transfers (September 25, 2011)

So...transfer calls were today and I am going to stay in Ogaki....yay!!! No but seriously I am excited. I love the people here and I have made so many friends just in random places...for example, we email at a cafe and we have become really good friends with the people that work here. they all know us and that we come here every week on Mondays to email our family. But today before I started emailing we talked to one of the ladies and talked about the impotance of family as she expressed her remorse of her divorce but said it was really tough. And how she wishes Japanese people took the role of family more seriously. And there are people like that all over Ogaki that I have grown to love. I also love my companion eventhough he causes a lot of stress. I now understand a fragment of what parents go through when they are trying to raise teenagers. The fragment might be very small but I'm starting to understand.

Actually on Saturday night we went to a member's house. We just wanted to drop by some cookies but she let us in and we talked for a while about how to help random less active members. After talking with her for a while she looks at my companion and said Elder Dinkel you look so happy and just excited to be here to work. You look like you are having fun...then she looked at me and was like you Elder Nelson not so much. You look tired and like you are worried about people, and trying to think about how to help them. I was like that is pretty accurate but I'm going to work on not looking so stressed out.

I had this really delicious food this week. I call it Japanese hashbrowns. They are so good. So you make mashed patatoes and then put some vegetables and meat in the mashed patatoes. Then you bread it and fry it I think. They are so good. A member surprised us last night and gave us 5 of them...they were so good. My companion likes microwave eggs which I refuse to eat. I tell him why microwave eggs when I can spend 2 extra minutes and have a fried one. Im just saying I don't think I will ever eat microwaved eggs.

We are still working really hard to promote english class. We actually made this big poster. I think it will help a lot. We also pass out a lot of flyers. So we go to the train station and we meet a lot of people. 2 days ago we had a lot of good experiences as we talked with everyone we could. We became real good friends with 4 high school boys that were interested in what we did. That was fun. Talking with everyone is something that was really hard at first and sometimes it is still tough but it is really rewarding. 2 new people have started coming to english class and they look like they have interest. I think the english class is so great because we talk alot about how to become better people and how to strengthen our families.

So we got hit by a typhoon pretty bad. It rained really hard here. There was flooding in Nagoya and Tokyo and it looks like it did some damage. I feel like Japan is having a tough year you know. First a tsunami' earthquake, nuclear disaster and we have been hit by 2 huge typhoons...last year we got hit by a small one but that was it. It is tough but we keep on going and trying. The people here are strong so that is good but I think they are going to start turing to God for help. A nation that doesn't really believe in God really needs His help now.

I am so excited that general conference is coming...unfortunately I will not get to watch it next week but I have really grown to love conference. It is one of my favorite weekends as a missionary to go listen to the Prophet's voice. In this months Liahona there were a lot of talks about how we can apply conference talks to us. One of my favorite talks from last conference was by Elder Christopherson. He talked about a current bush and how a gardner cut the bush down. The bush got angry at the gardner because it was making suck progress and it needed to be cut down. He then related a story about how God "cuts" us down to make us better. And some times we go through hard things but we will always benefit from them. Enjoy the Prophets messages. And have a good week.

Love
Elder Nelson