A Pictorial Day In The Life Of A Japan Missionary!

Here is the e-mail sent by Elder Mumford on March 29, 2010:

Dear Everyone,

This letter might be comparatively short, because we've been having a lot of drama recently. On the way home from a mission-wide conference in Kichijoji, I lost my wallet. Which caused quite a bit of trouble, because it was already very late.

That Sunday, President Albrecht had arranged a huge conference in the evening for everyone, and the speaker was John Bytheway. He's still funny, and sounds the same. He gave us the classic Book of Mormon story of Ammon, and shared some very important insights about missionary work.

Because everyone was all together at once, it was very convenient to simply grab your new companion and head off to your new areas. So I got to meet... Elder KING! Who is actually form the Vancouver East Stake. So this should be pretty fun. I will be staying in Shonan for another transfer.

So on our return trip, I misplaced my wallet. It wasnt crowded, and there was actually only 2 other people on our section of the train we were riding, and both me and Elder King were talking to them the whole time. So it wasn't stolen, but probably just fell out somehow. In any event, everything has been generally sorted out.

This week Ill fix the remaining details, so no worries.

Actually Japan is usually extremely safe, and amazingly a very large percent of lost items, including wallets are eventually restored with all contents still inside. People are generally afraid to pick up other people's things, or afraid to mess with anything that isn't theirs, so thefts are relatively few. For example, outside the police station, it gives crime statistics. In the entire area of Kanagawa-ken, there were 150 reported thefts in one day. (Which probably contains the population of all of washington state and more). Imagine if in all the cities of all of one state combined, there was only that little crime. Japan is probably the safest country on the entire plantet.

OK that's all the time Ive got. Thank you for your patience.

I love you all, have a great week!

Elder Martin D Mumford

-Tokyo Japan