of my life.” Those people are not anchored in reality and obviously crap like jiggling fat will make it go away. But I will say that I could eat ideboku ice cream for dessert for the rest of my life. It’s soooo good.
Anyway after that we went to a Chinese restaurant. They are nothing like ones in America. It’s pretty much just Japanese food. I had some meat with rice and some sauce that was kind of like sweat and sour sauce but of course it’s not called that. Brother Mochizuki ordered the drink for us so I swore that I’d get his money’s worth so I decided I’d go for the Melon Fanta (you don’t have it in the States but I love it so). I was super sick before I even got my food. I then ate that and decided that I might die. I went to the bathroom and tried to free up any space I could by urinating. Then I just sat on the toilet writhing in pain. after about 5 minutes I felt like I could at least go back out. From there I slowly started to feel better. Oh I also drank 2 cups of vegetable juice. It was way delicious though.
So some good things happened this week. We ended up teaching Suzuki San all of Lesson Two. It was way great. We were just going to teach her a little lesson but we ended up teaching her and her son the whole lesson. It was cool because we gave her Alma 40 to read because both of her parents passed away when she was younger so we wanted to emphasize that families can live together forever. She ended up reading 40 and 41. It was so a great feeling when I heard that. An investigator that actually cared enough to read more on their own. We started to teach and she was understanding everything and re-explaining it to her son so that he could understand. I made a little mistake though because we needed a map of the plan of salvation so I pulled out the Lesson Two pamphlet from a case in my backpack. The case was left by the missionary that I replaced and he went home so he left all of his stuff so I just took his pamphlets and stuff. Suzuki San was having a hard time understanding the names of all of places and in Japanese they might not understand a spoken word but if they read it then they fully understand it. It makes explaining words like “Apostasy” much easier. We were wondering why she was having such a hard time. Then the son was like “hey is this Chinese?” I flipped it over and realized that I couldn’t read anything on the front of the pamphlet (I can read some kanji now). Turns out it was Chinese. I was impressed that they understood about 50 percent of it anyway. The kanji explaining the Plan of Salvation did look a little weird to me. I just thought. “oh wow I’ve forgotten a lot since the MTC.” Anyway, once we got that all straightened out I was reading a scripture to her and all the sudden this giant beetle smacks right onto my scriptures right in front of my face. I thought it was going to poke my eye out or something. The mom freaked out and got angry at the son (it’s his pet) for letting it out. It was kind of funny but it scared me.
I’ve learned a lot this week about preparing someone to go to church. At first it can seem weird, especially to someone that doesn’t have a grasp on Christianity. A couple observations are that we sing a lot, pray a lot, and we seem to randomly raise our hands. Suzuki San came to church and we forgot to mention those things. So it seemed a little strange to her. Every time we sang she looked over at me for the page number. I was like “lady he just said it in Japanese, I don’t speak Japanese you do.” I guess the vocab we use during sacrament meeting is difficult so I just showed her the page number and hoped it didn’t make for a bad experience. She caught on that the numbers were on the wall but only when it was time to sing our rest hymn when we all stood up. So that probably seemed weird and there wasn’t a slot for a rest hymn and I wasn’t listening so I had to ask someone next to me what the number was.
Elder Wilson bore his testimony and so did some of the youth (they do that every sacrament meeting). Then we had brother Nonaka give a talk. He is a convert and a good member so I was excited. He was aware that we had an investigator so I was hoping he’d try to help us out a little. His talk turned out to be on obedience. He then continued to say that he wanted to talk about the Word of Wisdom. I wanted to punch him in the face. We hadn’t gotten to any of the commandments yet with Suzuki so it was all a surprise to her. She didn’t freak out or anything and in the end she said it was fun (I don’t know how sincere she was). Luckily before she left the bishop’s daughters went and talked to her and tried talking to her son. They are really upbeat so it was good. People were really friendly so that was good as well. Suzuki actually knew the bishop because they both work at the same company but she didn’t know he was a member. I bet he feels pretttttty embarrassed about not giving her to us as a referral a long time ago. Anyway, it was good in the end. Hopefully she will be willing to come again.
So Sunday we visited a potential investigator that we’d been talking with. He started to bring up the fact that he remembers World War II and I thought “ah crap this can’t be good.” He says he remembers the bombs going off and I jumped in the conversation and asked “so how’s your car? You said before you were working on your car. Is it almost done?” I wasn’t quite so abrupt but I did try to naturally change the subject fast. I really did ask that though.
I saw a poster of Jack Bauer today and cried a little. I went up and hugged it. I don’t know if it was for the newest season or if there are already advertisements for the movie but it looked way sweet and reminded me of the good old days.
We saw a pizza dude get in a weird argument with someone that lives in our apartment. I guess the pizza guy kept bugging this family for reasons that we know not. He would just stand outside the door and ring the doorbell every so often. Then finally a guy walked out and just started walking away. The pizza guy followed him for I don’t know how far. They were just yelling at each other. The dude kept telling the pizza guy to just go away. Elder Wilson and I were standing outside watching the whole thing. They both left. The pizza guy came back and got on his moped and left. Then this really old guy came out of the apartment and kept asking us if the guy and left. We assured him that the Pizza guy was gone and asked if we could do anything to help. He just muttered a bunch words and then went in the same direct as the first guy that left. It was all really weird. He was nice to us though and I think he likes us. I want pizza.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a good week. I’ve still got some emails to read. Thanks to Katie and my friends, I got lots of letters this week it was great. I sent Alec a birthday package kind of late but can I get an email next week letting me know if he got it or not? I’m worried that no one might ever see that package again. Alec I didn’t put a letter in it. I’ll send one some other time. Yeah some friend I am.
Love Elder Hooton
August 29, 2010
Dear Family and friends,
I wonder if this internet place wonders why they make less of a profit on Mondays because they have to refill the ice cream machine so much. Even though I’m stuffed, I refuse to pay money to email at a place that has free ice cream and not eat as much ice cream as my physical body can handle (my non physical body never gets tired of ice cream. I claim that it’s good for my soul). I have already eaten a bunch today which I will get to later. I’ve decided that carbonated drink with ice cream is probably too unhealthy for me so I poured natchan into my ice cream instead. It’s like the Sunny-D of Japan but it’s not caffeinated and its logo is just a creepy smiley face with a leaf for an eyebrow that is winking at you. It gives me the shivers but oddly enough makes me want to drink more. I’ll get back to you on how Sunny-D over ice cream tastes. I’m still not sure.
I’m sorry I’m emailing so late today. A member took us up to Mt. Fuji this morning. We left pretty early and we drove up to the fifth climbing marker. It’s the highest point you can drive to. It’s against the mission rules to go above six. So he dropped us off and said I’ll be back in an hour, go climb around and have fun. We climbed up to the sixth point in record speed. We cut the estimated time in half and I was even unprepared enough that I was wearing my dress shoes. I can now agree with that eccentric man at Dillards and swear by these shoes. Maybe it’s the injected whatever that he kept on raving about, but they are durable shoes. They just have a little dust on them. They didn’t even get scuffed up and we were going through tons of crap. People were giving us weird looks since I was in slacks and dress shoes but we were still booking it up the mountain. We estimate that it would take us two hours to climb the whole thing. It takes most people 3 or 4 hours to get up and about the same to get down. I will say going down was harder but still if I had proper shoes it would have been a cinch.
So after that we drove back down the mountain. I was reluctant to leave the cool climate at 7,800 ft. Now we are back down in the muggy hot climate. On the way back brother Mochizuki took us to Ideboku. Look it up. It’s the best ice cream on the whole dang planet. I had it the other day when we went with a member to an appointment close by (one of our investigator lives on Mt. Fuji essentially). I will stand by the statement that it’s the best soft serve on the whole planet. Now dad don’t let the term soft serve deter you. It’s sooo good. It comes straight out of the cow with sugar added. I’m pretty sure it’s really famous. You should look it up online and let me know. It’s super good. Some people say “oh I could eat pizza for the rest of my life.” Those people are not anchored in reality and obviously crap like jiggling fat will make it go away. But I will say that I could eat ideboku ice cream for dessert for the rest of my life. It’s soooo good.
Anyway after that we went to a Chinese restaurant. They are nothing like ones in America. It’s pretty much just Japanese food. I had some meat with rice and some sauce that was kind of like sweat and sour sauce but of course it’s not called that. Brother Mochizuki ordered the drink for us so I swore that I’d get his money’s worth so I decided I’d go for the Melon Fanta (you don’t have it in the States but I love it so). I was super sick before I even got my food. I then ate that and decided that I might die. I went to the bathroom and tried to free up any space I could by urinating. Then I just sat on the toilet writhing in pain. after about 5 minutes I felt like I could at least go back out. From there I slowly started to feel better. Oh I also drank 2 cups of vegetable juice. It was way delicious though.
So some good things happened this week. We ended up teaching Suzuki San all of Lesson Two. It was way great. We were just going to teach her a little lesson but we ended up teaching her and her son the whole lesson. It was cool because we gave her Alma 40 to read because both of her parents passed away when she was younger so we wanted to emphasize that families can live together forever. She ended up reading 40 and 41. It was so a great feeling when I heard that. An investigator that actually cared enough to read more on their own. We started to teach and she was understanding everything and re-explaining it to her son so that he could understand. I made a little mistake though because we needed a map of the plan of salvation so I pulled out the Lesson Two pamphlet from a case in my backpack. The case was left by the missionary that I replaced and he went home so he left all of his stuff so I just took his pamphlets and stuff. Suzuki San was having a hard time understanding the names of all of places and in Japanese they might not understand a spoken word but if they read it then they fully understand it. It makes explaining words like “Apostasy” much easier. We were wondering why she was having such a hard time. Then the son was like “hey is this Chinese?” I flipped it over and realized that I couldn’t read anything on the front of the pamphlet (I can read some kanji now). Turns out it was Chinese. I was impressed that they understood about 50 percent of it anyway. The kanji explaining the Plan of Salvation did look a little weird to me. I just thought. “oh wow I’ve forgotten a lot since the MTC.” Anyway, once we got that all straightened out I was reading a scripture to her and all the sudden this giant beetle smacks right onto my scriptures right in front of my face. I thought it was going to poke my eye out or something. The mom freaked out and got angry at the son (it’s his pet) for letting it out. It was kind of funny but it scared me.
I’ve learned a lot this week about preparing someone to go to church. At first it can seem weird, especially to someone that doesn’t have a grasp on Christianity. A couple observations are that we sing a lot, pray a lot, and we seem to randomly raise our hands. Suzuki San came to church and we forgot to mention those things. So it seemed a little strange to her. Every time we sang she looked over at me for the page number. I was like “lady he just said it in Japanese, I don’t speak Japanese you do.” I guess the vocab we use during sacrament meeting is difficult so I just showed her the page number and hoped it didn’t make for a bad experience. She caught on that the numbers were on the wall but only when it was time to sing our rest hymn when we all stood up. So that probably seemed weird and there wasn’t a slot for a rest hymn and I wasn’t listening so I had to ask someone next to me what the number was.
Elder Wilson bore his testimony and so did some of the youth (they do that every sacrament meeting). Then we had brother Nonaka give a talk. He is a convert and a good member so I was excited. He was aware that we had an investigator so I was hoping he’d try to help us out a little. His talk turned out to be on obedience. He then continued to say that he wanted to talk about the Word of Wisdom. I wanted to punch him in the face. We hadn’t gotten to any of the commandments yet with Suzuki so it was all a surprise to her. She didn’t freak out or anything and in the end she said it was fun (I don’t know how sincere she was). Luckily before she left the bishop’s daughters went and talked to her and tried talking to her son. They are really upbeat so it was good. People were really friendly so that was good as well. Suzuki actually knew the bishop because they both work at the same company but she didn’t know he was a member. I bet he feels pretttttty embarrassed about not giving her to us as a referral a long time ago. Anyway, it was good in the end. Hopefully she will be willing to come again.
So Sunday we visited a potential investigator that we’d been talking with. He started to bring up the fact that he remembers World War II and I thought “ah crap this can’t be good.” He says he remembers the bombs going off and I jumped in the conversation and asked “so how’s your car? You said before you were working on your car. Is it almost done?” I wasn’t quite so abrupt but I did try to naturally change the subject fast. I really did ask that though.
I saw a poster of Jack Bauer today and cried a little. I went up and hugged it. I don’t know if it was for the newest season or if there are already advertisements for the movie but it looked way sweet and reminded me of the good old days.
We saw a pizza dude get in a weird argument with someone that lives in our apartment. I guess the pizza guy kept bugging this family for reasons that we know not. He would just stand outside the door and ring the doorbell every so often. Then finally a guy walked out and just started walking away. The pizza guy followed him for I don’t know how far. They were just yelling at each other. The dude kept telling the pizza guy to just go away. Elder Wilson and I were standing outside watching the whole thing. They both left. The pizza guy came back and got on his moped and left. Then this really old guy came out of the apartment and kept asking us if the guy and left. We assured him that the Pizza guy was gone and asked if we could do anything to help. He just muttered a bunch words and then went in the same direct as the first guy that left. It was all really weird. He was nice to us though and I think he likes us. I want pizza.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a good week. I’ve still got some emails to read. Thanks to Katie and my friends, I got lots of letters this week it was great. I sent Alec a birthday package kind of late but can I get an email next week letting me know if he got it or not? I’m worried that no one might ever see that package again. Alec I didn’t put a letter in it. I’ll send one some other time. Yeah some friend I am.
Love Elder Hooton
I wonder if this internet place wonders why they make less of a profit on Mondays because they have to refill the ice cream machine so much. Even though I’m stuffed, I refuse to pay money to email at a place that has free ice cream and not eat as much ice cream as my physical body can handle (my non physical body never gets tired of ice cream. I claim that it’s good for my soul). I have already eaten a bunch today which I will get to later. I’ve decided that carbonated drink with ice cream is probably too unhealthy for me so I poured natchan into my ice cream instead. It’s like the Sunny-D of Japan but it’s not caffeinated and its logo is just a creepy smiley face with a leaf for an eyebrow that is winking at you. It gives me the shivers but oddly enough makes me want to drink more. I’ll get back to you on how Sunny-D over ice cream tastes. I’m still not sure.
I’m sorry I’m emailing so late today. A member took us up to Mt. Fuji this morning. We left pretty early and we drove up to the fifth climbing marker. It’s the highest point you can drive to. It’s against the mission rules to go above six. So he dropped us off and said I’ll be back in an hour, go climb around and have fun. We climbed up to the sixth point in record speed. We cut the estimated time in half and I was even unprepared enough that I was wearing my dress shoes. I can now agree with that eccentric man at Dillards and swear by these shoes. Maybe it’s the injected whatever that he kept on raving about, but they are durable shoes. They just have a little dust on them. They didn’t even get scuffed up and we were going through tons of crap. People were giving us weird looks since I was in slacks and dress shoes but we were still booking it up the mountain. We estimate that it would take us two hours to climb the whole thing. It takes most people 3 or 4 hours to get up and about the same to get down. I will say going down was harder but still if I had proper shoes it would have been a cinch.
So after that we drove back down the mountain. I was reluctant to leave the cool climate at 7,800 ft. Now we are back down in the muggy hot climate. On the way back brother Mochizuki took us to Ideboku. Look it up. It’s the best ice cream on the whole dang planet. I had it the other day when we went with a member to an appointment close by (one of our investigator lives on Mt. Fuji essentially). I will stand by the statement that it’s the best soft serve on the whole planet. Now dad don’t let the term soft serve deter you. It’s sooo good. It comes straight out of the cow with sugar added. I’m pretty sure it’s really famous. You should look it up online and let me know. It’s super good. Some people say “oh I could eat pizza for the rest of my life.” Those people are not anchored in reality and obviously crap like jiggling fat will make it go away. But I will say that I could eat ideboku ice cream for dessert for the rest of my life. It’s soooo good.
Anyway after that we went to a Chinese restaurant. They are nothing like ones in America. It’s pretty much just Japanese food. I had some meat with rice and some sauce that was kind of like sweat and sour sauce but of course it’s not called that. Brother Mochizuki ordered the drink for us so I swore that I’d get his money’s worth so I decided I’d go for the Melon Fanta (you don’t have it in the States but I love it so). I was super sick before I even got my food. I then ate that and decided that I might die. I went to the bathroom and tried to free up any space I could by urinating. Then I just sat on the toilet writhing in pain. after about 5 minutes I felt like I could at least go back out. From there I slowly started to feel better. Oh I also drank 2 cups of vegetable juice. It was way delicious though.
So some good things happened this week. We ended up teaching Suzuki San all of Lesson Two. It was way great. We were just going to teach her a little lesson but we ended up teaching her and her son the whole lesson. It was cool because we gave her Alma 40 to read because both of her parents passed away when she was younger so we wanted to emphasize that families can live together forever. She ended up reading 40 and 41. It was so a great feeling when I heard that. An investigator that actually cared enough to read more on their own. We started to teach and she was understanding everything and re-explaining it to her son so that he could understand. I made a little mistake though because we needed a map of the plan of salvation so I pulled out the Lesson Two pamphlet from a case in my backpack. The case was left by the missionary that I replaced and he went home so he left all of his stuff so I just took his pamphlets and stuff. Suzuki San was having a hard time understanding the names of all of places and in Japanese they might not understand a spoken word but if they read it then they fully understand it. It makes explaining words like “Apostasy” much easier. We were wondering why she was having such a hard time. Then the son was like “hey is this Chinese?” I flipped it over and realized that I couldn’t read anything on the front of the pamphlet (I can read some kanji now). Turns out it was Chinese. I was impressed that they understood about 50 percent of it anyway. The kanji explaining the Plan of Salvation did look a little weird to me. I just thought. “oh wow I’ve forgotten a lot since the MTC.” Anyway, once we got that all straightened out I was reading a scripture to her and all the sudden this giant beetle smacks right onto my scriptures right in front of my face. I thought it was going to poke my eye out or something. The mom freaked out and got angry at the son (it’s his pet) for letting it out. It was kind of funny but it scared me.
I’ve learned a lot this week about preparing someone to go to church. At first it can seem weird, especially to someone that doesn’t have a grasp on Christianity. A couple observations are that we sing a lot, pray a lot, and we seem to randomly raise our hands. Suzuki San came to church and we forgot to mention those things. So it seemed a little strange to her. Every time we sang she looked over at me for the page number. I was like “lady he just said it in Japanese, I don’t speak Japanese you do.” I guess the vocab we use during sacrament meeting is difficult so I just showed her the page number and hoped it didn’t make for a bad experience. She caught on that the numbers were on the wall but only when it was time to sing our rest hymn when we all stood up. So that probably seemed weird and there wasn’t a slot for a rest hymn and I wasn’t listening so I had to ask someone next to me what the number was.
Elder Wilson bore his testimony and so did some of the youth (they do that every sacrament meeting). Then we had brother Nonaka give a talk. He is a convert and a good member so I was excited. He was aware that we had an investigator so I was hoping he’d try to help us out a little. His talk turned out to be on obedience. He then continued to say that he wanted to talk about the Word of Wisdom. I wanted to punch him in the face. We hadn’t gotten to any of the commandments yet with Suzuki so it was all a surprise to her. She didn’t freak out or anything and in the end she said it was fun (I don’t know how sincere she was). Luckily before she left the bishop’s daughters went and talked to her and tried talking to her son. They are really upbeat so it was good. People were really friendly so that was good as well. Suzuki actually knew the bishop because they both work at the same company but she didn’t know he was a member. I bet he feels pretttttty embarrassed about not giving her to us as a referral a long time ago. Anyway, it was good in the end. Hopefully she will be willing to come again.
So Sunday we visited a potential investigator that we’d been talking with. He started to bring up the fact that he remembers World War II and I thought “ah crap this can’t be good.” He says he remembers the bombs going off and I jumped in the conversation and asked “so how’s your car? You said before you were working on your car. Is it almost done?” I wasn’t quite so abrupt but I did try to naturally change the subject fast. I really did ask that though.
I saw a poster of Jack Bauer today and cried a little. I went up and hugged it. I don’t know if it was for the newest season or if there are already advertisements for the movie but it looked way sweet and reminded me of the good old days.
We saw a pizza dude get in a weird argument with someone that lives in our apartment. I guess the pizza guy kept bugging this family for reasons that we know not. He would just stand outside the door and ring the doorbell every so often. Then finally a guy walked out and just started walking away. The pizza guy followed him for I don’t know how far. They were just yelling at each other. The dude kept telling the pizza guy to just go away. Elder Wilson and I were standing outside watching the whole thing. They both left. The pizza guy came back and got on his moped and left. Then this really old guy came out of the apartment and kept asking us if the guy and left. We assured him that the Pizza guy was gone and asked if we could do anything to help. He just muttered a bunch words and then went in the same direct as the first guy that left. It was all really weird. He was nice to us though and I think he likes us. I want pizza.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a good week. I’ve still got some emails to read. Thanks to Katie and my friends, I got lots of letters this week it was great. I sent Alec a birthday package kind of late but can I get an email next week letting me know if he got it or not? I’m worried that no one might ever see that package again. Alec I didn’t put a letter in it. I’ll send one some other time. Yeah some friend I am.
Love Elder Hooton
August 22, 2010
Dear Family,
Hey, well this week was alright. It’s getting pretty tough though. Before I forget, can you be sure to thank Grandpa Hooton for his letter. It was really great. It helped a lot.
So we went and visited a woman last week who was a referral that we found out had been taught by missionaries 20 years ago and disagreed in a lot of ways. Now she is studying the Bible with some JWs. She wouldn’t even touch a Book of Mormon. Luckily she listened to us when we read out of it though. She threw the usual stuff at us about how the Book of Mormon goes against the Bible and we just explained how we get that a lot and then we explained how it agrees with the Bible. She wasn’t being very cooperative so we just bore testimony and gave her Moroni’s promise and left. It felt good to just bear testimony and promise her an answer and leave it up to her. We will probably go back sometime this week and just check to see if she’s read it. If not then we’ll put her in the area book and have some other missionaries another 20 years down the road see if she has changed her mind.
Wednesday I had an exchange with the Zone Leaders. I was in Fuji with the Japanese one. It made communicating a little difficult but it was a good experience. I knew I was treading on thin ice because Elder Wilson had dropped an investigator right before I came here. The Zone Leader I was with, Elder Furukawa had found that investigator a year ago when he was in Fuji. So the first thing we did was to go and visit him. Elder Wilson had dropped him because his interest and commitment was minimal and was only sparked when food was involved so he was sort of freeloading. We went and had an hour and a half lesson with him (3 lessons) and he said he’s only eating rice and he can’t focus on feeling the spirit if he is hungry. I felt bad for him but I was a little suspicious of some of the things that he said. We set up a time for Elder Wilson and I to go back the next day. I was scared to tell Elder Wilson that we had the appointment because he wasn’t going to be happy about it.
The next morning Furuwaka Choro and I were riding to the train station and we were a little early so he asked if we could go to a convenient store. I said sure. He bought a bunch of little meal things and I thought they must be out of food in Shizuoka so for some weird reason he is buying food now since he has time. Then I realized that he was buying it for the investigator. We dropped it off at his door. I was pretty upset. It’s rewarding this man for just saying he has interest. I am completely fine with giving him food as if he really needs it. The Church does it all the time. I just don’t want a handout to be correlated with us teaching him. I want him to progress as an investigator solely based on his feelings and not based of if he gets food. So I told Elder Wilson later that day and he was furious. We taught a lesson that night and it went alright. Then yesterday the investigator came to our night sacrament meeting and showed up late (for the closing hymn) and then got up and left right after. There were only 7 people there but he literally ran out of the chapel. We didn’t get to talk to him at all. It’s a weird situation. I hope he is genuine but with the way he’s been acting I’m finding it hard to believe.
I haven’t been mentioning this but in this ward they have a missionary talk every week. So I have to give a talk every other week. It’s been stressful to say the least. Unfortunately I don’t know if I’m getting any better at it. My talk yesterday was pretty sketchy. Jason, Dad, Quincy, anyone, if you have any ideas for talks on “missionary work” (the topic every week), feel free to write. I’m all out of ideas and I think I’ve shared every story from every missionary in the Book of Mormon. Does anyone have any good talks from their missions? So yesterday the member of the Bishopric that was conducting said, “Thank you to sister Yuriko for your talk on being worthy to enter the temple and the youth speaker for his talk on obedience and Elder Hooton for...well whatever the crap he talked about. We’re still trying to figure that one out.” Not really but he did mention everyone’s topic but mine. He just said my name and said thank you.
We have this member named Higa that I’ve talked about. We sometimes go to the church with him on Saturday nights and play a game, make food, and share a message. Well, when I was on the exchange we went and visited him and I set up an appointment (he didn’t say a word he just shook or nodded his head). Then Elder Wilson and I were at the mall watching something going on and he walked up behind Elder Wilson and started playing with his backpack. We turned around and tried to talk with him but he just walked away. Then we were trying to do missionary work on the trains but just taking trains back and forth talking to people (worked out alright) and we ran into Higa on the train. He only said a couple words. Then we had the appointment with him and only got him to talk a little. He’s pretty good at Jenga. Together we got the highest one I’ve ever seen. It was 13 blocks crisscrossed. No doubles. It was sweet. Elder Wilson thinks that Jenga is more technical than Operation. I told him he’s crazy. Then I talked with Higa about coming to teach and praying and stuff and he wasn’t being very receptive. So we left (the cake we made was good) but then Higa came to church the next day. It was awesome. I was so happy when I saw him slink in with his ridiculously long pink tie and sat down behind us. Then later that day we saw him on the street and he actually answered our questions instead of just shaking his head. So he is progressing. It was way cool that he came to church.
Hey thanks to my friends for sending letters. I got some good ones this week. It was way exciting. I got a little Betty Crocker brownie thing. It was super good. I loved it. Thanks Abby. I don’t know if I told you but a couple of weeks ago our gas bill wasn’t sent in so we had to go two days without gas. I now appreciate electric ovens in America a little bit more (unless the electricity goes out). Our main food this week was eggs, bread, rice and curry. I’m turning into a Japanese missionary finally. I’ve given up and now sometimes I’ll just eat rice. I never thought I’d see the day. I showed Elder Wilson a picture of me from when I was in Takaoka and I guess I’ve lost a lot of weight. He said my face is much, much skinner now. I look like a fat blob in the picture. My cheeks like jiggled and stuff.
We were trying to talk to high school kids that were on the beach last week. It was interesting. I’ve decided that you can’t contact guys here if there are girls around. They get super defensive and just try to make fun of us and act stupid. They are okay if they are by themselves. They feel like we are a threat if girls are around (frankly because we are). Their instincts kick in and they try to be the alpha male. I think it’s one of the main reasons why there are so many more women in the church in Japan. They will come and talk to us. They are more open, (more spiritual), and they aren’t defensive against us. It was way funny though because Elder Wilson and I came from behind a bunch of giant cement jacks (like the game jacks where you have to bounce the ball and grab the little rubber things) that are used to break tsunamis and both of us had bloody elbows and I guess my backpack was wide open and we were dripping sweat. I’m sure it was quite the sight. We just meandered out of the jacks, two weird foreigners.
It’s so weird being at these internet places where there are people reading comic books and stuff. I want to yell, “You’re a grown man! At least go play pool with the last bit of dignity that you have left.”
I’ll send this off for now and try to think of some more things after I get some ice cream. By the way for whoever might be wondering, I am six foot four or if you use the metric system that’s 192 cm.
Love,
Elder Hooton
Hey, well this week was alright. It’s getting pretty tough though. Before I forget, can you be sure to thank Grandpa Hooton for his letter. It was really great. It helped a lot.
So we went and visited a woman last week who was a referral that we found out had been taught by missionaries 20 years ago and disagreed in a lot of ways. Now she is studying the Bible with some JWs. She wouldn’t even touch a Book of Mormon. Luckily she listened to us when we read out of it though. She threw the usual stuff at us about how the Book of Mormon goes against the Bible and we just explained how we get that a lot and then we explained how it agrees with the Bible. She wasn’t being very cooperative so we just bore testimony and gave her Moroni’s promise and left. It felt good to just bear testimony and promise her an answer and leave it up to her. We will probably go back sometime this week and just check to see if she’s read it. If not then we’ll put her in the area book and have some other missionaries another 20 years down the road see if she has changed her mind.
Wednesday I had an exchange with the Zone Leaders. I was in Fuji with the Japanese one. It made communicating a little difficult but it was a good experience. I knew I was treading on thin ice because Elder Wilson had dropped an investigator right before I came here. The Zone Leader I was with, Elder Furukawa had found that investigator a year ago when he was in Fuji. So the first thing we did was to go and visit him. Elder Wilson had dropped him because his interest and commitment was minimal and was only sparked when food was involved so he was sort of freeloading. We went and had an hour and a half lesson with him (3 lessons) and he said he’s only eating rice and he can’t focus on feeling the spirit if he is hungry. I felt bad for him but I was a little suspicious of some of the things that he said. We set up a time for Elder Wilson and I to go back the next day. I was scared to tell Elder Wilson that we had the appointment because he wasn’t going to be happy about it.
The next morning Furuwaka Choro and I were riding to the train station and we were a little early so he asked if we could go to a convenient store. I said sure. He bought a bunch of little meal things and I thought they must be out of food in Shizuoka so for some weird reason he is buying food now since he has time. Then I realized that he was buying it for the investigator. We dropped it off at his door. I was pretty upset. It’s rewarding this man for just saying he has interest. I am completely fine with giving him food as if he really needs it. The Church does it all the time. I just don’t want a handout to be correlated with us teaching him. I want him to progress as an investigator solely based on his feelings and not based of if he gets food. So I told Elder Wilson later that day and he was furious. We taught a lesson that night and it went alright. Then yesterday the investigator came to our night sacrament meeting and showed up late (for the closing hymn) and then got up and left right after. There were only 7 people there but he literally ran out of the chapel. We didn’t get to talk to him at all. It’s a weird situation. I hope he is genuine but with the way he’s been acting I’m finding it hard to believe.
I haven’t been mentioning this but in this ward they have a missionary talk every week. So I have to give a talk every other week. It’s been stressful to say the least. Unfortunately I don’t know if I’m getting any better at it. My talk yesterday was pretty sketchy. Jason, Dad, Quincy, anyone, if you have any ideas for talks on “missionary work” (the topic every week), feel free to write. I’m all out of ideas and I think I’ve shared every story from every missionary in the Book of Mormon. Does anyone have any good talks from their missions? So yesterday the member of the Bishopric that was conducting said, “Thank you to sister Yuriko for your talk on being worthy to enter the temple and the youth speaker for his talk on obedience and Elder Hooton for...well whatever the crap he talked about. We’re still trying to figure that one out.” Not really but he did mention everyone’s topic but mine. He just said my name and said thank you.
We have this member named Higa that I’ve talked about. We sometimes go to the church with him on Saturday nights and play a game, make food, and share a message. Well, when I was on the exchange we went and visited him and I set up an appointment (he didn’t say a word he just shook or nodded his head). Then Elder Wilson and I were at the mall watching something going on and he walked up behind Elder Wilson and started playing with his backpack. We turned around and tried to talk with him but he just walked away. Then we were trying to do missionary work on the trains but just taking trains back and forth talking to people (worked out alright) and we ran into Higa on the train. He only said a couple words. Then we had the appointment with him and only got him to talk a little. He’s pretty good at Jenga. Together we got the highest one I’ve ever seen. It was 13 blocks crisscrossed. No doubles. It was sweet. Elder Wilson thinks that Jenga is more technical than Operation. I told him he’s crazy. Then I talked with Higa about coming to teach and praying and stuff and he wasn’t being very receptive. So we left (the cake we made was good) but then Higa came to church the next day. It was awesome. I was so happy when I saw him slink in with his ridiculously long pink tie and sat down behind us. Then later that day we saw him on the street and he actually answered our questions instead of just shaking his head. So he is progressing. It was way cool that he came to church.
Hey thanks to my friends for sending letters. I got some good ones this week. It was way exciting. I got a little Betty Crocker brownie thing. It was super good. I loved it. Thanks Abby. I don’t know if I told you but a couple of weeks ago our gas bill wasn’t sent in so we had to go two days without gas. I now appreciate electric ovens in America a little bit more (unless the electricity goes out). Our main food this week was eggs, bread, rice and curry. I’m turning into a Japanese missionary finally. I’ve given up and now sometimes I’ll just eat rice. I never thought I’d see the day. I showed Elder Wilson a picture of me from when I was in Takaoka and I guess I’ve lost a lot of weight. He said my face is much, much skinner now. I look like a fat blob in the picture. My cheeks like jiggled and stuff.
We were trying to talk to high school kids that were on the beach last week. It was interesting. I’ve decided that you can’t contact guys here if there are girls around. They get super defensive and just try to make fun of us and act stupid. They are okay if they are by themselves. They feel like we are a threat if girls are around (frankly because we are). Their instincts kick in and they try to be the alpha male. I think it’s one of the main reasons why there are so many more women in the church in Japan. They will come and talk to us. They are more open, (more spiritual), and they aren’t defensive against us. It was way funny though because Elder Wilson and I came from behind a bunch of giant cement jacks (like the game jacks where you have to bounce the ball and grab the little rubber things) that are used to break tsunamis and both of us had bloody elbows and I guess my backpack was wide open and we were dripping sweat. I’m sure it was quite the sight. We just meandered out of the jacks, two weird foreigners.
It’s so weird being at these internet places where there are people reading comic books and stuff. I want to yell, “You’re a grown man! At least go play pool with the last bit of dignity that you have left.”
I’ll send this off for now and try to think of some more things after I get some ice cream. By the way for whoever might be wondering, I am six foot four or if you use the metric system that’s 192 cm.
Love,
Elder Hooton
August 15, 2010
Dear Family,
This week was alright. It went by way fast but unfortunately we didn’t get a whole lot accomplished. It was probably the lowest lesson count of my mission so far. That even includes the time that I was in the apartment most of the day when Elder Howells injured his ankle. It was really too bad. Once again no one was home or they were too busy to meet with us.
So Elder Wilson and I found a giant bottle of pasta sauce that looks really good. Monica, can you send me the recipe for those noodles that you make? It’s pretty easy right? It would be an awesome meal to eat here.
This last week we had to do a lot of stuff because Elder Wilson is District Leader. We had to go to Shizuoka for District Leader training. It’s about an hour away and then another 20 minute bus ride. I made a recording that has a little story about it. During the training I had to go do some housing (even though everywhere within 20 minutes of the Zone Leader’s church has been housed a million times) with another Japanese missionary. It was good to be able to talk some Japanese with him and have him answer some questions that I had. That took must of my Tuesday.
Wednesday we met with Brother Iwasaki. That was good. I gave my little lesson thing and he just kind of ignored it and asked about repenting after this life. He thought that after this life you either go to hell or heaven. We told him that people who don’t know the gospel can still repent. He wanted to see scriptures about certain types of sins and if you could repent of them after this life if you didn’t know the gospel. We told him we would find them for him. They were some weird questions. We didn’t want him to get any ideas about being able to just repent after this life. So Friday we actually met with him again and cleared this up for him but then he had more questions about plural marriage and stuff. We had to then clear that up for him. He said he read some of this stuff on the internet. That really worries me. It’s easy to see why Paul had to write so much of the New Testament because a lot of what he wrote was just trying to get people to understand the doctrine of the Church. It is especially hard here because the Church is rather new.
Friday was also spent doing finding activities that yielded no results or even ended with us talking to anyone. Saturday we had our big push to get investigators and inactives to church since their excuse of “I forgot” doesn’t hold as much water when we visit them on Saturday. It went all right and we ended the day doing some housing which just makes me feel good on the inside because I’m actually talking with people. Unfortunately we finished our giant apartment complex and we didn’t find anybody with interest.
Yesterday we finally met with Suzuki san. She said she will come to church on the 29th and that we can try to visit her whenever and if she is home then we can talk but if not then she is to busy. That was kind of stupid but she says she doesn’t know what hours during the week she will be working so it’s just random. It makes it kind of tough on us though. We got two good referrals this last week. One from Temple Square and the other one is a guy that the Tokyo missionaries talk to in a train station in Tokyo and he said he met with some missionaries 20 years ago and he would like to meet again. We went to meet him yesterday and only his wife was home. She said we could come back again but she didn’t seem too happy about the whole thing. We also visited an old referral from a couple of weeks ago who had just never been home. I was standing in the wrong spot and so when she opens the door I was the one that was standing there. So I asked if she was the name that we got and she said yes. She then said some Japanese I didn’t understand and then said it to Elder Wilson. As we walked away we passed her husband who came out of the garden and gave us a mean look. I guess she said that she couldn’t talk because her husband is home and she asked us to not come back anymore. It’s so sad because she is a member actually and she served a mission as well. I wanted to punch the guy when I found out that she said, “I can’t talk my husband is here.” What kind of dirt bag would say something like that to his wife?
Well your Rexburg trip sounded like fun. I wish I could have gone on it. It would have been fun to go play tennis at the college and stuff. Just to be back at college would be nice. Are classes still going on there? When does the semester end? Yellowstone sounded good. I’m glad no one got eaten by bears. I showed some members my driver’s license yesterday and it has those bears on it and they asked if we had bears in Montana. I told them that actually we had one that just ate a person. They freaked out. Japanese people will go crazy if you eat the skin of potatoes. The word in Japanese actually means poison (when it is in soup or something). I’m glad everyone is where they need to be safely and getting settled in. Mom if you sent me sun block I still wouldn’t use it.
At that dinner that I was at last night when I talked about the bears, Elder Wilson was showing them a picture of his driver’s license because he’s lost a bunch of weight. They were like wow you are a lot skinner. They then looked at my picture and said I was just as skinny. I was like “score!” then one of the bishop’s daughters said that I look like Joseph Smith. I was like “well that’s weird.” I then asked if he was a good looking guy. They said yes. So I’ll talk it as a complement. It’s mainly just because I have a big nose and blue eyes.
I’m sorry but that’s pretty much all I did this week. I don’t know what else to talk about. I’m sorry I don’t have any funny stories. I was sitting in our massage chair yesterday morning trying to wake up in the wee hours of the morning and it dawned on me that I’m not funny anymore. It was very discouraging. I’m not witty or funny. It’s too bad. I was going to try to write my emails like Tom Hanks since he seems to get some laughs out of people with his emails but then I remember he hates Mormons and decided the less funny route might be better. Hopefully my audio clips will be better. Everyone have a great week.
Love,
Elder Hooton
This week was alright. It went by way fast but unfortunately we didn’t get a whole lot accomplished. It was probably the lowest lesson count of my mission so far. That even includes the time that I was in the apartment most of the day when Elder Howells injured his ankle. It was really too bad. Once again no one was home or they were too busy to meet with us.
So Elder Wilson and I found a giant bottle of pasta sauce that looks really good. Monica, can you send me the recipe for those noodles that you make? It’s pretty easy right? It would be an awesome meal to eat here.
This last week we had to do a lot of stuff because Elder Wilson is District Leader. We had to go to Shizuoka for District Leader training. It’s about an hour away and then another 20 minute bus ride. I made a recording that has a little story about it. During the training I had to go do some housing (even though everywhere within 20 minutes of the Zone Leader’s church has been housed a million times) with another Japanese missionary. It was good to be able to talk some Japanese with him and have him answer some questions that I had. That took must of my Tuesday.
Wednesday we met with Brother Iwasaki. That was good. I gave my little lesson thing and he just kind of ignored it and asked about repenting after this life. He thought that after this life you either go to hell or heaven. We told him that people who don’t know the gospel can still repent. He wanted to see scriptures about certain types of sins and if you could repent of them after this life if you didn’t know the gospel. We told him we would find them for him. They were some weird questions. We didn’t want him to get any ideas about being able to just repent after this life. So Friday we actually met with him again and cleared this up for him but then he had more questions about plural marriage and stuff. We had to then clear that up for him. He said he read some of this stuff on the internet. That really worries me. It’s easy to see why Paul had to write so much of the New Testament because a lot of what he wrote was just trying to get people to understand the doctrine of the Church. It is especially hard here because the Church is rather new.
Friday was also spent doing finding activities that yielded no results or even ended with us talking to anyone. Saturday we had our big push to get investigators and inactives to church since their excuse of “I forgot” doesn’t hold as much water when we visit them on Saturday. It went all right and we ended the day doing some housing which just makes me feel good on the inside because I’m actually talking with people. Unfortunately we finished our giant apartment complex and we didn’t find anybody with interest.
Yesterday we finally met with Suzuki san. She said she will come to church on the 29th and that we can try to visit her whenever and if she is home then we can talk but if not then she is to busy. That was kind of stupid but she says she doesn’t know what hours during the week she will be working so it’s just random. It makes it kind of tough on us though. We got two good referrals this last week. One from Temple Square and the other one is a guy that the Tokyo missionaries talk to in a train station in Tokyo and he said he met with some missionaries 20 years ago and he would like to meet again. We went to meet him yesterday and only his wife was home. She said we could come back again but she didn’t seem too happy about the whole thing. We also visited an old referral from a couple of weeks ago who had just never been home. I was standing in the wrong spot and so when she opens the door I was the one that was standing there. So I asked if she was the name that we got and she said yes. She then said some Japanese I didn’t understand and then said it to Elder Wilson. As we walked away we passed her husband who came out of the garden and gave us a mean look. I guess she said that she couldn’t talk because her husband is home and she asked us to not come back anymore. It’s so sad because she is a member actually and she served a mission as well. I wanted to punch the guy when I found out that she said, “I can’t talk my husband is here.” What kind of dirt bag would say something like that to his wife?
Well your Rexburg trip sounded like fun. I wish I could have gone on it. It would have been fun to go play tennis at the college and stuff. Just to be back at college would be nice. Are classes still going on there? When does the semester end? Yellowstone sounded good. I’m glad no one got eaten by bears. I showed some members my driver’s license yesterday and it has those bears on it and they asked if we had bears in Montana. I told them that actually we had one that just ate a person. They freaked out. Japanese people will go crazy if you eat the skin of potatoes. The word in Japanese actually means poison (when it is in soup or something). I’m glad everyone is where they need to be safely and getting settled in. Mom if you sent me sun block I still wouldn’t use it.
At that dinner that I was at last night when I talked about the bears, Elder Wilson was showing them a picture of his driver’s license because he’s lost a bunch of weight. They were like wow you are a lot skinner. They then looked at my picture and said I was just as skinny. I was like “score!” then one of the bishop’s daughters said that I look like Joseph Smith. I was like “well that’s weird.” I then asked if he was a good looking guy. They said yes. So I’ll talk it as a complement. It’s mainly just because I have a big nose and blue eyes.
I’m sorry but that’s pretty much all I did this week. I don’t know what else to talk about. I’m sorry I don’t have any funny stories. I was sitting in our massage chair yesterday morning trying to wake up in the wee hours of the morning and it dawned on me that I’m not funny anymore. It was very discouraging. I’m not witty or funny. It’s too bad. I was going to try to write my emails like Tom Hanks since he seems to get some laughs out of people with his emails but then I remember he hates Mormons and decided the less funny route might be better. Hopefully my audio clips will be better. Everyone have a great week.
Love,
Elder Hooton
Friday, September 3, 2010
August 8, 2010
Dear Family,
This week was an all right week. It was super tiring though. Last Monday we ended up just buying food and then trying to visit our most promising investigator. We’ve been trying to get a hold of her several times a week for the last two weeks and finally met her on Saturday. We were praying so hard she’d say she could come to church because she had said that she would if she had time. Unfortunately this week is a Buddhist holiday where the dead revisit earth. So she had to drive to some family member’s tombs yesterday. It was too bad. We had found out that President Baird was coming to our sacrament meeting so we really wanted an investigator there so we didn’t look like bums and so that they could listen to President Baird. So Suzuki fell through but we were still hoping for Sakaguchi would come and she had already said that this last Sunday would work but then when we called to confirm she backed out and said she was busy. It’s so frustrating.
Tuesday we woke up at 6:00 am to get ready to be picked up at 7:00 to go up on Mount Fuji to go to the scout thing. He called at 6:15 and said he’d be there at 6:30. So it started off as a rough day. We drove up to a gas station type place. In Japan at gas stations you just get gas. If you want snacks or low grade food you go to a “conbini” which is Japanese for convenient store because they can’t say the v sound. So it was a conbini we went to. When we got there we met two men in scout uniforms that told us to get into their car. Since we aren’t serving in Eastern Europe we just did what we were told. One guy asked us how long we had been in Japan (in Japanese) and I said “what?” because I couldn’t hear him and he jump to the conclusion that I couldn’t understand the simple Japanese that he spoke so from then on he thought our Japanese was terrible. He said it in English and I answered in Japanese. From then on he wouldn’t talk to us in Japanese so we had to put up with his crappy English. It was so frustrating. Japanese people think that if we ask them to repeat themselves because they don’t speak very loud then we must not understand.
So we went to our little tent thing that we didn’t know we had and it had a bunch of church materials in it and a bunch of Book or Mormons. There were these way weird posters that I don’t think are church approved because they had some weird pictures on them. I’ll send you a picture. We then had the English speaking guy explain what we would be doing. He was very vague. We were kept in the dark on everything so it was quite frustrating. At this point we found out that the two guys we were with are members (that would have been nice to know before hand). Then a scout guy came a told us some things (which were translated into English for us which made it even harder to understand because we just wanted the Japanese).
Then we were told that the Prince of Japan was going to show up for a bit. We started to fix some fallen pictures around the tent and make it look nice. We then realized the two members were gone. We decided that’d we’d go find a bathroom before we had people start to come. We couldn’t find one and I decided I could just hold it for a while. We went back to the tent and the two members asked why we didn’t follow them to go see the prince. They said they told us but we were too busy trying to make the tent look like it wasn’t put together by 4 year olds. It was frustrating. Then kids started to come and the members were teaching a weird lesson about Jesus and his life and then had them pray. It wasn’t what they should have been teaching. Our unique message is the restoration. There were other tents that were teaching the exact same thing as us so we should have been teaching the restoration. We were at the tent all day and it was pretty boring. We went home exhausted.
Some kids came up to us and wanted to take a picture so there were a couple people with cameras and Elder Wilson and I gave our cameras to the guy that we had the previous conversation with and I wasn’t paying attention and they took the pictures and I got my camera back and there wasn’t any new pictures. It was the same with Elder Wilson’s camera. Then another group came and said the same thing. The dude went to take our cameras and then when he said he was taking the picture I looked and his finger wasn’t even close to button. He just held the camera, counted, and then said he took it. I had to go explain to him that you have to push the button. It was super weird. I guess the most technologically advanced country in the world can’t even produce someone over the age of 50 that can use a camera.
Wednesday we tried to visit some people and get some work done. Thursday I was hoping would go a little better. I prayed a lot that Elder Wilson wouldn’t just sleep the whole time in a chair at the back of the tent like he did on Tuesday. We had to give that talk in front of a couple hundred kids, along with two members of the Area Seventy. It was funny because the institute people there had a bunch of different pictures of Jesus and did their same little bit about stuff that was all over the place and then the two Seventy members taught lesson 1. It was very nicely done and they spoke simple plain Japanese. Elder Wilson started to give his little thing on scouting and I had a couple things I was going to say. Then one the Institute Directors who I like a lot (different guy than who I’ve been talking about) told me to just do mine in English and have someone translate. I then had to swallow my pride and have the English speaking institute guy translate my talk for me. It ended up going alright.
After that though we asked the institute director if we could do our own thing and try to talk to people in the ways that we want to while the other guys just handled the stuff in the tent. He said it was a good idea. From then on the thing was great. We talked with several hundred kids. They wanted to take pictures with us and then wanted to shake our hands. We gave them pamphlets and the numbers of all the different missions they were from. We felt like rock stars. They asked us to sign their shirts and their hats. I probably gave out 200 signatures. I still feel weird about signing that kid’s face (just kidding). We ended up getting tons of referrals that I sent in today. It was really good. Overall it was fun and a good experience.
I did get a terrible sunburn on my face that decided to start to peel yesterday when president Baird came to our sacrament meeting along with a different member of the Seventy. It was weird because I sat next to him at a meal after sacrament meeting and it didn’t even click that he was a member of the Seventy. I just talked to him like him was a normal guy. He was super nice and loves missionaries a lot. He was really upbeat and happy like I’m assuming most general authorities are.
So you could actually see Mt. Fuji for a couple hours this last week. It was pretty cool. Also, two week ago I forgot to mention that I beat a legit Japanese person in ping pong. Let’s just say it came down to a tie breaker and it ended with me running around the room with my hands in the air screaming “katta.”
We found a legit mall last week. It’s way cool. Now we know where people go on the weekends. It’s cool try be around tons of people and try to talk to them. Hopefully we can start to find new investigators again. It’s been kind of slow this last week. Is 3D TV as huge in America as it is here? It’s huge here. They have tons of displays at electronic stores and stuff. It’s way cool. I saw a little clip of the latest star wars movie and it was 3d without glasses. I’m not sure if I liked it though. It made it seem like it was some history channel reenactment or something. It seemed more corny than usual. I think it might have been some cool new LCD thing where they have the primary colors and yellow as their liquid crystals. The glasses ones are still sweet. They had some nature scenes in 3D and then a camera that actually took 3D video. It was way cool.
After we ate tacos last week Elder Wilson couldn’t handle the feeling he had in his stomach so he made himself throw up. I think he should now do public service announcements for teenage girls. He said it was a pretty bad experience. I was telling him the names of all the different things he discovered at the back of his throat. Turns out he got his finger back pretty far.
So I can’t do the audio thing today. I bought a cheap microphone and it doesn’t work so I’ll have to bring it back and find a new one. I really want to do it to send home audio things but I decided it would be most useful to speak Japanese into and then be able to hear myself. My biggest hang-up right now is my ability to sound like a Japanese person. I can’t get my intonations right and my pronunciation is a little weird I guess. I think it will be helpful to listen to myself and maybe record a Japanese person reading a scripture and then me trying to imitate it. I’ll try to get it going next week though so I can send something home. Just through email probably.
I looked up the word leadership in my electronic dictionary to use at the scout thing when I was talking to people. I’m glad I ended up doing it in English because I looked up the word later in a different dictionary and turns out it means a person who incites a riot. I guess that is a type of leadership but not quite was I was looking for when talking about how the church has taught me a lot in my life.
Well I found Mr. Miyagi (karate kid dude). A couple of weeks ago we rode past an old guy with an awesome beard who had a giant bottle of Japanese sports drink (it’s called pacari sweat). If you ask me, any drink with the word sweat it in just sounds gross but the people here like it. This old guy was just going to town smashing his hand against a cinder block, just a nice slow pace of whacking it. I rode by last week and saw him punching a brick wall. I can just picture his wife yelling out the window “Are you still hitting that stupid brick. When are you going to give that up? Your glory days are over.” and he just mumbles something about her not understanding him. It was something similar to Dad when he would be writing some sort of debate frontline imagining himself ripping into someone in a 2NC. This guy was imagining himself sinking his wrinkly old fists into someone’s face.
Well this last transfer it turns out two more missionaries that are on the same transfer as me and training, including my MTC companion. All the leadership is young. I think that President Baird doesn’t want new missionaries to be corrupted by the older ones. He is waiting for all the older ones to finish. President Baird’s new goal is 2000 baptisms by the time he leaves. We were the highest mission in Japan last year with 162. There are a lot of older missionaries that say that it’s crazy and impossible but us younger ones totally think its possible and not only that but that it’s going to happen. My trainer got pulled out of being a Zone Leader and is in a regular area and President Baird says that he is being called to perform a miracle of 20 baptisms in that area. On the train ride to his area he found someone that wanted to hear a lesson right then so then took him to the church and gave him lesson one and then committed him to be baptized. Then the next day Elder Insch found another person that already has a baptism date. I have the faith that we will see that many baptisms. The trick is just being obedient and right now our mission is having some trouble with that.
Will you thank grandma and grandpa Hooton and Miller for me. I love their letters. Thank you for your prayers. My Japanese is getting a lot better. I’m very thankful for that. I love you all.
Tyler
This week was an all right week. It was super tiring though. Last Monday we ended up just buying food and then trying to visit our most promising investigator. We’ve been trying to get a hold of her several times a week for the last two weeks and finally met her on Saturday. We were praying so hard she’d say she could come to church because she had said that she would if she had time. Unfortunately this week is a Buddhist holiday where the dead revisit earth. So she had to drive to some family member’s tombs yesterday. It was too bad. We had found out that President Baird was coming to our sacrament meeting so we really wanted an investigator there so we didn’t look like bums and so that they could listen to President Baird. So Suzuki fell through but we were still hoping for Sakaguchi would come and she had already said that this last Sunday would work but then when we called to confirm she backed out and said she was busy. It’s so frustrating.
Tuesday we woke up at 6:00 am to get ready to be picked up at 7:00 to go up on Mount Fuji to go to the scout thing. He called at 6:15 and said he’d be there at 6:30. So it started off as a rough day. We drove up to a gas station type place. In Japan at gas stations you just get gas. If you want snacks or low grade food you go to a “conbini” which is Japanese for convenient store because they can’t say the v sound. So it was a conbini we went to. When we got there we met two men in scout uniforms that told us to get into their car. Since we aren’t serving in Eastern Europe we just did what we were told. One guy asked us how long we had been in Japan (in Japanese) and I said “what?” because I couldn’t hear him and he jump to the conclusion that I couldn’t understand the simple Japanese that he spoke so from then on he thought our Japanese was terrible. He said it in English and I answered in Japanese. From then on he wouldn’t talk to us in Japanese so we had to put up with his crappy English. It was so frustrating. Japanese people think that if we ask them to repeat themselves because they don’t speak very loud then we must not understand.
So we went to our little tent thing that we didn’t know we had and it had a bunch of church materials in it and a bunch of Book or Mormons. There were these way weird posters that I don’t think are church approved because they had some weird pictures on them. I’ll send you a picture. We then had the English speaking guy explain what we would be doing. He was very vague. We were kept in the dark on everything so it was quite frustrating. At this point we found out that the two guys we were with are members (that would have been nice to know before hand). Then a scout guy came a told us some things (which were translated into English for us which made it even harder to understand because we just wanted the Japanese).
Then we were told that the Prince of Japan was going to show up for a bit. We started to fix some fallen pictures around the tent and make it look nice. We then realized the two members were gone. We decided that’d we’d go find a bathroom before we had people start to come. We couldn’t find one and I decided I could just hold it for a while. We went back to the tent and the two members asked why we didn’t follow them to go see the prince. They said they told us but we were too busy trying to make the tent look like it wasn’t put together by 4 year olds. It was frustrating. Then kids started to come and the members were teaching a weird lesson about Jesus and his life and then had them pray. It wasn’t what they should have been teaching. Our unique message is the restoration. There were other tents that were teaching the exact same thing as us so we should have been teaching the restoration. We were at the tent all day and it was pretty boring. We went home exhausted.
Some kids came up to us and wanted to take a picture so there were a couple people with cameras and Elder Wilson and I gave our cameras to the guy that we had the previous conversation with and I wasn’t paying attention and they took the pictures and I got my camera back and there wasn’t any new pictures. It was the same with Elder Wilson’s camera. Then another group came and said the same thing. The dude went to take our cameras and then when he said he was taking the picture I looked and his finger wasn’t even close to button. He just held the camera, counted, and then said he took it. I had to go explain to him that you have to push the button. It was super weird. I guess the most technologically advanced country in the world can’t even produce someone over the age of 50 that can use a camera.
Wednesday we tried to visit some people and get some work done. Thursday I was hoping would go a little better. I prayed a lot that Elder Wilson wouldn’t just sleep the whole time in a chair at the back of the tent like he did on Tuesday. We had to give that talk in front of a couple hundred kids, along with two members of the Area Seventy. It was funny because the institute people there had a bunch of different pictures of Jesus and did their same little bit about stuff that was all over the place and then the two Seventy members taught lesson 1. It was very nicely done and they spoke simple plain Japanese. Elder Wilson started to give his little thing on scouting and I had a couple things I was going to say. Then one the Institute Directors who I like a lot (different guy than who I’ve been talking about) told me to just do mine in English and have someone translate. I then had to swallow my pride and have the English speaking institute guy translate my talk for me. It ended up going alright.
After that though we asked the institute director if we could do our own thing and try to talk to people in the ways that we want to while the other guys just handled the stuff in the tent. He said it was a good idea. From then on the thing was great. We talked with several hundred kids. They wanted to take pictures with us and then wanted to shake our hands. We gave them pamphlets and the numbers of all the different missions they were from. We felt like rock stars. They asked us to sign their shirts and their hats. I probably gave out 200 signatures. I still feel weird about signing that kid’s face (just kidding). We ended up getting tons of referrals that I sent in today. It was really good. Overall it was fun and a good experience.
I did get a terrible sunburn on my face that decided to start to peel yesterday when president Baird came to our sacrament meeting along with a different member of the Seventy. It was weird because I sat next to him at a meal after sacrament meeting and it didn’t even click that he was a member of the Seventy. I just talked to him like him was a normal guy. He was super nice and loves missionaries a lot. He was really upbeat and happy like I’m assuming most general authorities are.
So you could actually see Mt. Fuji for a couple hours this last week. It was pretty cool. Also, two week ago I forgot to mention that I beat a legit Japanese person in ping pong. Let’s just say it came down to a tie breaker and it ended with me running around the room with my hands in the air screaming “katta.”
We found a legit mall last week. It’s way cool. Now we know where people go on the weekends. It’s cool try be around tons of people and try to talk to them. Hopefully we can start to find new investigators again. It’s been kind of slow this last week. Is 3D TV as huge in America as it is here? It’s huge here. They have tons of displays at electronic stores and stuff. It’s way cool. I saw a little clip of the latest star wars movie and it was 3d without glasses. I’m not sure if I liked it though. It made it seem like it was some history channel reenactment or something. It seemed more corny than usual. I think it might have been some cool new LCD thing where they have the primary colors and yellow as their liquid crystals. The glasses ones are still sweet. They had some nature scenes in 3D and then a camera that actually took 3D video. It was way cool.
After we ate tacos last week Elder Wilson couldn’t handle the feeling he had in his stomach so he made himself throw up. I think he should now do public service announcements for teenage girls. He said it was a pretty bad experience. I was telling him the names of all the different things he discovered at the back of his throat. Turns out he got his finger back pretty far.
So I can’t do the audio thing today. I bought a cheap microphone and it doesn’t work so I’ll have to bring it back and find a new one. I really want to do it to send home audio things but I decided it would be most useful to speak Japanese into and then be able to hear myself. My biggest hang-up right now is my ability to sound like a Japanese person. I can’t get my intonations right and my pronunciation is a little weird I guess. I think it will be helpful to listen to myself and maybe record a Japanese person reading a scripture and then me trying to imitate it. I’ll try to get it going next week though so I can send something home. Just through email probably.
I looked up the word leadership in my electronic dictionary to use at the scout thing when I was talking to people. I’m glad I ended up doing it in English because I looked up the word later in a different dictionary and turns out it means a person who incites a riot. I guess that is a type of leadership but not quite was I was looking for when talking about how the church has taught me a lot in my life.
Well I found Mr. Miyagi (karate kid dude). A couple of weeks ago we rode past an old guy with an awesome beard who had a giant bottle of Japanese sports drink (it’s called pacari sweat). If you ask me, any drink with the word sweat it in just sounds gross but the people here like it. This old guy was just going to town smashing his hand against a cinder block, just a nice slow pace of whacking it. I rode by last week and saw him punching a brick wall. I can just picture his wife yelling out the window “Are you still hitting that stupid brick. When are you going to give that up? Your glory days are over.” and he just mumbles something about her not understanding him. It was something similar to Dad when he would be writing some sort of debate frontline imagining himself ripping into someone in a 2NC. This guy was imagining himself sinking his wrinkly old fists into someone’s face.
Well this last transfer it turns out two more missionaries that are on the same transfer as me and training, including my MTC companion. All the leadership is young. I think that President Baird doesn’t want new missionaries to be corrupted by the older ones. He is waiting for all the older ones to finish. President Baird’s new goal is 2000 baptisms by the time he leaves. We were the highest mission in Japan last year with 162. There are a lot of older missionaries that say that it’s crazy and impossible but us younger ones totally think its possible and not only that but that it’s going to happen. My trainer got pulled out of being a Zone Leader and is in a regular area and President Baird says that he is being called to perform a miracle of 20 baptisms in that area. On the train ride to his area he found someone that wanted to hear a lesson right then so then took him to the church and gave him lesson one and then committed him to be baptized. Then the next day Elder Insch found another person that already has a baptism date. I have the faith that we will see that many baptisms. The trick is just being obedient and right now our mission is having some trouble with that.
Will you thank grandma and grandpa Hooton and Miller for me. I love their letters. Thank you for your prayers. My Japanese is getting a lot better. I’m very thankful for that. I love you all.
Tyler
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