Elder Rogers Japan Tokyo Mission: I'm a scary American

皆さん(everybody) おはようございます(good morning)
    This week has been 素晴らしい(awesome). We've had lots of good stuff
going on. Our investigators are progressing. We taught some good
lessons throughout the week and the message was received very well.
They want to keep learning more and everyone seems to really like us.
Like, they go over the top for us sometimes. Everyone feeds us and
Nishiyama-San made us a ton of food at her shop. I didn't think I
could finish all of it because she kept bringing more out! But I did
it. I ate all of it. And it was delicious.
    This week we did a lot of 同席s (member present lessons) and they
were a HUGE help. They explained things so well and became good
friends with our investigators. It's really good when the
investigators testify about how the gospel has helped them because the
spirit is so strong, most of them are converts themselves. The
members are really good here at just about everything. If we need a
模擬もぎ (role play lesson) the members will help us. If we need them to
come teach a lesson with us they'll do it. If we need food, the
relief society is who to ask! They are so on top of it. We asked
them for cereal, rice, and bread, and they did not waste any time.
Our food basket was the fullest it's ever been yesterday! The members
are just really nice people here.
    Specifically, 大石兄弟(Brother Big Rock) is always helping us out.
高井兄弟(Brother Tall/High) meets with us every week and sometimes more
often than that. He gives good feedback and helps us improve a lot.
The 木村s (it has a tree in it but I don't know what it means) help us
out too and want to meet and help more! The Naganos even came up from
Tokyo to do a lesson with us on Friday! My Mission President came and
helped me with one of my lessons! It was probably the worst one of
the day, naturally, but he said it was good anyway.
    We've had some days this week where we just go from one
appointment to the next the whole day and during one of the
appointments we get fed so we don't have to take time off for lunch.
Our days have been becoming increasingly packed with lessons and
meeting new people who we hope to start teaching soon. That's a good
thing. We have a few more people we want to meet with this week and
see how interested they are and start teaching them. We also got 3
referrals from one member after a particularly good role play lesson!
    I'm excited. This area has improved so much since I first got
here. Everything seems to just be going uphill. We also are going to
try to start teaching a guy who has talked to missionaries for 30
years! And he still hasn't been baptized! That means he's totally
ready by now and teaching him should be a breeze.
    On Sunday we watched our area plan video and it was SO japanesey.
It was like straight anime and it was hilarious. It was spiritual
too, don't worry, but it was so un-American. Everybody should try to
look it up, it'll give you a good laugh. Maybe less if you don't
understand Japanese but it was funny to me. It's the Asia North area
plan JP final (1). Or something like that.
    Oh yeah, I'm a scary American. So whenever we go visit this one
less active we go by an elementary school. And a lot of the time when
we come back from our appointments there the kids are getting out of
school. So when they see us with our white skin and pointy noses they
scream, "Amerika! Aaaaaa!" and run around in little circles with
their hands in the air. Some of them actually want to talk to us but
mostly we get the Godzilla reaction. It's pretty funny. Sometimes I
feel like messing with them but I feel like that may be pushing it.
Also, when we just walk around places sometimes kids will say,
"Gaijin" which means foreigner, and we'll respond in Japanese that yes
we came from America and start talking to them. This almost always
makes them laugh that they thought we couldn't speak Japanese but we
can. They're like, 'why do these white kids sort of speak Japanese?'
It's always fun.
Love you guys,
Rogers 長老