Leaving on a Jet Plane

Hello Family!

Sounds like things are doing pretty good at home which is good to here. Glad everything is going well in the elections so far, hope they continue to go that way. So lets see, seems like there is a lot to say so here we go.

So this Tuesday we go to the devotional and we got some pretty sweet seats. However, I needed to leave real quick and it was like 15 minutes before the start so I wasn't too worried about it. However when we try to get back in they are being meany heads and won't let us in. Finally we convince the guy that we should be allowed in and when we walk in everyone is standing and singing. Now this isn't totally uncommon so we sneak back to our seat and then when everyone sits down we look up at the stand and who happens to be sitting there? M. Russell Ballard! What the what?(As Sister Carter would put it). Total pleasent surprise. Two apostles in two weeks. Lucky are we! It was quite fun to contrast his talk to Elder Hollands. They have very different speaking techniques but the same spirit is there and as Sister Carter put it in her most recent letter these general authorities have a power to really give you a kick in the butt. So that was sweet and a half!

Ok next crazy thing. So Wednesday we are chilling in class and then the head of the Japanese Department comes in and tells we need to all come back to class (when we all study together not much gets done so we usually split up). Not unheard of so we come back. Then this guy comes in that we have never seen and his name tag says "Operations" (Sidenote: I kinda love being on a mission because i don't need to ask what anyone does or what their name is because of these nametags). Anyway he starts out real sullen with "I need all of your full attention, Saturday at 2..." At which point we all get worried because we are thinking something went seriously wrong LAST Saturday at 2 then he continues. "...BBC will be coming to the MTC." Starts talking more about it. Kinda cool but a lot of people come here to film and do different stuff so nothing too special and then he says something along the lines of,"So they will be interviewing a few of you and then filming you during your language instruction" Becomes pretty clear that they are coming just for our district! Ha. So apparently your son is going to be famous in England! Also they said they would let us and you know when BBC puts the story online. Pretty snazzy if I must say so myself. So that means I get to get my hair cut today (Which I'm not suppose to do until 5 days before I leave but when we brought this up he just told us to tell the people that "President Brown said I could break that rule" (President Brown is the MTC president)). Anyway, kinda cool. Will actually end up probably being not that cool and kinda boring but yeah.

So now the moment you have all been waiting for! Travel plans!!!! There was much jubilation yesterday when these were received. So here is the deal, pretty simple. On September 26 I will be taking Delta Flight 639 from Salt Last City, UT -> Tokyo Narita, Japan. Leave at Sept. 26 2:00pm, arrive at Sept 27 4:45pm. Pretty super exciting little piece of paper! Also a more stressful part of this. I'm the travel leader for all the Sendai missionaries to make sure they make there flights and don't do anything stupid from the time we leave the MTC until President Rasmussen picks us up at the Tokyo airport. This is all fine and dandy but then I thought to myself, "Wait who will be going to Japan with me?" Flipping a few pages to a list of the people and my fears were confirmed. Its me and 5 Nihonjin! Ha. So the person with probably the least airline experience is going to try and lead these people through the airport when he only kinda speaks their language. This shall be an adventure.

As for the phone call, I know nothing about it. They really never even address that you can do it although I'm sure you can. So I will try to find out more about that before next week.

As for our investigators things are going pretty good. Mayumisan accepted the invitation to be baptized this week but there is no way we get her to the level of actually being prepared before we leave and (drum roll please!) Monday Morimotosan is getting baptized!!!! Ha. Fake investigator but I was still super happen when Henderson Choro came in and all he said was, "Well go congratulate him" "......so he passed?" "Oh yeah, guess I should have started with that". Yay! I guess the benefit of this is that because he is fake he can't not show up to his baptism (well technically he can but that would just be mean). Anyway so that is cool. However, when we leave the Kohai don't actually get our investigators. They just keep the progressing investigators that they currently have.

Well out of time now. Love you all. Hopefully I answered questions. Talk to you hopefully soon!