Tuesday, December 1, 2015

November 29, 2015


So this week we had transfers.  All the missionaries that were transferring had to go to Kamisugi for a big transfer party.  Even though I wasn't going to transfer, I still had to go to the meeting because there was also a "New Missionary Training" that I obviously missed because of my foot and being delayed.  So the plan was that we go Tuesday and leave later the next day.  But as soon as we go to Kamisugi we find out that the new missionaries plane got delayed from LAX to Tokyo and then again when they were trying to go from Tokyo to Sendai.  The meeting that I was to attend was pushed back to later on Wednesday.  That made it so Macnab Chourou and I had to stay at the honbu (mission home) for an extra day and wouldn't be able to return back to Izumi until late Friday night.  So therefore my comp and I could do almost zero work in our area.  All in all, the meeting and the orientation was really cool.  A lot of new things I learned about missionary work in Japan and Japan in general.

 In Japan it is really complicated to throw away garbage, it has to be separated from plastics, bottle caps, cardboard ... just to list a few. And we have to take it out every single day.  It's really taihen (troublesome).

 We gained two more elders in Izumi.  Their names are みまき長老と村上長老(Mimaki and Murakami Elders).   Both of them are 日本人.  They both are so cool and really good missionaries.  It's really nice to have two Japanese native speakers in the apartment in case the Macnab Chourou and I have questions about Japanese and such.  Oh I almost forgot they both make really good Japanese food on top of that all!!!  I am really happy with that haha.

 Cool Experience time:

Yesterday Macnab Chourou and I were heading to the church early to catch a meeting and as soon as we get to the church the bishop greets us saying what are you doing here??  We say "we have here for the missionary meeting" he responds "oh man I forgot to tell you that it was cancelled this week."  Well shoot then, I guess we will just do our studies here at the church.  As soon as we start our language study, the bishop comes in again and says there is someone here to learn about church and God.  So we sit down with this guy and we figure out that he is from Vietnam, speaks no English, little Japanese, and really only Vietnamese.  So now we basically have two Vietnamese investigators that know little Japanese and little English as well.   It was very interesting to sit down with this guy and try to communicate with him.  While my comp talked to him and tried to figure out his beliefs and such, I had the iPad in my hand with the google translate app opened up, translating from English to Vietnamese and then showing this person.  After a while we figured out that his is Christian and he google searched a church for the sole purpose of coming to praying.  Our church in Izumi was the first place to pop up and he just randomly showed up yesterday morning.  We "gave" him an Vietnamese Book of Mormon,  by gave I mean we downloaded the gospel library app on his phone and changed to the language setting to Vietnamese and he just started to read.  He stayed at church for the whole 3 hours and just read from his phone because obviously all of meeting was in Japanese.  So really he didn't understand really much of anything.  It was really quite interesting to say the least, hopefully he becomes an investigator because he really seemed to enjoy it.

Another story from yesterday.  There is a family in the ward that is American.  They are from Sandy, Utah actually.  Again, they don't know Japanese very much at all.  So I had the incredible task of translating for Brother Chapman!  All I would say is this "I think he is talking about this but I am not sure" or when I thought I had an idea "Oops never mind, it's not at all this but it could be this instead" Haha it was fun/interesting. As time went on, I got the hang of it.  The language is coming along slowly.  Anyway the Chapman's are a great family.  Wee had Thanksgiving at their house on Thursday.  It was so good haha just like home, I stuffed myself.  Mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, stuffing all that good stuff haha.

So again I forgot my journal for all of my stories and what happened.  But have a good one, I love you all!!!

 Elder Halverson

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