Week 75

Hello!!

This week we got transfer calls and I've been asked to leave Iwaki. But I'm really grateful for the time that I've been privileged to spend here. I was here for four transfers, or six months in normal people time units. I've learned a lot from my time here and come to love a lot of people here. Some of the things that I appreciate the most about Iwaki are these: The Sisters in the branch sometimes have cute little arguments (this actually only happened once but it was pretty fun) about who gets to take the missionaries out to eat on pday, there is a member who works at Mister Donuts and frequently shares her spoils with us, we have a fantastic grocery store within three blocks of our apartment where we can comfortably purchase all of our fresh produce, we have a nearby restaurant with 540 yen lunch days on Tuesdays and Fridays, we have a rather wide selection of hills to suit my various moods and thirst for reckless speed, our mission leader recently gave us 25kg kettle bells to amp up our morning exercise, the church is within five minutes of the apartment if we're really interested in getting there quickly, we have several housing developments that I haven't had the chance to visit because our area is so big, and there is an interestingly large number of exotic supercars that can sometimes be spotted disturbing the peace in downtown Iwaki.

We also had a conference with the President of the Asia North Area. He advised us all to eat natto in order to improve our Japanese ability. Natto is fermented soybeans. I think the idea is that we'll better understand Japanese culture and have a stronger connection to Japanese people.

Have a great week!!
Elder Mitchell

Excerpts from a letter to the family. . .
Hey,

Sorry this email is a little late. I hope that everyone is doing okay. I don't have quite as many emails from family members as I normally would at this time of day. I am healthy and happy. A little bit more so since we have an investigator that took us out to eat. It was ridiculously good tonkatsu and it was pretty dang big too. It was funny because his plan was to pay for us but then his friends own the store so they paid for him. So we had a double cover for not having to pay for ourselves. :)

You may have seen the transfer post that President Sekiguchi put on Facebook the other night. I'm supposed to head to Morioka tomorrow morning. I'll be the district leader again there and I'll have ten people in my zone. I'll have two of the four APs in the mission, my companion and I, a sister currently on a plane on her way to Japan and her trainer, a sister who finished her mission in Tokyo South and is here to help with an odd number of sisters in the mission and her comp, and then the Elders in Miyako where I served for two transfers with Elder Reber who is still not married. I'm not quite sure why that is.

I just told mom I'd have this done in three minutes so it's wrap-up time.

We had a conference with Elder Choi who is the area president of the Asia North area. He's a pretty cool dude. He was a bodyguard for the Korean president or something like that. He spent some time telling us how we need to all eat natto in order to get good at Japanese. Natto is fermented soybeans. But since he promised blessings I plan to eat more natto in the remainder of my time here in Japan. That will be fun.

I love you the most,
Benny Boy