December 15, 2014 Letter

21:00 hours; The last Stand

Winter has brought down the last leaves and has yet to bring forth much snow so I have decided I am going to transfer up to somewhere with more snow. I am going to Aomori! :-) (It is the farthest north on the big island of Honshu that you can go.) My companion will be an Elder Macnab. It will be his first experience as a missionary in Japan. I am excited to work with him.

sannintomadachi

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so these are what is left of my MTC group after war disease, 19 months, a mission split and the snow of 13.... no one has really changed that much! 

This area with a bunch of kids that are way too cute!

Culture point:

So I got a letter this last week inviting me to a coming of age party in the town center. When you turn 20 in Japan you are an adult! I might go check it out. But with regards to age something that I have found really hard to understand is a thing called keigo. It’s polite Japanese. First of all I found it hard to understand because it is beautiful and long and just hard. Second is when to use it. As a missionary and volunteer, I should use it all the time really. An employee or anyone serving you will use it too. But for example in normal conversation within missionary groups and two Japanese Missionaries are talking to each other. One might use keigo and the other just speak normal... and the reason is one might just be more casual than the other guy, but I have found a specific pattern of one speaking up to someone because he is a few years older. This especially seems to occur to people that played a lot of sports in high school. I can kind of understand speaking more polite to a teacher or boss, but someone a year older than me is harder to understand. But the more I feel the level of respect for other people I see that is a lot less of speaking down and more of speaking up.. It’s hard to explain... ha-ha 

Sorry my time is gone! Love each other for me!

Law Choro