Muroran Week 12

Hello there!

Transfers coming up. I'll be interested to see what happens. Here's my report:

Monday, January 6: After calling you guys, finished up sign 2.0. One side says "I want to learn Japanese. Please talk to me." The other side has general missionary information. Dendoed near the college afterwards.

Tuesday, January 7: spent most of the day at the college. It was kind of a trial and error day to figure out when people wouldn't be so busy. I think we narrowed down a good time for that.

Wednesday, January 8: The snow came down pretty powerfully today. We tried to house a little in the east, but Minegishi chourou remembered the place, so we're pretty convinced that literally all of Muroran has been housed. Came back and studied. The snow didn't slow down, so that wrecked our streeting plans. Sat around a bit wondering what to do. I kinda thought "well we aren't doing anything here. We might as well get out there". I kept thinking about the library, so we grabbed our signs (I almost left mine) and headed out.

We sat down in the library and I attached my sign 2.0 to my bag. A couple girls at a nearby table started giggling when they saw it. I said "konnichiwa" and we started to study. All while we're studying, the girls are giggling and talking about our posters, but we pretend not to notice. Then they run off and come back with two more friends. They all start talking about us and start playing rock paper scissors (you can guess why). Finally, one of them stands up and starts inching over to us, clearly unsure how to start the conversation. As she's almost here, I suddenly stand up and say in japanese "hi, my name's Elder Brown". We had a great conversation with the four of them and introduced them to sports night and eikaiwa.

Later, had indo curry for dinner. I don't know why everybody in the mission is crazy about it.

Thursday, January 9: Tried out some store dendo. We walk around with our signs and I pretend to be a clueless American. I'm having a hard time coming up with pickup questions, though. Had eikaiwa later, which was fun.

Friday, January 10: Tried some sports dendo in the morning, where we go to a local gym and play games with people and invite them to sports night. Pretty fun and rather effective. Couldn't get a team-up for kids eikaiwa so that was a bummer, but toeic was super fun as usual.

Saturday, January 11: stressed over my talk. You know I always write them word for word and I have to do it in Japanese.

Sunday, January 12: finished my talk on the walk over. Between the amount that I wrote and trying to read all of it, the talk took about 20min. I think. The next speaker Hayashi きょうだい was happy I took so long.

Monday, January 13: made some mochi. One of the members in our ward is a recent convert and absolutely awesome at dendo. She invited somebody she met at the store to the new years party and to learn about kids eikaiwa. Absolutely awesome! Everybody had a great time, even if it went a little long.

The Ward New Years Party was held Monday morning at the church. Which is also Conner's p-day. He always video chats us from the church because that is where they can get wifi. During the party (which stretched out 3-4 hours long) he finally called us before it was too late in the evening America. When he came on we were surprised to see him joined by a couple little friends! They hung over his shoulder the whole time just watching the screen with their sweet faces.