Letter #17: “Patience”

Well another week has gone by, sorry for again not writing yesterday. We had interviews with the mission president yesterday so they moved our p-day to Tuesday.

Last p-day was so much fun! We went to Ozushima which is a small island about 30 minutes away by boat from the main island. There we saw the Kaiten Memorial Museum. A kaiten is actually a underwater missile that can be piloted by a person. So it was used for kamikaze attacks in WW2 and used during the Pearl Harbor attack. It was a very somber memorial. It was interesting seeing a different side to the war which happened so long ago. We got to the island by ferry, got to say it was pretty cool riding out in the ocean seeing all these little small islands. I of course took lots of pics.

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We went with a member called Kanetoshi-kyoudai. He taught us a whole lot about the museum and stuff. It was cool. Afterwords we ate dinner at the Hiroshima stake president’s house. He and his wife are so great.

We have two investigators that we meet with regularly. One is H______and he is actually a referral we got from the Sendai mission. He is an interesting character, funny guy and very big on freedom of choice. We had a really good lesson with him Sunday. He came to church and was well received by members. (Even though after the meeting he went outside and smoked, haha). The smoke was getting to me but a member who was standing next to me said in English, “patience”.

It seems like patience is a hard thing that I never really got used to even before the mission. I’d always be like “Daddy, I want it now” like the girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I never really exercised patience before. Things may seem hard now but with patience and being humble it will all work about. We can all try our best to do better.

Veruca Salt
Veruca Salt

Any way, things are still a bit rough out here but little by little it has been getting better. Thanks everyone for you emails and your prayers. They have helped! Life here is good and its crazy that we are here in Japan. Really crazy. Sometimes I really just sit back and think “whoa, I’m in Japan”. I’ll talk to you all again next week for sure on Monday this time. Sorry mom, your probably having a heart attack. Breathe.

With love,

Elder Bryce (older)