A Nice Week

So this week was a pretty busy week, I'd say.  We were barely in Aomori for the first half of this week.  We bussed, I don't know if that is spelled right.  We rode a bus down to Morioka to do service down in that area.  So we did that last Monday, and then we had service all of Tuesday.  It was pretty fun, but it wasn't too hard.  Since the area we were assigned wasn't in too bad of a shape, we mostly picked up sticks and seashells.  Sounds like a ton of fun, right?  Well you'd be surprised how much fun picking up seashells can be if you're with the right people.  Anyways, so that was Tuesday.  Wednesday we bussed, I used that probably misspelled word again, back to Aomori and then we did stuff here.  So that was Wednesday.  Thursday was a bit more exciting.  It was my turn to do splits with the District Leader, Elder Kendall.  So that was fun.  The only problem was that since he has never served in Aomori except in splits, he didn't really know the area.  So I had to lead him around.  Now I'm bad with directions, I think we can all agree on  that, so to make a long story short, we got lost.  Twice.  But it's okay because we eventually found where we were going.  So that tragedy has a happy ending.  Friday was just a normal Friday.  Nothing super crazy happened then.  But Saturday we had a Talent Show in our branch.  That was a lot of fun.  It could have been better if more members had gotten involved and interested in it, but it was still nice.  Hopefully, because of how well this went, the next time missionaries try to do something like this, the members will be more receptive and excited about it.  At least that's the plan.  Well that was my week.  It's still really hard, but it's a lot of fun at the same time too.  Hopefully it will get even more fun the longer I'm out.

Love, Elder Wixom

I Looked Out the Window

The sun looked like Pac-man this morning.  How cool is that?  I'll tell you how cool.  Really cool.  The only thing that would have been cooler is if it had looked like a pokeball or something like that. Anyways, that's how my morning started today.  Running between looking at the sun and cooking my breakfast.  The week that I had though was a pretty fun week.  Would you like to hear about it?  I'll take that as a yes.

So the week started off pretty awesomely.  How you might ask?  Well, for those of you I was able to talk to on the phone, you were that reason.  Yay!  Anyways, so it started off really nicely and then it stayed pretty good the whole week.  We went on splits up in Hachinohe on Tuesday, that was fun.  Then we came back home on Wednesday, just to go back up to Misawa again on Thursday for district meeting.  So this week I got to see the other Elders in my district a whole lot. Which is not a bad thing.  They are super fun and really cool people. One of them is Canadian.  Just thought you ought to know. I don't know why. :)  So those days were really fun.  On Friday we had a lesson with Saito san.  We taught him lesson one, and I thought that it went really well.  Mostly Squire choro taught, but I was able to talk about some stuff and Bro. Niiyama was able to help out a whole lot.  It's great when members help out us missionaries with teaching, finding, and just everything in general.

Other than that this week was just another week here.  It hasn't started raining too bad yet, but it's been getting pretty cloudy lately.  I can feel a storm coming in me bones.  Arrgh. Anywho, I'm going to not be a pirate right now.  I hope you all can have really fun weeks.  Maybe you can be pirates for me. :D

Love, Elder Wixom

Happy Mother's Day!!!

I realized that I don't think I wished you a happy mother's day when we talked earlier.  I'm sorry.  So I guess you'll just have to settle with the day after thing.  Sorry about that.  But it was super nice to hear from all of you.  That totally made my day.  Maybe even my whole week.  I don't know yet though, cause my week just started.  But I can tell you about last week.  That was pretty cool.

So the week started just like any other, with p-day and Tuesday we just did dendo stuff.  Which was still pretty hard, but really fun. We didn't get to meet with Saito san like we planned, but we were able to meet up with one less-active sister.  That lesson went really nicely.  The members that jointed for us were a huge help.  Like always.  Members always seem to make missionary work better.  It makes me wonder why they don't do it enough.

Anyways, Wednesday we left for Morioka because we had a conference on Thursday.  Now the conference was really pretty great.  Elder Yamashita came and taught us.  Along with his wife and we also heard from Pres. Rasmussen and Sis. Rasmussen.  So Elder Yamashita is like President's President.  So he had a lot of really good things to say. It was a really great meeting thing.  I don't know how to attach things or I would put on the picture from it onto this e-mail.  Sorry that I'm bad at stuff like that.

The rest of the week we just did work and stuff and it was all great.  We were able to visit Saito san on Saturday, so that was wonderful.  It wasn't with a member like we wanted, but it was still a nice little visit/lesson.  We asked him to come to church, but he wasn't able to make it, so that was pretty sad.

So that was how my week went for the most part.  It was another good week here in Japan.  I hope that everything is going well with all of you back home.  Have a fun week.  :)

Love, Elder Wixom

Just Smile and Nod

I would like to first of begin this e-mail saying how difficult it is sometimes to not speak the language that everyone else is speaking.  Even though I'm working and practicing, sometimes all I can do is just look focused and try to figure out what somebody is saying.  A bunch of other Elders say that they still have that problem sometimes and they've been out for quite a while, but I don't know if that makes me feel better.  I guess it will be nice to understand what's going on most of the time and only having problems a little, rather than the opposite.  I am lucky to live with three other Elders who are willing to help me get better rather than just not care if I improve.  So that's good at least.

This week a couple really, really cool things happened.  Wanna hear what they were?  Of course you do!  Why else would you be reading this except to read about cool things.  First off, my comp and I got our first real investigator as a companionship.  He is an old investigator that stopped meeting with the missionaries, but now he's meeting with us again.  It is so awesome.  Hopefully we'll be able to re-spark his interest and his desire to be baptized again.  That would just be great.  And we've got to thank Bro Niiyama for helping us get our next appointment with him at the church.  Members are super important when it comes to missionary work.  They can never help too much. 

Another cool thing that happened was that we got to go to Hirosaki to see a baptism.  It has been the only baptism in that area for a while so President said that we could go to support the Sister missionaries.  It was so cool to see that sister be baptized and then to hear her testimony.  Even though I couldn't understand all of it is was super awesome.  The bonus of going to that baptism was that we got to go to Hirosaki's Sakura Matsuri.  Which is mostly just a festival for the sakura.  We got to see a bunch of trees just covered in those beautiful pink petals.  And the area where they had it was by some cool old Japanese buildings.  One was a castle I think.  Either way, it was a super awesome experience and a super awesome day. 

Other than that I don't really have much to say except that I wish that the rain would go away.  The sad thing is that it's not even the rainy season yet.  So it's only getting started.  Wish me luck. 

Love, Elder Wixom