My Eyes Are Purple...

Hello Sports Fans,

This has been one long week. In case nobody knew, I really didn't get a
P-Day last week because we had the Family History Fair (more on that
later) and then since it was transfer week we were way busy. I am
チョー疲れた. Going through the week without a P-Day, running on fumes with
early mornings gets rough. That's life I guess.

I guess I'll start off by talking about the Family History Fair last
week. It was actually a really big success. There were around 300
people there (with about 30 missionaries) and we all got to listen to
Elders Packer and Yamashita of the Quorum of the Seventy. After
hearing from them everybody went through the fair where different
"booths" introduced a different aspect of family history. Elder
Nakamoto and I were assigned to teach groups the Plan of Salvation
which was a way neat experience. Some of the first people to come over
to talk to us was the Yamashitas. It was so awesome to get to see and
talk to President and Sister Yamashita for a little bit! Sister
Yamashita was so excited to see all of the missionaries and was
running around with her phone taking pictures of all of us. After
getting to talk to them we had the opportunity to teach a lot of
people about the Plan of Salvation and explained why family history is
important to our church and how we can live together with our family
forever. It was a way cool, once in a mission experience even though
if stole my P-Day.

The rest of the week was normal transfer stuff. We had the dying
missionaries come into the 本部 on Monday and woke up flipping early on
Tuesday to take them out to the airport. One of the people I got to
see off this time was Sister Brewer which was way weird for me. I met
her on her first week in Japan and her and I served together in the
same zone for 8 transfers, 6 of which were in the same district, and 1
of which was the same area. It made me feel like an "old" missionary
to watch someone a transfer younger than me go home. Our trip to the
airport this time wasn't as hard on us as the last time which was
good. At night we picked up the bean-chans and they were way quiet and
tired compared to the last batch. There were only four who came in and
they all seem pretty solid.

On Wednesday we had orientation and introduced the bean-chans to their
trainers. During the orientation I translated for a Japanese elder
for most of the time so Nakamoto kind of soloed most of it. Once we
finished the orientation we took them all to meet their trainers. I
love all of the trainers! It's always really fun to watch a first-time
trainer meet their bean-chan for the very first time. I kind of wish I
could have the opportunity to train again, but alas I believe my time
has passed.

Thursday was a pretty productive day and we got a lot done and had
some cool experiences talking to people. We are trying to be more
effective in our area this transfer and so we are trying to do some
different things that haven't been tried for a while so we'll see what
happens. Friday was a solid office day where we didn't really get to
leave at all because due to opening and closing of apartments,
training meetings, and exchanges we wouldn't have the time to get any
immediate things done if they weren't done yesterday. We also got some
fancy partitions in the office to make us look more professional. So I
guess that was exciting.

And that's where you find me at the end of this week. It's been a really
good successful week with a lot accomplished and now I am チョー疲れた and
my eyes are shadowed in purple. Thank goodness for a P-Day!

I hope you've all been able to keep yourselves busy this week. Spring
Break should be coming up soon so I hope that people are starting to
create some fun plans for that. Anyways, I wish you all the best of
luck and I love all of you and thanks for everything. I couldn't be
more appreciative for all of your support and prayers.

スピードと天使

堅城長老

Pictures

Pic 1- Teaching at the Fair