Our day begain much later today (5:15 a.m.) than yesterday's 4:15 a.m., so I suppose our bodies are acclimatizing. Had a wonderful zone conference. Of the 10 missionaries, 8 are Japanese, so virtually everything that we heard was in Japanese (Nihongo). Pam was more comfortable in her introduction and bearing her testimony. I even had her sing "I Am A Child of God" with the sister missionaries. She gave me that look, but I just smiled, and she was an obedient missionary and did a wonderful job. Everyone loves "Sister Rasmussen" because she is so interested in them and always has a smile. She is beginning to recognize words and phrases which is a huge step up from hearing only a stream of unintelligible sounds. We stayed in Morioka longer than we would normally stay to attend the baptism of a mother and her 9 year old son. She is very sharp and her son looks and acts like a missionary already. There were many members there supporting her, so that is always a good thing. What a blessing to observe a baptism already in our mission! There were four other baptisms across the mission today, so that is a great thing for the individuals, for the branches, and for the morale of the work. This whole Tohoku Chiho (northeast Japan) has been hit hard economically as companies have closed and people laid off. We have not yet seen any of the physical devastation from the tsunami, but that is because we have been away from our home so much.
Tomorrow I start with a 7:30 a.m. meeting with the Assistants to put the finishing touches on our first transfer, then we go to church at 10:00. We are joining with many friends and family of Gretchen Urkov in a fast tomorrow. They are eager to have a child or children and have already had two miscarriages this year. I know they would appreciate your faith and prayers in their behalf.
I meet with the Sendai Stake Presidency and high councilor over missionary work at 4:00 p.m., then by 5:00 or 5:30 we are on the road again, this time to Niigata for a Monday Zone Conference. Return home Monday night (it's about a 3.5 hour drive), Sendai Zone Conference on Tuesday, welcome new missionaries Tuesday night (9:30 p.m.), send them out to their fields of labor on Wednesday after interviews, good food, and some training, then welcome the returning missionaries to the mission home on Thursday for their final meal, interviews, and testimony meeting. When Friday comes, we may just lie down and sleep for about 15 hours straight-----or not.
It's a great work and I continue to be absolutely amazed at the quality of missionaries here in our mission. First class. Today I met an elder who completed his first year of medical school, then because of the influence of a close friend who died of leukemia, he decided to go on a mission. He is the 10th of 10 children, and nearly all of them have gone on missions. Another of the Japanese elders is 27 years old--he was less active for a time then decided to get his act together and come on a mission. He is a humble and effective zone leader. We have a Senior Sister who is on her second mission--the first was to Brazil back in the late 60's. She married an American and they raised a lovely family. He died and she decided she wanted to come on a mission to her homeland. So here she is, one of the hardest working missionaries we have at a fairly advanced age. Her 18 months end this next week. I could go on and on.
Today my training and talk were completely different from yesterday. Although my Japanese is still fairly weak, I was surprised at the courage I had to go in a different direction from yesterday and talk about things that I felt they needed to hear. In some cases, the words and phrases came to me, in other cases, they didn't and I had to muddle through. I'm not exactly sure when I will have time to actually study Japanese here--it's all on-the-job training so far!
I'll end with on a somewhat humorous note, at least in retrospect. A few nights ago when we walked up the hill into the lovely park near the house, Pam stumbled a bit and hit the ground. Fortunately, she landed on her rear-end and not on bones, so there was no break or anything like that, just a mild sprained ankle. The missionariels were alarmed and she was embarrassed, but no harm, no foul. This morning as we walked from the hotel to a nearby donut shop to get treats for the conference, we were walking in front of the train station and I was looking ahead for the exact location of the donut shop. To my surprise, I found myself lying on the ground as I didn't notice a step on the plaza. I lightly sprained my ankle and fortunately landed on my right knee (the non-artificial one!). I jumped up, more embarrassed than anything. It was only after we got to the church that I noticed a hole in my suit pants. Oops! So Pam and I laughed about how we are a couple of klutz's who are having a hard time getting around. Of course, I used the incident to poke fun at myself in the conference and to remind the missionaries that it is important to pay attention to the here and now details in missionary work if we expect to attain our goals--if we are only looking way down the road to those lofty goals and don't watch where and how we are going, we may stumble and fall. Alma 37 was the reference about great things being accomplished through small means. We'll try to be more careful in the future!
Love, gr
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