Area: Izumi
Companion: Hirano Choro
Hey Everyone! How are all of you doing!? It sounds like you all had a great week! I loved Matthew's and Erin's pictures and videos! They were awesome. I miss seeing those mountains, and also Erin's cute kids!
My week was pretty good; it was kind of a whirlwind with all of the change. It was weird transferring so quickly, but with that, I'll try to recap the highlights of the week.
So with us transferring, Hill Choro and I had to quickly say goodbye to as many people as we could, so we spent Tuesday doing that. We went to say bye to Ujie Shimai which was a good time. Even though she was frustrating to teach because she believed that all churches are A Okay, it was fun to meet with her. She told us to come visit Furukawa with our kids when we are older, but hopefully before she is dead. She also randomly gave us some corn on the cob, which was cool I guess.
Wednesday, we packed up our stuff and went to Sendai for transfers. Before meeting at the church, we went to this sushi place where you sit around this conveyer belt and grabbed sushi that you wanted to try. It was pretty good, pricey though. After that, we went to the church to meet our companions. I got to see Canepari Choro; he was transferring out of Hirosaki. He said all of our investigators are still eternal and they won't progress at all. That was a bummer to hear. Then I met Hirano Choro and we took the subway to Izumi. Izumi is way pretty with a lot of trees and stuff, but it also has a ton of hills! My thighs are going to get in great shape riding bikes up those all summer long! And the apartment is way nice too; it's pretty big.
Thursday was pretty boring. The Elders here are pretty behind on putting in records into the iPad, so we spent most of the day doing that and updating me on the new area. So not a whole lot going on there.
Friday was pretty cool though. They go to a Japanese class here with a bunch of other foreigners who live in Izumi (and there are a lot of them). But last week they had a cooking activity, so we went and made a bunch of food from different countries. I made some gyouza and sushi which was pretty fun. The lady who is in charge of it though was pretty annoying. She apparently doesn't trust our Japanese at all, so she will always talk to us in super broken English which doesn't make any sense. After the meal, she told us in Japanese we owed her 300 yen, but then tried to explain it for like 3 minutes in broken English, which we didn't understand at all. Oh well.
Later that day, we did this service thing which ended up being pretty hilarious. So, Hirano Choro and his last companion every week would volunteer at this old person home and talk to them and just help out, so we did that. There's like 10 or so super old Japanese grandmas there and we talked to them and played games. But now I'll get to the thing that will explain the title of this email. There's this one guy, probably in his early 70's there too. After the game, I sat down and talked to him for a while. I learned very quickly that he had crazy bad short term memory loss. Apparently, back in his young days, he was an engineer for a shipping company. so he was a sea man. The first thing he told me was "I was a sea man!" I was like "Oh that's way cool, where have you been?" and things like that. We would be talking about that kind of stuff for maybe a minute or two, and then he'd get this blank stare and look at me and say "I was a Sea Man! Chief Engineer of a big shipping company". I was a little confused, but I just rolled with it. This probably happened 20 to 30 times! It was ridiculous! I felt like I was in Groundhog day, living the same day over and over again. I got to the point where I knew exactly what he would say next and I would try to beat him to it. It was a great time, I had a lot of fun with it! The guy was way nice, he's just super crazy! So I get to do that once a week. That should be way fun. I was a Sea Man!!
So with us transferring, Hill Choro and I had to quickly say goodbye to as many people as we could, so we spent Tuesday doing that. We went to say bye to Ujie Shimai which was a good time. Even though she was frustrating to teach because she believed that all churches are A Okay, it was fun to meet with her. She told us to come visit Furukawa with our kids when we are older, but hopefully before she is dead. She also randomly gave us some corn on the cob, which was cool I guess.
Wednesday, we packed up our stuff and went to Sendai for transfers. Before meeting at the church, we went to this sushi place where you sit around this conveyer belt and grabbed sushi that you wanted to try. It was pretty good, pricey though. After that, we went to the church to meet our companions. I got to see Canepari Choro; he was transferring out of Hirosaki. He said all of our investigators are still eternal and they won't progress at all. That was a bummer to hear. Then I met Hirano Choro and we took the subway to Izumi. Izumi is way pretty with a lot of trees and stuff, but it also has a ton of hills! My thighs are going to get in great shape riding bikes up those all summer long! And the apartment is way nice too; it's pretty big.
Thursday was pretty boring. The Elders here are pretty behind on putting in records into the iPad, so we spent most of the day doing that and updating me on the new area. So not a whole lot going on there.
Friday was pretty cool though. They go to a Japanese class here with a bunch of other foreigners who live in Izumi (and there are a lot of them). But last week they had a cooking activity, so we went and made a bunch of food from different countries. I made some gyouza and sushi which was pretty fun. The lady who is in charge of it though was pretty annoying. She apparently doesn't trust our Japanese at all, so she will always talk to us in super broken English which doesn't make any sense. After the meal, she told us in Japanese we owed her 300 yen, but then tried to explain it for like 3 minutes in broken English, which we didn't understand at all. Oh well.
Later that day, we did this service thing which ended up being pretty hilarious. So, Hirano Choro and his last companion every week would volunteer at this old person home and talk to them and just help out, so we did that. There's like 10 or so super old Japanese grandmas there and we talked to them and played games. But now I'll get to the thing that will explain the title of this email. There's this one guy, probably in his early 70's there too. After the game, I sat down and talked to him for a while. I learned very quickly that he had crazy bad short term memory loss. Apparently, back in his young days, he was an engineer for a shipping company. so he was a sea man. The first thing he told me was "I was a sea man!" I was like "Oh that's way cool, where have you been?" and things like that. We would be talking about that kind of stuff for maybe a minute or two, and then he'd get this blank stare and look at me and say "I was a Sea Man! Chief Engineer of a big shipping company". I was a little confused, but I just rolled with it. This probably happened 20 to 30 times! It was ridiculous! I felt like I was in Groundhog day, living the same day over and over again. I got to the point where I knew exactly what he would say next and I would try to beat him to it. It was a great time, I had a lot of fun with it! The guy was way nice, he's just super crazy! So I get to do that once a week. That should be way fun. I was a Sea Man!!
Later that night, we got to go to a play of Cinderella. There is an American family from Herriman in the branch here. The dad, Brother Chapman, is a pilot for a Japanese airline. Their three kids are going to an international school and they had a showing of Cinderella which their kids were in. It was way fun. I felt like I was in America again. There were a ton of white people there; it was kind of weird. I'm not used to that. It was a pretty fun time. Riding home in the pouring rain wasn't so fun of a time....
Sunday was pretty good. The ward here is a pretty solid size and we have the biggest church building in the mission. It was fun to be in a normal chapel again with benches and people actually sitting in them. The members are way nice and there are lots of youth and kids so its pretty fun, and the Chapman family is way cool too. It's fun having an American family in the ward. They come every week, but we have to follow them around so we can translate for them during all three meetings. We are going to their house on Tuesday! I got to speak in Sacrament meeting again. (I've been doing that a lot recently.) It went pretty well. It was a little scarier doing it in front of a big crowd, but it was good. Then we got to go with Luke Chapman, their younger kid to his classes. I got to attend primary, which was a riot. Japanese kids are crazy!
Yeah that was my week! I'm excited to serve here hopefully for a little while. Our situations with our investigators are a little weak (we only have one and he knows the bible really well,) but he believes that we don't need commandments or laws. We met with him, but it was kind of hard for me to follow along with conversation so well because I'm not used to having a Japanese companion. (They we were talking about some deep stuff). So hopefully we can build this area up a little bit.
I hope you guys have a great week! I love and miss you!! Till next week!
Love
Elder Nathan Didericksen
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| Us with Ujie Shimai |
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| Cinderella Carriage |
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| With investigator in Furukawa |
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| Furukawa rice fields |
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