Week 97

Some Sadness. . .

I got a letter from the post office the other day saying that I needed to call them because I had a package from America. It was a very short letter and there was part of it that I couldn't understand even with my handy dandy Japanese app. So I called them and tried to figure out what was up because they would normally just bring the package to me. And if I wasn't home they would leave a delivery notice, not send me a letter (they actually knocked on the door for during dinner time and gave the letter to me in person which was kind of weird too). I called and talked to a lady that wasn't too happy to talk to me and she told me that the letter was referring to itself and I should enjoy its contents. I had told her a few times that it was from her and I even read it to her. After that we decided that we had to just go in to the post office and show it to them. We did so.

We ended up going to a smaller post office that apparently isn't actually connected to the distribution center that's a bit further away in the other direction, but the nice lady there looked at the letter and called the other post office for us. She was on the phone for a few minutes too. Probably six or seven. She came back saying that there was indeed a package, but it had been damaged in transit and they wanted me to go check on it. She said that some stuff had fallen out of it. We were leaving town that night for companion exchanges. We ultimately set up for them to bring it anyway because we couldn't make it to the other post office. I was pretty surprised when my companion told them we couldn't make it because if anyone can get to the post office it's the missionaries. I didn't know exactly where it was, but it would have been hard to fix because the lady helping us out was on the phone trying to negotiate for us with her fancy post office powers. We gave them two time slots we would be home for. One for two days out, last Saturday. And another one for the next Monday which would be yesterday.

After it didn't come on Saturday I was not really interested in waiting until Monday to find out what had become of the package that I hadn't been expecting and apparently had been damaged so I was like "hey we're going to the post office to check on it like they said we were supposed to do in the first place". So we did. It was relatively close to closing time for the post office so we kind of hurried to have time for whatever was going to go down. The lady didn't know about my package. She at first told me there wasn't one. I told her to try harder (nicely) and gave her some more information that might help. I hadn't brought the letter because I thought it would be pretty easy to look up with my name and phone number. And the letter didn't say anything on it anyway. I think she ended up calling her own customer service counter with the number that I gave her. I was a little bit frustrated because no one knew where my package was and kept telling me it didn't exist. I'm not quite sure whose fault that was. Probably twenty minutes later she came back with a dude that was clearly in the mail-handling side of things. He gave me his card and told me to follow him to the other section of the building. I liked him. He was really nice.

Breakfast break. This email is quite a lot longer than I thought it might be.

We followed him outside and around to the other section, took an elevator and went through a security door. He sat us down at a table and asked for my ID so that he could bring me the package. The table was in a very large room and there were several other people working there. He came back with a brown box and a camera. He said that a lot of stuff had fallen out. He wanted to take pictures as we opened it together. Inside the brown box there was a white and red one that looked more like the kind that I've gotten packages in in the past. Except it was ripped from top to the bottom. It had a lot of post office tape that had been put there in order to close the box again. I wondered if they might have replaced some things that had fallen out. It looked like the box might have a decent amount of stuff still in it. He opened it up and showed it to me. It was 90% gone. There was a picante sauce and a few candies and granola bars. At this point it was probably a little after five when we were supposed to be setting up for a Halloween party. We sent the other missionaries a message saying that we'd be late.

He wasn't too confident in his English ability so he had me tell him everything that was supposed to be in there and we looked and counted the things that there were. There was no peanut butter. He circled that in red. There were no triscuits or hand warmers. That got circled too. We made it through the whole thing and ended with a 1 next to Picante Sauce and a 7 next to the granola bars and candies. He said that Tokyo had repackaged it and that it had been broken when it got to Japan. He would send his report and all the pictures to Tokyo who would talk to America and see what they could do. I was supposed to contact the sender of the package and let them know what had happened but he guessed that you would probably also get a call from U.S. Postal service. We barely got to the Halloween party by six when it was supposed to start. Fortunately the Sisters and our Senior couple had set everything up already.

That's most of the story. I took a couple pictures too after we finished. Just one of the box and one of what was left. I'll send them if you would like them. What do you think? Have you heard from the post office already? I was a little bit sad about all of the food that disappeared but there wasn't anything in there that I should have been more sad about was there? I was worried that there might have been something at the bottom that said "cards". I wasn't quite sure though. I wasn't sure exactly how I should feel when I saw the package either. I know you still love me a lot to send me a package of all of my favorite things over the Pacific ocean even the post office didn't love me enough to deliver it to me.

I love you the most,
Ben