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