November 27, 2011

Dear Fam,

This week on Saturday the Young Men and Women in our ward had a 'Shumi Happyo' (Hobby Announcement) activity for mutual. We decided to participate as well and took pictures of our 'hobbies' as missionaries, documenting what we do every day. Then at the activity the computer we were going to use didn't work and we ended up not showing them at all... but I'm passing them along to you anyway.

One of our ward members teaches art and we went to a show that his school put on. Some of the students were there drawing people for fun. They asked if I would let them draw me because I'm 'not Japanese and it would be good practice to draw a different kind of face'. It was fun. This is a picture that a girl drew of me.)

Our day
1- Favorite time to wake up: 6:26
2- 6:30 to 7:00 – exercise
3- Companion study
4- One of my hobbies is letting Kai Shimai cook me yummy Japanese food.
5- Personal study
6- Studying Japanese
7- Visiting members
8- Housing
9- Riding bikes
10- Visiting more members

The Mutual activity was a lot of fun - it was interesting to see what people presented. Brother Watanabe collects Duraimon (a Japanese animation character) ties and brought all 30 to show us. Brother Ohashi plays a bamboo flute. Sister Watanabe showed us how she can sharpen pencils, even teeny-teeny short ones, by hand and suggested we all try it. The bishop's wife, Sister Nara, won a contest when she was younger that required one to move beans one by one from one plate to another using chopsticks, so she set up a contest and some of us tried it ourselves to see how fast we could do it. Chiho, a Young woman, just really likes eating and stood up and told us about her favorite foods. Hasegawa Shimai likes making different versions of recipes and trying which one is her favorite, and she brought 2 different kinds of desserts for us to try. The bishop's daughter likes playing the piano and played a song for us. And Mikari, a young woman, told us all about how she just really likes cool people and described some features that she considered would make one cool. She ended with a special request that we as missionaries pray to be able to find cool people, especially cool young boys, to baptize. Anyway, it was pretty fun.

Things are really taking off here. I wish I had time to tell all the amazing things that have happened this week.

Thanks for all your letters and packages. I got a huge Christmas package this week from Aunt Amy Smith and her family. She put tons of effort into it and I can't wait till Christmas to see what on earth she sent.

Also, I am officially requesting a copy of Maren's play on DVD. I've heard too many good things about it. Good job to both Maren and Hannah for doing such a fine job. I'm impressed!

Hope all is well. Love from Japan,

Waite Shimai