An Early Email, April 26, 2009
Well, sorry to catch you all a little off guard and email a little bit early (though I did warn you at the end of my last email). It’s raining pretty well here, and has been for the last few days. There was even some exciting thunder last night - it had been a long time since I have heard thunder.
There isn’t a whole lot to report on today, since it feels like I just barely finished writing my last email. Transfers are announced Tuesday and if transferred, one of us will leave Ina on Wednesday. I am pretty safe in guessing it will be Elder Katanuma, but there are always surprises. He has been here for one transfer longer than I, but still hasn’t hit the peak length of four transfers yet, so it is all up in the air. I’ll let you know next week if I’m still in Ina or not.
This week’s District Meeting was a bit sad - there are two finishing missionaries in our district. One is Elder Hurley, who I wrote the song for. He is pretty sad about going home. He was excited six weeks ago, when he still had his girlfriend waiting for him, but that excitement kinda died away when she dear johned him. It is really tough to see other missionaries finish up, especially when you are good friends with them. You can tell they are actually a little bit scared/nervous to go back home, and they are usually at the point of almost crying whenever they talk about missionary work or bear testimony. It is really sad, but life moves on.
Oh! I forgot one really big thing this week. Our church building isn’t actually a church building - its in the second floor of an office building (I think I mentioned that once before). The tenant next door closed up and moved out, so the landlord was cleaning their area out. Deep cleaning. With a pressure sprayer. The water and cleanser he was spraying with decided to seep through and under the walls into our side - leaving a digusting yellow stain and strong cleanser smell in parts of the church building. Even worse, it is tile floor, so it sept in and basically won’t come out. The Branch President’s little room is the worst - it actually looks (and kind of smells) like a dog came in and relieved itself all over the floor. Really disgusting. I have pictures.
Anyway, we spent all Saturday and will be spending most of tomorrow cleaning it up - good fun. The landlord and a cleaning crew are coming to help us tomorrow… Way fun…
I also learned a good lesson in patience this week. Last week I SOS’d way hard for letters, because except for LeeAnne and her Mom, I think the last time I got a handwritten letter from anyone was Christmas! But then, after slightly complaining in email, I came home to five letters in my postbox - all for me. I was really humbled - so sorry for being a bit greedy and begging a little last week. I guess patience still isn’t my strongest attribute. I’m working on it though.
Also, we had about the equivalent of $6 or so to make it from Tuesday to Tuesday this last week - with almost no food in the apartment (and that is after withdrawing quite a good amount of my own money this transfer to pay for trains and transportation - which is being reimbursed by the way so don’t worry). We saw a miracle a day this week as every day except for one, a different member or investigator, without knowing our situation at all, gave us food or a meal to take home. I would have never even imagined it happening. It wasn’t anything special or big, each time it was hardly even a meal, but it kept us alive. That and the soup you sent helped us make it through, losing only a little bit weight and maybe some hair. I can say God protects his missionaries if they are doing what they are supposed to.
Today we went home teaching to less actives with the Branch President, and even though we had set up five appointments on the phone and confirmed, every single one either cancelled last second or weren’t home. We spent a good amount of time driving and talking, which was nice, but we didn’t get to meet a single less-active. It was definitely a bit of a downer, but we heard some words of wisdom from the Branch President, and I found out he was a fan of The West Wing. I guess it played in Japanese for awhile here on NHK. I wish I would have watched it more, so I could answer his questions. I guess one character shares our last name - crazy.
Well, other than that, not much this week. I am healthy, doing well, and learning alot - spiritually and musically. Guitar is coming well - I’m working on Eric Clapton - Tears in Heaven and Dust in the Wind right now, both of which I think I have down. Plus I can now play almost any hymn out of the children’s songbook by memory (at least the popular ones). I’m even teaching lessons to Sister Aland every week at District Meeting while our district cooks food together. Next week, another of my investigators I found and taught in Gifu will be baptized. I’m hoping if I transfer, it is somewhere close so I can go see it. Erika went home this weekend, and is already in contact with the missionaries - I got an email today. They challenged her to be baptized the first time they met her (that’s Brazil for you) but she isn’t quite ready yet. She needs to marry her boyfriend. I’m praying for her. I took a picture of the four of us, so I’ll send that home sometime. Right now I still don’t have the money to even send a single letter home. I’m carrying the equivalent of 10c until Tuesday morning.
I hope you all are doing well - LeeAnne probably had a baptism this week, so I’m pretty excited to hear about how that went. I am still jealous you got one so quick - punk… Ha. Just kidding. Kind of. I would like to hear next week about how Kathryn’s surgery went, and anything else worth hearing. I still don’t know anything about mother’s day phone calls - I think that will be in next week’s email. They try and delay it until last second so that we don’t lose focus the few weeks before the call I think.
I’ll talk to you all again next week!
Love you!
Greg Burnham
gregburnham@myldsmail.net
1-304 Itakadai
Meito-ku Nagoya-shi Aichi-ken
465-0028 Japan
