Is anyone up for trying the Crunky bar? (After the experience with the "hospital" candy, we haven't dared try it yet.)
(From an e-mail dated 2-19-09)
Dear Family,
Sorry about the email mishap last week, we can probably just expect that something will go wrong each week, and that my email time will be a little less. For some reason today is one of the exceptions! Everything worked fine!
There definitely isn't much time in the day. This is the hardest I have ever worked in my whole life, including previous transfers of the mission. We work from the moment we wake to the moment we sleep, our study is all about preparing for more work! And it really is a good feeling to go to bed each night completely drained, knowing you did your best.
Important news: iPods are dame! (not allowed). I just found out from the Zone leaders that all iPods, video or not, are not allowed. Apparently this has been the case for a long time, but I never found out about it until now. It's a shame because I really liked listening to the wake up music to get us out of bed :). I just put them away until I can figure out what to do. Do you want me to send them home?
Speaking of unusual Japanese flavors, Martin's English class went bowling. (It was a goodbye party for Elder Cook) And while there, two girls from the English class bought some juice drinks in "curry flavor", and wasabi flavor. Apparently, there are some flavors that are even too strange for Japanese folks, as you can see in the picture below.
Ok, questions:
1. We would like to send you some stuff from TheFlyingPig.com (delivery service from Costco in Japan) but we need to know when you will be home, and which foods from the list you would like to have delivered. We are almost always home from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I started to get teary eyed just reading that list of foods...Bagles, muffins, rolls, and martinelli's sounds GREAT! We don't actually eat cereal much in Kawasaki, so that might be a low priority. Costco muffins and rolls sound heavenly!
2. Does your mission have an official theme song? (Like the one in the Kennewick Washington Mission- "tracting through the fields of walla walla onion") Sadly, no mission song. There probably is one, but I've never heard it. I suppose I'll have to make up one! If only it could be as cheezy as the Kennewick one! (no offense, if any Kennewick missionary moms are reading.)
3. What is your new companion like? Do you get along OK? I don't have any way to contact his mother, so you don't have to worry about us swapping baby pictures of you guys. Elder Fukuda 'Fukes' is the best! He is extremely funny! I thought it would be very frustrating speaking in all-japanese, but a lot of times it just comes as a fact: 'well, I dont know what He's saying, but Ill take a stab at it, and if Im wrong I can laugh about it later'.
4. Is there anything that you need or would like that you are not able to obtain there, that we can send you? The Hot Chocolate was a hit. Just so you know, Japanese hot chocolate is extremely bland, and even 10 packets of splenda, a candy cane and a chocolate bar could not sweeten it.
5. What does your companion think of the new "wake up" music? I tried it the first day. 'What the heck is that?' was his weary response. And then he told me about the iPod rule, I checked with the Zone Leaders, and yes, iPods got to go! It was a REALLY good idea though! (Perhaps the next mission president will change the rules. :)
6. Dad was going through a box of his old mission stuff. (It was so weird to see name tags that said "Elder Mumford" and have them not be yours, and also they were in Portuguese.) But he found these papers, where he had to write a letter to his mission president every week. Do you do anything like that where you write a letter to the Mission President? Also, how often do you have interviews with the Mission President; district leaders, etc.? Yes, we write weekly letters. At the end of the mission, the president gives you a binder with all of them! It will be cool to see how I grew over the months. Mission President interviews are every 6 weeks. District meetings are weekly.
7. Do you still have lots of dinner appointments in this new area? A few, here and there. Its perfectly normal in other areas to have 1 a week, or 1 every other week. We generally have 1-2 a week here. Yokosuka is the exception because it has the military branch, and so the missionaries there get 5-7 a week. However, someone from my doki (Elder Gordon) is in Yokosuka now! He came to Japan the same time as me.
Sorry, I've got to get going. I just got a letter in the mail, so If there's something important in there, I won't be able to answer it until next week's email.
Thanks for all the great support, keep on working hard at normal life :)
Time is going by so fast, I can hardly believe it. Weeks fly by like days.
Thank you everyone!
Love,
Elder Martin Mumford
Tokyo, JAPAN!
Kitkat bars of many flavors!
ReplyDelete