Tsuyama week 2

Yeah yeah yeah so this week had some ups and downs i do suppose. Monday, actually during email last week, we got a call from one our members say he wanted to take us to see tsuyama's gundam. so we went and did that and you'll see from the pictures, that it was pretty legit. i know where to go to when Godzilla attacks tsuyama now. though really thats quite silly. godzilla would attack a much bigger city and one that was actually on the coast. not to mention that hes wouldnt like the cold here. but anyways, theres a big robot and its cool. then after P-day, we had our family-home-evening with the single adults in Tsuyama branch. that was pretty interesting. We shared a message, played a game, drew some pictures, ate some food, and i played a really awesome game of shogi with one of the members. I started off really strong and was beating him but then he started fighting like a freaking lion i swear. he just wouldnt go down. we actually ran out of time before we could finish but the activity was a good way to strengthen some of our members. next day, we headed over to Aeon mall for some "mall-dendo" (basically just talking to people at a mall). which is usually pretty hard for a lot of missionaries myself and elder nuttall included. something about starting casual conversations about the gospel in a mall is difficult. but we were actually able to do it pretty successfully that day. we had a 20 minute long conversation with this guy named Iria and he was way tight. we exchanged contact info and later that night, he mailed us saying he wanted to get some food sometime so we're going to meet him and his friend on saturday. We are a little worried that his plan is to take us to a bar to pick up some chicks or something but if thats the case, we'll turn it into a teaching oportunity. thats like the word of wisdom and law of chastity in one right there. we also talked to another cool cat by the name of Niki who said he was interested in eikaiwa and actually showed up that night for the class. from what ive hear, they usually have around 5-7 students at eikaiwa here, but on tuesday, for whatever reason, we had 10. and it was my first week and things were a little chaotic. i dont think we made a super great impression on some of the people who were coming for the first time, but hopefully they'll come again. Im not super worried about it.

Then wednesday up till saturday, the mission had its leadership training thing which i didnt go to but my companion did which meant that i was sent to an area called Kurashiki to hang out with two elders by the names of Elders Nakamura and McGuire. And actually I've done exchanges with Mcguire before since we were in the same district when i was in Kakogawa. I dont like Elder McGuire a whole lot. my previous exchanges with him were... rough for lack of a better word. but I was able to live through 3 days with him this time without doing anything too rash. though i did almost snap when he was explaining to me the science behind those stupid powerbalance bracelets. ooohhh. anyways i guess that means my patience has leveled up since my first transfer. so thats good and stuff. Friday night, though, one of Kurashiki's awesome members took us out to visit lessactives and then to this awesome all-you-can-eat yakiniku place and it was insanely delicious and i almost died i ate so much. then on saturday, we went with a bunch of our eikaiwa students to another all-you-can-eat yaki-niku place! and i ate so much i almost died again. That whole thing was planned by one of our investigators, Joutani-san and it was good to be able to meet and talk with him.

Then yesterday wasnt super great. the flu is apparently going around in Tsuyama and there was hardly anyone at church. maybe 10-15 people. and after church we went around and visited various less-actives and potential investigators and all of our visits just didnt quite work out as we had hoped. it was a bit of a bummer. but next week is a new week and im excited it should be a good one.

sorry this email is a bit long. sometimes i have to stop myself from typing unnecessary things. sometimes i type them anyways.

hope everyone is genki!

love,

Elder Horton

ホートン長老

写真

１。ガンダム

Transferred to Tsuyama

Yup I'm now residing in a very cold area by the name of tsuyama. President said in interviews that he was going to send me to a bigger area where i could see more lessons and whatnot. the area is definitely bigger. not really so much in the way of being more urban like i thought he meant. land mass didnt seem like the topic of that conversation. But Tsuyama is more urban than Ako. But we definitely don't seem to be seeing more lessons here. They didnt find one investigator last transfer so we are already doing a lot of finding. So i guess president had a change of heart or forgot about me. But actually, I'm quite happy about it. One of my MTC teachers, Bishoff-sensei served here for like 6 months and he told us some things about here while i was in the MTC. that and my good friend Elder Burhoe served here for 3 transfers before he went to Himeji so ive heard a lot of stuff about the place. Its not the greatest area, but im really quite happy to be here. unlike my last area, i wouldnt mind staying here for 3 or 4 transfers i think. But yeah it is very cold. yesterday i got to experience my nose hairs freezing which brought me back to my winter at BYU. 'cept at that time, i had a mustache which froze too. And this city is waaayyyy spread out. theres about 100,000 people living here from what one of the members here told me, but there arent really any big building or places people gather because everything is so far away. So it makes talking to people a little difficult. There isnt a ward here, its another branch with around 30-35 people coming to church. but the members are all really nice. its not the greatest area. aparently most missionaries before me havent liked it, but i think its good.

My new companion is a Elder Nuttall. I dont have a lot of time so ill just say he's kind of like a spiritual version of Jon VanWagonen. He keeps life interesting and its pretty relaxing to have a companion who i can speak english to. But ill miss Hasegawa. we had a lot of good times.

So as for what happened this week, we didnt do much other than look for people and introduce me to various members and less actives we visit. Saturday, we had a Nabe party where we got to eat some pretty tasty food and yesterday, we visited the hittori family. they have two kids at home who are both returned missionaries so they were fun to talk to. it was a fun visit and we actually ate good food.

again, I'm pretty short on time so i may have to cut it here. Tsuyama is pretty cool and way cold. im excited to be here though. You'll here more from future emails i guess. hope im not forgetting anything too important...

hope youre all genki

love,

Elder Horton

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...)

Christmas in Ako weeks 9 &10

Yeah didn't get to email last week because P-day got moved to Christmas and we didn't email on christmas. So yeah ill try my best to summarize two weeks but I'm gonna forget a lot of stuff. Christmas week was super busy. we had Zone conference, our ward Christmas party, or special Christmas Eikaiwa, and Christmas in Himeji with everyone. Zone conference was pretty cool getting to see people and hear from pres. they tried to tell stories and stuff to make it seem like being a missionary during Christmas is super awesome to try to make people not homesick and stuff i guess. I wasn't really homesick before but the stories had the kind of opposite effect. but then i forgot about that real quick. our ward Christmas party was weird. i mean i guess it was good. but all the 'acts' or whatever you call them were just strange. I have a video of one that i wish i could send because words truly cant describe. but all in all it was a good time. then after, we all ate curry and the most delicious and moist cake Ive ever dreamed of. and we got to chill and talk to some nonmembers like my eikaiwa student, Kyougoku-shimai's daughter who might be coming to eikaiwa some time. So yeah that was pretty good. As for Our Christmas Eikaiwa, not so good. it was alright but really it went about how i imagined. but its all good i suppose. after our ward Christmas party, we hitched a ride with a member living in Himeji(we were riding in the back of his truck with all sorts of random tools and stuff) and started our exchange with them. So Akina and I chilled on Christmas eve until it was time for Himeji's Eikaiwa which was mixed with a ward activity where we all went out and sang Christmas carols. that was fun but it was dark and i couldn't read the music which made it hard to sing. i just hummed the tune when i couldn't see though. i dont have the Japanese Christmas songs memorized yet unfortunately. then on the way back from caroling, we had a Christmas miracle! it snowed! i was way confused. i thought it was like pollen from trees or something at first because there weren't really any clouds or anything and its not normal for it to snow in this part of the mission. it normally just gets really really cold and then rains (which is what its doing right now). but that was fun. i was filled with christmas spirit and stuff. Then we the district all spent the night at Himeji's apartment and had a little christmas program, timtam slammed, and hung out on christmas and i got to talk to the family which was aight i guess haha.

After christmas, it was a little hard to get back into the swing of things, but this last week was all business besides saturday. We spent a lot of time trying to visit people but lots of people are gone or busy for the holidays so we didnt have much success. But last week, our indonesian investigator, Ryan, did come to church though i dont think she understood much. after, I taught her a lesson about the restoration and the book of mormon and all that good stuff. But its really hard to speak English when I'm teaching or even praying and stuff. Ive just gotten so used to doing that in Japanese, that the English isn't natural anymore. I had thought the lesson went all right, but we haven't been able to get in touch with her since then so I'm a little worried. I guess time will tell with that one. We were also able to meet with an investigator who was a referral from a member, Tomiyama-san. That meeting went pretty well she made friends with one of our members and we explained about our purpose and about God and families and we should be meeting again soon. Its just a little difficult because she lives in Aioi, which is another city in our area we cant really get to by bike. so we have to take the train which is okay i guess but we don't really get all that much money and we'll run out fast if we have to go to Aioi a couple times a week. Oh wells, we'll figure that one out too. That's about as much as there is in terms of investigators for Ako right now.

But then Saturday, for the new years, we had a Sports Conference(? that might not translate right but you get the idea) where most of the missionaries in the mission get together and play sports since its impossible to talk to anyone on the first day of the year anyways here. So all my past companions and all the Elders from my MTC district who came to Kobe were there. it was way fun to see everyone and play around a bit. dodgeball was way intense with that many people. and i got to watch kungfu panda in Japanese which was pretty intense too. lots of vocabulary i didn't know, but it was funny. So that was also way fun and kind of a once a year thing where we get to just play for a whole day. So yeah that's about whats been going on up in Japan for me. ill post some pictures. love you everyone,

Elder Horton

ホートン長老

2. aioi

3. ako

1. christmas party. hasegawa a funny one.

4. basically says "Christ takes and erases sin." bad translation but i dont know.

5. MTC buddies reunited.

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