The Return!

September 19, 2016: Week 99

Area: Hirosaki

Companion: Livermore Choro

Hey y'all! It was great to hear from all of you and see how you are all doing! I'm glad you are doing well!

This has been a pretty solid week as I've kind of relived my days as a green bean missionary with coming back to Hirosaki. It was a lot of fun rolling into the city as I reminisced where I had walked in blizzards, tried to talk to people in broken Japanese, etc as a new missionary all those months ago. I never thought I'd be able to come back here, so it's been a cool experience so far. 

My new companion's name is Elder Livermore from Oregon. He is a convert of about 4 years and he is a stud. He probably will be the best Japanese speaker in the mission within a matter of a few transfers. He has studied Japanese for like 5 years and also did a home stay in Sapporo before, so he is super fly. It's a lot of fun to be able to work with an American who can speak really well; it makes teaching pretty fun. I feel bad for him though because he just barely killed (sent home) his first trainer and then he will be killing off his second trainer in 5 weeks, so he will have plenty of blood on his hands come October. Haha!

The work in Hirosaki is pretty solid right now; there is a lot more to do here and more people to work with than there was in Izumi for sure. I've probably taught more lessons to investigators this week than I have for the past 5-6 months or so, which makes it pretty good. We only have like one sort of solid-ish one right now, but the others are listening and keeping their commitments, so its really nice. We have mostly been teaching and running around to different appointments since the day that I got here which makes it really fun because I'm gonna be honest, I got pretty tired of housing and streeting all day for 4 months. It really feels like I'm fulfilling my purpose as a missionary as we have been teaching all of these people. I hope we can make some progress with them before I go home! It is a super good situation for me to end my mission on. 

Also, it was so cool to see the members and other people I worked with when I was here over a year and a half ago. It was fun to be standing in the chapel and see members walk in, see me, do a double take, and run up to me to say hi and to ask what the heck I was doing there. I was surprised with how many people remembered me! And it's been so fun to be able to talk to them like normal this time, whereas when I was a bean, I couldn't really communicate with them at all! I also got to speak in Sacrament meeting a bit and tell them how happy I am to be back and bear my testimony. It's been a really fun time being able to experience that.

The one interesting part with Hirosaki is that the church that I went to when i was here got torn down and they are building a new one. In the meantime, they are renting out a room in this fancy-ish hotel for only two hours for Sacrament meeting. Church is super chaotic because we have to get out immediately as soon as the clock strikes noon and don't really get to talk to members a whole lot at church. Also, the only place we have to use for lessons and things like that is this tiny little shack by the church construction site. It's not too bad of a set-up, but it's hard to have lessons with the sounds of machines and construction going on. But other than that, it's not too bad. 

But yeah, its been super great being back here in Hirosaki and I'm very excited to spend the last 5 weeks of my mission here. It's starting to feel really weird, I can feel the finishing line drawing near. I'm super super stoked and excited to see you all again and have it be like normal, but in the meantime, Elder Livermore and I will do our best to find and teach and hopefully baptize before it's all said and done! Sorry, I don't have any crazy stories or anything like that and I'm slowly getting lazier in my emails, but that was the gist of this week! I hope you all have an awesome week!! I love you guys! Talk to and see you soon!

Love,

Elder Nathan Didericksen

 Elder Erickson and I. We came into the mission together and are
both ending our missions as trainers in our bean areas. He's an
awesome friend.

Last week's eikaiwa. They bought Elder Everett (he went home) a bye bye cake.