We're walking a lot

12 January 2014

Things are really going well in the mission. My companion and I get along really well, sometimes too well and we have to refocus, and we’ve really started doing a lot more work in our area. It’s been really weird this week that the majority of people that we’ve met this week have been Christian. One does not find many Christians in Japan so to have found 3 in one day was really amazing. But we haven’t just been running into Christians but a lot of people that have had questions about life that they want answered. And though we haven’t heard back from any of them yet, it feels good to know there are people here who would want to hear our message. 

My new companion is really trying to prepare me to be a trainer by next transfer. I don’t know if I want to train yet or not but I really don’t have much say in it anyway. In the mean time I think in his letter to our mission president, he’s written to make me a trainer. So who knows, I might have a new companion again after this transfer.

We’ve been walking a lot. Before with Elder Johnson we either biked far or stayed really close to home. With Elder Crain we walk everywhere we go and we go really far out. I actually prefer it that way. It gives us the chance to talk to a lot of different people. But I think I’ve almost worn through the first pair of my shoes. 

My Dad has started something really cool with me that he does with Christina and that’s ask 5 questions for the blog so here they are:

1. How much time a day do you spend studying Japanese?

         We spend an hour a day during our language study time. But I feel the majority of what we learn comes as we talk to people.

2. What do you focus your studies on?

         Mostly I study grammar. It’s easy to pick up on words while talking to people, but much harder to learn grammar from just talking.

3. What’s the funniest mistake you’ve made so far?

         I haven’t really done any funny mistakes. I make a lot of mistakes but nothing that would cause a laugh. 

4. What are the hardest things for you to understand?

         Two things are hard to understand. Passive sentences, because I don’t recognize when I say them in English. And listening to people. Some people are really hard to understand.

5. How did studying Japanese in school help you? 

        It gave me a lot of normal people talk. A lot of missionaries speak church talk really well but not normal things.