It’s August August 3, 2009
Yes, it does feel a little odd to me that it is already August, but I am excited. I don’t really know what I’m excited for, but I am excited. This week was pretty awesome, actually. We went to Ina Matsuri (a giant festival that spans over two day, including a fireworks display with 5000plus fireworks). I got some good pictures, we got to spend some good time with some less active members and Kouta-kun, and it was a pretty sweet cultural experience. I have some photos, but none are really all that special, so I’ll just send them home sometime via the memory card. On Sunday night we went to see the fireworks, but about an hour or two before they started, it rained REALLY hard. Like, some of the hardest rain I have ever seen. It was all of a sudden too - the sky just went black and then exploded. Thunder, lightning, scared children, people running for cover - it was actually kind of hilarious. Anyway, we stood under cover for about an hour or two (we didn’t have coats or an umbrella, since it had been sunny all day and in the forecast) and it never stopped raining. Then they started shooting off fireworks! They did them in the rain, since it had at least slowed down enough to set them off. So we walked out in the rain and got soaking wet watching a fireworks show with two investigators and a less-active. It was fun. The finale was set to ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ and was pretty awesome. I would have got it on video, but I didn’t want my camera to get wet…
Anyway. Other than that, we had a pretty boring week at church. There were a lot of people out of town this weekend, so we ended up with only eight people at church, instead of the usual 14-15 now. It was a bummer. Kind of took me back to when I first got to Ina - only back then it was consistently six at church.
Good to hear everything is going well at home. It is good and bad to hear about Kathryn and her boyfriend being serious-ish (no wedding until summer, when I can come), but I am happy. I hope it goes well. Sounds lonely at home with just Mom there for a few days - at least you know it isn’t really an empty nest, just temporarily vacant. That probably helps.
Thanks LeeAnne for the engagement photos for Josh and Kendall. I was kinda bummed when I didn’t get an invitation, but I am a missionary in Japan - I guess I can’t get too bummed about it. And crazy that you saw Michael Epps - is he just as weird as he used to be? Or did the mission help him out a bit? I’ll be writing and sending off a letter today if I have time (hopefully).
Oh, Kouta-kun is doing well. We taught him and his mom again last night. They bought him a brand new laptop with a 50M broadband connection for no reason out of the blue yesterday. The kid is way lucky. Anyway, his mom is kind of blackmailing him with it, saying now he needs to grow up and treat things like church and school more seriously - and it worked. At least for yesterday. He was way more involved in the lessons, and had tons of good questions. I think he is likely to be baptized by the end of the transfer. And I think the laptop will help him grow mentally a little faster, and help him develop a little faster. Still, he is spoiled.
Well, other than that, I don’t have much. Glad to hear SF and Tahoe with the Carlson’s was fun. I am a little jealous - I miss California weather and fun. Ina in the middle of Nagano prefecture just isn’t quite the same. But I only have 10 months left, and I need to make the best of them, so I try not to think about it.
This week we have a Zone Conference in Nagoya, which means a good three hour train ride or so, to and from. Should give me some more good study time.
Well, I should probably finish this email up. I have to get a few talks and such from the LDS.org website to hand out to some members as prep for some lessons we are teaching. I do have one favor to ask, however. If you have any good object lessons or interesting FHE lessons that don’t rely on English to be interesting (ie: no English jokes or games that need English speakers) please send them to me! We are running low on object lessons ideas, and I love teaching them. Thanks!
Thanks again for the emails, they always make me happy! Keep up the good work there, and I’ll do the same here.
PS: Sorry if I have started to not reply to everyone’s emails, time is becoming more and more valuable as my mission goes on, it seems. Don’t take it as offense, please!
Love you all!
Greg
Greg Burnham
gregburnham@myldsmail.net
1-304 Itakadai
Meito-ku Nagoya-shi Aichi-ken
465-0028 Japan
