Friday, July 1, 2011

Day 1 in Sendai

Hard to believe that I am typing this from our home in Sendai. What a beautiful city--it's known as the city of trees. Just up the road from our home is a secluded hilly park of trees with a gurgling stream running through it--like our own personal "sacred grove". We went there tonight with some missionaries to talk about important things and to consider what might transpire over these next three years.

Our flight yesterday was an adventure since the Delta flight out of Salt Lake City was 1 1/2 hours late. That tightened up the connections when we arrived at Tokyo and had it not been for a very nice brother from the Area office who scurried around the airport with us making alternative arrangements, we might still be there! As the plane was descending we were struck with how green it is in the non-urban areas. Then we "felt" the reason why as we disembarked and confronted humidity with which we are unfamiliar being Arizonans. Finally arrived in Sendai at 10:30 p.m. and were surprised to be met by not only the Tateokas, but also the new stake president and his wife (Sugiwara), the Area Seventy (Nishihara), and a sister in the stake who is a decendant of the feudal warlord Date. At the mission home (honbu), spent a couple of hours eating some delicious soup and talking with the Tateokas--they were so gracious and eager to tell us all about the mission home and this wonderful group of missionaries that they are leaving after serving here for the past three years. They had already cleared out of the master bedroom and moved into the guest room. One of the first thing President Tateoka did was to hand over the cell phone to me which is truly the sign of passing the baton since I will get to deal with all issues that arise, and so far there have only been a couple of minor questions that I was able to handle reasonably expeditiously.

This afternoon I interviewed the four senior missionaries who serve in the mission office. The Thomas's are from Georgia and speak no Japanese but are hard-working and fun to be around. They take care of finances, mission vehicles (there are only two), and non-Japanese correspondence and document preparation. The Higashi's are from Chiba (near Tokyo) and don't speak much English at all. My interview with each of them was very enjoyable and I was appreciative that they spoke in fairly simple sentences and did it slowly! Everyone compliments me on my Japanese, but that is simply the Japanese way--always very nice and gracious.

Tomorrow we meet with Elder Stevenson whose Church assignment is to oversee the Asia North Area. He is the nephew of Darrell Garn from Mesa for those who know him. Then we begin a road trip that will allow us to have zone conferences and personal interviews with each of our 70 missionaries by next Tuesday, just in time for our first transfer. We only have three new missionaries coming in, and we also have seven missionaries heading home, so it will cause some amount of churn in the mission.

We have already identified some things that we would like to change in the mission; nothing major, but some minor tweaks and course corrections. We will want to be sensitive so as not to be disrespectful of the Tateokas and those who came before. But we believe that we were called here for a reason and it's incumbent upon us to effect changes as we feel so impressed. Had a good session with the Assistants this afternoon counselling together about training needs, having them propose the upcoming transfer (I explained that in the context of Oliver Cowdery's experience in trying to translate the Book of Mormon in D&C 9), and how to cut down on the amount of time in house at the next transfer. Change is easier to implement when key players are involved in the process and their points of view are appropriately considered.

Very tired tonight as we have felt the effects of jet lag (arose at 4:45 am this morning). Grateful to be doing this with Pam. She is such a trooper. Smiles warmly at everyone, even when she doesn't understand what they are saying. But they understand from her the language of love--a smile and kind tone.

Time to sign off. Love to all. GR

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