Oh, and how in the world do you know my travel itinerary? They don't tell me anything! So I arrive on Friday, in the late morning? Wow, that jet lag sounds absolutely terrible. When I land I will be ready to take a wonderful nap. You four will have to turn nocturnal for me, okay? So, what are we going to do with our 4 days as a family? The only thing we ever do is go to the movies, which would be okay for me, but we'll have to watch rated G movies so I can slowly adjust to normal life. Or we can go swimming! Missionaries can't go swimming (probably because God gave Satan power over the water, as I read in the Doctrine and Covenants recently - that was pretty weird. They never taught me that in Sunday School), so the closest we get is foot-bathing or watching other people get baptized. I did take baths this past winter. Japanese baths are infinitely superior. And no, I didn't go to the public bath houses. Those are also off-limits for missionaries.
Yes, I did buy a new dictionary. It was 15,000 yen, which probably means close to 200 dollars with the exchange rate as poor as it is. The dollar is so weak! I heard the exchange rate was close to like .8 instead of 1.0. That's really different! So, Oh well. But my new dictionary is superior to my old one. It's the same one most missionaries have. It has slightly weaker dictionaries (it is made for a middle school student) but has all these cool features that none of the other brands have. Ha ha. I'm such a sucker. It's white, because the other choice was pink. I bought a case for it, so don't worry. I hope not to drop this one for a while.
This week we continued on service missionary work. We continued our mold war, but I think we've hit the limit of what we can do. I think the mold stopped growing in the floor. I want to just rip the wall-paper off, but the family doesn't have enough money to replace it. I would rather live with no wallpaper instead of moldy wallpaper, but there seems to be something else going on in this Sister's head.
Japanese walls are not drywall. They are this yellowish color, and I think it's wood-based. Anyway, I think we've done what we can in that room. So next we will take all the junk out of the one room, put it in the less-moldy room, and clean the other room. We did unearth this magic closet in the hallway between the two rooms that magically has NO MOLD. So we took everything important to this couple and put it in the magic closet. The Sister collects CDs (there were so many!) and the husband collects manga. So they were stuffed into the magic closet. It was such a good feeling. I had to explain it to my companion later. She didn't understand why we worked so hard when time was scarce. I had to explain that these sorts of things are very important to them. To us they mean absolutely nothing, but that has no relation to their feelings. The Sister said she felt really good. Now her stuff is safe away from the mold.
We taught the visiting teaching message for June, which was Temporal Self-Reliance. Don't worry, we aren't cleaning for her, it's more like when we come over we create the opportunity and moral support for her to clean. She pretty much does the cleaning.
Then on Sunday morning she called us when we were walking to the eki. She said that her husband had work so she could (and wanted) to come to church. We were super surprised. So we went to church with her. The last time she went to church as probably about 5 or 6 years ago.
Her older daughter is 5 and sat through primary just fine since she goes to kindergarten. The Sister sat with her 3 year old daughter all through the Sunbeam class. When I walked in at the end of primary to see what was going on, I realized that Primary is a zoo, even with super polite Japanese children. American primary must be crazy. But I don't remember it that way at all. Kids were jumping off chairs, and talking to each other, and hardly listening to the teacher. But the two little girls seemed to like primary. We hope that they can come every week when the husband has work. Or that the husband will not be hantai (this is Japanese for opposite, but its used this way to show how he doesn't like church or anything to do with it) and come to church with the kids. We'll have to see.
On Saturday we went to the Relief Society President's house and attacked her weeds. She has quite a bit of land. I don't know what you would do with that much land. And she is older and lives alone, so there is no one to take care of it. We gathered an army of strong men (and the sister missionaries) and hacked down all of her weeds.
It took 4 hours. My favorite (least favorite?) part was this pile of garbage on the side of her house. I don't know how this happened, but it was a pile of trash. As we dug it out and put it in bags, the smell got stronger and stronger. I found this jar of Strawberry Jam, only it was a green-ish water. I made the mistake of dumping it out, then we had to wait 5 minutes for the smell to evaporate. Gross!
Besides this one garbage spot, the house and yard was clean. You know how everyone has that one room in their house they don't want people to enter? Yeah, this was her spot.
So yeah, I have 6 weeks left in Saijo. And it's slowly getting hotter and hotter. Like I said last summer, I know that God knows that I can't handle a summer in Okinawa. I have a distinct tan line on my feet. I wear the same shoes everyday. My goals before I come home include clearing all hints of acne, having no gingivitis, and losing another 5 kilos. I would said 5 kilos is impossible in 6 weeks, but I sweat buckets. I can't hydrate fast enough. Seriously. So maybe. If I lose 5 kilos that would bring my mission total down to 16 kilos. I will let you do the conversion.
Well, I'm going to send pictures now.
レモン姉妹
Tis statue is outside the place we do email. It is made up of blocks, as you can see, but one is missing. This guy needs a bath real bad.
Me and the RS President. We were really really sweaty from weed-wacking all morning.
The missionaries (and one of the Elder's investigators) with all the trash from weed wacking.
Me at KFC for the 4th of July.
My companion at KFC for the 4th of July
We heart-attacked the dying missionaries on Tuesday at District Meeting.
No comments:
Post a Comment