Akashi Apartment Move

We closed two old apartments and replaced them with new ones this week. The Nishinomiya apartment and the Akashi apartment. Both were quite run down and some of you mothers would not want your sons living in them! Neither did Sister McIntyre. The Akashi apartment had been rented for 21 years. You can imagine 21 years of elders living in the same apartment. Just normal wear and tear would be bad enough! This room above had wall paper from the 1970's, but some of it was torn off and moldy. Don't worry, our other apartments are not any where near this bad and no one used this particular room.

The Akashi elders with the office staff and assistants after several hours of clean up and moving. Elders Steele, Rassmussen, Throop, Bohman, Remund, Fukui, Andrews and Sisters Painter and McIntyre. The tatami mats where worn through and the whole place needs a major overhaul. The owner however, was surprised it was in as good of condition as it was after so many years. We may even get some of our deposit back. (Wow) The new apartment is a 1 minute walk from the church, very nice and it cost a little less!

Jan 09 Wakayama Tour with Assistants

After the holidays and zone conferences, Sister McIntyre and I spent most of our time making the regular transfer interview visits. Our last zone was Wakayama. We travelled to Iwade with the assistants on the 28th and interviewed part of the zone there. After lunch, Sister McIntyre returned to Kobe by train and the assistants, Elders Bohman and Rasmussen, accompanied me by car to the farther locations of the zone. Periodically I like to visit these areas personally rather than have the missionaries come to me. We cannot do this all the time in all areas, but we try to balance our visits. We drove to Gobo from Iwade on Thursday afternoon and I interviewed Elders Harris and Neider there.Here are the elders in front of the Gobo church building. This is actually the back of the building. The church is on the second floor. Gobo is a smaller branch in the Sakai Stake.

Above is Elder Neider and I standing in front of the Gobo apartment. After interviews and an apartment inspection, we drove to Tanabe which is further down the coast of Wakayama. That evening I interviewed elders Christensen and Drake and the assistants helped teach their weekly English class at the church.

The next morning we took a picture in front of the Church. Tanabe has a nice little building chapel. It is also a smaller branch in the Sakai Stake. Thursday morning we had study and morning schedule with the elders and then departed to Shingu.

Here are the assistants and elders Drake and Christensen in front of the Tanabe apartment building. They live on the 7th floor with a great view of the ocean. The drive to Shingu is several hours from Tanabe. There are two routes, the coast or the mountains. We took the coastal route down and returned via the mountains. At one of the rest stops we found a governmental experimental breeding laboratory. They are breeding wild bore with domestic pigs. We took a picture or two and actually saw some inobuta (a cross between a Inoshii/bore and a Buta/pig). This was just something you do not see everyday!

Above is the mom and dad and here are the inobuta children. They do use them for meat. They were very friendly and cute though.

About half way down the coast is the Hashiguiiwa rocks in the ocean. The assistants took advantage of this famous photo spot.

Once in Shingu I had the chance to interview elders Fell and Schmidt and the assistants spent some time with their English class and on splits proselyting. Friday the 30th, in the morning we spent our study time together in the Shingu apartment then started our journey home. The drive back to Kobe can take anywhere from 5-6 hours.

Took a quick picture in front of the Shingu church before leaving.

On the way home on the mountain route, about lunch time we found and stopped at a little restaurant on the side of the road. It specialized in unique "local" cuisine. (picture above) The elders were brave and wanted to try some so we had a quick lunch consisting of wild bore meat (inoshishi donburi) over rice, wild bore meat curry, deer meat fried rice and to top it off some raw deer meat sashimi. A nice family owned and managed the place and we visited with them for a few minutes and were able to leave some information about the church. The food was good!

Sister McIntyre and I also attended the Sakai Stake Conference this month. Elder Stevenson of the seventy presided and Elder Bin Kikuchi, an area seventy, accompanied him. I spoke in the priesthood leadership session Saturday and the main session on Sunday and Sister McIntyre spoke in the Saturday evening session. It was a great conference. We also held a new member meeting with Elder and Sister Stevenson, Elder Kikuchi and President Sugimoto of the Sakai Stake after the meetings on Sunday. We saw several new converts we know that have joined the church since we arrived. It was great to see the work moving forward and the fruits of everyone's efforts. Time is moving so fast. January is gone and February begins. Some areas in the mission are quite cold. Toyooka has lots of snow. Spring will be here soon!

Week Ending November 9th

Next week is transfer week and we will be welcoming 5 new Elders. This week was largely spent planning and preparing for next week, preparing talks and training and generally catching up on things in the office. We closed an apartment in Osaka and rented a new one in Okamachi for Sisters. Below is our rented moving van and missionary movers. Elders Christie and Nicerio who are our office elders, Elders Rasmussen and Murayama my assistants and Elders Steele and Johnson who serve in Okamachi pose below. Elders Rasmussen and Nicerio got to drive for the first time in Japan and did great. Everyone looks quite different in work clothes! Elder and Sister Wade also helped greatly with the move, but were back still cleaning the old apartment while we unloaded at the new one and took this picture. Sister McIntyre and I attended Kyoto Stake Conference in Shimogamo on Saturday and Sunday. Below is a shot of the stake center there.

After the conference on Sunday, we took a picture with President and Sister Tamaya of the Kyoto Stake. It was a wonderful two days of conference. I was asked to speak in the Priesthood Leadership session on Saturday afternoon and Sister McIntyre and I both spoke on Saturday night in the adult session and both again on Sunday in the general session. One of the focuses of conference was unity. We also had the chance to speak about sharing the gospel and growing the church in the Kyoto Stake. After conference we took a picture of most of the missionaries in the Kyoto Zone. Below are Elders Swartz, Goesch, Moore, Edfrennes, Obata, Maeno, Shoaf and Tibbs with Sisters Glenn and Kogawa.

We also had a chance to walk over to the Sisters apartment (a rented house very near the church) to inspect their living quarters. They live in this very nice old house and have lots of space! The boys have started their basketball seasons at school and we had fun Saturday juggling going to both their games and then trying to make it to stake conference in Kyoto. Thank heavens for nice expressways throughout the mission boundaries. We spend a lot of time driving on them.

It has turned pretty cold the last few days and winter will be here soon. We are starting to turn on the heaters in the mornings and evenings. Erika said it is very cold in Sapporo and they already had some snow. It will only get colder there! I am glad she prefers cold over heat.