Week 11 &12

Pictures

1. ping pong people

2. At the Indo-curry place

3. thats how I roll

4. NATTOO

Jan 16
This week was pretty normal i guess because i cant really remember what we did. I guess in addition to our normal work, we played basketball a bit. i scored a basket. the crowd loves me. we had our Eikaiwa class this week and 30 minutes past 7:00, nobody was there so i thought nobody would show, but then 3 people all showed up 30 minutes late. it was a stand alone complex or something. but yeah it was cool because all the students were pretty high level in english so i was able to teach pretty normally without having to hold back or always be translating. probly the funnest eikaiwa ive had in Ako. Thursday, we had service at the old folks home we go to. i got destroyed in shogi in like 10 minutes and then that old geezer had to go shower, so i went and played "trump" with a bunch of old ladies. i picked up on the rules pretty quick, but all the ladies kept forgetting them, so i had to pretty much run the whole game, but it was really funny. good times. After that we had a lesson in Aioi with one of our investigator who is also an old lady by the name of Tomiyama. She is really nice and we taught her lesson 1 about the restoration. she has questions about what happens after death and where we were before this life. Plan of salvation stuff. so shes gonna get taught a solid lesson 2 sometime soon and hopefully get those answered. I like studying Kanji a lot. the word for investigator in japanese is "kyuudousha" or by kanji, 求道者。the first kanji is the kanji for 'motomeru' or to seek. the second is the kanji for 'michi' meaning the way or truth and the third kanji means person. basically, kyuudousha means a person who seeks truth. which Tomiyama-san actually is. So shes a pretty solid investigator i think. Then friday, we had a really fun District meeting, did our predictions where everyone is going to transfer to, and went out and ate some indo-curry. it was delicious and i ate 4 things of nan. Saturday was normal and we had our ping pong activity which will probly be my last time but it was fun and ive gotten pretty dang good at ping pong. And yesterday we went drove around with yabuuchi-kyoudai and tried to visit some people. pretty normal.

maybe next week will be more exciting. or if i dont transfer, it will probably be much more boring.

oh one more thing. At the MTC, I made a commitment to Durney-sensei to eat natto everyday for a week. I started that this week. so far ive eaten it three times. The flavor isnt horrible but the texture is not that of food. its like nasty snot or something. whenever i eat it, my hands start shaking and it makes it hard to use chopsticks. its that hard to eat. words cant describe. use google images or video or something.

Hope everyone is genki and stuff

love,

Elder Horton

ホートン長老

Jan 9

So this morning i could have sworn that Hasegawa got out of bed and told me "I'll show you how to take a short shower," except in japanese (i take long showers in the winter because our apartment is freezing). And then I said "manabimasen" which means I won't learn. But i asked him about it and he says he didnt say anything this morning. I guess it was a dream or something. Its pretty interesting dreaming in japanese. in a lot of ways my subconsious knows japanese better than the rest of my brain. like one time, I defined what "aitsu" means in a dream and i didnt know what it meant before. pretty cool i think. Having a Japanese companion really gets your brain thinking in Japanese. Its been an interesting transfer with Hasegawa. there have been some rough times but for the most part we've been able to have a lot of fun. Haha this guy has a dirty mouth, but only with english words. there have been tons of times, ive had to tell him that he cant say that word but he always says its not bad to him and says it anyways. I did get him to stop saying 'the f-word' but now he just says "F-word!" instead. its a little weird but ill take it.

Transfers are coming up next week and I would have said that we might stay together for another 6 weeks, but we had interviews with President this past week and pres says that he wants to move me to a bigger area where i can get some experience with teaching lessons and whatnot since i really havent been able to do much of that up to this point in my mission. So its looking like ill be transfering out next week, but we'll see. I still got another full week in Ako.

Last week was pretty same old same old, though we did have our exchange with Himeji. Burhoe and Akina came on over to Ako and Burhoe and I worked together for a day or so. I was just about the only time ive spoken english for an extended period of time in Ako aside from eikaiwa. But we had a really good time. Elder Burhoe is a really good missionary and he knows how to make the work enjoyable so we were able to find investigators and have fun doing it. Not many missionaries understand that you can do both of those things. Most just do one or the other. Hopefully my next companion will get that. But Burhoe and I visited our indonesian friend, Ryan who talked to the minister from the church in Toyota she was going to and now she says that what we talk about with her doesnt "click." So its kind of a shaky situation but she says shes coming to church next week and we're going to teach her the plan of salvation and all that good stuff. But other than that just a regular week. I got destroyed in Shogi by the old man at the old folks home we do service at. He is insanely good. So thats about it!

hope everyones genki!

love,

Elder Horton

ホートン長老

1. Kanji Study

2. My companion
3. I wish the weather was as nice as it looked this day

4. Video (dont know if i can but im going to try...)