The Missionary that was Returned: Thanksgiving Week

Before I forget,

- My camera is a micro SD, but I have a regular SD card adapter for my camera. The camera people are really smart and made the micro SD cards and the regular SD cards the same size, and the micro ones come with an adapter. I expect that sooner rather than later all the cameras will switch to micro SD. Anyway, my camera can handle either one of those. I don't think there's a limit on the length of the movie or anything, but I haven't actually done it. If it's a problem, I can load it onto the church computers and watch it on P-day.

- Thanks for the gift in the mail! I'm exited for new bras.

Seriously. I want to see if my weight will hold still long enough for me to buy new clothes, but I don't want to buy new clothes if I'm going to change size again, you know? Maybe for Christmas I will need a new winter coat though. These are kinda big. I wonder if they'll get bigger.

- My companion has continued to go up and down, but it's the regular up and down she was doing back in Sendai, which is still a lot more than the normal person. I very much think her depression is situational and not medical. She is the one making these decisions to be sad. At least that's how I look at it. I don't think I am in danger of being seriously depressed. I just choose not to be. It's weird because I am watching my companion choose to be depressed. At least that's what it looks like to me.

- I realized today that I don't know how to get personal money from the credit card. For whatever weird reason in Japan, everyone uses cash. So I want to go to the post-office and pull out money from my credit card like a debit card. Is there a pin number for my credit card? I know that kind of defeats the purpose of a credit card, but I thought it would be good to know.

This past week we haven't done anything worthwhile. But funny story of the week. It involves how Japanese addresses make no sense at all.

Seriously. So we were on companion exchanges this week, and Yoha Shimai and I were trying to find the address minamihanakashimacho (yes, that's a name of a neighborhood) 310-12. Well, thanks to our one map with the index, we found minamihanakashimacho no problem. 310 was also on the map, so we found that. After looking through people's mailboxes to find the addresses we found 310-1 through 11. Yes, looking through mailboxes is illegal in Japan. One stands guard and the other reads the address. We could not find 12 for the life of us.

We housed that whole area, asking for Souma-sama. Nope, no one knew of that family. So we finally gave up and went home. At home we have this super detailed map that lists every house and the name of the family that lives there as of 2004. Yeah, the map is kinda old. So after a few minutes of looking, we found it. It was across the street. But this wasn't just a normal street. This is one of the biggest roads in all of Miyazaki. Seriously. It's the Japanese equivalent of a freeway, only there are stop lights still. What was it doing way over there? Crazy! These addresses are ridiculous. It wouldn't be that bad if the places were at least labeled, like they were in Fujisaki. Sendai was even better than Miyazaki.

So back in Sendai, in my weekly report to my mission president, I asked him for an iPhone so we could look up addresses. At Zone Conference I again asked him about it (in a joking way) and he said he read it. He even talked to Richard Heaton, head of all the MTCs and in charge of that kind of thing.

Bro. Heaton said 'don't think we're not thinking about it. Woot! I doubt I will see missionaries with google maps on their phone in my mission lifetime, but in my new letter to the mission president I volunteered to pilot the program. Haha. I'll keep you posted.

Oh, for other Christmas presents, I would like nylons and tights. I have enough black tights, but I'm getting really sick of black. Really really sick of black. How about gray or a conservative pattern? That would be great. As for Jay and John, I would just like an August Christmas Present instead to get ready for school and stuff.

For your Christmas presents, you will just have to wait and see.

Okay, my companion wants to go home to sleep, because she is depressed I think. I kinda hinted at the mission president for a transfer. I told him my patience and faith was running thin. We'll see what happens.

Okay, bu-bye! Happy Thanksgiving.

Your Favorite Daughter

Oh, some new photos.