Missionary Moments

.....Probably my biggest worry is simply logistics. I bought another bag in Japan, so I have double the carrying room, but I have a 30kg limit over both of my bags, which I was just told today, and I have to make like 4 stops on my flight back home. First will be from Osaka to Tokyo, then 4 hour wait, then Tokyo to Sydney, then Sydney to Melbourne, then Melbourne to Tasmania. It sounds like a hassle and it goes all night, but at least I will make it back, if maybe not my bags.....

my week has been pretty good.

We have been trying to put in a bit more effort with everything, and it is paying off. Last Sunday we heard from Bishop of a Filipino member who just moved in the ward boundaries, so we took the initiative and got everything organised for him to come to Church, when he came he brought two friends, so we got three new guys at Church total. I also had to baby sit them and translate for everyone, which was at times easy and at other times impossible. I find I can go from English to Japanese fine, but Japanese to English is hard, because I have trained my brain to understand the Japanese as Japanese, and not English, and the go between is not really connected. I ended up translating half of sacrament meeting alright and the second half was simply stating the topic and saying stuff like 'that was a joke' or 'he is testifying about the joy of the gospel'. I think I will need another of couple of years of study to ever consider myself 'fluent' at Japanese, but I can function as a missionary, so I am happy. Sunday evening we went to hang out with K. and provide some support for him, because his work has been doing forced overtime of like 8 to 8 every day,...... He had two more Filipino friends with him too, so Sunday was a very Filipino-y day. On Friday we went and finally got in contact with our Brazilian friend, and taught him, so often I feel like I am serving a mission in not Japan.

Despite all the internationalism we managed to make some Japanese friends too, which was nice. We got the Ipad on Wednesday, .....we have put it to good use, and are trying to find ways to use it in dendou. 

On Friday we went to the N's and taught two more girls that are Katie's age,...... Saturday was the music night. It was kind of lame, because only two member half families turned up in addition to investigators and eikaiwa people, but it was a lot of fun, and half of it was Ping pong, which I haven't had a chance to play in almost two months. I made good friends with one guy there after having a few really good matches. Hopefully I can still do the Ping Pong when I get back.

I had Okonomiyaki once this week, on Thursday. It was pretty nice, we definitely need to find some of that sauce for when I get back......

Eikaiwa story made by the students in a game

some of my favourite Japanese English

The best use for the Ipad we could think of

At the N.'s