You've Got to be Kidding Me!

Dear Family and Friends,

Watashi no namae wa Sorensen simai desu. Does that give anyone a hint as to who my new companion is? I am currently serving in the Lincoln 2nd Ward in the Rocklin Stake with Sister Takako Kawasaki. I have to admit while I had some sentimental thoughts that it would be kind of cool to train the Japanese sister given our family's record with Japan and missionary work, I was quite surprised that President Perry and the Lord are having me Shotgun Train with a foreign Language missionary. Partly because this simply cuts out an hour and a half everyday of extra study time that Sister Kawasaki gets, but I'm sure it will all work out. After all I trust the Lord and President Perry a great deal, so they must know what they are doing right?

Now for proper introductions. Sister Kawasaki comes from Kumamoto, Japan (even though all the mission stuff says she comes from Tokyo, I guess that is where she was living just before she came out). She joined the church when she was 18 after taking some of the free English lessons the missionaries were offering and feeling obligated to repay their services by listening to them teach the gospel, but merely as a courtesy. Of course, that changed and she has now been a member for four years. She is the only member in her family, and her family is apparently a little less than supportive in her decision to come on a mission, particularly all the way over here in California. That said, would Emily, Anne, or Travis like to brush up on their Japanese? Sister Kawasaki gets very little mail, and while she is very nice and polite about it, I can tell it bothers her a bit. She's graduated from college and all that, and apparently worked as a nurse for a year before she came on her mission. That job, however, was not to her liking so she is also trying to figure out what else she can/will do when she goes home.

Okay so how about the ward. There is only one word I can use to describe this ward/area and week: crazy. While I love General Conference (I particularly liked Elder Boyd K. Packer and Elder Robert D. Hales talk this time round), it did fall at a very inconvenient time for trying to get to know a new ward. This ward is absolutely huge! (By all accounts, since I have not yet actually witnessed this). It has 750 members, very many of whom are active. There are three nurseries (which equals to 60 kids between the age of 18 months and 3 years), 120 other children in primary, and apparently there is almost literally a baby born each week. For the last two years they have read at least one new family into the ward each week and sometimes it is closer to three or four, and during the block every single room--including the kitchen--is being used. There is also a chunk of a fairly large retirement community in the ward so there are plenty of old people too. The only thing in scarcity, it sounds like, are teenagers and people in their 40s. Meanwhile we have only met six or seven families. We spent all of last week and this weekend trying really, really hard to meet the last set of Elders' investigating pool with very little luck. This people are nearly impossible to get a hold of! We've called them all, gone round to their houses at different times during the day, and left notes on their doors with very little return. We are probably going to have a baptism this month though, which is fun (we do have an appointment with this person tonight). And we started teaching a friend of one of the family's last week and not only did the lesson go very well, but we all met at their home to watch Conference on Saturday; he ended up watching all three sessions that day, and was supposed to have gone back over for Sunday's sessions as well. Another plus about this ward though is that there are lots of ward missionaries and the Ward Mission Leader and Bishop are really on top of missioary work, not that the ward really needs any new members, but hey. Apparently the big hold up is that there is simply no other building to put another ward and so they cannot split Lincoln 2nd (there are at least three wards meeting in all the buildings in this stake).

So this next week is going to be a great big adventure. Sister Kawasaki and I are going to press forward and work really hard; if we can't find all their old investigators we're just going to have to go out and get some of our own.

I hope you all had a great week, sorry about the delay. The computers went all weird last Monday.

Love,
Sister L. Sorensen