This is the one and only photo we got this week, so I guess we'll be looking for more next week. Today's email let us know that he did get the package we sent which contained oreo cookies and other requested items along with some letters and a whole bunch of love. Always nice to hear that the package not only arrived but was appreciated. :)

He also told us that he would be hiking Mt. Takao again in a few weeks, but with the district this time.

"A fun panorama that I took on Saturday while we were looking for a referral. This is the edge of our area. Sorry this is all I have right now, I had Elder O. take most of the photos this week, and I haven't gotten them from him yet so..."

"Weekly update:

This week has been a crazy. We went housing on P-day, and we were able to find a new investigator and a really good Potential Investigator. I'm WAY excited to start working with them, but sadly we haven't been able to meet with either of them again yet, though we've been mailing and keeping in contact. Eikaiwa was pretty good this week, we had a few people call us and they're planning on coming this next Wednesday, so hopefully it'll grow a little! Sadly we also got sick this week from cooking in a non-stick pot that started to disinagrate and make our food taste funny, but we were able to clean the apartment while we were sick, and we're OK now so. :) Lastly we spent most of Saturday (4 hours straight in the heat) on our bikes searching for a referral that we couldn't find, but we think we've figured out where he lives now and we'll visit him on Tuesday"

FUN, FUN, FUN!

This past week we were reminded just how good we have it with our easy email contact and the ability to receive photographs from Jeff every week.  I was feeling a little down because we didn't get any pictures with our email last week, but then I was reminded that many parents don't get to see pictures from their missionary very often if at all.  We use Skydrive to transfer photographs back and forth between home and Japan, the transfer is almost instant and we very much enjoy seeing what our son is up to.  It is also fun to send him a few pictures of what is happening around here. I'm feeling a lot more thankful and less down about our communication situation this week.

OK, blah blah blah... lets get to what you come here for, the weekly update from the boy(s)!  This week Jeff had a lot of fun, fun, fun it seems.  Also we get to hear a little from Elder O.

"Weekly update:

So this week was fun. I had a lot of fun getting to know Elder O, he's a lot of fun. He's from a family of 6, and has a younger brother, and two younger sisters. He's from Idaho, and yeah, he's fun. :) We talk a lot lol, but it's not caused any problems yet so. On Friday we went and climbed Mt. Takao with an investigator, and I've got some fun photos of that that I'll upload. It was about an hour and 20 min up the mountain, and it was a lot of fun. Sadly it was raining once we started, so we weren't able to see too far off the mountain, but it was fun to hike in a cloud. :) I took a photo of "Fuji", but again because of the cloud.. well yeah, you can't see it. :P oh well. After that we went to a type of restaurant called "Shabu-Shabu" which is pretty cool, and I'm not sure how to explain it other than all you can eat meat for and hour or so, plus tasty ice cream. It was fun :) Sorry, no photos of that one. :P

Lastly for this weekly update I want to try something new... Here's Elder O: "WOW! THAT'S A LOW PRICE! Hey everyone! Nice to meet you. Elder Mosdell is awesome! WE have quite a fun time talking to one another. We can never shut up...lol, it's quite funny. yeah... lol smiley face! Yeah anyway, I'm just a crazy Idahojin that loves potatoes. have fun!"


Here are some of the photos that we got this week, we didn't get any captions with the photos, so your guess is as good as mine.  Japan is beautiful isn't it?

I'm guessing that on a clear day we would be looking at Mt. Fuji in the back ground here.

 

Another New Companion (transfer 5/16)

Some times we just get a really short email that tells us the boy is still there and doing all right.  This week is one of those super short ones, but its all good.  Elder Mosdell just got an new companion again. It sounds like all is well aside from the joyous experience of real humidity which two desert boys are learning all about right now. ;)

Here is the weekly update as Jeff wrote it for your kicks and giggles:

"Elder O is my new companion. O-man is he fun! ;) lol, we both talk a lot, so that's been fun. We started the transfer off really good so far. When he was in high school he did a lot of things, but his favorite was golf, and he's pretty good from what I've been told. He's from Idaho, and is on transfer 7 this transfer, he's also a good several inches taller than me, so that's a little weird. :P He also played the alto (saxophone), Tuba, Drums, and Trombone for a few years, and was actually a drum major in high school too! Needless to say, I think this transfers biggest challenges are going to be NOT spending all day just talking, and surviving the August heat... It's already super nasty right now, but everyone says it's just going to get worse. GROSS! Well... I can't think of anything else really new this week, so I guess that's it. :)"

I'll add photos when I get some, he hasn't sent any as of yet this week.

New Mission President

Being a temple week we didn't an update from Jeff until later. He has this to say about his new mission president:  "I got to meet President Budge and his family last Saturday. I really like them, and I'm excited to get to work with them for the next year and a half(ish). I'm amazed at how fast the first four transfers with the Albrechts went past, it felt like it'd be forever before the switch. But anyways, President Budge is (no surprise) VERY fluent in Japanese, and he's very energetic. Another thing I like about the Budges, is that their 13 year old son is here with them. So I technically have a "little brother" now, even if I don't really get to see or do anything with him."

Jeff did get to the temple this transfer, but it was really close. Being a little further away and with the size of the mission growing he has to get up at 5am in order to get there on time. He's still enjoying the opportunity to go but says he may not go every transfer depending on what his companions want to do. They have investigators, but none that are progressing as fast as Jeff and Elder M would like.

His Japanese has progressed, but now he's discovered that he's just good enough that people feel that they can tell him when they don't understand him. It seems that's fairly common. "More or less the language is still extremely hard, but i guess that's the thing about Japanese, the learning "curve" never really curves. It's pretty much a straight 45 degree angle the whole two years."

Jeff sent a funny reply to Laura's email last week. She said he could have her sushi because she won't touch the stuff. "Thank you for your portion of sushi! Don't mind if I eat it when the district goes to sushi this Thursday. Yum yum yum." Then he commented on her plans for the Homecoming dance with this, "Homecoming? Bleh, why would you want to go to something with gross boys... Oh wait..." Such a silly brother.

Jeff says these are banana creme and chocolate creme sandwiched between 3 saltine crackers. "They taste 'zackly' what they seem like." Don't know if that's bad or good, LOL.

A cool little grove to take a break in while housing.

Food, glorious food!

This week's email and photos from Jeff had a lot to do with food.

"Tama ward is AMAZING! Holy wow! I don't know about other missions, but here, normally the missionaries have a basket at the church that every now an again some members put some food in. In general how much your getting is a good sign of how well you're working with the ward. Apparently this last week the ward had some kind of "plot" and everyone got us something (or rather a lot of somethings). I didn't take pictures myself, but I'll post Elder M's. There was SO much food we couldn't even carry it back from the church in one load! We were SO SO surprised. We weren't even sure what we'd done lately. The best part of the whole thing was the notes that were written to us and a few "anonymous" emails we got from ward members telling us how thankful they are for our work, and how it absolutely made their day to see how taken aback we were when we came downstairs after church. I absolutely love serving here in Tama. It's a great area, it's pretty, the ward is amazing, everything we need is within 10 mins by bike."

"For P-day today we went to a sushi bar (very similar to the one I ate the squid at last transfer) with an investigator. It was a lot of fun, though it's very different going with two Japanese people, than just with another American. I defiantly ate a lot more sushi than they did, but that's OK, it was good.  OH and cheap! 90 yen (90 cents) for a plate with two sushi on it! It was SO good! Sushi is defiantly my favorite so far in Japan."

Glad to see he's enjoying the food and getting along well with the members in his new ward. They also had a pretty crazy week:

"We went on splits twice this week, once with our district leader, and once with the zone leaders. When we went with the District Leader Elder M went with him, and I went with Elder H... Elder H and arrived at the MTC and Japan at the same time, and while is Japanese is quite a bit better than mine, we had a lot of fun when we couldn't understand what people were saying. We got lost for several hours too, but it was fun to be with someone from my same group.  We both were trained in the same zone, but it was a really neat experience to share the "best practices" we've learned over our mission so far and to compare and learn from each other. On Splits with the Zone Leaders I went with Elder P, who was one of my zone leaders for all three transfers in Chiba zone, and he is now (still) my zone leader. I went on splits with him once my first transfer. We did talk a lot about our Zone, and he really feels that our zone has a lot of the best missionaries in it right now."

Sounds like he's in a great Zone with great Zone Leaders! That will bring many blessings to him. We are very happy that he's doing well and feel blessed by the members in Tama.

A "pretty sweet" garden they came across.

One of the notes from a Tama Ward member.

Some of the food given to them.

A full refrigerator!
Jeff says they now have 5 times the food they had before.