Lightning

Our church got struck by lightning last week during sports night.  It didn't actually damage anything except that it blew out a couple fuses in the fire alarm system, which made the fire alarms all go off.  We had to grab the master key and go into the room with the fire alarm control panel and figure out how to reset it.  Of course, the control panel was all in Japanese.  It was an adventure.  x3

In other news, they had transfer calls today.  President Wada made some huge changes.  All of the zone leaders have been split up.  Normally, each zone has two zone leaders, and those zone leaders are companions with each other.  Now, each zone leader is in a different area, and in most cases each zone leader is companions with their local district leader.  (There are still two zone leaders per zone.)

I'm still in the mission office, working as tech staff, and Elder Berube is still my companion, but Elder Berube is now a zone leader (and still tech staff).  This is going to be an interesting transfer.  ^__^

A Week in the Life

Sunday: We got word that a typhoon would be coming later in the week.

Monday: We went out to a Thai restaurant.  My food was literally boiling when the waitress put in on the table.  I naively assumed that the bowl's handle was okay to touch, and burned my little finger.  The waitress kindly brought me a bag of ice, almost as if she were expecting that to happen.  Silly gaijin, right? xP  Also, that evening, a 19-year-old young man named Yuki waltzed into the mission office, wanting to know about English class.  Elder Yagui, our wonderful commissarian, offered to introduce him to the gospel.  Elder Yagui and Elder Etchu taught him about Joseph Smith and they gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon.

Tuesday: Zone conference.  We all received emergency 72-hour kits and get emergency preparedness training.  We also learned about teaching the first missionary lesson.  They tell us that Typhoon Neoguri is going to arrive on Thursday or Friday.

Wednesday: Yuki came to English class for the first time.  He was really nervous about it at first, but he had a good time.

Thursday: Between the wind, the gathering clouds, the atmospheric pressure, and the news of Typhoon Neoguri, it felt really ominous.  Sports night went well, though.  Yuki came to sports night and made friends with everyone.  He wasn't nervous anymore by the end of the night.  ^___^  Sister Wada told us that Typhoon Neoguri was supposed to arrive around midnight, so we made sure everything outside was secure before we went to bed.

Friday:  In the morning when we woke up, there was a little puddle outside our door and everything else was dry.  The sky was the bluest it's been in weeks.  And it was hot.  And the air was thick.  Apparently Typhoon Neoguri hit Okinawa pretty hard, but it died out before it reached us, and we got a heat wave instead.  I also started doing video editing.  We've been making training videos lately.

Saturday: This was an eventful day.

Around 4:22 in the morning, all six of us were sleeping peacefully, and then the earthquake warning alarm went off on all five cell phones at exactly the same time.  Everyone just kind of rolled over and groaned and waited for it to stop.  I felt my bed shake a little bit.  When we got up in the morning and checked the weather website, it turned out that the reason we got that alert was because there had been a 6.8 magnitude earthquake up by Fukushima...

...but the epicenter was a ways out in the ocean, so it didn't actually damage much of anything.  Which is good, because probably the last thing those nuclear power plants need is another natural disaster.

 Elder Berube, Elder Etchu, and Elder Yagui drove out to the countryside to look at apartments for missionaries, and I went and worked with the full-time proselyting elders for the day.  We spent most of the day in the park.  Since it was the weekend, there were a bunch of craftspeople with booths set up in the park, and a number of musicians hanging out, too.  We talked to an old man in a Batman & Robin tank top who said he'd been playing blues for 45 years.  He was selling CDs out of his guitar case.  He had a belt with an amp on it, an awesome steampunk-looking guitar, and a contraption with a built-in microphone that went around his neck and held a harmonica.  We asked him if he would play, and he put all that gear on for us and totally rocked out in that park with his steampunk guitar and harmonica, singing and playing old American blues songs.  He was way good at it, too.  It was awesome.  x3

Elder Yagui and Elder Etchu had another appointment with Yuki.  Turns out, he read the entire Book of Mormon in four days, and compared it side-by-side with the Bible (which he's read before) and drew some pretty awesome connections.  And he's not even Christian.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain...

One of the cool things about working in the mission office is that I get to see a lot of what happens behind the scenes.  We're working on a lot of projects, including setting up emergency preparedness systems, figuring out ways to use Facebook as a more effective tool, preparing and delivering training to missionaries, working with the local Area Office to create media content for the missionaries to use, setting up new apartments to accommodate the growing number of missionaries, making sure everyone has air conditioning for the summer, and so on.  There's a lot of work, which means time goes by really fast.

Life at Headquarters

So, I'm now working in the mission office as tech staff.  My first day on the job, I got to deliver a presentation to the new missionaries about an app on their iPads.  Lately I've been helping a lot of the recently-transferred missionaries get their new area email accounts set up on their iPads, plus handling calls about other weird glitches and things.  Elder Berube and I also handle broken iPads, website maintenance, filming training videos, and other odd jobs.  We usually get an hour or two to proselyte each day, too.

The other day, I went on an exchange with the commissarian and we drove out to help four sister missionaries move into their new house.  They moved from an apartment to a three-story house.  (There are only a couple rooms on each floor, though.)

Including the six elders in the mission office, there are fourteen missionaries assigned to the Kichijoji ward.  That's a lot.

Life at mission headquarters is very busy.  But it's fun.  :3

Transfer #5 Begins

Well, today was transfer calls.  Last week on Tuesday night I got an email from the mission headquarters that said "please answer these questions by tonight".  The questions were about college (where did I go, how long was I there for, when do I expect to graduate, what was my major, etc.).  There wasn't any explanation as to why they wanted that information, and the only reason I could think of was that maybe they were thinking of putting me on the tech staff.  Usually, when they transfer elders to the mission office, they transfer them a week early so that they can be trained before their predecessor leaves, so I'd been anticipating an early transfer call since Wednesday.  My heart would skip a beat every time the phone started ringing.

Then this morning (Monday) I got a call from our zone leaders, and they said I was staying in Sagamihara.  I wasn't really surprised, because I'd heard before that when both elders stay in the area they get their transfer call from their zone leaders instead of the assistants to the president.  Our zone leaders sounded like they were a little confused, though.  After they talked to me they talked to Elder Watanabe and then he was confused when he got off that call.  "I guess we're staying here unless we hear otherwise," he said.

Then we got a call from the mission office (not one of the assistants' cell phones, where transfer calls normally come from), and it was Elder Berube (the tech staff) who happened to be helping the assistants with transfer calls today, and he told me I was transferring to Kichijoji on special assignment--I'm joining the tech staff.  And then asked I him about the email I got last Thursday.  Turns out they needed to have my college information for national health registration or something like that--nothing at all to do with transfers or tech staff.  

Then we went to the church and met the other elders in our area, who apparently had the same thing happen--our zone leaders told them they were staying, and then they got a different transfer call from Elder Berube.   And then some point our zone leaders realized there was a mistake somewhere and called us to find out what was going on. 

Transfers are exciting.  XD

So, yeah, I'm going to the mission headquarters in Kichijoji, and I'm going to be the on the mission tech staff.  Elder Berube is going to be my new companion. Over the last couple of transfers they had just one elder doing tech work full-time (it was Elder Berube last transfer), but now they're switching back to having two elders handling both tech work (including writing/maintaining mission software) and normal proselyting.  That's why I didn't transfer early for training--Elder Berube's not leaving, so they'll still have someone who knows what's going on.  I transfer on Thursday, so next week I'll write more about what the tech staff does.

Rainy Season

Somewhere around Thursday or Friday last week, we looked at the weather forecast... and it said 100% chance of rain every day for the next two weeks.  It's been very wet since then.  xP  It cleared up for a little bit this morning though, so we got to do a service project.  ^__^  But we didn't bring any rain gear... and later that day, as we were biking home, it started raining again.  And a few minutes later I decided to quit trying to avoid puddles because there was no way I was getting any wetter.

Fortunately, my bag is waterproof.  ^_______^

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