Earthquake August 10, 2009
Hey everyone! Another week, another email.
Yes, we felt the earthquake at about 4:00am this morning. It was enough to wake us up, but it wasn’t too bad in the Nagano area. I think for us, it was actually kind of fun. I hear that Tokyo is just fine, and because it was offshore and underwater far enough, no tsunamis or anything. It wasn’t even strong enough in our mission for the Mission Home to say anything about it.
Well, off to the regular news. I got pretty sick on Sunday night, and wasn’t able to keep food down - then continued to work until Monday night, which was a bad idea, and then had to turn in an early night for probably the second time on my mission. I went to sleep at about 5:00pm and slept through until 4:00am, when the earthquake hit. I feel much better now, so that is good.
The area is doing well. I think we are a little low on investigators, but we are trying to find more. Some members just introduced some people to us, so that is definitely good. I think though, now that I have hit the seven month mark in this area, that I am just about ready to be out of here. It isn’t that I don’t love the people, or that I don’t like my companion, seven months is just a REALLY long time to be working in the same place as a missionary. It is weird to think I will end up spending more than a third of my time in the field here in Ina. Not much I can do but stick it out until next transfer. Only three more weeks. If I stay one more, I’ll break an all-Japan record for Elders, so I assume I will be transferring. The good news is, the Branch President here loves me so much he is going to send a big box of freshly picked Nagano apples to my next area as soon as they are ready in September or so. He also wants to meet everyone if/when we come back and visit Japan after the mission.
Annie is doing well, though she now works from 7:00pm to 4:00am, making it hard to meet with her. She is still doing the basic things, reading, praying, and coming to church, so I am not worried about her. She is always talking about how happy she was to be baptized, and her faith is still strong. Kouta, on the other hand, is being a little punk and didn’t come to church again two days ago. We are meeting with his family tonight and we are going to challenge his mom to push him a little harder, especially because he is getting his new laptop soon.
We had zone conference at the Mission Home this last week, and that was great. The training we got was centered around language skills since there are a lot of people in the mission who just can’t seem to speak Japanese. I don’t really understand why - I know it is a hard language but with effort it isn’t impossible to learn. All I know is President Traveller is worried about it, and is really pushing language skills on the mission now. I feel pretty good about my Japanese, I just need to learn more kanji so I can read and write a little better. I can read about 50% of the kanji in the Liahona, so I am getting up there, but it is nowhere near being able to read a newspaper. That is my language goal before I get home.
Let’s see… other things. I have decided it is really fun to be a district leader and call everyone in the district at night to make sure they are safe. Especially in a lonely area like Ina, it is nice to hear from everyone and talk to them about their day. I enjoy it quite a bit. I’ll be doing a companionship exchange this weekend and after the exchange, we are going to see fireworks in Suwa! You might be able to look up the Suwa Fireworks online, but in case you can’t, it is a 40,000 firework extravaganza that is apparently the best show in Japan. I’m very much excited. I’ll take pictures as long as it isn’t raining.
Oh, and that reminds me. I am sending memory cards home soon - I am running low on space. Would you mind emptying them and sending them back? Just drop them on your computer and burn a DVD backup of them, if you would. That would be awesome.
I guess I don’t really have that much else to talk about this week. Good to hear Derek and Jacob had fun even if it didn’t sound fun to begin with. I guess that is kind of how it always goes. It is definitely good and bad to hear how things are going quickly with Kathryn and Carl - I still don’t even know anything at all about him! Kathryn - you have to send me an email with everything about him before you get engaged, especially if you don’t plan on waiting til I get back to marry him. Please!
Well, I think that is all. I love and miss you all, and will talk to you soon!
PS: I met Sam Siebach’s companion in the MTC, he is serving in the same zone as me, just further north. He is kind of weird, ha.
kbye!
Greg Burnham
gregburnham@myldsmail.net
1-304 Itakadai
Meito-ku Nagoya-shi Aichi-ken
465-0028 Japan
