Septermber 28, 2003

Sunday Sept. 28, 2003
Dear Family and Friends,
We have enjoyed your phone calls, e-mails and other communications this past week. About a week ago, my laptop computer started acting up. Every time I went to turn it on it would require me to go through a series of system checks before it would allow me start up the computer (which required about 30 minutes each time). So then I started leaving the computer running all the time. When Bro Killian (the computer specialist from the Tokyo office) was here I had him look it over. He couldn’t tell what was causing the trouble, but said he had a feeling that it was on its way out! Well he was right. Day before yesterday it went off and hasn’t been on since. Yesterday I took it over to computer repair Dept. at Best Dept. store. They checked it over and were pretty sure the hard-drive was shot. Anyway to repair it they estimated up to $1000. Since I only paid $300. for it to start with I have decided to junk it and start using my office computer. I guess that’s what I get for buying second hand. I did save my important things on a disk before the computer went out. So much for that.
Yesterday (Sat.) was a beautiful day here. The sky was clear and it wasn’t really hot so Mom and I decided to go out to Miyajima Island. We went as far as we could by streetcar and then took a ferryboat over to the island. We had a nice walk and saw most of the island. Up at the top of the mountain they say there are wild monkies. We thought we might like to see them but they told us there are only a few now and we probably wouldn’t see them even if we went up. So we will try that another time.
This weekend Pres. Banks invited all the District Presidents (regular members, not missionaries) from throughout the mission to come here for a conference. The Pres. didn’t have room for them to sleep in his apartment, so he had the Mission Office Elders sleep over with the regular missionaries and turned their room over to the guests just for Sat. night. They finish their meetings today and will soon be returning home. Sister Banks acted stressed so we offered to make a cake for them, she sure snapped us up on that. We asked the Elders how they slept (on the floor) and they said they made it through the night, but it wasn’t quite like sleeping in a bed.
In a little while we are going over to the Gohallers for dinner. Bro. Gohaller and I are assigned to home teach a Utah member who married a Japanese member after he we are all going to meet for dinner. So along with home teaching, we are also doing some misprevious letter). Now he is engaged to another Japanese girl who is not a member, and sionary work. I hope he’s not jumping from the fry pan into the fire.
We are getting along well and thank the Lord for this wonderful experience. We hope things continue to go well for all of you.
Love, Dad & Mom
P.S. This is Haha senkiyoshi. I know Dad won’t tell you about this so I’m putting in my two cents worth. Do you remember the talk that President Eric Shumway gave the BYU devotional in March before we came, that was on KBYU? Well President Banks is using the segment about Dad’s experience with Kajiyama San (the person who dad contacted on a streetcar and who was later baptized). As President Banks goes around to each Zone Conference and speaks to the missionaries he gives this presentation to illustrate how important it is not to miss opportunities to contact people. President Banks told me it is really fun to watch the missionaries faces when dad’s picture and story comes up because a ripple goes through them as they realize who it is and they begin poking each other and saying “Hey, there’s Elder Roper who’s in the Mission Home, that’s cool etc.”