September 26, 2010

Dear Family,

This week was really tough. Luckily it was by far the fastest week of my mission up until this morning. It felt like it went by in a snap. I’m still way stressed though and trying to manage being in a foreign country while living with another human being that doesn’t speak the same language as me. It’s been tough and I’ve just had my just compromises and refrained from just yelling in English (I did it a couple of times though).

Funny story, I had told some people that my grandpa has served in Kanazawa and the senior missionary couple here got wind and the Elder, Elder Oldroid called me and told me that he knew my grandpa. I was shocked and then he told me to look up his name on the North Asia Mission website. It says that Elder Oldroid and Elder Hooton served together and baptized 3 people or something like that. I just played along and didn’t bother to tell him that it was my mother’s father that served in Japan but I guess a Hooton served here as well with Elder Oldroid. I told you Japan missions run in families.

We went into the post office the other morning. We walk in and I went to stand off to the side to wait for Elder Momose to use the ATM. It was just what I usually do. I could tell something was wrong because Elder Momose turned around and gave me a weird look. At first I just thought it was because the man using the ATM was obviously drunk (he was yelling slurred Japanese words). It wasn’t a huge deal. If you are over the age of 70 and live in Japan that’s the cool thing to do is get drunk and roam the streets yelling at high school girls. Anyway, when I looked closer I realized that his pants were around his ankles. Elder Momose tried to help him use the ATM machine. After awhile he told me why the man had his pants down. He was unaware of the matter. We had to help him out and eventually he went home and we got our money. It was quite the experience though.

So this inactive woman called us and wanted to meet. It was a little weird. She was a little crazy from what I could tell from the teaching record. She told missionaries that if they translated some papers for her into English then she’d get baptized. I guess the missionaries started teaching her and she gained legitimate interest and she eventually got baptized. Anyway, half way through the conversation with Elder Momose (on the phone) she started asking tons of questions about me like how tall I was, my eye color, hair color, etc.. It was quite weird. I feel like I have a stalker. Her children are high school age and not members so we wouldn’t mind trying to teach them so we are going to visit her this week. I’ll be careful.

Don’t worry about printing emails and sending them. Short ones are fine. If you want to send other letters by regular mail that’d be great. We don’t get NBC on DirecTV? How are we supposed to watch The Office at home?

I was tired of Elder Momose always leading the way because I think it stressed him a little bit that he always had to be finding the homes of people, so one day I decided I’d look up the addresses in the map book and I’d map out a route. He was a little unsure but I was fairly certain I could do it. After the first three minutes I took a wrong turn. It’s not my fault though. Elder Momose kind of threw me off. Anyway, Japanese maps are stupid. Streets have names but the names aren’t anywhere on the actual street. They are really only on maps. They name intersections. That’s stupid if you ask me. Why would you only name intersections? So on all four poles with traffic lights on them there is a sign and all four of them say the same thing. Anyway, I found the way after a while. It went well for a long time. In the end I misjudged the size of the river (well actually creek) that we needed to cross and I went about a good 30 minutes farther than we needed to. In my defense though, that creek looked huge on the map. Also, yesterday we had to go that way anyway. It was 2 hours by bike there and 1 and a half hour to get back (we took a different way) it was super exhausting.

Well the area hasn’t really picked up that much. We are still kind of just fluttering around trying to figure things out but it’s at least going a little better. I’m doing alright. Just please keep on praying for me. I love you all. Have a good week.

Elder Hooton