Yep, We're way there, and I really think we're living on a prayer

Yep, the mission's half over. Man.... Most people say it feels like it was way fast.

It feel like about a year to me.

(send me Brandon's letters! :) よろしくお願いしまい

A mission is quite a bit like a life time.

We come into it, study a little in the pre-earth life (MTC- little old Brandon),

Get born into a totally different world.

Fumble around with language, and teaching. Never quite being able to do perfectly.

We have our parent (trainer) and some times we wonder if they actually love us or if they're trying to kill us.

We move to different stages in life (area) make new friends only to have them all disappear.

We have the difficult teen years (when your trainer is only a transfer ahead of you, or you and your companion are both third transfers in a foreign world.).

Then we reach our mid life crisis.

We're getting old.

Eventually, we refine our talents, get the hang of things, then we die.

I was talking with my Zone Leader (Cox-Choro, and excellent man.) and we figured out a way to calculate dendo age.

(16+2)*10 all divided by 8. Yep. I think that's right. I'm about fifty years old. (my comp is 55) I'm feeling it.

Cox Choro said that he feels like he could sleep for days. I told him about how dad said he slept for weeks.

Getting old!

The weird thing in the mission is, there's really not too many new people being born.

My transfer is the 'baby boomer' of the mission. There's 28 or so of us. The transfer that's coming in now (which should be the biggest all year) is 6-8ish missionaries, I think. (man, Japanese people say I think at the end of the sentences instead of the beginning. I'm turning Japanese, I think.)

Leadership positions are rare in these days, because the two or three transfers above my snag them all. What you end up with is a lot of double leadership positions. Situations where one companion is the District Leader and the other is the Senior Companion, regardless of age (mission age).

It get's a little awkward sometimes when you both think you have good ideas.

Yep.

Awkward.

I've made a goal never to get in an argument with anyone of my companions.... It's not easy.

One thing that I'm working on over coming is the tendency to rebel when someone tells me to do something that I'm already doing.

q1: Things are going well with him. He's a good missionary. He's Japanese, and can speak the language quite well. He doesn't really like English too much. He says "when am I ever going to use it?" meh. probably more often then I can use Japanese. But I like speaking in only Japanese, so that's good.

I don't understand this language as well as English (obviously) so sometimes is hard to get the little  nuances

 that people say. Often times when people are talking indirectly to me, (in Japanese directness is rude) as they pause waiting for me to say I'll do whatever thing they were implying, I'll say: "okay... uhm... Alright... What should I do?"

Sometimes they'll explain it indirectly again, and if I still am not getting it, I'll go for a round two.

Reading and writing are almost impossible, but that's only thing that I've been wanting to focus on recently. I read at least one of the paragraphs from the white handbook in Japanese with my companion's help. If it's church words, it's not a problem. (or if it had furigana.)

I don't know if you can do it, but, could you see if you can find a good book for learning kanji? Don't send it to me or anything, just look it up. Maybe I might want it. (that was also very Japanese

Japanese is funny. "It would make me happy if you did..." "May I humbly partake of you doing..." "Would it be good even if you...." Etc.

Red man invited us to play tennis again, I told him if he does a lesson. He said okay.

The district is doing well. The new shimai are super nice.

Pray for Yokoyama-san.

Also our branch mission leader: Mamoru-kyodai.

Pray that I'll love people more.... pfft. and speak this language with more confidence.

This week was pretty interesting.

We had a Zone Training in Koriyama.

We had some "free time" (no time is free time in dendo time), so I mapped out a bunch of Old investigators and we visited them. They were all pretty nice, and pretty "busy".

One man let us in. I'll tell you that story next week though. This computer won't copy paste.

Thanks for all the pictures!

Keep them coming!.... :)

I love you all. A mission is an awesome experience........... woo!