Letter from Matlock – 25 November 2010

Dear (Family in Japanese characters),                         25 November 2010
So I found out that today is Thanksgiving this morning.  As you may be able to tell I’m not really doing anything to celebrate.  This week’s been a little crazy actually.  Monday we had a huge training from a member of the Quorum of the Seventies.  So then Tuesday was p-day but since that day was a Japan holiday we moved p-day to Thursday.  I wasn’t feeling so well Tuesday however.  I woke up and couldn’t really eat anything.  Absolutely no appetite.  I took a short nap and then went to the church because we had some lessons to teach.
Here I need to rewind a little.  Last week we were housing when we met a new investigator.  She’s very interesting.  She came out and after briefly explaining what we were doing she went back into her apartment, got changed, came back out and said ok, let’s talk.  Where shall we go to talk?  We were a little unprepared for that situation since it never happens and just invited her to church.
Rewind a little more.  We arranged to play ping pong with a young man who doesn’t seem to have any interest in the church but whenever we get together with him he brings along a friend who does have interest.  This time he brought a friend who is a girl, and she was interested in church things.
So – all three of these people came to church, and all enjoyed except for the young man who doesn’t really have interest.  Then Monday the two girls came to FHE and turns out one of our other investigators knows one of them from class.  So they’re all good friends.
Back to Tuesday.  We taught a lesson to the two new female investigators together, and we had a Chinese member there to help us.  It was a really great lesson, we challenged both of them to baptism and they both accepted.  Meanwhile I thought I was going to die during that lesson.  It went pretty long and I was sick and had a full bladder.  Right after that lesson we taught one of our older investigators the word of wisdom.  He had some issues with it but he really liked the idea of prophets warning us that some things were bad before it’s common knowledge among everyone else.  That lesson went extremely well too, but I on the other hand I only got sicker!  At that point we wrapped up as fast as we could (not that fast), went back to the apartment and I hardly left my futon the next day.  I might have been alright for a little bit of work but my companion refused.  He wanted me to get completely better because we have some important lessons – today actually.
Love you all,
(Elder Wyman in Japanese characters)

Dear (Family in Japanese characters),                         30 November 2010
Not a whole lot happened since I wrote less than a week ago.  Except a bat flew into my face while we were riding our bikes one night.  No one can tell me that echolocation works….
We still can’t seem to be able to meet with one of our investigators, but things are going great with another investigator.  He’s really excited about his baptismal date.  We told him that Elder Bee was going to be doing the baptismal interview with him and he said “Bee?!  Is it going to sting me?  This is going to hurt!”  Then afterwards he said “I will change my English name to Bee predator and overwhelm him with the knowledge you have taught me!”  This guy is so funny.  I really want to be here one more transfer so I can keep meeting with him.  This transfer ends next week by the way.  I really, really don’t want to be transferred!  Especially since we have four baptisms next month!
The mission home decided to get new phones so we got an announcement at conference that we would receive a new phone and would start using it the next day.  Well the phones came and their like a brick!  About twice as big as the old ones!  All our excitement over getting a new phone was demolished when we realized it was just bigger, heavier and more troublesome….
The two female investigators are also doing very well – we had FHE at a member’s house with all our Chinese investigators.  He has a lot of cats in his house and the girls became attached to a white one that was lying around.  The white one walked out of the room and after a while a black one walked in.  They got really excited and started yelling “It turned black, it turned black!”  How’s that for a blonde moment?
Well gotta go,  Love you all
(Elder Wyman in Japanese characters)

NOTE: We received an email from Elder Wyman and he is staying in this area for the next while - he did not get transferred to a new area!  He's very happy!