Week 10 - 10/22/17 - Group Email

Hey everyone, I'm finally in Japan! My first area is called Shonan. It's the southern part of my mission and on the coast. My Comp is named Elder deAndrade and he's from Brazil. He's a cool kid and we get along well. Our area has tons of people who speak portugese and spanish so we have a few investigators who speak those languages. Elder deAndrade speaks Portugese so that will be intersting for me. We had 3 lessons planned this past week for investigators but 2 canceled to so we only got to teach one. His name is Tazaki san. I guess the missionaries have been teaching him for a while and he's pretty interested. I was pretty lost during most of the lesson cuz my Japanese is terrible and it's so hard to understand people. 

The first few days were pretty stressful. After the long flight we had a 2 hour bus ride and then had to do some stuff at the mission home so it was a longgg day. The first morning here we ran down to the park and did radio taiso. It was so fun and a cool cultural experience. So basically everymorning at 6:30 on the radio they play this workout and tons of people gather all over parks and infront of businesses and do these weird exercises haha. It's mostly old people but it was so fun! We had a ton of trainings throughout the day then in the afternoon we got paired with missionaries and had to go out and talk to people. I was super nervous at first but it ended up being really fun! Talking to people is not as scary as I thought it be. Rejection doesn't hurt when you can't understand them haha. I gave out a Book of Mormon which was cool. That night we went out and ate, Me elder orton and elder ota ate Sukemen (noodles that you dip in soup). I'm so excited to eat the food here because it was really good!

On Thursday we found out who our trainers were and traveled to our areas. My comp loves to cook so that has been a blessing! We have gone out knocking doors a couple times and have talked to a few people on the streets. We taught a guy from the philipines who spoke english which was so nice! The first day of church was awesome, the members here are really friendly! I had to give a self introduction and bear my testimony in sacrament. I couldn't understand very much at all during the meetings so that's frustrating but it will get better. 
Last night there was a typhoon warning and they told us to get ready to evacuate cuz it looked pretty bad but it ended up hitting during the night and we didn't have to evacuate. It's been pretty rainy everyday and pretty cold here. Sorry for such a long email, hope everyone is doing well!

Dean 長老