Week 73

This week was pretty good. We had some ZL splits and they also crashed our DTM. They stayed for three nights so they could make all that happen and get in some splits with the other Iwaki Elders too. They usually like to get splits with all of the District Leaders and all of the new missionaries which qualified both of the companionships in my apartment. It was pretty fun. Our Zone Leaders are really funny. But I don't have any pictures with them from splits. Sorry. I'm not very good at getting pictures.

We also had a service day. It was fun. We got to hop in a car with a member and they drove us to Bandai. I think it's a volcano. Anyway, there's a place there that gets used by the members for youth conferences and missionary conferences and stuff like that so we went and cleaned it for a few hours. It was almost all of the missionaries from my zone and a few members from a few different branches. I think it started as something focused more on members but somehow all of the missionaries ended up getting invited too. The only picture I have is the one of just the missionaries.

We have a mission conference coming up pretty soon which will be visited by Elder Choi who is the Asia North Area President over the missions in Japan and Korea and maybe some other places. Japan is the most important one. :) We're supposed to learn how to sing Called to Serve in Korean because that's Elder Choi's native language. I'm not very good at singing. Singing even in English is pushing it. Japanese is a little bit worse. And I don't know how they think I'm going to sing in Korean. It should be fun though.

I've been reading in Mosiah lately. This may not be the most profound realization, but I've come to appreciate the importance of running away. There are three pretty good examples of people packing up and leaving in Mosiah. The first one is Alma taking his 450 people that he just baptized and heading off into the wilderness before King Noah's army gets to them. Then there's King Limhi sending a bunch of wine to the Lamanites standing guard over them as a present and leaving in the middle of the night while they're all passed out. And finally Alma picking up and bouncing again after the Lamanites find them and break a deal. We, like the people of Mosiah, may have things in our lives that seem unsurmountable. But it's not always required of us to square up and fight. Sometimes we can go for a change of scenery and find a place where our trials don't mean anything anymore.

Have a great week!!
Elder Mitchell