My heart are thirsting for a good feeling of place...

Are your heart are thirsting for a good feeling of place???

Hello!
        This week we had quite a few adventures... But I won't bore you with those. But first, something important is happening tomorrow.  Tomorrow is transfer day, and as many of you know, it is also the 31st. That means Baskin Robbins is 31% off! So everyone make sure to go with your new companions, old companions, etc.

        But anyway, lest the swarms of angry butterflies overtake our journey, let us begin.

        On Monday, the main thing that happened was that we got to meet with Tezuka, who we thought we were going to meet with last week, but then realized she said to come back in two weeks and not one. So we met with her and it was a great lesson! Well we didn't really have to teach too much, but it was still great. We had given her a Book of Mormon and a restoration pamphlet and asked her to read. Last week she went to Saitama but didn't take the Book of Mormon. But she had the pamphlet. She told us that she had read it twice and when we would explain something, she would then put it into her own words and say what she needs to do because of it. Then she said , or course if I really want to know if it's true, I have to read the Book of Mormon. So that was pretty awesome. And we are going to go meet with her again tonight. That was probably the biggest thing on Monday.

        Then on Tuesday, we had a koukan! It was great, I got to be in Fuji with Elder Bauer from Numazu. He is great! And from Australia, so he has a great accent. So we met at the Indo curry place and had lunch, went home and we had a great day. The main thing we did was at night. We went with Kikuchi Kyodai and visited a less active member named Nakajima Shimai! She is way awesome and only less active because she can't really get to church on time. She works on a farm that is sooooo
far away from where we live. But it is always fun when we get to go visit her. And we got to pet her cows... Not all of them of course, she has about a hundred! But we got to try to milk one and then she
had us squirt some of the milk into our mouth! Not something that I figured I would be doing when I was called to Japan.

        On Wednesday, we planned, because we knew that we wouldn't have time on Thursday. So that was pretty much the biggest thing that happened. Because the Uematsu family canceled their appointment on us. That happened a lot this week. Most of our appointments fell through. Oh well.

        Then on Thursday, the reason we wouldn't have time to plan was because we had interviews with President Ishii!!! It was great! We had to travel to Shizuoka for it, but it wasn't that far. It was really good to see him and the other people that we their for their interviews. It was a good time. But as always it ran a little late. We had to hurry back because we had eikaiwa. Unfortunately, that didn't
happen...we got on the wrong train because we were trying to hurry too much. It was going the wrong direction. And we hadn't realized it until is said something that sounded like Fuji, but then had a little
bit at the end...FUJIEDA. That is a whole other area and we were already late for eikaiwa at this point. So we hopped off the train and had to wait for the next one back. We called the eikaiwa coordinator and told her what was going on. Then she called us back and said that the people still wanted to do eikaiwa. We showed up an hour late and had a really short lesson. But they were pretty happy with that.

 

        Another thing that happened that day when we were in a hurry to get home, was we know that we wouldn't have time for dinner and had to eat on the train. Also the train left in half an hour. So we went to McDonald's. I ordered two of the dollar sandwiches (the crispy chicken) and a five piece chicken McNuggets.  The lady asked me what kind of sauce I want and then told me I get five of them, I was confused but got the mustard sauce and we were getting it to go. My total was just as expected, about 500 yen. But my food took forever to come. And we were really getting anxious because we needed to get on the next train. Then it came and we had to hurry. For some reason my
food came in a big bag. When we got on the train, we pulled out our food, because we had to eat there because we wouldn't have any time. This is when I look and realized the lady gave me 5 boxes of 5 piece chicken McNuggets. Huge mistake. I looked at my exempt and it only said one and so the whole thing was confusing, but it was way too late for that. I ended up with 25 nuggets and 2 chicken sandwiches. Needless to say, I had lunch for Friday.

        Speaking of Friday, it was our last DTM for this transfer, and it was a great one. We were all supposed to choose someone in the Book of Mormon and list their attributes and how we can apply it. Of course I chose Captain Moroni. He is super rad. But that was a good DTM and really hard to translate into Japanese. People use a lot of really weird words that are hard. Of course when it was my turn, Elder Hansen had to figure out a word for stratagem. Hahaha! Then afterward, we were getting ready for a lesson with these less active members that we meet every week. But they cancelled on us! Oh no! What do we do? So we went to the back up plan! Which happened to be dumb. We had planned to go bike by this park that is by the ocean and see if there were any
people there on a weekday. They aren't.  But there was one guy and we talked to him and he had no interest and we were on this road that there was nothing on and so we decide to see if it would lead us to the main road and we got under the freeway and there was this guy that we know that skateboards at a park that we talk to sometimes. And he was skateboarding there! It was awesome! Then pretty much nothing else cool happened that day.

        On Saturday morning was transfer calls! And...Elder Hansen is transferring, he is going to Yokkaichi and he is a new zone leader. Pretty cool. I am staying here and my new companion is Elder Day!! This is going to be his last transfer, in missionary terms I am going to get to "kill" him. It is pretty cool because his dad served in Fuji for his last area as well! So he's keepin' on the traditions of his father! Hahaha!

        Then Sunday we had church and Mizusawa came again and we had a lesson with him! And we asked why he comes to our church and talked to us about it and he replied, "because I want to find the truth." That is so awesome! And the things that he believes are what we believe too. He was just talking about some other churches and what he didn't like about them. And he really doesn't like the Protestant faith for some reason, but he wouldn't say why. Maybe he had a bad experience. But he
likes Christianity the most so far he said. And he likes that we can pray in whatever language we want. (Apparently in Islam you have to pray with the right inflections and in Arabic and stuff, he didn't like that very much).

        But that is about everything big that happened this week, I hope that you weren't too bored with it. Have a great week everyone and don't forget, tomorrow, Baskin Robbins!

-Elder Richardson