Japan 15 May 2011

Week 46

Mission Log

 

Things are going well here.  No, Brother Otsuka has not been baptized yet.  We still don`t have permission from his father.  In Japan you become an adult when you turn twenty.  Anyone under twenty needs written permission from their parents in order to get baptized.  Technically, I`m not even an adult yet in Japan.  It`s a little bit annoying.  Sometime when I tell people that I`m 19, they say, "Wow, you looked like you were an adult."  It`s a bit frustrating.  I just want to yell, "I am an adult!" but I`m not. 

 

We have a Chinese investigator who wanted to meet with us, but she didn't know where the church was.  So, we decided to meet with her somewhere and ride our bikes to the church together.  It turns out that she had just learned to ride a bike a week ago.  It took us forever to get to the church.  If there was even the slightest incline, she couldn't get up it.  She said that in China she`d never ridden a bike before.  She also said that she`s never driven a car.  It just seemed strange to me. 

 

One of the really great things about being a missionary is getting to see how people completely change their lives when they accept the gospel.  When we met with our investigator Sister Saho, she said that she didn't even believe in God, but after we had talked to her for about ten minutes, she changed a lot.  We explain prayer to her and she got excited and asked "Can I do this anytime?"  She told us now that when she prays, she feels amazing feelings of warmth and happiness like nothing she`s felt before.  At our second appointment with her we told her about baptism and she`s excited about that too.  She wants to get baptized.  The mission is great. 

 

Yes, I am eating well here.  I`m not starving.  I've been in Japan for so long now that I've started wanting to put mayonnaise on everything I eat now.  I put mayonnaise on my tacos yesterday.  I haven`t put any mayonnaise or soy sauce on my cereal yet, but I think it`s only a matter of time until that happens.  I've been gaining a little bit of weight.  I`m about 207 lbs now.  I don`t feel like I`m any bigger though.  It`s weird. 

 

It rained a lot for two days because of a typhoon down in Okinawa and in my dream last night there was a huge tsunami that hit the town, but other than that it has been warm and sunny every day. 

 

We don`t have an oven.  So, my companion makes oatmeal cake (cake with oatmeal in it) in our rice cooker.  A member of the branch gave us a recipe for making a cheesecake in the rice cooker.  It turns out you can use the rice cooker for more than just rice.  I was pretty surprised. 

 

We started getting a cockroach problem here.  We keep the apartment really nice and really clean, but for some reason, a few cockroaches have still come.  Apparently the apartment in Uwajima always has cockroaches.  There are just a lot of cockroaches in Uwajima.  It`s pretty gross. 

 

That`s all I have for this week.  I love you all and I`ll write again next week.  Bye. 

 

-Elder Isaac Swift