Hot, humid and green in Japan

July 18, 2016: Week 90

Area: Izumi

Companion: Bruce Choro

Hey everyone! How are things in Utah? This week was pretty good, although for some reason, especially this past transfer, days kind of blend together and I can't really remember anything specific that happened. What I do know is that it's super super humid in Japan right now. We are dripping in sweat after riding our bikes or walking for like 2 minutes. And maybe since it's so hot here or something else, I don't really know why, but people in Sendai wear like no clothes here. It's pretty crazy; let's just say some girls aren't dressing as modestly as they could.... Also, I housed into some old dude who wasn't wearing any pants, just a long shirt...... Anyway... 

The good side is that it's super green and pretty right now. I'm learning to take some time and to smell the roses every now and again, trying to savor the last couple months I have left here.

Tuesday was a fun day. I got an email from one of my old companions from over a year ago saying he was back in Sendai to visit the mission and travel around Japan, so he met us in Izumi and we went to lunch with him. It was way fun to see him again since he went home last October. It was super weird to see him as a normal person with a huge, thick beard, but he was still the same guy. It was a good time. We spent the rest of the day knocking doors and were able to visit a less-active couple for the first time. We've been looking at the member records and have been trying to visit the less actives in whatever area we are in that day. For the most part, most of them want nothing to do with the church and usually aren't too stoked to see us at their door (I've been yelled at a few times), so I was pleasantly surprised when the couple invited us in and talked to us and stuff. They were super nice and we had a great visit with them. 

Wednesday was a little rough. We went out to a way far part of town to go tracting for the afternoon. The clouds didn't look too threatening so we didn't think too much of it, but we were super wrong. Out of nowhere, the clouds rolled in and it started raining really hard. We didn't have an umbrella or rain gear of any kind so we got pretty soaked. Also, since in this mission, we aren't allowed to ride bikes if it's raining (kind of a frustrating rule but we have to obey it) so we had to walk to our next appointment in the pouring rain for about an hour. We got pretty soaked, but it was a good time I guess! But when it rains this time of year, it feels you are literally drowning in humidity. I can't really explain it, but it feels super no bueno. I love the dry Utah weather!

On Thursday, I went on splits with Elder Robb, an elder from Spanish Fork who works in Furukawa. We worked in Izumi for the day and it was pretty fun. Since he is in a leg brace, we weren't able to ride bikes so we had to walk a ways to get to where we wanted to go. We spent most of the day knocking on doors again. Usually, housing for more than like 1 or 2 hours at a time is miserable, but it was super fun with Elder Robb. We didn't take rejection too seriously and we just laughed and joked around the entire time so the 4 hours of housing seemed to go by really fast. We didn't see any success whatsoever until the very last door (it's always the last door for some reason). We found another woman (gosh darn it where are the men?!) who was interested so we gave her a Book of Mormon and got the OK to come back. SO that was pretty cool. We also found this massive house that looked like a castle so we decided to house it and see what would happen. Elder Robb's door approach was something like "we are missionaries who are sharing a message about REAL happiness"(cause having stacks on stacks of money doesn't bring true happiness!)  She gave a pretty weird excuse of why she couldn't talk to us. Maybe it was legit, I don't know, but she was like "sorry, I can't talk right now, my dog is pooping." (Now that's a new one!) I guess I totally understand if that's actually what was happening because I wouldn't want my dog pooping in my castle, but, she didn't say she wasn't interested or anything like that and said something to suggest we could come back another time, but we will see. That would be way cool if we could pick up a super rich investigator; do lessons in their castle, drive in their fancy cars, etc! I'm getting ahead of myself, but that'd be legit.

Also, in other news; one of the investigators we found for the sisters last week has been dropped already. She was super interested and I guess she still is, but she told the sisters that her husband got really mad that she was even considering meeting with the missionaries so she said she couldn't meet with them so her family wouldn't break apart. It's kind of frustrating, a lot of the time when you finally find someone who will listen, their parents or the spouse shut it down pretty quickly, so that was kind of sad. 

Other than that, I don't have much to report on. It was a good week even though nothing too crazy happened. I only have two weeks left of the transfer and then I will enter my last two which seems so weird; like it's already halfway through July! What the Heck?!

Anyway, that's about it from me! I hope you all have a wonderful week and a sweet pioneer day. I have been reading a bit about the pioneers lately and throughout my mission and it's helped me realize the blessings I have thanks to all of those faithful saints who gave up everything so that they could worship God. Especially being from Utah, it's made me super proud of my heritage and grateful for the blessings that the pioneers gave to us. So I hope you have a great one blowing stuff up and stuff! Haha! Now I'm off to play some of the young men in basketball! It's the first time playing since January so I hope I'm not too bad! I love you guys! Talk to you next week!

Love,

Elder Nathan Didericksen

My old companion, Elder Hill