Countryside

So, it turns out that there are places in Sagamihara where you see farmland and no apartment buildings.  It really does feel like countryside there.  ^^

Elder Quentin L. Cook came to Tokyo, and last Saturday they set up a combined mission conference for the Tokyo and Tokyo South missions. There were about four hundred missionaries there.  o.0  I don't think I've ever seen so many missionaries in one place since the MTC.  It was a great conference.

This morning we worked with a volunteer group that helps keep the city clean.  The other missionaries trimmed hedges by a main road while Elder Watanabe and I swept sidewalks.  We were using these really old-style brooms that I'm pretty sure were made of bamboo.  They looked more like Quidditch broomsticks than something you'd sweep with.  :P

モルモン書

The other week, while teaching a lesson, I had a thought.  We tell people it's really important that they receive a witness from God that the Book of Mormon is true (see Moroni 10:3-5).  The Book of Mormon has answers to a lot of pretty serious questions, like where we were before we were born, where we go after we die, what kind of relationship we have with God, and so forth.  And these answers are really good news.  If the Book of Mormon really is true, that's good news!  (And it means we have some homework, too.)  That's a big reason why we tell people to find out for themselves if the Book of Mormon is true.  It makes life so much better.

Sagamihara

I've been transferred to Sagamihara.  It has more of a city feel to it than Tama does (aside from the fact that both cities have plenty of ten-story apartment buildings).  I finally had to get a bike, since things are quite a bit more spread out than they were in Tama.  The elders' apartment is about a thirty-minute walk from the church.  (It was just around the corner in Tama.)  So, I got a little six-speed folding bike.  It's just fast enough for what I need, less expensive than a mountain bike, and it should be easier to transfer with.

I'm now living in the same apartment with two native Japanese elders. That's rare.  Right now there are about twenty-five missionary apartments in the mission with elders living in them, and only thirteen native Japanese elders.  The Japanese elder who's not my companion has been in the field for about six weeks, and he's training a brand-new missionary from Utah.

And I've got a ton more to write about, but I'm out of time.  XP

Golden Week

I'm getting transferred again!  My new companion is going to be Elder Watanabe.  I've worked with him before and he's pretty awesome.

Right around now there are a bunch of holidays right next to each other, making it what they call "Golden Week".  They've got a festival set up around Tama Center Station with lots and lots of people and lots and lots of food stands.

We had a bit of an earthquake last night.  We all sort of woke up and everything was shaking.  o.0  Nothing fell over as far as we could tell.  Apparently that happens all the time here.

Hot Water

On Friday last week, Elder Medlyn got sick, and I wasn't feeling great myself.  So I took a shower while he slept it off, but the shower water suddenly got cold, so I got out and went to my scriptures and read forty chapters of Isaiah.  (see Mormon 8:23)  I liked the stories about Hezekiah in chapters 37-38, but that might have mostly been because they were a nice change from all of the destruction-and-restoration prophecies in the preceding thirty-six chapters.  We discovered that night that our water heater wasn't working at all.  The next morning we all took freezing cold showers, and then when lunchtime came around we found out that our gas wasn't working either. This meant that our meal options were severely limited, since we cook almost everything on the stove, but it also explained why our water heater wasn't working.  So we called the mission office, and fortunately they got someone to come fix it later that afternoon.

Most water heaters I've seen here in Japan have electronic control panels.  As long as the water heater is turned on, the water is hot.  I've never heard of anyone running out of hot water.  As soon as you turn the heater off, the water goes freezing cold.  When you turn the heater back on, in a moment the water becomes hot again.  I think they just heat up the water as it's flowing instead of heating up a tank of water like they do in America.  The control panel also lets you adjust the temperature of the hot water.  Our apartment in Tama doesn't have a control panel for the water heater, but if you let the hot water in the kitchen run for a minute, it gets hot enough to make hot chocolate with.  ^__^

We had a "zone blitz" last Saturday.  All of the missionaries in our zone came to Tama, and under the zone leaders' direction we all swapped companions three times for an hour each and did different kinds of finding activities.  That day we were focusing on family history.  Our mission, and especially the Machida Stake (where I am), is working on learning how to use family history in missionary work. I happened to meet one of the board members of Toys 'R' Us that day, playing with a remote-controlled boat in a park.  He was friendly but he wasn't very interested in what we had to offer.  We also talked to a bunch of junior-high-school students who were practicing a dance at the park.  Junior-high kids who speak English (or try to) are really entertaining to talk to.  ^__^

Kamioooka

Yesterday I went down to a place called Kamioooka.  It has three of the letter "o" because it has HUGE hills!  (In Japanese it's 上大岡 in kanji, or かみおおおか in hiragana.)  We watched a family receive baptism there.  They were so happy!

There's a squirrel zoo in the next area over from us.  We've been talking about going there some P-day.

They have waterproof pocket notebooks at the dollar store here in Japan.  They really work.  You can use them in the rain and they don't get damaged at all.  They do take some time to dry, though.

General Conference

Because of the fifteen-hour time difference, it's not really practical to broadcast General Conference live to Japan, so we got it the weekend after.  All of the missionaries assigned to wards in the Machida Stake (including myself) gathered at the Machida Stake Center Saturday and Sunday.  The native Japanese missionaries watched the broadcast in the chapel with the rest of the Japanese people, and the rest of us English-speaking missionaries went upstairs to another room to watch it in English.

On Saturday, the broadcast went from 12:00 - 8:00 pm, with an hour break between each session.  Between the end of the afternoon session (5:00) and the start of the priesthood session (6:00) we ran down to a convenience store and got some dinner, and ate it at the church.  On Sunday, the morning session went from 10 am - 12 pm and the afternoon session started at 1 pm.  Most people brought food with them to eat for lunch.  We brought stuff for peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, but then it turned out that several people brought extra food for all the missionaries, so we were well fed.  ^_^