to them forever! Although teaching in English is a little bit
uncomfortable and awkward. I end up translating from Japanese to
English in my head and it always sounds funny. Last night we bumped
into a lady from Cameroon. She was so kind! She is catholic but when
we told her we were missionaries she asked is if we could come over
and do bible study with her. We are so excited! I have really been
studying the bible a lot lately and I'm excited to talk about it with
her. I love the bible! And definitely introducing the Book of Mormon
to her when we go over. The other lady we bumped into is half Japanese
but grew up in Croatia and lived in America. Her family is all
Buddhist but she is like hardcore Hindu. She was telling us all about
her life, and she served in a nunnery type place for a while (but for
Hindu) so she said she could relate to what we do. I love the
different types of people I get to meet out here. It's such an amazing
experience. On Saturday we got to go down to Kumamoto to help clean up
after the earthquake! There is still so much damage there! We went to
help clean up this one old ojisans house, and I was asking him how the
earthquake was and he told me that he literally thought he was going
to die. He said it was so strong and so scary. Later I found out that
his house was right next to the epicenter. He asked us if we could go
help clean up his parents graves because the earthquake hit the
graveyard so badly and when we went there.. It was just unbelievable.
This graveyard was in the middle of the forest, with tons of huge hit
trees surrounding it. It was absolutely beautiful, but then when you
looked at all the tombstones (and Japanese tombstones are huge and
amazing) they were all toppled over and cracked. These tombstones are
crazy heavy too. He asked if we could help try to push this tombstone
away so he could get his parents urns, and there were ten of us and it
wouldn't even budge. It had to have weighed at least a thousand
pounds. I wish I had gotten a picture of the area. It was so
beautiful, but completely destroyed. He showed us an area where it had
actually cracked the ground. There was this huge crack in the dirt
maybe about half a kilometer long. The houses next to the graveyard
where all deemed unsafe, everyone had to move out of them, including
this older guy we were helping. A lot of people lost their homes and
are still living in shelters 2 months later. It's way sad. I'm glad we
got to go help them for a day. We really cleaned up a lot of his yard.
He had a couple of sheds that were completely destroyed that we helped
clear out. All this stuff had been sitting there for 2 months and
through rain and the humidity so there were so many bugs and maggots
on the wood and rotting food. It was so so bad. We got just one area
all cleaned up, but didn't really make a huge dent in what needed to
be done. I hope we can go back and help. Although we didn't actually
get home until around 10 Saturday night so we were pretty dang
exhausted yesterday. Also, it is so so hot lately. We are always just
covered in sweat and sunblock haha. Last night we were biking to an
area when this downpour started out of nowhere so we ran and got
cover, but it was still so stinking hot, even with the downpour of
rain! So last night it was a mixture of rain and sweat haha. Oh man I
love Japan.
It was a way good week. I'm so excited for this next one too. I just
love it here so much. My companion is amazing, my area is the best
area, and I just love the people so much. I am so so so happy I am
here. Anyway, that's all for today :) hope you all have a crazy fun
week!
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