Anyway, we had mission conference for Valentine's day. My companion and I handed out chocolate kisses to the Elders. As I walked away they would all say something along the lines of "I just got kissed from a sister". The infinitely cuter Japanese sisters all made little hand-made choclates. That's just how cool they are.
For Mission Conference Elder Rasband and Elder Stevenson got stuck in Korea because of a snow storm. Their flight was canceled. We were all bummed. but at least we all got together. I drove up with the Adachi Couple, the senior missionary couple in Kagoshima. Elder Adachi is 70, and is the worst driver I know of. I'm surprised we made it there safely. Seriously. We popped out of a ridiculously long tunnel right before we hit Kumamoto and suddenly everything was white and snowing. I looked at my companion and simply said "I'm going to die".
In Japan, drivers that are over 60 or so have to wear a special sticker on their car. It's yellow and orange, and kinda tear-dropped shaped. It's like an idiot mark that says "watch out! I'm old". New drivers, for the 1st year after getting their license, have to have a green and yellow tear-dropped shaped sticker. A different type of idiot mark. Anyway, Elder Adachi totally redeemed himself when he took us to Costco! Yeah! Both me and my companion got giant jars of peanut butter. I got chunky and she got creamy. Each is 1.81kg. I'll let you do that conversion into pounds.
The Taniyama Elders wanted root beer, so we grabbed a case of that. We also grabbed 12 cinnamon-raisin bagels. Oh yeah. This is true happiness... in Japan.
There wasn't a lot of room for all this food, so we sat the whole way home with the peanut butter in our laps. We sang the peanut butter song on the way home. It was great. Sister Adachi laughed at us.
Now there is no place to put the peanut butter away in our apartment. They have a place of honor on top of the table in the corner right now.
I got the package you sent. Thank you. I picked it up yesterday at the hombu when we went to Fukuoka. Good timing! I was so happy for John's iPod. Mr. Cool's Music box is great. We set a snooze and woke up to "Hello, Sunshine, what a beautiful day" that we found on it. We actually gave it a really bad look when we woke up this morning. Yep. Wasn't as funny early in the morning. Not at all.
I don't know who's more excited for new music, me or my companion. 412 songs. Totally worth it.
And I'm wearing the new blouse. Thank you. Mom, you're right - it is nothing I would wear before my mission, but right now I'm so desperate for anything different in my wardrobe. I look at the closet and stand there deciding between that one thing I wore last week, or that other thing I wore last week.
Our investigator family, Kamikawa family, is still getting baptized, but their date got moved to the 12th of March. Shion-chan, the 10 year old girl, has to take an entrance test to get into middle school.
It's that time of the year. Depending on how she does on that test, she will be placed in an appropriate middle school. They don't actually live in Kagoshima, but in Minami-Satsuma. They live too far away to visit so we write letters and call. Because of that test, and their karate tournament, they had to push the baptism date back to the 12th.
They're coming to church this Sunday where we will teach them more of the commandments, like prayer and scripture study. The mom is a member, so they have a home teacher, Brother Hayashi,which translates as Brother Forest. I asked Brother Forest to do the actual baptizing of the kids, since they don't have any father priesthood holder. It took him off guard. "Me?" Yes, you. So he's coming to the next lesson to get to know them a little better. Haha.
Izumi-san also had a baptismal date, but I haven't even talked to her since coming to Taniyama. We finally got a text from her where she explained that her bunny died and she is in too much pain to meet us right now. I've had it. I don't get people. She also wrote that she is too sad to read, or pray... the list goes on. I laughed out loud then felt bad. Then I had to call the elders to figure out how to say "I'm sorry your rabbit died" in Japanese. お悔やみ申し上げます means I'm sorry for your loss. Yep, I'll know that one for a while now. She's basically a dropped investigator.
After that.... a member's sister has come to church 5 times in a row, but we weren't able to get her to hear the lessons. I was really confused by that. It's usually the opposite in my experience. We finally grabbed her before church for a quick lesson. I asked her why she comes to church. "Because it feels good". Well, you can have that feeling all the time if you get baptized. "Yeah, but then I have to follow all the rules". Haha, well, from there we will continue teaching her before church every week.
I think that's it for this week. I'll try to send my pictures in another email, smaller so that Dad's inferior hotmail account can handle them. Haha. :)
レモン姉妹
Barraclough Shimai holding up Mt. Sakurajima.
This is a giant Japanese shaved ice food. The elders weren't quite sure how to eat it all. Abe is on the left and Oshima is on the right. They finally did eat the whole thing. Me and Barraclough Shimai ate ours too. It was really really good.
Mt. Sakurajima. It was finally clear enough to take a picture.
Usually this random mountain is steaming ash from the right side, but Mt. Sakurajima had some indigestion today and is taking the day off.
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