Sendai Mission after one month

We helped the sisters with a discussion this morning and the girl that we taught talked about baptism. It seemed to go well. She just needs to get more commited and give up some of her habits. Late this afternoon we went to down-town Sendai for the Saturday session of stake conference. Pres. Onuma, the stake president, challenged the missionaries and members to work hard enough that we can have a temple here in two decades.

Here is a photo of the down-town area of Sendai. The stake center is out of this picture on the left.




President and Sister Miyashita have done an outstanding job of taking care of the missionaries and running the mission. They will only be here through next weekend and then their tenure is finished as they return to their home down by Tokyo.

They've been having their final round of Zone conferences and it has been hard for the missionaries to tell them goodbye. Sister Miyashita has really loved them and has fed them, given them gifts in the Japanese fashion, and encouraged them when they're down. The Tateokas arrive 1 week from today. By the way, Miyashita is pronounced (Me-osh-ta)


We wouldn't be missionaries if we didn't send pictures of other missionaries. Here's Elder Bradley from Sugar House. He's one of the APs and has about 6 months left as a missionary. He's a very hard working Elder and has mastered Japanese marvelously. He is always the one that President Miyashita uses as his translator.

This is Sister Hansen's desk in the mission office sitting next to Sister Karlinsey. The Karlinsey's are the ones that we replaced.


Needless to say, we haven't mastered the language.
We've both started to clip addresses and names so that we can compare the ones that we know with the new ones as they show up. It's hard to pay a bill or complete the end-of-month balancing when you can't read what is written.

We hold a devotional each morning at 9 and when I gave the prayer in Japanese at the last one, the missionaries laughed and said, I bet you learned that at the MTC. They were then kind enough to help me change it so that it matched grammar currently used in Japan.

Finally, here's a picture of the mountain about a 5 minute walk above our house. The two structures in the background are water tanks. We tried to hike up to them on Pday last week, but we went up the wrong side of the ravine and ended up above them on the other side to the right. As you can see, the foliage is very dense. We got on Google today to make a map to the church and there were too many trees in one part of the trip. Google couldn't even see the road that went through there.
I send my love to all of you. We love you and appreciate the great people that you are. Keep sharing the gospel at every chance you get. It is too precious to keep to ourselves.

Love, Dad & Mom