letter sent 09.27.09: minasan

konnichiwa
元気です。

this week was pretty crazy. On tuesday night we had a shoukujikai (shoukuji= meal kai =apt). It was yakiniku style so they had this bbq and tons of raw meat and fish and shrimp and stuff and you just cook your own and hang out and eat. i ate so much meat that night. oishikatta (oishii=delicious katta =past tense). We played games with the family and shared a message it was alot of fun, japanese kids are crazy. theyre way cool. early that day we went to this all you can eat pizza and pasta place with the zone leaders cause they came for splits that day. The pizza here is not good. haha its terrible, well its not bad but its not like american pizza at all they put weird stuff on it like corn and weird sauce and mayo and all kinds of weird junk. but it was fun. My favorite thing here is still tonkatsu. its so good.

anyway, this week i had my first lessons with investigators. the first one, my first one ever was pretty crazy to say the least. We made an apt with a lady named ritsko after eikaiwa and she said she would feed us, well this crazy lady overheard and wanted to come to the "party" or so she thought. Ritsuko is way nice so she invited her which was bad. anyway at the apt we ate lunch and thought it would be ok but nope. oh and also we took a pretty crazy member as well. well during lunch she got a call and had to watch her 2 month old grandson so he came over and after we said the opening prayer the doorbell rang and it was the toilet dude who came to fix the toilet so she did that and the phone rang and she did that, and the baby started going crazy and she was trying to do all things at once. so we would say one sentence than something would happen and she got up and ran around the house. and the same cycle kept repeating. well the crazy lady saw this and laughed for like 10 miniutes straight at us because it was like manga to her and we were gaijin, she went crazy i think she was a little typsy as well i saw a schmernaugh or whatever in her purse. so it was bad. kind of funny though i guess now, i was pretty annoyed. then we truned on j smith video anyways and the crazy lady the whole time is just asking ritsko about random things like food and trying to make coffe in the kitchen. when the movie started she broke the coffee machine and beans went everywhere. everything crazy kept happening. haha at the end my comp even said that was his craziest lesson and hes going home in 2 months. what a good start eh? its pretty funny but were going to have another lesson with just ritsuko this week she felt really bad.

anyway lesson 2 went better. it was really short but good. We taught a daigakusei (college student) there's tons because of APU, anyway hes a kendo master, pretty cool dude. I taught the first part of the lesson god is our loving heavenly father and was really cool. i felt the spirirt testifying to him while doing so, whether or not he felt it i dont know. but it was amazing. he had to leave but hopefully we get to teach him again, hes way smart and cool.

so thats my week for you pretty much japan is still way hard. Its so different im not used to it yet, but things are good. i read in mosiah today and came upon a script mastery 3 verse 19. It says to be submissive as a child and be willling to submit to all things which the lord seeth fit to inflict upon you. interesting concept ive never thought of before. Things can be hard but something good can always come from it, but its up to us. we can always learn and grow, which is what this life is all about, and its only through those trials. thinking of trials as blessings is a bit ironic but could be so eh? well anyway this is church is true and god is in fact our father in heaven. he loves us more than we know. he cares about us and wants whats best for us. comforting to know when im a whole pacific ocean away from my family. haha well have a good week じゃね

Ｍａｒｔｉｎｅｚ　長老