September in Hachinohe

Week two 

Mori-Mori Taikai, Shinkansen, Respect for the Aged Day, etc.

Today, as you can probably tell, I`m on the computer unusually early. We woke up at 5:30 and got to the church right at 6:30, when seminary is supposed to start, but apparently it got canceled without anyone telling us about it. Well, at least that means we`ll have plenty of email time!

This week, we had our long anticipated Mori-Mori Taikai (AoMORI and MORIoka missionary conference). Returning to Morioka, the zone I spent eight transfers in, was pretty exciting, as I had the chance to see missionaries like the Hills and others. We were also privileged to hear from Elder Whiting of the Seventy. He pretty much told us to trust our mission president and told us a lot of spiritual stuff. I felt like doing better as a missionary after he spoke to us. I was glad we got the opportunity to gather and learn from him.

When we were returning back to Hachinohe, we were just going to go on the local train all the way back, but the sisters were late getting to the station, and it wasn`t too expensive, so we rode the Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Hachinohe! It`s amazing! Rather than spend nearly two hours on a slow, winding rail trip, we had a smooth, comfortable half-hour journey back to Hachinohe. The inside is similar to that of an airplane, though rather longer than most airplanes. You hardly realize how fast you`re going because it`s so smooth, unlike the normal JR trains. It`ll almost make it harder to use the local trains again after experiencing the nicer option.

We`ve been trying to get up to teaching twenty lessons a week, but it`s still pretty difficult to find people. However, we have at least two new nonmembers that we should be able to start teaching soon, so that will be nice. I can understand the reasoning for wanting extra teaching experience by us missionaries, and I hope that we`ll be ready for any investigators. Our current investigator is still pretty much the same as always, we taught him about the restoration and he acted somewhat uninterested, but he said he`d pray about whether it`s true, so that`ll help no matter what.

Anyhow, today should be pretty exciting! Today is Respect for the Aged Day here in Japan, so a member is going to drive us to Christ`s grave later this afternoon, followed by eating at some meat place. All I know so far is that they have horse meat, so I`ll be sure to tell you how that is! Hopefully we can tell the visitors to the grave about the real story of Jesus!

Anyhow, that about sums up my week! 愛しています！日本の伝道は素晴らしいです！敬老の日おめでとうございます！

アール長老より