Under the Weather and Turning Twenty!

July 4, 2016: Week 88

Area: Izumi

Companion: Bruce Choro

Hey everyone!!! Let me start with saying Happy Bday to Matthew yesterday!! That's probably the best birthday I can think of, spending it in Hawaii! I hope you had a great day! You've always been a role model for me and someone I've wanted to be like! Thanks for your great example and for always hanging out with me. I can't wait to continue our shenanigans in 3 months! Love you buddy!

Also Happy 4th of July everyone!! Its kind of hard to be patriotic here, but I'm doing my best. We sang all of the patriotic songs in the hymn book for comp study, and my screen on my iPad is the statue of Liberty so I'm feeling the Patriotic spirit! I hope you all have a good one tomorrow!!

I'm not gonna lie, my week was just a little rough. First of all, I'm in my twenties now which freaks me out. I'm still in denial about that. I'll get to my bday later, but also, I got some nasty virus on Monday night and it basically knocked me out for like 4 days so there's not a lot of missionary work to report on. 

So on Monday night I rode my bike down to Sendai to do splits with the Zone Leaders again. We got there a little early so we went to the station to talk to people. As we were headed back to the apartment, there were two white people shouting at as and waving. They seemed really nice and like they wanted to talk to us so we went over to see them. They were super super nice people. They were just a young couple on vacation here from Oregon. They actually knew the church; their friend is a Mormon and they have actually taken all of the missionary lessons and have had the missionaries over to their house for dinner several times. It was so refreshing to have a conversation with chill American people. They were super nice and it made my day. You don't get to have conversations like that too often as a missionary here. 

I slept in the Kamisugi apartment that night and woke up the next day feeling awful. Elder Mitabi, the elder I was to go on splits with woke up sick too, but we decided to go out and work anyway. It was raining all day so walking all day in the rain for 8 hours probably didn't help our sickness. We basically housed and streeted all day. It was pretty miserable because we were feeling awful, but we were actually able to see some good things happen. We found a new investigator and were able to hand out a few copies of the Book of Mormon.

The next day, I woke up feeling even worse. We rode our bikes back to Izumi where I found Elder Murakami sick with the same thing, so we ended up staying in the apartment and resting for the day. In the end, we were stuck in the apartment for like three days. We tried to make the best of it. We made pancakes and had some silly conversations while on our death beds. We definitely grew closer over those three days. It was pretty bad though. It was so hard to sleep it off cause we had no medicine and were so congested. We are finally starting to get over it now though which is good. So yeah, that was rough.

Also, President Smith called me this week saying he wanted to come to my District Meeting last week, so that caught me way off guard and caused some stress. I think it went pretty well though, despite the fact I was coughing like every sentence I said. But yeah, I have no idea why he came. 

Lastly, I graduated from my teen years and turned twenty on Friday. It was a pretty good B-day. Birthdays are definitely not the same as a missionary, but it was pretty good. I loved the bday package that Mom sent me, I've been going to town on the Oreos! I found out that Oreos are my number one weakness when it comes to food. Also thanks so much for that little book y'all made for me; that was so nice! It's pretty crazy that was my last bday on the mission! 

But yeah, that is honestly about all that I have. I was basically dying inside all week (haha) so I don't have much to report. Ill try to make it more exciting for next week's email! I hope you all have a wonderful week! I love you all so much! Have a great Fourth of July tomorrow!! Love you!

Love,

Elder Nathan Didericksen

Getting my Japanese culture on with the mask.
Also, my district gave me this shirt for my birthday.

Lunch with the elders in my district.