Whoa, can you believe that it's already half way through March?! How in the world did that happen?
Ok, so last time I told you all that we had transfer calls and that crazy things were happening right? Ok, so now I am e-mailing from the Oita 「大分」 Ward in the Kumamoto Stake. Man, I thought that Yasufuruichi was a pain to travel in, but Oita, man, we pretty much have an entire prefecture that we are in charge of! That and we live about 20 minutes (if you hurry) from the church, all up this giant hill, with seminary each morning (yay for early morning seminary again!) I'm getting a mean set of goat legs....
Ok, so let’s start from the beginning, because this is going to be a crazy post! So, transfer calls come on Wednesday right? Okada and I both knew that we were leaving so we had already mostly packed (we still had a crazy amount of cleaning and organizing to do, though) just sort of waiting to hear where the heck we were headed. So, Okada is heading back to Okinawa on this island called Miyakojima, the very most southern part of Japan, and I get moved back to Kumamoto Stake in Oita! I don't know if you remember why Oita and I have a connection or not, but, I'll explain that one later. :D
Tuesday we made it back to the Sign Language circle put on by one of our less active members. We had to break the news to everybody about transfers, which ended up being way sad. We had made really good friends with most of the other members there and 5 weeks was just not enough to really get a good segue into the gospel, but hopefully the Sisters will take care of the rest. Now I have to see if I can find a way to keep up JSL.
From all 4 missionaries in Yasufuruichi, only Sister Mueller stayed, Elder Okada and I had most of the week to prepare to leave everybody but poor Sister Miyagawa just got the brunt of it all on Wednesday. That Eikaiwa was a special *Cooking* Eikaiwa. We made American brownies, but the challenge was that we could only speak in English. Which ended up being harder than originally planned, seeing that we had 5 students under the age of 12. We got them all cooked though, so I guess it was all good.... But at the end of Eikaiwa, we always have a spiritual thought before we close and it fell upon me this past week. I talked to them about Loving one another and the meaning of the song "Love One Another". A couple of the members were trying to tell me that they thought I was about to cry, but that's nothing compared to Sister Miyagawa; right after the closing prayer we started taking pictures with everybody and she was bawling the whole time. Man, it's hard for sister missionaries, especially when you've been in an area as long as that. But I know she'll have a great time with her new companions down in Kagoshima.
That night Okada and I still had to get the apartment ready to close, which ended up going until about 4AM! Which was way rough for the 8AM bullet train we had to catch! We were planning on meeting with one of our Eikaiwa students at about 7 for breakfast, but that just never happened, too much to do to close an apartment. Two days is just not enough to get done all we needed to (especially since we had other obligations in our area which is a half hour train ride away) Mah, we got most of it done, we'll just leave the rest to the ZLs.
On Thursday I get into Oita about 11 in the morning, crazy fast, via the train 'Sonic 9'. Oh, how I love the names in Japan! My new Companion, Elder Takahashi, is from Saitama over in the Tokyo Mission. It's been an interesting couple of days so far, but, I'm sure we'll figure out what needs to get done.
Oita is doing crazy good with missionary work. We have a baptismal interview scheduled for tomorrow and 1 more in the next couple of weeks, and if things go well with our new investigator (who I'll explain in a little bit :D) we could be looking at 3 baptisms this transfer!! One of the people looking to be baptized is the mother of one of the recent converts in the ward, and the other found the church Online; this last one that may happen, is a referral from a missionary, which, well, that hardly ever happens!
Ok, so this mystery investigator that I've been talking about, you might want to take a seat. So, I get here this past Thursday, and we set a lunch appointment for Friday with this kid named Naoya Matsuda. He did a study abroad in high school for a year, over in America … in North Carolina … at my house! Naoya is our new investigator! We ended up meeting for Lunch at the half way point from the church and his apartment (he lives about an hour away) and had lunch! It was so weird meeting him again! His hair is so long now, I hardly recognized him. We're going to see if we can meet with him on Fridays, and maybe Thursdays and, you know, maybe Sundays, too. He said that he'll start reading the Book of Mormon (from the start this time, not coming in right in the middle of it.....) and see how it goes! His English has gotten better too!
I think it's going to be good things here in Oita. The members are awesome, we're getting super sweet help from the young men's presidency (who happen to all be American!) and its going to be a good transfer, I can feel it!
Elder Everett
エベレット長老
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