Southern & Western Areas of the Sendai Mission

We didn't post last week because we went with Pres. & Sis. Tateoka to attend zone conferences and inspect missionary apartments in the southern and western areas of the Sendai Mission. We had some wonderful meetings and became much better acquainted with the missionaries in that part of the mission. Our mission stretches almost half way to Tokyo and takes in all of the northern part of Honshu Island.





We started in Koriyama on the Pacific side of the mission and then crossed through the mountains via about 18 miles of tunnels to the city of Niigata, pop. 800,000. The first two pictures were taken from Niigata--one a night picture from the 12 floor of our hotel, and the next one an early morning view taken along the river.







We have some wonderful young missionaries serving here and could easily fill up our blog with stories and pictures of them. The last stop was a visit to the missionaries and the small branch on Sado Island, a small island about a 2.5 hour ferry ride westward into the Sea of Japan.








We put the car onto this large ferry and watched the sea gulls as they followed us out of the harbor. President Tateoka is a very effective missionary and as we arrived in Sado for a late dinner he struck up a conversation with a school teacher and had a good gospel conversation. After our meal was finished, he had the waitress show us the decorations of the restraurant and was soon deep in a gospel discussion with her.






There are only a few members on Sado Island, but they have a very nice small chapel and the members were excited to have visitors. They had prepared a meal and stayed to talk with us for as long as we could stay. On the way home, President Tateoka told us that we needed to get bold and start speaking to people in Japanese. The ferry did not have seats and instead, people sat on the floor. While we were sitting among them, we began to use our shaky and rudimentary Japanese on them. We tried to ask them simple things like how many people in their family, where they lived and worked, and what they did on Sado Island. They were all polite and tried to help us. Sister Tateoka found on lady who spoke some English and she agreed to start attending our English classes in Niigata. This experience was helpful for us and made the time pass quickly, but we realize that we will need more than 18 months to get so that we can communicate in Japanese.

Fall in Sendai

This was taken out in Natori. That is a little community just south of our Nagamachi church. I went out to walk with him at 6:00 a.m. last Tuesday.

This is a Shinto Shrine that we passed as we walked up over a hill and out into a farming area.

It was a rainy day so the farmers were not in their fields, especially at 6:00 a.m.

Sheaves of rice are hanging on poles to dry, then will be put in the thresher.

You can see the piles of chaff and the bags of rice in the background.

Shun is 76 and comes to our Eikaiwa class. Before he retired he was a high school teacher and taught American history, geography, and political science. He has accompanied students on trips to most of the English speaking countries, including the US (Grand Canyon twice), to New Zealand, Australia and England. We met his wife for the first time and they insisted that we have a rice ball and fish breakfast with them. Fortunately, they also served fruit and juice so we did fine. They have a beautiful home on the very top of a hill overlooking the valley and his wife is a good painter. She had pictures everywhere and was on her way to a painting session after we left. I talked with Shun about the church during our walk, but couldn't get them to commit to a discussion with the young elders yet.

We watched conference on the church web site during the early part of the week, but went this week end to the ward to support the local members and interact with them. I couldn't get the priesthood session on the internet so it was great to see that. It was an impressive meeting and I will try to lift where I stand and stand where I lift, but I think that we should learn Spanish.

This coming week we're going with Pres. and Sister Tateoka to 2 zone conferences in the southern part of the mission. While he does interviews, we'll check the missionary apartments in that part of the mission. We won't get home until Sunday evening so we won't make a posting next week end.

(This is Mom.) Our ward has another baptism coming up the last Sunday of the month. The sisters have another baptism! The sister (Akiko Yuhara) getting baptized has asked that I give the closing prayer and there is a rumor that she wants Dad to talk. I told Elder Porter (our District Leader) that I'd do my prayer in Japanese, but that I wasn't sure if Dad would do his talk in English or Spanish! (Just kidding!) It definitely won't be in Japanese! We are happy to see the work progressing--even if it seems slow at times. We love the Japanese people! They are so kind and gracious. Hamamoto Kyodai, our Japanese convert of less than a year who has been helping to teach us Japanese, sat in with the English speaking missionaries today to watch the conference sessions. He's a sweet young man and is trying so hard to do what is right. He's the only member in his family and is not one who fits in well with the people his age in the ward. Therefore, he spends as much time as he can with missionaries. He speaks English very well, having lived in Hawaii 10 years. Life is GREAT and we LOVE what we are doing. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to happiness. May we live as the prophet and apostles have counseled us. This conference was truly inspiring. WE LOVE YOU ALL!

We didn't post last week because of pressing issues. Elder Evans, the area president over our mission came to meet the missionaries and see how we were doing. President and Sister Tateoka invited us to have dinner with Pres and Sis. Evans the evening before the conference. He had asked the APs to come for a mission meeting at 8:30 after our dinner was finished. They had been at a Primary activity and he asked them how much missionary work was accomplished. One of them made the mistake of saying, "this was a support the ward activity, not a missionary activity." Well, they didn't get finished with that meeting until 11 p.m., long after missionaries are supposed to be retired. President Evans stayed up longer than that and the next day at mission conference he attempted to change the thinking about missionary work. I've never seen anyone talk for 5 or 6 hours with only a lunch break in the middle, but Elder Evans did. He told the missionaries that until they change their attitudes and approaches, the mission will scrape along as the lowest producing mission in his area. He taught how to follow Preach My Gospel, how to tactfully obtain referrals, how to get members to assist, and how to be more bold about asking people to commit to baptism. Well, we'll see what happens. We believe we are seeing some changes occur.

We're attempting to be better missionaries also, working harder on the language, talking to our English students about discussions, and going out one evening a week with the young missionaries.

I had a commitment from another one of our students to let the missionaries talk with him and his wife. He walks 3 km every morning at 5:30 a.m. and I'm going to walk with him on Tuesday morning to work out the details. So far we don't have any rejections, but we don't have any baptisms either.

I decided to put in a picture of one of the colorful spiders that live in our neighborhood. They build huge web networks and then wait for something to get caught in them. By clicking on the picture you can blow it up to get a better look. This one was above the bushes out in front of the mission office.

This past week 7 new Elders arrived, one from Japan and 6 from the U.S. We now have them started on their way and go back to a regular schedule for another six weeks. New missionaries create a domino effect that results in many of the missionaries moving on transfer day, either to pick up one of the new elders or to make a shift so that everyone has the proper companion. We lost one of our office elders, Elder Shurilla. He went to the north of the mission as a zone leader. Elder Porter is our newest office missionary. We will enjoy working with him. He's a great young man. We also had 4 missionaries leave to go home. Transfers are getting easier for us since this is the 4th one that we have done.

It's hard to believe that we've been here for 4 months or that we've been full-time missionaries for 5 months. Despite the work load and stresses accompanying our work, we're really enjoying our experiences. It's great to see people embrace the gospel and follow the Savior. The Nagamachi Sisters had another baptism last Sunday and had another lady commit to baptism this past week. If that baptism goes through, they will have had 7 baptisms since we came in May. I wonder if the elders are getting a complex. They haven't had one in that time.

As we've told you earlier, when we discovered the kerosine leak from the tank sitting on the carpet in our living room, we took the tank out, removed the carpet as well as the plywood underneath, and replaced everything. We're now finished except for re-connecting the tank. It looks nice even though I'm not much of a carpet layer.

We discovered that we could watch general conference on our laptop, so Ruth watched the woman's conference and then this morning we got up early and watched the Saturday sessions before we went to church. We'll be able to get up early and see the Sunday sessions in the morning. Isn't that exciting about the new temples--especially the one in Rome! Who'd have thought? The majority of members here don't get to see it until next weekend when the Japanese DVDs arrive.

We would appreciate your comments about Conference. Could each family share with us something they learned that will make an impact in their lives? I hope we will all rededicate ourselves to living the gospel a little better than we ever have before. I also hope we will remember that the Savior is there to help us when the going gets rough. We love you all and share our testimonies to the truthfulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is only through obedience to all the commandments and enduring to the end that we can experience true joy in this life and in the life to come.

Love,

Dad andMom (aka Dale & Ruth and Elder & Sister Hansen)