February 6, 2011

Dear Family,

This week was good. I’m sorry that I spent most of my emailing time reading emails. That’s kind of how I wanted to do it today because I don’t: have a ton to say. It was just a regular week. The snow was absolutely incredible for the first two days of the week. We went to Katsuyama Shi again to shovel for my investigator. It took us 6 hours and there were four of us again. I’m working on getting pictures from this last week but Elder Nelson has the pictures. He is trying to email them to me but it doesn’t seem to be working. To say the least it was about 12 feet of snow that we were shoveling. I will explain the pictures if I ever send them. It was probably the most ridiculous thing of my mission. It was fun though.

Thiago came to church this week with his girlfriend and daughter. It was really fun. We took them back to the train station and their little girl was adorable. It was a nice sunny day and they were taking pictures of their daughter the whole way. They are just such a nice happy family. Aida san’s son got pink eye (imagine that Jason) so we can’t meet with her this week. It was tough trying to figure out what pink eye was over the phone in Japanese. We have an appointment tomorrow with an former investigator who is getting married soon so now his interest in the church is rekindled. We are also teaching his parents...kind of. His sister is a member in Osaka so I’ve now decided it’s my purpose to bring their family together through the gospel so that’s what my goal is right now. I’m hoping it goes well with him tomorrow.

My talk went well. I told everyone that I was really busy that week and didn’t have time to prepare so on Friday I just started to pray for snow and on Saturday morning I got a call from brother Jotoku saying that church was cancelled so I felt pretty good about my faith. Then later that night he called and said that we were having church after all. So then I started to prepare my talk. They were laughing pretty hard at that point (my timing was pretty good). Then I apologized for all of the snow being my fault. Brother Nozaki fell out of his chair he was laughing so hard. He doesn’t even like me. His reaction reminded me of when I tell a joke to brother Fike. That man just loves my jokes. I miss that. Anyway, I then talked about how I emailed my dad the week before about the talk so that they knew that I actually did prepare. I told the story of Pat Tucker’s conversion and then talked about the ward’s example and thanked them for being such great examples. It went well I think.

Hey can Grandpa Miller send me the names of the people in Komatsu again and tell me which members he baptized and which he knew when he served? I might go there next week so I want to see if we can meet any of them.

I decided to contact an old investigator from about a year and a half ago the other night. He was a very talkative college kid. We taught him lessons 1-3 in an hour and a half at his door. He seems pretty promising. He was way cool to talk to. He was a little loud but it just made it funny.

Sorry I don’t: have a lot to talk about this week. Hopefully next week will be better. Thanks for all of the great emails. I love reading about everyone. I hope Jason can get over the plague.

If you need me I’ll be cleansing my soul for Elder Holland’s visit. We had a 45 minute conference call this morning with President Baird about how we need to prepare. I’m quite scared.

Love, Tyler