Naha skies. You never know when it will rain.

So, another tough one this week. Mostly busy, but it was good. We had interviews on Wednesday with President which was great. I spent the entire day at the church translating for the Japanese Elders and Sisters. It was a pretty long day.  I was the last person to be interviewed and Kaicho was pretty worn out, so I didn't have lots of time to talk to him. It was a quick talk about the Zone and what we were going to to do.

AP's and the Naha Elders

Also, I had the chance to go out to Itoman to do splits. It was a really good exchange. I was really impressed with the Elders there. I worked with Elder Silver. He's a really hard worker. Elder Silver has a lot of confidence and he knows the vision. I had a lot of fun working with him.

With Elder Silver on the beach at Itoman

In other news, we saw Brother K yesterday. He's really struggling. He has a hernia and can hardly move. His diabetes is also getting pretty bad. He didn't come to church. He seemed pretty upset about that. He really really wants to go to church because he gets depressed when he's not there. We're working on getting him there.

F san is doing well. He also didn't come to church this week, but we were able to meet with him and talk about some more commandments and he is willing to follow them. He's pretty solid. I think he's still a little bit nervous for Baptism, but we still have a little bit of time with him.

Surprisingly, I find that the more I learn Japanese, the harder it gets to talk to people. I actually know that they are denying me. Haha, it's forcing me to be a lot more bold, but I think it's a good thing. I'm learning to be "politely bold". Haha, I had a couple bad experiences before. I'm getting better though.

Dinner at a member's house

So, we had a the worst garbage experience ever. Because of weather, the garbage person wasn't able to come for a really long time, so we've kept our garbage bags out on the balcony. They rescheduled a day, but we had Elders staying in our apartment that day and totally forgot about it. We remembered when we heard the song (In Japan, icecream truck songs are played on garbage trucks) and we freaked out. We ran out to the balcony and grabbed all the garbage to take it down. As we were running down the stairs, Elder Miyanishi broke one of the bags and a REALLY old onion and it's juices started to poor out. Elder Miyanishi started freaking out! "うんこよりもくさい!!!!"　I'm sure everyone in the apartment heard it. In the end, we missed the truck and had a HUGE garbage clean up. Because the garbage broke at the top of the stairs, the juices dripped ALL the way down and the entire apartment complex from floor 5 to 1 smelled worse than......Haha, well, Elder Miyanishi said it best. We had to clean the ENTIRE apartment complex. It only took about an hour, but it was crazy. Everyone in the apartment was really kind and had a sense of humor so we didn't get into trouble, but it was nuts.

Anyway, that was my week. It's going well. Still loving the work and the people here. I love you all.

Elder Low

So, I had a busy week this week. Not a lot happened. I'm still in Naha.....and I am happy that way. I was really worried to leave. This has been my longest area, but I really really love it here. BUT because of transfers this week, I got to do the big Airport day on Thursday. All day long waiting for new missionaries in the Airport. I didn't take pictures this time because it was really boring. We just....sat. At one point we tried to weekly plan, but that didn't work super well. It was a long boring day. We're really excited about the new missionaries in our zone though. They are all way cool! We also have a new bean sister missionary. We'll see how that goes.

This last week, we met with F san twice. He is progressing like an animal. He said that he knows God is guiding his life and he LOVES to pray. Before, he was telling us that God doesn't exist. So, that is huge progress. Here's the problem. He has lots anxiety problems and he came to church a couple weeks ago.....and he knew one of the members that gave a talk that week. He said that he didn't really get along with the member because the live across the street from each other and are always fighting......so now, he doesn't want to come to church because K kyoudai is there. So, there's something we need to work on....

Typhoon season is getting pretty crazy. We had another day inside. President called me and told me to assign the zone to teach three hour long lessons to their companion and then report back to him that night. I'm sure Jake and Jon can testify that teaching lessons to your companion is SO awful. Nobody likes it. But the whole zone did it so that was good. :) I didn't want to have to tell president that nobody in the zone did it because they don't like to practice with their companion.

Some other sad news. There is a convert in this ward....she baptized maybe a week before I got here. Her name is A. Everyone just calls her Popo. She left for Virginia to do a nanny job. She's been really struggling with the church. I also found out that her Baptism was WAY too rushed. There wasn't even a member of the ward at the Baptism. Not even bishopric. So, now we can't really help her. We gave her addresses to churches around where she lives. I really hope she goes.

Anyway, that's pretty much it for the week. From what I hear, there is a huge Typhoon coming this next week so we probably won't get to work a ton on Wednesday and Thursday. It's supposed to be worse than the last one. We'll have to get all emergency stuff ready and stuff like that.....Ugh. I would much rather Dendo.

Anyway, Love you all and I'll talk to you next week!

Elder Low