5 January 2009

Dear Mom,

Yeah, you were right. There was no place to do email last week. Im still fine. All is well. Another week in Hatsukaichi! Yeah, the Japanese had their `Christmas season` last week. So, we worked hard none the less, even though sometimes not very many people were home or answered their doors.

My companion is Elder Goto from Gifu prefecture. Truthfully, I was a little apprehensive about becoming his companion, but he is awesome!!! He is one STUD of a missionary. He works hard, but has quite the goofy side -- just like me!!! Really fun to work with. We have really been working hard for the members, so we passed around sheets for everyone to fill out the names of their less active member friends, how we could help, and when we could meet them, and then we got to work. Elder Goto`s goal is to become the kind of missionary that a member would want to refer their friends to. I think that is excellent. So, in order to do so, we are working hard to help the less actives come to church. It was particularly effective this week because it was hard to do regular tracting. So, we taught a lot of lessons with less active members. And guess what? On Sunday, 3 less active and 1 kind of active members came! So, we saw that as a great success. We hope to continue that. That was probably the big highlight of the week.

Well, sounds like everything is pretty good out there! I cant believe my Mom plays the bass! Speaking of, a member played solo bass for us at a meal, and he was AMAZING! So yeah. Way exciting. I was also very happy to hear that Ben got his mission call! Yeah! Way to surprise me about Clayton! What about the other Galena guys? I dont really know anything...

Well, I hope everyone has a great rest of the holidays!

Love Yalls
Elder Hogge