I'm going to Miyazaki!

Hello from Sendai. But not for much longer.

We got a call from the Assistants to the President last night at about 10pm. He said that Sendai is changing together and that both me and Takahama Shimai are going to Miyazaki on Thursday. Miyazaki is turning into a 6 missionary area. 4 Elders and 2 Sisters. That's really rare for a branch. I'll still be in the Kagoshima Zone. So basically that call was poorly timed. We couldn't sleep at all that night. When you are closing an area as sisters, there is a lot of work to do. You have to hang out with all your sister recent converts and let them know they're awesome, without telling them that we're transferring and two maybe-immature boys are coming. Yeah, we can't tell anyone until Wednesday, so if you could not put this paragraph on the blog until Wednesday in Japan, that would be great. Thanks.

So sisters have a reputation of having clean apartments. So we have to make sure the apartment is clean for the two Elders. This Sister image is very important! Then we have to make sure all of our records are up-to-date with lessons taught, and what we think such-and-such a person needs. Phew. The reason this area is changing to Elders is because the men are pretty few in number. And as Sisters we can't really contact men on the street. It's part of that same Sister's image, you know? Then we have to put the phone and key in the mailbox and just hope for the best!

In Miyazaki, we think we'll be getting a new apartment. There haven't been sisters in that area for as long as anyone can remember, so we are really hoping we get a new apartment.  Next week I'll have the address for you and such. They usually don't tell us early, but when you're closing an area they let you know so you don't buy too much food and such.

This week was our Halloween Party. Friday night. Somehow the missionaries got put in charge of it because last year and the year before it was an Eikaiwa event, so now the members expect the missionaries to do it. I somehow managed to make a Twister board out of a green lawn tarp and some paint markers. It was so cool. Now the Elders in Kagoshima want to use it for their Halloween Party this coming week. I've made missionary history! Yeah. The other games included bobbing for apples (haha) and that game where you throw rings onto water bottles for a prize. It was more like a carnival than a Halloween Party, but it was fun. It was also a lot of work for two Sisters. We asked the Relief Society to bring food and man did they bring food. In America, they would have brought a bag of chips, or some pop, but here they brought different kinds of sushi, and little chicken wings and wrapped up nicely so you can eat it without getting dirty. Haha. It was tasty. There was also a costume contest, but no one really dressed up. So we gave the cutest award to the 9 year old girl, who is the cutest because she is 9.

Our favorite investigator, Kamezawa-san, has not been praying in the name of Jesus Christ. He's been praying in the name of the two cute angels that come visit him almost everyday. Haha. This area definitely needs to be Elders. Anyway, we keep trying to tell him how to pray, and what's important to pray about, but he is stubborn and wants to find the answer himself in the scriptures so he's studied every part of the Standard Works about prayer. He's the king of hard work. I keep trying to tell him to pray, then he'll understand, but he wants to understand before he prays. Okay, so that would be great, but that's not how God works. You have to show faith in him first, through actions like prayer, then he proves to you that you did the right thing. I've had my share of stubborn old men. I wonder how you and Grandpa are doing.... (haha, just kidding Grandpa. You're the best! And you do the things that matter, like pray and pay tithing.  Good job!)

A little side note. It's interesting to see how different your emails are. You both live the same boring life right now, but your views are totally different. Dad writes me poems (as it looks from the email I haven't read yet) and Mom writes all the warm fuzzies. It's funny, but greatly appreciated at the same time. Keep up the good work there!

Anyway, I don't really have much time to write today because we're headed to Taniyama for a District P-day. We are going to play Twister I think. Of course, the Elders and the Sisters can't play together.  Haha. Luckily I brought pajama pants. You can't really play Twister in a skirt.

The picture is of Takahama Shimai petting a turtle we randomly found on the sidewalk. It was pitch black outside, so the picture isn't very good. My hand isn't steady enough for a slow exposure. This turtle was going to die, so we spent the next 10 minutes trying to pick up the turtle and walk with it 50 meters to a nearby lake/river thing. The issue was it gave us the creeps. It's little legs came up around and started scrapping our hands. Gross! But we saved it.

Love always,

Your favorite daughter.

Week at a glance

Wow Mom, you're really not diligent on this whole writing your favorite missionary thing are you? Ha ha, I guess I can't complain.  (Editor's note:  The Mom is on a road trip to Colorado with her sister Karen so she gets a bye on not writing this week.)

My companion hasn't talked to her mom since she left on her mission.  She writes her a postcard every week, but she never gets anything back. She emails her sister every week, and according to her sister, her mom is doing well.

BTW, I haven't gotten the toothbrushes yet. From the mission office things take about a day, as long as I live on Kyushu, and about 2 if I'm on Honshu Island or Okinawa Island. So I expect them tomorrow, maybe.

So you've both begged me for what a typical day is like for me. Well, there is no typical day. Every day is different, but here is a week at a glance.

Last Monday

For P-day we went shopping for food, I power washed my clothes. My whites aren't exactly white any more. But we found some really awesome color bleach stuff that is magic if you soak the clothes in it for 2 hours. ha ha. The power! P-day ends at 6 so we visited Sagara Kyodai, who is a less active that was baptized about 7 years ago. His day off on work changed from Sunday to Monday, so he can't come to church anymore. He would like to go to a church activity if there was one on Monday, but since the single adults here in Sendai Branch are few and far between, there is no YSA (Young Single Adult) Family Home Evening. Then we visited Isshiki-san. She got married about a year ago. She works at a beauty salon and teaches people how to wear make-up and such. I thought she was kinda a make-up freak and told me my face was so red it looked like it hurt. Yeah, I don't really like her much. Ha ha. Japanese concept of beautiful is all white, with no blush or anything. Well, if you do wear blush, it is basically white.

As for my make-up, that pretty much died during the summer when I would sweat it off in about 20 seconds after putting it on. Now that I don't sweat the moment I put it on, I've been known to do a little for church and stuff. Anyway, Takahama Shimai likes Isshiki-san so we have an appointment with her tomorrow. Maybe then we can actually teach her something, instead of just listening to her talk and talk about how her friends and her get drunk and do silly things.

Tuesday

District Meeting. That means all the missionaries in Kagoshima, Taniyama, and Sendai (me!) get together and have a weekly training, and eat lunch together. Since we're so far away, we leave the apartment at 7:30am, to get to the train station train by 8am. It's crowded with all kinds of school kids. If we get there early enough we can sit down. There are commuters that come from Sendai to Kagoshima for work everyday. It's about an hour train ride, and it's way bumpy. I mean there is no part of Japan that is flat, I think.  At least not on Kyushu.

So if we come a little late, then we just have to stand for the whole hour. About 3/4 of the way through the train ride all the school kids leave for the school, but then more commuters appear, so if you want a seat you have to be really aggressive. Luckily, I'm American so I have no problem with that. At least it's not packed like the trains in Tokyo, where they have hired people with white gloves that shove you into the train like sardines.

Yeah, that would really stink. So we get to Kagoshima and transfer trains to go to the Taniyama Church building. Remember, the Kagoshima Church building is on top of the Hill of Faith, so the meeting is at the Taniyama church building. So, there are 10 missionaries. We talk about how to be better missionaries, then the senior couple feeds us (this is the best food) and drive us to the train station in Kagoshima to save us some time and money. Then we take the hour train ride back. Phew. But this week was companion exchanges, so the sisters in Taniyama came to Sendai! With Endo Shimai we visited some old PIs (potential investigators), and found an interesting house. In Japan, all the houses have the name posted outside are really cool looking plaques. We saw日日which is an really interesting name. It means Sun Sun, or whatever. (Editor's note:  According to Babblefish it means everyday life.)

So Endo Shimai and I knocked on the door and did our contact. She wasn't interested but Endo Shimai asked her for her name. See, Japanese characters can be pronounced many ways - especially the common ones like Sun. It was Hibi-san. Ha ha.

Wednesday

I worked with the other Japanese sister, Yoha Shimai. We came to Japanese together and I remember talking to her in the MTC (Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT).  Well, trying to.

We decided to take the bikes to a really far away place. It probably took and hour, and it was slightly uphill the whole way. Well, the map in Sendai is a little difficult. We have a really big map of Kagoshima-ken (the whole prefecture or state), and a really detailed map of Sendai-shi, but not any in between map. The really detailed map is about 16,000 yen (US$160.00), and it can't leave the apartment, so we have a photocopied book and we take the parts of the map we need with us.

But I realized Sendai is so pretty! Really it is! And really country. The rice is being harvested. Then when they are done, they burn their fields. I'm not exactly sure why, maybe it's because they want to fertilize the soil? I really have no idea. So there was smoke in the air. It smelled like camping. Ha ha. We couldn't find the less active member, but we found her mom, and she talked to us for a while. Then the Taniyama Shimai left to go back to Taniyama. All it all it was way fun.

Thursday

I pretty much died. I was so exhausted from the bike ride on Wednesday we both ended up taking a 3 hour nap. My body was just worn out. One thing I've learned is that a sister missionary's body is not an Elder's body. We can't just do whatever. Today I read 1 Nephi 17:2 about how the wives of the Lehites were made strong. Yeah, I'm still waiting for that. Thursday night was Eikaiwa. We tried to teach Morio-san, one of the students, but he ended up giving back the Book of Mormon to us, telling us that it's too hard to understand.

Well, there goes that potential investigator.

Friday

Weekly Planning Session. We planned all of this week. It was intense. It took about 5 hours. That night we visited Kamezawa san (see below)

Saturday

Nagatoshi Dendo. We found a new neighborhood that isn't on our maps, so we housed it.

Sunday

We sang in church! During practice it was really bad, but isn't that what church is all about - bad musical numbers? Ha ha, anyway, during sacrament meeting it wasn't too bad. And we made some of the more sensitive ward members cry. That's how you know it's good.

Anyway, I'm running out of time, but I wanted to talk about Kamezawa san. I mentioned him before. He has lung cancer, and will probably die this year. He studies the Book of Mormon for like 3 hours everyday, but he hasn't be progressing. But this week he said he's thinking about it. He is really old, like Grandpa old. And stubborn too. His pace of learning is that of a snail. I will try to learn more patience.

Anyway, there are no pictures this week, because I didn't take any, but this Friday is the Halloween party, so I'll have pictures.

Hope you are doing well!

Your favorite daughter.

Thanks for the Toothbrushes!

Thanks for sending me a toothbrush. It will be happily received.

When I did companion exchange with the sisters is Taniyama (just south of Kagoshima, but still in Kagoshima city) one of the Japanese sisters mentioned that my toothbrush was real big. I just smiled. 'It's American sized. You should see the toothbrushes in Texas.' She didn't get it.

Yes, I can read your emails in full on my camera. I just take a picture of the computer screen and read it later. My P-Days are actually quite uneventful. It doesn't take us that long to do email and buy food, because it's all really close together, so I just sit at home. Actually, your emails from last week I couldn't read because my camera focus was off, but I figured it out, and I'll read your emails later today. I also re-took pictures of your emails from last week.

So don't worry about sending hard copies of the emails. I don't have room to transfer with any more stuff!

Okay, so the suitcases. We'll see what happens, but I'm pretty sure I'm staying in Sendai for a while, so I don't need to worry about that any time soon. Oh, and next time I will definitely mail one of my suitcases. It's only about 20 bucks to mail myself a suitcase. Japan is cheap in many ways - and that's one of them. You can mail things relatively cheap. Unless it's international to America. That's just a nightmare. Speaking of which, now is a good time for you to start telling me what you want for Christmas from Japan. There's all sorts of good stuff here.

My address in Sendai is:

(Removed)

You just kinda make that last line fit where ever you have room.

'fureguranse' in the address is Japanese for Fragrance. Ha ha. I laugh every time I see it. And Kami Maru is God Circle. Ha ha. In Sendai we've seen other Fragrance Apartments, and we always house them. We haven't found anyone yet. However, don't put that address on my blog or anything. I've been told not to make my address publicly known.

There is an Elder in this mission who had an issue with a stalker, and keeps getting transferred. Anyway, he won't talk about it much, as you can imagine.

If you made a video for me for Christmas/Thanksgiving or whatever you said, this is how I could watch it. You would have to send it to me on a SD or micro SD (I have an adapter) card. Then I would plug it in my camera to watch it. I trust in your computer skills to be able to do that. I would be so happy to see everyone!

I wish I could tell you more about Sendai, but we don't really have very many investigators right now, and those we do have aren't really progressing. 1st is Kamezawa. He is 79 years old, and will die soon from lung cancer. He's been a heavy smoker his entire life. He's been an investigator for about 6 months, but won't do anything about it, like get baptized. When we bring up baptism he basically explodes into Japanese I can't understand (think like Grandpa, only in Japanese). So we decided to take a different approach and just show him love by visiting him often. Like 3 times a week, and we don't mention baptism anymore. He knows this is true, but he has his agency. We were reading in 3rd Nephi together, when Christ comes, and we talked about how the people had to hear the voice 3 times to understand it. Then he turned the page and the scripture 'those that aren't baptized will be damned' instantly caught his attention. He knows what he needs to do, but just won't do it.

We also have Sako san, who loves to smoke but declares he is still healthy. There is Sayaka san who is recently married and wants to learn more but can't find the time. There's Ikumi san who is a daughter of a really strong church member, but she is 25 and doesn't have time for more than a casual look into what her mom believes.

Basically, we spend all day housing (and streeting anytime we see someone one the street). The Sendai Branch is really great, but there are only about 4 active priesthood holders. There was an incident about 5 years back and half the branch went inactive. Anyway, we're trying to find men to bring to church to strengthen the branch, but it's hard when we can't really talk to men. Something about two missionaries targeting men is kinda sending the wrong picture.

For general conference we went to the Kagoshima church building at the top of this massive mountain. We had to walk from the train station because people don't really go to the Saturday session here. It is called the mountain of faith. The church is at the top. Then they had an English room upstairs. It was great to listen to conference.

As per usual, I enjoyed Elder Holland, Eyring, Uchtdorf, and Monson.

I really want to get the Liahona edition soon and study it. There is only so much you can get from watching it once. I thought the theme of conference was faith, gratitude, following the prophet, and agency.

Okay, so that's 4, but each was touched on more than once! Ha ha.

Okay, that's all for this week. The pictures are of

- Curves. I found on in Sendai! And I ride my bike by it almost everyday.

- a scarecrow in the middle of some rice fields (tombo). I see them all over the place.

Until next week!



Sister Lemmon

Week 3 in Sendai

I figure the two of you are watching General Conference today, or yesterday - I'm never quite sure what time it is over there.  Either way, it works a little different in Japan.  Everything is delayed a week. So two days ago was the Relief Society Broadcast, but I couldn't go because an investigator wasn't going. But we go to all 4 sessions of conference this next weekend.  So all the members in my little branch go to the district center in Kagoshima.  It's like a stake center, but it's not as this isn't a stake, it's a district.

That church is way cool because it's on a hill.  A giant hill. From the top of that hill you can see Sakurajima (the giant active volcano next to the city) and all of Kagoshima.  I'm convinced that the church is conserving that land to build a temple there some day.  But it's a total beast for the Elders that are in Kagoshima.  It's insane.  The vanimal, as it is called, could barely make it to the top.  The vanimal is the mission vehicle the president and his wife and the APs (Assistants to the President) came down in.  It's pretty much the biggest vehicle you can own in Japan.  Watching the APs drive that is crazy.  They have to actively look at every mirror, and they have learned to know exactly how big the vanimal is.  If they can drive that beast in Japan, they could do anything.  Maybe their future is as an Ice Road Trucker. Ha ha.

Anyway, so this week we'll go to the district center and watch General Conference. I think they will have an English room for all the missionaries and such. Yay! If not I'll probably take a nap or try to read the apostles lips. BTW, is the Ensign this month like the Liahona, all about temples?  I thought it was way cool, because of the pictures of course.  We get the Liahona in English also for each apartment, but I really just look at the pictures.

I do have a request for the two of you.  Okay, so I came to Japan prepared with my toothpaste and my deodorant, and I'm still going good with those.  Maybe by Christmas I'll need some more.  But the thing I forgot was a nice American toothbrush.  Yes, it's true.  Even the toothbrushes here are different!  They are baby sized.  I like my nice American toothbrush. I really don't have room for a whole bunch of toothbrushes in my suitcase, but could you send me one?  I want a nice high-quality American toothbrush, with the different strength bristles on the sides to dig into my gums, and the little plastic things on the sides to stimulate my gums.  Could you mail me the best American toothbrush on the market right now?  Please! I've turned my Japanese toothbrush into a tongue scrapper. That's all it's good for.

From my mission, I've learned that you should not listen to any Japanese person about dental care. All of their teeth are coming out.  I've seen more dentures in Japan this past few weeks than in my entire life combined. Ha ha.

Also, since it's October now, I have to wear 'stockings' as my companion calls it. That means I can't wear the short socks I've been wearing all summer.  I still have the pairs you sent me at the MTC, and there is an infinite supply of knee-highs where ever you go, so I think I'll be fine for now, but in the future, I may need a shipment.

Ha ha. Recently I was reading about the 2000 stripling warriors, and how they had their dads bring in supplies for them and the rest of the army. I feel like one of those warriors that needs the shipments of food and stuff. Ha ha.

I've been settling into Sendai.  We have our P-day routine.  Before email we go to this bread place and eat some special bread.  The Japanese people have really taken bread and made it into their own.  I think I've told you about Melon Pan.  Delicious!  Then there's Tuna Bread (not so good) and Apples Cheese Bread (so-so) and Strawberry stuffed french toast. Yummy.  Anyway, today I noticed that the people that work at that bread store are.. different.  In my limited Japanese I asked my companion if the people that work in the bread store are 'special'.  She said yes.  They work there together and live above the store. Ha ha, 3 p-days and I had no idea.

Attached is a picture of the view off of our balcony in our apartment, and the group picture from Zone Conference. Enjoy!