Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Hello Everyone!

How have you all been? It's been a really busy week for me over here. But, I can't really think of much to share. Even though we were busy, most of it is stuff that's pretty mundane and not that exciting to talk about. It was still a good week though. Pretty fun.

The mission van after it was loaded up to go open 

the Tama Sisters' apartment. Driving through Tokyo 

without a rearview mirror: Check.

We're finally making some headway on finding new apartments for missionaries. This last week we've opened up two new apartments for the upcoming transfer, and we'll be opening a third this week as well. Right now in my companionship, Elder Fukuchi doesn't have a drivers liscence and Elder Hosoda has one but doesn't like driving in Tokyo. That means that I'm essentially the designated driver whenever we go look for apartments of set new ones up. I don't know if I've explained this before or not, but the process to get a foreign license converted to a Japanese license is considerably faster and cheaper than the process for a Japanese person to get a liscence from scratch. That's why I have my license (which the mission paid for. yay!), but Elder Fukuchi doesn't. Elder Hosoda already had his from before the mission. Anyways, so that means I've been getting to drive around Tokyo alot lately. It's pretty interesting. What I've learned is that without GPS I would be hopelessly lost. Tokyo's road system is a mess. Just a giant sprawling web of roads. Definitely keeps you on your toes.

Elder Hill at the returning missionaries' breakfast
 helping clean up the the food Sister Wada
dropped on accident. Turns out that kitchen
 dirt is one of Sister Wada's cooking secrets

There were some missionaries who returned home mid-way through the transfer this week. When the mission split and the transfer schedule shifted 3 weeks, that threw off alot of the returning missionaries' return flight plans. Since the mission split until now we've been having some missionaries go home at transfers like normal and some missionaries going home halfway through the transfer. It all just depended on whether or not the missionary was able to change their return flight plans. However, this was the last group of missionaries going home mid-transfer. From now on the return schedule is normal, and everyone goes home together. Anyways, This group of returning missionaries had Elder Mangum in it. I got to see him when he came in for his Final interview and then again the next morning. His parents came to pick him up, so he's still in Japan for another week, and I'll get to see him again Saturday before he goes back to the states. I'm gonna miss him. He was a fun companion. At least he lives just down the road!

Sorry it's kinda short. I feel like I've been saying that a lot lately. I really can't think of much else write for this week though. I'll talk to you more next week! Take care!

Elder Blake