Still inTsuyama

So I have a new companion right now! And who could it be other than my good friend from the MTC, Elder Warner! We were in the same district in the MTC so its just like old times. He went to the Tokyo mission though so we never would have thought we could work with each other but then there was this big earthquake and stuff and to make a long story short, he's hanging out with me in Tsuyama. So we were getting ready for this already shorted transfer due to the week long delay, but then last night, we got a call from the Zone leaders who informed us that the Tokyo missionaries are going back at some point before the transfer ends. So apparently my time with Elder Warner will be cut a bit short, and i dont know what will happen with Tsuyama when he leaves but for the time being, im excited to be working with him.

Elder Warner and I were able to have some pretty good lessons this week after sending Elder Nuttall off. One with this High schooler we found a few weeks ago by the name of Maeda. He's 16 and is interested in Christianity but he lives with his grandparents who are very strong Bhuddists who would throw a Book of Mormon or any pamplets they found away. So he didn't take a book of mormon. And basically he says that he wants to convert to christianity when he is an adult but until then, its impossible. a bit of a bummer.

Then we had a lesson with Sakamoto-san. We decided to review lesson 1 because we don't think he understood it at all. Normally during the lessons, he just sits there and listens and doesnt get involved at all, but this time we would ask questions to see if he understood at all and he didnt like that. He got angry and ended the lesson. Basically, he doesnt have any real intention on changing anything about his life despite how unhappy he is with it. Its sad but thats the case with a lot of the people you talk to. So at first that was a bit of a bummer but really, we were wasting time with him anyways.

Then Yesterday we had church and I gave my third talk of my time in Tsuyama. this one about the importance of preparation. I shared the story of the ten virgins and then busted out Alma 41:5-8 where it talks about the endless night of darkness and choosing good in this life and whatnot and tied it all in. I thought it went pretty well. And our branch was unusually genki. Then we had a lesson with Kajioka, another investigator from a while back. He's heard all the lessons but has struggles with faith, so we read Alma 32 with him. He's a really deep thinker and fun investigator to teach so I think he'll like that chapter as he studies it in more detail.

So Sunday was a good day. Its because i was wearing my lucky tie.

But yeah this week should be cool. we have an exchange with the traveling Assistants to the president so we should be able to learn a lot.

So thats life at the moment. hope everyone's doing alright in the States!

Love,

Elder Horton

 

Tsuyama week 13-last week in Tsuyama

View from my apartment

From the sounds of it we will be getting calls about transfers tomorrow morning. So hopefully something cool will be going down. we'll see.

Last week was pretty cool. we finally got to finish conference, which was legit. There were some way good talks that you all heard like a month ago.

And we had a lesson with Jotani-san who has been an investigator for some-odd 2 years or so. He was actually found by my sensei at the MTC, Bishoff-sensei. but anyways, he has been an investigator for a really long time now, but for the most part he hasnt been able to grasp much about the importance of our message or anything like that. But During our lesson, we talked a lot about the after life and about how it relates to us and our ancestors and what kinds of things we do for our ancestors. He, being a bhuddist and a Japanese man, was able to relate to that pretty well. He wanted to meet with us again the next day and seemed pretty anxious to read whatever we assigned him. So we assigned Alma 34 (because its awesome and my companion thought it talked more about the spirit world than it did) and we ended up teaching him about the Atonement the next day. I think he is finally starting to understand! its nice to have a progressing investigator.

I'm sure we did some other things throughout the week but i changed my planner out and i dont remember what they were. Probably lots of knocking on doors in addition to the things we do on a weekly basis.

Hope everyone is doing well. I heard from emails that easter is this next weekend. i had no idea. also when's mother's day?

love,

Elder Horton

Pictures

I got a new camera in the package from home, so i had to take some pictures to try it out. nothing fancy just stuff near our apartment

panoramic(looklolilol)

Tsuyama week 12

Last week for our Family home evening with the lonely single adults of Tsuyama branch, I taught them all that stick game i learned from Katie like 10 years ago that i'm super ridiculously good at. it looks like this:
l
l l
l l l
l l l l
l l l l l
kind of.
When i was planning it out in my head, i was like, "Ok, ill go easy on them and let them win a few times." but that didnt work out at all. I ended up just DESTROYING everyone over and over and i couldnt stop! haha but they played against eachother and i think they all had fun. i even taught them a secret or two and now they're pretty good. but yeah it was fun.
we had interviews with president, which went well i suppose. There are pictures on the mission blog from that. we got easter cookies which were wayy delicious. set up an appointment with a previous investigator, Yamamoto Yumie, who seems way nice from the phone call i had with her. we should be meeting this thursday. and we had a lesson with Sakamoto-san who talked to us about faith and turned out to be pretty good. he still isnt progressing very quickly, but he'll get there eventually.
we also had a lesson with Jotani-san which our ward mission leader attended. we started out with a pretty simple review of lesson 1, the restoration, but half way through, our mission leader, took over the whole thing and taught Jotani lesson 1, 2 and parts of lesson 3 all in about 20 minutes. So that was a bit of a mess. He doesnt think we have any idea how to teach which is pretty obvious by the the fact that he is always trying to give us training. its quite frustrating. So this next week, We'll be cleaning up that mess with Jotani-san. Saturday, we were supposed to watch General conference at the church in english in a separate room from everyone. thats what our branch prez told us anyways. but we get there and theres only one TV and they were watching it in Japanese. We didnt want to watch in Japanese partly because its much cooler to hear their real voices and partly because its really hard to be understanding japanese like that for 6 hours. So we decided to go out and Dendo that day and we still have to watch all the saturday stuff from Conference at some point this week. We went to Okayama on sunday so we hear the sunday sessions. Really liked Richard G Scott's talk.
As for transfers, its looking like they've been cancelled for this week because of earthquake related difficulties. we might be having them next week or we might not be having them at all. if we dont have them, ill be with elder nuttall for a third transfer. Please pray that we have them!
We also got the chance this week to go see the Sakura trees with Jotani-san and i took a picture or two, so I'll send those.
hope everyone is genki!
love,
Elder Horton

Cookies from Sister McIntyre at Interviews

Tsuyama 11

There are no pictures because Marc's camera is broken and He is waiting to get one in the mail!

This week. Last sunday, a bird pooped on my bike seat. and on monday we played monopoly at our single adults family home evening. the monopoly set at the church is anime themed so its extra exciting. plus i get to learn the japanese words for property and monopoly etc. Tuesday I had another companion exchange with Elder Lee which was fun and i learned a lot. He's a really good missionary and i always pick up some good tricks from working with him. Then Wednesday we did our reading activity and we read that book about that lazy mouse named fredrick who was a poet and he didnt even know it. I forget the title. Thursday, we got haircuts at the hair salon located directly under our apartment. The guy who does them is a previous investigator and is really freaking cool. afterwards we read Ether 12:27 together and i told him he should read Alma 34 because its awesome. Plus I got probably the best haircut I've ever gotten (no offense mom) for a fraction of the price he usually takes! I was happy. Friday, we had a really good district meeting and practiced teaching. Saturday we had a lesson with Sakamoto-san and we taught him the word of wisdom and read out of Mosiah 4. He wouldnt commit to keeping the word of wisdom probably because he doesn't have a real testimony in God so we'll keep working on that. Then this sunday, I fasted a little bit too hard and lost the ability to do just about anything so after church, i was recovering in the apartment. I went to Okayama 3 times this last week, which takes about 3 hours there and back so I actually spent a lot of time on trains. Which is fine because who doesnt like trains? And the rest of our time was pretty much spent knocking on doors. So we're keeping busy.
Soon the Sakura should be blooming. they're apparently a little slow this year, But the Japanese really love their Sakura trees. Everyone just gets a little happier this time of year. I'm excited to see them.
Yay!
Love,
Elder Horton

Tsuyama 10

This week from monday to wednesday morning, i had a companion exchange with Elder Pipkin in Okayama. It was super fun. Elder Pipkin is a gentleman and a scholar and working with him was a pleasure. He's one of the missionaries who got evacuated to our mission from Tokyo so it was pretty interesting to see the differences in style of our Dendo, but I learned a lot. It would be sweet if i got the chance to work with him in the future but that kind of depends on when all the Tokyo missionaries are heading back. Wednesday, Elder Nuttall was sick so we weren't able to get much done, though we did get to go do our reading activity at the library. I read Grandma baba's busy night and Madaline. it was good times. Thursday we had a pretty good member lesson with the Hisamune family. then the rest of the week we had some ups and downs. Friday night, we had our appointment with the investigator we found last week, Hiromi, who listened to the plan of salvation, but afterwards told us about how our devotion to our religion inspired her to be a better bhuddist and now she doesn't want to meet with us. so that was a bummer. Saturday, we went out and tried to visit a bunch of people and most everyone wasnt home. We did get to talk to an investigator, Kasumi who we had an appointment with like 2 weeks ago but we weren't able to make it to because of some miscommunication. We tried to call and cancel but they didnt pick up. Anyways, Kasumi was actually pretty upset at us. she said her and two of her friends had been waiting to hear our message with questions about the Book of Mormon. Thats some pretty hard news for a missionary to hear. So we tried to set up another appointment, but she said she was busy. We arent giving up, but I was quite unhappy about the whole thing. But we did have a good lesson with a past investigator, Kajioka, who was way cool. we're going to see if we cant get him back on his way. He said he'd come to church on the 3rd of April. And yesterday, we were able to get one of our less actives, Kawai Hiromi-shimai to church. we were stoked about that. she came with her boyfriend and he kind of seems like a tool, but we were happy to see her there. Then lastly we had a good member lesson with the Hattori family. their 26 year old son is the second councilor in the branch presidency and he hasnt been to church in 5 or 6 weeks. So we're a little worried about that.

So thats whats going on in Tsuyama, in case you were wondering.

Love,

Elder Horton

Tsuyama week 9

Kind of embarassing but i just this week realized that the Kanji in for the 'Tsu' in 'Tsuyama' and 'Tsunami' are the same. huh.

So Yeah there has been a bit more aftershock from the earthquake and whatnot. During the earthquake, there was a nuclear plant near Sendai that was damaged and is right now leaking radiation. Basically, because the reactor is unstable, the people up top were like "Get out of there, she's gonna blow!" and closed the Sendai and Tokyo missions. To my readers (aka mom and dad) it might not seem like a big deal, but it kind of is to a missionary in japan. The Kobe mission took in 45 missionaries from the Tokyo mission. In order to make room for them, all missionaries that were scheduled to go home in the next 3 months were sent home on friday and areas all over the mission opened up and got extra missionaries packed in. Since my area is pretty in the middle of nowhere, i was relatively uneffected. So things were a little chaotic, but now things are back to normal. Assuming the reactor doesnt explode, the Tokyo missionaries will probly be heading back soon enough. and if it does explode, my guess is that ill be finishing my mission in the states. So pray or cross your fingers whatever your fancy may be that it doesnt explode.

Our work was pretty good this week. We taught Lesson 2 to Sakamoto-san and commited him to baptism pretty hard but he wont set a date. so for now we're going to work on strengthening his faith and understanding. He'll get baptized some day, it just might long after ive left Tsuyama unfortunately. We found some pretty interesting investigators who we'll be meeting next week and a really nice girl named Hiromi who we taught lesson 1 to on friday night. she is bhuddist like most people in japan and doesnt have much intention to change right now, but she's interested in our message and if she'll read the book of mormon and pray, then we could be in business. It was a good week and i dont really have time. I'm heading over to Okayama for a couple days for a companion exchange. I'll be working with an Elder Pipkin who is a missionary who just got here from Tokyo. so maybe ill get to see some new styles of dendo. im excited.

Cool well i think thats all!

love you, everyone!

Elder Horton

Tsuyama week 7&8

Week 8-

Yeah so I got emails from just about everyone expecting to hear something cool because of the earthquake. I'm really sorry to disappoint, but I actually didn't feel anything from where I'm at. The quake was actually very far away and Tsuyama is too far from the coast to be anywhere near danger of Tsunami. But i really appreciate everyone's concern. You all know more about the quake than I do, but from what I have heard by way of mouth, it was pretty freaking bad. So keep the people of the Sendai area in your thoughts and prayers and stuff. thanks.

So really this week was pretty normal for me. We had some lessons with some of our investigators and less actives. which all went really well. We talked to Hiromi-chan who is a less active who served a mission in the temple square mission, so she speaks english and teaches a childrens english class. We asked if we could do anything to help her and she said it'd be cool if we'd come visit her class. so we did. it was way fun and afterwards, we talked to two of the kid's moms who both said they wanted to try and come to church sometime. We also visited one of our PI's, Yamamoto Kemi-san who said that she had been reading the book of mormon we had given her and that it was easy to understand. which is unheard of coming from a Japanese person. It usually takes a very very long time before people can understand the scriptures very well here. Probably because she has a Catholic background. which is also rare, but we set up an appointment with her and probably her friend, Oyagi Kasumi-san as well for tomorrow. should be good.

This coming week, Elder Nuttall is going out for some training so its going to be me and my junior from the MTC, Elder Randall, tearing it up. Its gonna be legit and stuff.

So life goes on as usual for us in Tsuyama. sorry for another boring email.

Love,

Elder Horton

Week 7

Yeah so last monday, we went to Okayama to hang out as a district and see Okayama castle. it was pretty cool i got to wear a totally manly kimono. That was good times. we thought it would be the last time we could do it because we figured half the district would tranfer that week but as it would turn out, nobody did with the exception of Sister Etchu. So I'm still with Elder Nuttall in Tsuyama. First time I'll be staying with a companion for more than one transfer. Then after getting transfer calls, I started feeling really sick so I was like "I hope i dont get sick, better drink some orange juice." so i drink half a carton of OJ and soon im throwing up everything in my stomache and in a whole lot of pain. It got pretty bad, so we had to cancel Eikaiwa and our Ward mission leader came over and took us to the hospital. Somehow they found out i drank orange juice and they were all freaking out. Its aparently a very bad idea. i hear the nurses talking, all like "Didnt his parents ever teach him anything?" etc etc. So i learned my lesson. dont drink orange juice when your stomache doesnt feel good. They pumped me full of a couple good meals worth of vitamins and minerals and stuff through and IV and gave me some pills. After that, the rest of the week was spent recovering in the apartment unfortunately. We started feeling better and got out a little bit yesterday and the day before but we didnt accomplish much. I think we'll be fine from here on out though. So yeah kind of a bummer. But i figuered i have to go to the hospital atleast once on my mission. that and i had to wear a kimono atleast once. got two things off my list this week!

love,

Elder Horton

PS. If you want better pictures, give me money to buy a better camera. in the mean time, blame mom.

never mind its out of batteries or something. pictures will have to wait till next week.

Nevermind, im stupid, here are the pictures.

1. Okayama Castle

2. my ohime wave

3. kimono was hot