Dear Family and Friends,
An essential part of missionary work is building a good relationship with your investigators. So, the usual when you first meet someone or have a first appointment is you tell them about yourself. Like your name, family size, what country you are from. A lot of Japanese have traveled to America or even Canada (which by the way, Happy Canadian Thanksgiving [which I believe is this week] everyone). So, many missionaries will find out during this getting to know you phase that the person has visited their hometown. This happened to Elder Smith a couple of times as he is from Washington and a lot of Nihongen travel to the Pacific part of America (and everyone here loves Ichiro too). He has been pretty happy about it and uses that as a connection to build a relationship with the person. For me however, I realized I can`t do that. Everyone but me can be happy that someone they know visited their hometown. If you are from Utah and your investigator said they have been there, you say `Oh, I am sure they know a little about our church.` If you are from Brazil and they have been there, you think, `Maybe they know Portuguese and I can further confuse my bean who barely knows the difference between Portuguese and Japanese by talking with them in Portuguese!` If you are me, your investigator says `Oh you are from Vegas? I`ve been there!`
There are three ways to re-act:
An essential part of missionary work is building a good relationship with your investigators. So, the usual when you first meet someone or have a first appointment is you tell them about yourself. Like your name, family size, what country you are from. A lot of Japanese have traveled to America or even Canada (which by the way, Happy Canadian Thanksgiving [which I believe is this week] everyone). So, many missionaries will find out during this getting to know you phase that the person has visited their hometown. This happened to Elder Smith a couple of times as he is from Washington and a lot of Nihongen travel to the Pacific part of America (and everyone here loves Ichiro too). He has been pretty happy about it and uses that as a connection to build a relationship with the person. For me however, I realized I can`t do that. Everyone but me can be happy that someone they know visited their hometown. If you are from Utah and your investigator said they have been there, you say `Oh, I am sure they know a little about our church.` If you are from Brazil and they have been there, you think, `Maybe they know Portuguese and I can further confuse my bean who barely knows the difference between Portuguese and Japanese by talking with them in Portuguese!` If you are me, your investigator says `Oh you are from Vegas? I`ve been there!`
There are three ways to re-act:
1. Obliviously- `Oh, have you been to the Coca-Cola factory and the M&M shop? A couple of the best things to do on the Strip!`
2. Ignore- `Oh, that is cool. How about we talk about the Gospel now!`
3. Dread- Remain absolutely quiet as you realize that teaching the Law of Chasity and the Word of Wisdom, just got a lot harder then you thought.
So while I do have Vegas pride, I might change my hometown to Henderson. Or maybe I will just carry around a picture of the Las Vegas temple and ask if they have seen it. Actually that is a really good idea. I think I will print off some pictures of the temple after I finish writing this e-mail.
Besides this little advice to all missionaries that happened to live in Vegas, this week we welcomed the new senior couple missionaries! Basically there job will be to not only help us find and teach people but to also help the Numazu Ward in their ward mission plan. They both lived in Osaka and Oshi Choro used to be a Japanese Area Seventy. They both speak no English so that is pretty much all I can tell you about them for now (except they have five kids which is A LOT here in Japan) but they should be fun to work with.
Everyone have a great week where ever you might be in the world and enjoy General Conference next week, although I will be waiting an extra week to watch it in English here because the churches here don`t have satellites so wait to send me all of the really good General Conference memes from the BYU meme page until next week and don`t spoil anything!
Elder Hall
Elder Hall
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