40 Days And 40 Nights (In the MTC)

Conference here was great!  It's probably the biggest holiday here, (Most others just sort of pass by without notice).  I especially liked the story President Monson shared about the discouraged Spanish Elder who attended the Japanese class to get his spirits up!

I also thought that there was a lot of missionary-related talks, but that might just be because I am a missionary, and it's what I needed to hear.  We also got to see Music and the Spoken Word on Sunday.  Did you see the gigantic harp that they had?  It was unbelievable.

And to all who have asked, As much fun as that would have been, I didn't sing in the choir at the General Priesthood Meeting.  The Choir was randomly chosen out of the many, many people who applied.

We had a festival dedicated to our being here for 40 days and 40 nights on the 40th night.  We drank the Martinellis you sent us (THANK YOU!), and danced to Irish Folk Music. ... Or, at least shuffled around a lot and jumped up and down. 

 (Click to see the celebration dance!)

Also, there is a man here who is in charge of security (or something) at devotionals and large meetings.  He is utterly massive, rather grumpy looking, and bald.  His name is Brother Angus, and I'm sure he's a nice guy, but because of his intimidating stature, he's called "Angus Khan."

             

The districed loved the chopsticks by the way.  Thanks for the incredible and abundant packages/letters that you have been sending.  It's been an impressive effort on your part.  I wish I had the time to send as many letters out as I'm getting in.

We taught our first all-Japanese 35 minute lesson this Thursday, and overall, it wet very well.  Everyone had a few mistakes, some of which were pretty amusing.  At the end of our lesson, I asked if our investigator would like to teach US more tomorrow, instead of the other way around.  It's easy to switch subjects in Japanese with the wrong letter.

Someone else said, "God is our Children" (also easy to mess up), and "The Earth was nowhere on the truth".  And there are ledgends of some really bad switches from a long, long time ago.  Someone told the person they were teaching that, "Jesus Christ killed bad people", instead of the other way around, and kept insisting this the entire lesson.

It sounds like for Mom, this missionary mom thing is like facebook, but more addictive.  Just be sure not to neglect Madison (the last child) between trips to my roomate's mom's houses :).  I'm sure you'll have lots of fun swaping stories about us.

Thank you!

-Elder Martin Mumford

-T o k y o, J a p a n