AKO Week 8

Hey, this week was cool. Monday was a pretty normal Preperation day. just normal stuff though we did head over to the church to help set up for the open house thing the members were going to be doing for the Matsuri (festival) the next day. The Matsuri was way fun. The missionaries from the other areas in my district came up to Ako to hang out and talk to people. So everyone in the district got to know eachother a bit. from what we hear, 70,000 people came from all over to see the matsuri. since Ako's population is around 50,000, we talked to a lot of people who weren't from around here which made it hard to set up and appointments or anything. but we were able to set up two which was good exept the both fell through it seems. But what are you gonna do. I took some pictures and stuff of the parade a bit but i mostly took videos of the cool stuff like the samurai fight which i cant really send through the mass emails. so you'll have to wait a year or two for those. but ill send what i can i guess. anyways, it was a lot of fun but i didnt get to buy any of the cool snacks or anything i saw at all the stands and whatnot because we were too busy. i really wanted a princess crepe. so bad... oh well.

after the matsuri, we went and played some basketball for a little sports dendo. i suck at basketball. but im getting better. ill get there eventually if we keep going. like the ping pong activity we have with some members here. ive gotten crazy good at ping pong. same thing with basketball right? probly not.

Wednesday was cool too. President decided he wanted to give our district some special training so we headed over to himeji for that. he gave us a lot of good ideas and stuff for how to work more effectively but the whole thing was in english so i dont know how much Hasegawa got out of it. then after the training, we had to hurry back for Eikaiwa(english conversation class for those who forget) which was fun. we did self introductions for Hasegawa since it was his first week and then wrote letters to santa. I asked for a Robot and the moon and a new tie. Next week we're having our special christmas eikaiwa which hopefully wont suck!

Thursday was pretty boring until night time when we were housing but then got a little distracted by a mysterious building, so we went to check it out and next thing we knew, we were on a pretty freaky adventure. it was like halloween in december. i wont go into details, but it was cold and dark and we kept stumbling into creepsy graveyards and bhuddist shrines. it was fun though. fun things like that didnt exist last transfer.

I honestly have no idea what we did on friday. I assume we went housing or something. but i do remember that i ate donuts and chocolate milk for breakfast, goldfish for lunch, and a big mac(which was only ￥200) and more donuts. I love me some mister donuts. Then saturday, we dendo'd and we had our ping pong activity.

This is getting long, but sunday morning was pretty crazy. we went and cleaned the church in the morning, then we headed over to a less active family's house and shared a message with them, then we had that meeting where we talk about missionary stuff. i have no idea what its called in english. then before church we were supposed to go with the indonesian girl we found, Ryan, to church. but we got there and she had been partying the night before and had a hang over so she wasnt coming. that was a bummer but we'll visit some other time. then church was church, we had to give talks and we pounded the members pretty hard on getting their own missionary efforts started. didnt really intend to but it came out that way. after church, we had rehersals for the stuff that we're going to be doing for the christmas party next week. the primary kid's little skit thing is sooo funny. pretty much everything they do is hilarious to me. they're funny kids. after that was a pretty normal night. i ate mashed potatoes and meat for dinner. just like old times.

Sorry this email was so long. next week is way busy with christmas and zone conference and all so next week might be long too. the week after that might be short though.

hope everyone is GENKI in the states.

Love,

Elder Horton

ホートン長老

ps can someone tell me my blood type? people always ask and i never know. Its apparently a big deal to people here.

pps my SD card is full on my camera. send me a new camera or something.

Ako week 7 New companion!

New companion! woo! Elder Kodama transfered out to Sakai and an Elder by the name of Hasegawa took his place. Yeah another Japanese companion. I've been speaking a lot of Japanese as of late. but its been really good for me. the members tell me my japanese is as good as some missionaries who have served their two years and are going home. which sometimes is a really good compliment, but ive heard plenty of missionaries who are getting close to going home who have pretty aweful japanese. so if they're comparing me to them, its not super flattering. But regardless, I'm getting better. I talk pretty fast and fluently now, which makes a problem because I can speak much better than i can hear which is opposite from most people. But in consequense, people hear me talk and think im fluent or something and start talking really fast and i cant understand a whole bunch of what they say. Its a bit troublesome at times. but listening will come in time. in the mean time, my English is suffering, in case you havent noticed from reading my letters. i try to make it sound all right and i end up correcting a lot of my sentances after i finish them. I didnt really mind all that much before because i figured all i needed english for was teaching Eikaiwa but then yesterday, we housed into a girl from indonesia who spoke much better english than japanese so i ended up doing the contact in english. and i must say it was some pretty aweful english. i wouldnt have thought i was a native speaker if i had heard that contact as a third party. but she became and investigator anyway. We're going to meet her before church next week and go together and teach a lesson after. That should be pretty good her name is Ryan (she probly spells it differently.)

But anyways, back to my companion, Hasegawa is pretty tight. he has good people skills so things are going to go a lot more smoothly than last transfer. Also he was my sempai in the MTC so i knew him from way back then. right now he's senior companion but I've actually been a missionary for longer since nihonjin dont spend 12 weeks in the MTC. But its way cool to be working with a young missionary as my companion. We're going to tear things up this transfer.

So last week was pretty cool. we met with a less active member from italy, Rafael (sp?). but he's way legit. he is from italy but served a mission in britain so he speaks english, though i didnt speak any english with him just japanese because his japanese is really really good. he is here right now getting a doctorate degree in Japanese. So i like listening to him talk because hes not native so he doesnt slur words as much but he uses some really awesome grammar patterns and whatnot. and hes a huge weeaboo hehe. id probly hang out with him after the mission. Then we had transfers and Hasegawa came on over. We ate at our branch president's house and it was one of those times where i was forcing myself to stomache what they put in front of me. i ate Eel, Oyster, and shellfish. shellfill was alright i guess. but i really dont like oysters or eel. gross stuff. i just wanna eat curry.

But yeah thats about all for this week i guess. hopefully things will be picking up soon so i can see something happen in ako. this week theres a big matsuri, or festival, that 100,000 people are expected to come to so the elders from himeji and kakogawa are going to come and work here for that. it should be really cool. im excited. ill try to take some pictures.

Love,

Elder Horton

ホートン長老

Pictures are going to be the a picture of Hasegawa and I from the MTC. (pretty old so im way cooler by now). and the poster being displayed outside our church for our chirstmas party. Hasegawa says its inappropriate but i like it haha. either way its pretty funny to have that hanging in the church.

Ako week 6

Its the last P-Day of the transfer so we're about to head over to kakogawa and party it up with the other elders in the district. apparently theres this really cool all you can eat yaki-niku place i didnt know about when i was there that we're going to go hit up. should be more good times. the elders in my district are way legit right now... with a couple exceptions hehe. But yeah so I'll be trying to make this short. this week was pretty good i guess. it went by fast. Monday and Tuesday were my exchange with Escalante and lets just leave it at that we had a lot of fun. Hopefully things work out with transfers tomorrow that we'll get to work together again. yeah so then on wednesday, we had Eikaiwa and the Kobayashi family came so we had 5 people there in all. new record! Since my companion is Japanese, Ive been teaching Eikaiwa all by myself all transfer and let me just say i teach a pretty mean english class. I'm going to include a picture of the white board after this weeks class(yeah i wrote all that ugly japanese too). usually I actually write more but i just thought the stuff we talked about was pretty funny this week. Then Thursday, we headed over to a different city in our area, Tatsuno where we walked around and tried to visit some less-actives with no luck. but I did take another picture. Friday was district meeting which was cool then normal stuff after that until now. So tomorrow is transfer calls and im pretty stoaked to see what happens. I feel like something crazy could happen. well crazy to me, it doesnt really effect any of you that much. but tomorrow is also matt's birthday(in japan)! so everyone wish him happy birthday. Let's see other than that, just that I'll be calling the family on christmas which is Christmas eve's night for everyone in the states. so if you're in the family, mark your calendars.

Love,
Elder Horton