Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Rain, rain and more rain

Hi family,

 This week was really tough.  Last P-Day we didn`t do anything, whatsoever.  All that happened was staying in the apartment while it rained and rained and rained.   We didn`t get to go anywhere cool, like a shrine, temple, or art museum.  Just stayed inside, it was pretty terrible.

 We weren`t able to meet with anyone this whole week.  No one.  Everyone is too busy to talk with us or they are out of town.

 We would wake up at 6:00, bike in pouring rain at 7:00 for an hour, study in the church at 8:00 for 4 hours, have a way awkward mogi at 12:00, bike home at 1:00 in pouring rain for 1 hour, eat like two bites of a sandwich for lunch at 2:00, then go out and not be able to talk to anyone for the rest of the day.  That was my week.

I  had my first zone training last week on Friday.   I got to see Elder Nelson and a couple of my MTC buddies.  It took the entire day to get there, have training, and then ride home.  The Zone leader took some heat though.  He was talking about how we should be doing street contacting and let it slip that he contacted two junior high (like 15-16) girls!  Whoops. As a missionary in Japan you should NEVER contact someone of the opposite sex especially if they are young, unless you get a VERY big spiritual prompting.  Once that was let loose, it took him at least 30 minutes to get a control of the situation.  Pretty funny, though.

We got to meet with 3 people the last two days, though.  One Peruvian, one Japanese, one Chinese. We did a "setting the table" lesson with them (a memorized lesson that you have to use as your first lesson).  One was at the church with Sister J. (The Chinese) which was pretty good, that was yesterday.  Except for her going on a tangent about Panasonic televisions for like 30 minutes, she was pretty focused during the lesson.  I had no idea what was going on, with her talking in Japanese with her Chinese accent.  Still a lot better than Kansai-ben (the local dialect around here that everyone speaks).  Kansai-ben is so hard to understand, as they say in Tokyo it is `dirty` Japanese.  The other was with the Peruvian and Japanese people, Brothers F. and M.  That lesson was in AlPlaza.  AlPlaza is like a mega center shopping center.  Very loud.  So loud that I got a migraine for the rest of the day.  We couldn`t even finish the lesson.  We are going to try and meet with them next week.

Yesterday was church.  We got to eat lunch with one of the ward members named Brother S.  He is so funny!  It's funny because he doesn`t act like a Japanese person at all.  Japanese people love to beat around the bush, so much so - you don`t even know what they were trying to tell you in the end.  But, Brother S. is so forward.  When we were eating and I finished my bowl (of granola/cereal), he would fill my bowl again and kept saying `Don`t hold back` He did it like 20 times, so funny!  He just doesn`t care about being to blunt with Americans and I like that about him.  So, very nice too.
 
They also talked about in our coordination meeting about getting the missionaries an oven.  This is so that we can do cookie dendo (cookie prosyleting), as they call it.  We make cookies and take them to every investigator or less-active member.  They really are funny that way.

So, I finally got your package today.  It was one heck of a journey to get it, though.  We tried to get it at the nearest post office, but it wasn`t at that post office.  It was in the one in Kusatsu, half an hour away.  We couldn`t get to Kusatsu because it was pouring rain.  We asked if we could have them bring it to the post office nearest us.  We needed a proof of residence, of which we don`t have.  To get the package, we would need to send a redelievery slip in the mail.  We struggled trying to figure out what we needed to write on the slip (all in Kanji, both of us can`t read Kanji, so we didn`t know where we needed to put stuff).  We fianlly figured out that they wouldn`t be able to deliever it until today, so I had to wait for another week.  Man!  It was a workout!

It also has been raining a lot lately!  I swear we get drenched each time we step out of our apartment! We head somewhere when it is nice and shining, then BAM! pouring rain.  It sucks because we can`t stay indoors to dendo, so we have to head out and dendo in the rain (Dendo-prosyleting).  I hope that it stops raining so much soon though, that would be nice.

With all the love,

Elder Klein

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