Mom and Dad,
Every
night Hoshino Choro and I seem to have the same discussion - how on
earth did we get here? Didn't we just get out of our futons not just 30
seconds ago? And now we're here again! It's kind of spooky just how
fast things are going.
So about the Christmas call. Just like on Mother's day you'll need to call me because our phones can't make international calls.
You'll need to call me when it's Christmas
for you. It would be best if you could call at about 9:00 our time.
If I'm not mistaken that should be around 5:00 in the afternoon for
you. Or it could be 6, I don't remember how it goes with daylight
savings time and all. Again, 59 minutes maximum.
So an update on T.Kyoudai - he has a member record!
Yoshi! We know he's been baptized, but we're not sure if he's been
confirmed yet. The mission office said that the record will be sent our
way soon, so we're curious to find out a little more about him. We're
still meeting with him and working closely with the Branch on helping
him out. He is absolutely incredible. He has so many awesome questions
and he has such a sincere desire to learn and grow closer to God.
It's been hanging around 0-5C this last week and we
finally got a good few whacks of snow. It was snowing a little when we
left our house to go visit some potential investigators (who live about
30 minutes away by bike) so luckily we wore our rain gear.
Nevertheless, wearing rain gear and biking almost always leads to
sweat, and so when we got there and took our gear off, we froze. The
ride back wasn't much fun, either. But we're going to be gearing up today
and getting a few things to make working in the cold a wee bit less
uncomfortable. The snow hasn't been sticking around, but I'm sure that
will change over the next few weeks.
So about money and stuff, I (so far as I know) don't
have control over which account I pull out of when I got to an ATM
here. I had no idea that it was pulling out of savings. In any event, I
don't foresee any huge need to pull out cash in the near future, but
I'll likely be making some debit purchases, just FYI.
Funny that you mention the light display in Osaka.
There have been a lot of advertisements for it in trains and such over
the past few weeks. Looks like it would be pretty cool. Definitely
nothing of that sort in Toyooka, but a few folks put Christmas lights on their houses. Yoshi.
Yesterday
we went to Fukuchiyama and the branches combined their church meetings.
There was an excellent shokujikai (food fest) afterwards, and then
everyone watched the Christmas Devotional. I would say that I absolutely loved the Christmas
Devotional, but I actually didn't get to watch it. Because we're Zone
Leaders, Hoshino Choro and I ended up having a meeting with the District
President during the time everyone else was watching the Devotional. I
caught the last few minutes of Elder Nelson's talk and the last song,
it was nice. Maybe I'll watch the Devotional someday, maybe not.
I love you. Thank you so much for all of your love, concern and support. I'll try and send some pictures if I can.
Love,
Elder Kyle Hutchings
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| Elder Hoshino and I may or may not have bought some way cool glasses at a recycle shop and then vainly took our photo in the reflection of a train. |
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| Some way cool natural formations called the Genbudo caves. Not too far from where our house is. |
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| Last week we went to Mister Donuts. They had Charlie Brown sweets. Couldn't resist. |
