Week 67

Did I have a nice New Years?  Yes. What did I do for New Years?  Well to be honest it didn't feel like we did that much.  Last year about this time we had 8 dinner appointments in 5 days.  This year we were 3 in 3. ... -_-'  

So like it was still good because the members houses who we did go to were way awesome, and we had a fun time, but it almost literally becomes impossible to do missionary work over New Years here, because everyone's focused on the holiday and people become very unconcerned with religion and stuff.  Not to mention everyone (including our investigator) all went back to their hometowns, which left us with very little to do.  But we did make the most of it.  Christmas was much the same.  Except that on Christmas Eve, we stayed home (sad isn't it).  Then on Christmas Day we had no appointments going into church.  When the 1 hour session ended, we still had none.  :(  But we had to wait around to talk with the Bishop about something and then a member invited us to their house =D  Then while we were dropping stuff off at our apartment we got a call and an invitation to another shokuji (meal appointment).  So we ended up getting 2 last minute meals.  Back to back.  I realized that I can eat A LOT!  Like I ate my fill at the first one and then went over to the second one. (My companion told me before we went in the second house 'I'm not gonna make it. I need to go to the bathroom so bad.')  Then went and in the second one I ate my fill and had seconds and thirds of some stuff.  By the end, let me tell you I was FULL.  I had been snacking a LOT the couple weeks prior to that so I think I may have just been training myself but maybe it's just the missionary part of me haha.  And then after the 2 shokujis we had to ride our bikes what is normally a 20 minute bike ride home.  But my companion REALLY had to go.  So we biked basically as fast as we could back.  There were a couple times during the all-out bikage that I was just praying 'Please let me hold it (my cookie tossing) til we get to the apartment so my companion can go.' Thankfully I didn't end up throwing up but man was I ever full.   Yeah it ended up well.

Nope.  No snow yet!

So yeah my goals for the year are as follows:

-Read BoM cover to cover in Japanese

-Re-read Jesus the Christ

-Focus on consecration in dendo

-learn +500 kanji

-Keep all study areas neat

-Save up another 25000￥in coins

-Work up to 3 sets of 50 push-ups  (I'm up to 3 sets of 30)

-Not get trunky

-Read 'The Miracle of Forgiveness'

-Baptize people (plural- 'people' not person.  more than 1)

I guess those are just my goals more for towards the end of my mission, but they still work.

Our investigators are doing well.  From what I can tell at least.  We just recently had one of our investigators drop us though.  That's never fun.  Didn't come as too much of a shock, but we were able to preserve the friendship, and she's still coming to eikaiwa (english class) so it's all good.  And then besides that we have 2 that we feel are getting close to baptism!  But transfers are just 3 weeks away, and since Elder Hosier and I have been together for 2, the odds that one of us gets transferred is very high. 

But yeah I'm kinda glad the Holidays are over so that we can get back to a normal life again.  Haha.

Love you so much!  Take care!  I'm glad that you made it home safely!

Elder Keith

キース長老