letter sent 11.01.09

konnichiwa

well it sounds like everyone enjoyed there halloween this year and is doing well ... except amy, get better soon! well mine was good, i guess. i celebrated wednesday night for eikaiwa. we had a cool halloween party with people from the ward and our students it was fun. the missionaries were in charge of the games so we did the classic griffin string game and musical chairs and bean bag toss for the kids with my hackysack. we had to be pretty creative cause they dont have halloween stuff or american food so i used these little little dohnuts and dipped them in flour, haha but it still tasted fine, everyone liked that game alot. it wasa fun night, Chikuba kyodai did a haunted house with was just a dark room with glow in the dark things haha it was pretty funny. there was people in it but they didnt scare you the hardest part was making it to then end cause it was so dark. it was interesting but a fun night. on halloween night i just ate my halloween treats with my companion it was pretty good.

well it is starting to get pretty cold, today especially was the first time ive been cold in japan. im happy its winter time though. oh so this week we had district mtg in nagasaki and interviews with the mission president which was good, pres margetts is very nice and is keeping good care of all his missionaries, making sure were eating right getting enough sleep making sure were happy haha. oh and then after district meeting we went to eat as a district and with the APs to an Indian resturant. We had curry and they had a scale of spice ill send the picture anyway, i took the challenge of 50x. the hottest curry. theres not much spicy food so i took it. and it dominated me. It was so hot my mouth was on fire i couldnt taste anything...it was great, gave me bad stomach ache but was fun.

also this week we started practicing for a christmas choir were going to be in. its not through the church but we sing gospel music, its way funny. picture a large afircan american lady singing praises in the south and you get me! haha its pretty sweet. the missionaries do it every year. the teacher is funny african american dude. its cool we get to meet a lot of peopl through this so hopefully it will turn into somthing good. We also met some japanese RMs there. they served in japan one in fukuoka in 05-07. there from the airforce academy. there cool guys it was weird to be able to talk to other gaijin not being missionaries, they were way nice and bought us food from the base. so of course what did i ask for..Tapatio. im was pretty pumped. and the lady they were with bought us twizzlers and marshmellow matys it was a good treat.

we didnt have many lessons this week cause we were pretty busy as ive explained but i did have a couple good experiences. on was that i placed my first book of mormon, like completely by myself. I found this teenager when housing and talked to him about our message why it was important and what its done for me, i asked him questions and eventually placed a book of mormon without help from my companion. It was so sweeet. my japanese is not that great but its pretty cool that in june i did know a word. The lord has def helped me in the last few months, its amazing. its easy to forget but we need to often, take a step back and look at how the lord has blessed our lifes each day. even for the simple things.

so thats about it for me this week. one fav scripture id like to share is alma 26:27, maybe i shared it already but its cool. we need to just put our trust in the lord, even when the next step might seem impossible to take, we need to make those blind steps of faith, and trust in the lord always, and then we will see amazing things happen. i can testify of this scripture, its kind of summed up me in the last 4 months. so just keep that scripture in mind when things get tough. well thats it for me have a good week!

愛しているよマルティネズ長老