letter sent 09.21.09: All is well

愛する家族と友達

this week has been anoither good one. It started off with a bus trip to the west side of Japan. We went to kunamoto for zone conference which was pretty cool. it was cool traveling and seeing more of japan and getting to meet all the other missionaries. It was cool. we had some really good food that the members made for us which included pizza weird japanese pizza haha but it was good. the food is great. Well it was a fun little trip.

Um the rest of the week we have just been doing more housing and streeting and chirashi kubari. Not having too much luck yet, but we do have 1 or 2 lessons with potential investigators this week so that should be fun. i havent taught a lesson yet. Im looking forward to it.

Well we have been housing a lot of danchis there huge apartments like only about 6 stories high but for each floor theres only two doors, every 2 doors have there own staircase so its quite the workout but its fun. super tiring but not bad. we found 2 potential investigators so it was pretty cool. Most people dont want to talk to us or they listen for a long time cause there nice and then say theyre not interested its funny. the old men are pretty grumpy and funny, we meet pretty interesting people.

Yesterday in church i had to give a 5 minuite talk it was kind of scary but i did alright i think people understand me. But one of the councelors came up to me afterward and told me its pretty dame to have your hands in your pockets and thats what i did for my whole talk in front of everybody..oops but he was nice about it. im still trying to figure things out here.

i always joke around with my comp and tell him i suck at japan which is pretty true. haha im just a huge gaijin haha. well thats about it for this week. I taught eikaiwa by myself which was interesting. It was fine beacause everybody is way good at english but sound super funny, it always makes me think, do i sound like that? i probably do haha that stinks. well im not understanding anything much more than last week still cant make out what people are saying, its so hard, but at least they can understand me, so thats half i guess.

yesterday at church i talked to a return missionary from tokyo. he know my senseis in the Mtc and he was way surprised that i was a been cause he said my japanese is good, so that was nice to hear for the first time but it still doesnt help the fact i cant understand anyone. well thats about it for me. this week.

oh yea my talk was about why i came on a mission and ill share a little bit with you. I said it was easy to live in japan its way diffucult for me cause everything is different but the one thing thats exaclty the same is this gospel, as my life keeps changing; the people i surround myself with and where am. the only constant i have is this gospel. And thats exactly why i need to hold on to it. This gospel gave my life guidance and comfort. thats why im here. to share this message with everyone, because what it has done for me. Jesus christ is my savior my redeemer. he lives. and his church has been restored today. This is my testimony and the message i came to share. untill next week

まってね
Elder Martinez