February 14, 2003

February 14, 2003 DONE!
Dear Family,
This week has gone very quickly, however, it hasn’t been without a lot of hard work. Every 5 weeks we have transfers in our mission. Well, this week was transfer week, the second one we’ve been involved in since we’ve been here. Transfer week is where the new missionaries come in (late Tuesday night), and missionaries going home come in on Thursday, and go home on Friday. That means there’s a lot going on in the office. It’s fun though because we get to meet a lot of really neat young people, we hear a lot of interesting stories. Out of the whole week, I think the busiest days are Tuesday and Wednesday. because Dad and I are directly involved. We are each assigned a time to do our little speech for Orientation on Tuesday to the new missionaries ( some of them we knew from the MTC), Dad’s part goes on for quite a while explaining about how to handle their finances through the mission office etc. Those new missionaries are so worried they’ll make a mistake, it’s interesting to compare them to the missionaries going home. They come into the office and make themselves right at home. President Banks interviews all the missionaries going and coming, so that puts quite a crowd plunk dab in front on us. Some on them wander into Dad’s office, sit down in one of his soft chairs and proceed to visit with him, sometimes he gets flustered because he has to give each one of them money and their tickets home. Same way with me, they love to sit and visit, and some of them get pretty nosy and look at confidential material especially if I happen to have it sitting on my desk. It’s very hard to get my work done, (I can tell you I’m no Carol Burnett, chonkin’ on that gum, with a nice clean desk in front of her and not a thing to do). They love looking at the President’s Book that I put together, it includes, their weekly President’s Letters ; weekly reports of each minute of their time, plus, awards, parent letters, Stake Pres, Bishop’s letters. I’ve added my own touch to it also by putting their mission picture on the front (next time Pres. Banks said he would take their going home picture so they would have a before and after on the front page. I’ve also added a nice colored map of the Japan Hiroshima mission so they can circle the places they’ve served. The President is supposed to give it to them when he gives his final interview, but they see them sitting on top of the file cabinet outside his office and grab them and start looking through them. I guess next time I’ll have to come up with a better plan.
Dad’s trainer has been transferred this week to Akashi, about a 5 or 6 hour train ride from here. I think Dad was kind of nervous about that, but these last two days have gone like clock work for him as far as the money checking out okay is concerned, and the other things have gone well too. In some ways I think he’ll do better with his trainer gone. You know how nervous he gets with someone standing right there looking over his shoulder.
This weekend is Stake Conference, President and Sister Banks invited us to go with them, and I think we’ll also go to the Saturday night session out to Takasu. By the way, Dad got a really nice letter from Sister Naito (a Sister he baptized on his first mission). She and her husband moved to Tokyo to live with their daughter because he has been quite ill. She says she would love to see Dad again, she also asked about the family, she remembered taking us to lunch. I remember what a beautiful place it was and I also remember Matt eating that raw egg plopped on top of the rice, it just makes me sick to think about it!
I had the opportunity to go on splits the other night with the lady missionaries. They had an appointment with a young woman I would say was around 30 years old. She had approached them and said she was interested in the church. It was so neat, because Sister Ahlstrom challenged her to baptism, and she accepted, so she’s getting baptized in a couple of weeks.
Sherry, we received the package you sent with the medicine, tape and candy. Thanks, that was great! Marlene, it was wonderful to hear from you, in spite of all of those moans and groans we heard coming out of the phone, Dad and I concur with your Bishop, you’re the one to handle those young women, you’ll be subarashii! (Wonderful) We LOVE to get phone calls!
Love, Ropa Shimai, and Ropa Choro (or haha and chichi)