Saved from our own folly by a screaming obaachan!

dear family, 
 
still no call for ali huh? I guess that will put an end to my checking the mail 
religiously 18 times a day to see if she wrote. dont tell me though cuz she 
insists she is sending a tape when she gets her call. hopefully she wont forget 
to hit record like i did haha. 
 
and no...it will not put an end to my checking 18 times a day...if you dont have 
hope, what do you have? hee hee 
 
this week was full of hilarious experiences...and few investigators. but we are 
getting close! Tanzawa san is progressing now. Shes a very VERY quiet person and 
getting her to keep committments is kinda hard but from reading the progress 
record the past missionaries have focused on changing her behavior and not so 
much her testimony so that is what we are focusing on right now. 
 
some people in the ward tell us she seems like she mayhave a history of abuse 
but from what she tells us about home is seems like an alright place...she stays 
there often enough. she doesnt tell us much so she is like a mystery and i 
really have to focus on what questions i ask and what i can piece together from 
her answers. powell shimai says she is being a lot more open than she used to 
and i think its cuz we have got her reading the book of mormon every night. 
 
as for solving the mystery... something terrible happened to her i am sure... 
and she is on a hunt for something spiritual to give her peace. she can sit in 
the chapel for hours by herself just staring...and when i asked if there was 
anyplace in the world she would like to go she said france because she wants to 
see the cathedrals. 
 
shes is a very nice girl but terrified of men...(hence the ward members 
assumption) and so getting her to sacrament meeting is hard. she comes to relief 
society though. She just needs time i think. we are going to start teaching her 
from lesson one next week. 
 
so that is tanzawa san. our one and only progressing investigator. 
 
on to the hilarious experience for this week. 
 
on saturday we wanted to go to fujiyoshida to visit some members. you dont get 
much contact with the missionaries when you live in the shadows of mt fuji. so 
we check the train times and head to the station only to get there and realize 
we dont have a map. so we had to go back and get it and that set us back an hour 
because of train times. 
 
powell shimai didnt think we should go but i insisted that we should stick to 
the plan and it would be ok so we prayed again and felt ok with going. we met a 
really nice girl on the way there and she really wanted to come to church. we 
exchanged phone numbers and then went to catch our train. 
 
on the train we sat down and then the girl from the street showed up and sat 
with us. we talked to her for about an hour til she had to get off. she is 
really cute...but she is only 17 and her dad is a buddhist preist....that spells 
trouble in my opinion but we will see. 
 
so we get to a random eki in the middle of nowhere and the train switches to go 
back to kofu so we run off the train and the next train isnt coming for another 
half hour. we decided to go dendo in the area and found out we were in the place 
tanzawa san said she lived (she wouldnt tell the missionaries before but now we 
know the neighborhood she lives in and it is close to the eki) so we decided to 
play detective and find tanzawa sans house. 
 
no luck so we returned to catch the train. we were now like 2 hours behind so we 
called the member we were going to meet to let her know and then...missed the 
train while we were on the phone. ayah! 
 
long story short, we ended up missing 2 more trains before getting on one way 
later than anticipated. we sat down and there was an old woman staring at us. we 
smiled and she walked toward us. we were expecting her to ask to be baptized 
right there but instead she starts yelling at us to get off the train. 
 
she was pointing to the train bound for kofu and telling us to get on that one. 
we were so confused. powell shimai tried to tell her we jsut came from kofu and 
didnt want to go back yet but she kept saying `IKENAI YO!!!` which basically 
means you cant go (by this train). 
 
we got off cuz she scared us and as the train pulled out i noticed the 
destination was not fujiyoshida but fuji. A little geography lesson for you 
all... Fuji is in the NAGOYA mission. 
 
so even though that woman had no idea where we intended to go, somehow she knew 
we shouldnt be on that train. had we stayed, we would have left the mission and 
been completely oblivious til it was too late. God loves us! He sent an obaachan 
to save us from certain doom! 
 
so we had to make a whole new back up plan, being so far from kofu made our 
original back up plan null and void so we called hosaka shimai and she picked us 
up from the eki near her house. we practiced teaching lesson three with her and 
she helped us with all our japanese questions. 
 
Of course, she wanted to feed us so we went out to house in her neighborhood 
while she made dinner. Housing was hard because they were either all obaachans 
and ojiichans who had been buddhist all their lives and dont wanna hear about 
`krisito kyo` or they were younger families that lived in `great and spacious 
buildings` (big houses...even for american houses) and certainly represented the 
pride of the world =p (see lehis vision 1 nephi 8) 
 
anyhow, we did that for about an hour and a half and then we found a neat row of 
new houses that werent so big. we knocked on one door and got it shut in our 
face (nicely) and then the next door there were 3 young girls and their mom all 
in the genkan. they were all very cute and the mom was very nice but she said 
she had no interest in religion. I jumped in with something that in english 
would sound like this `my family has the same goal through this message. it 
makes us strong. here is a pamphlet (family proclamation) uh....here` 
 
in my head i am thinking `yeah. take the pamphlet. its good. i should be telling 
you to read it or something but i cant remember my japanese so just take it! 
PLEASE!` 
 
apparently my inability to speak japanese made her think we could teach her kids 
english. she came outside and talked to sister powell while i played with the 
kids in the yard (yeah! they had a yard!). turns out the woman had grown up 
jehovahs witness and felt that her experiences were pretty miserable for a child (no 
matsuris or field days or birthday parties!) so she didnt want them to live like 
that. she thought all christian churches were like that. we assured her this was 
not the case. i like birthday parties. :)
 
anyhow, we are meeting her tomorrow. we are jsut teaching her kids english but 
we think that she will come around soon. she was very curious as to why we were 
volunteering for a year and a half and not accepting money to teach her kids. 
 
that was pretty much our horrible day which wasnt horrible at all. its the best 
day we have had this transfer! yay! 
 
now we are trying to build up our eikaiwa. there are about 5 people that come 
and they all like to go out to eat after and bash the Church. why... i dont 
know. its odd but whatever. We "made" new fliers for eikaiwa. and when i say 
made, i mean we totally plagiarized and copied off a bunch of fliers from another 
eikaiwa. which eikaiwa? Well, the fliers have a picture of a penguin teaching 
other penguins... where do you think they came from? =p 
 
unfortunately, we ran off about 100 of them before we realized the map on the 
back was a map to the church in Akita which for you who dont know is in Brittan's mission...yeaaaaaah.... that is the price we pay 
for plagarism huh? 
 
I just remember powell shimai cutting them out and then gasping and saying `THE 
WHOLE THING IS DAME! (messed up) haha...the look on her face. oh man. it was priceless. 
 
if anyone sees brittan, tell him thanks for his help with eikaiwa haha. 
 
thanks for all the packages mom! elder morris will be very happy haha. 

 
also, if it isnt too much to ask... powell shimais camera is broken and she goes 
home next transfer (to her surprise but that is another story) so there isnt 
much point in her parents buying another camera. but i told her we might have an 
old one laying around somewhere that she could use if my old one isnt in use or 
something? She is kinda lonely without pictures. 
 
yeah, i am going to be a serial killer...i am on to killing my second companion. 
she got a call from the honbu telling her she had to go home next transfer cuz 
president hill just got his hand slapped for letting us all extend at the end of 
our missions. heh. powell shimai is pretty bummed cuz you can extend if your 
ministerial certificate expiry date is within 30 days of the next transfer 
ending. she had had the option of extending and going home christmas eve but 
that falls 31 days after her certificate runs out. she is pretty bummed... 
 
well, that is all the news. i did get the package and thank you! unfortunately 
peachy season is over...sad day! but i am excited to make grape jelly instead! 
 
thanks for everything! love you and miss you! 
 
Love, 
sister halliday