Thrashing the Nations

Dear Family,

It’s Tuesday evening at 9:45, and 24 young missionaries stagger off the plane after 22 hours en route from Provo, Utah. They are in various stages of excitement, wonder and exhaustion. We are there to meet them with a fleet of vans into which we stuff them together with their roughly 100 pieces of luggage. Arriving at the mission home, they settle into the bunk room, the bedrooms and hallways, many sleeping on rented futons on the floor.  Up early the next morning, they grab a quick breakfast and we take them in waves to the city offices to register as residents.  The mission president interviews each one, each is allowed a safe-arrival e-mail home, and perhaps a quick foray with experienced missionaries meeting people on the streets to share the gospel.  For lunch we send out to Hotto Motto for Japanese bento, a plastic box with chicken over rice. 

Incoming!

The afternoon is for photographs on the hill behind the temple (see picture) and then orientation.  I regale them on mission finances and Pat walks them through an orientation book with such things as history of the church in Japan, Japanese etiquette, reports to complete and apartment cleaning.  The mission president and mission mom counsel with them and say how much they love them, and assistants give them some last-minute instructions.  In the evening we all go to dinner at a traditional Japanese restaurant, Hamakatsu, then walk over to the local chapel for English classes. Barely surviving jetlag now, they assemble in the mission home 24 hours after their arrival to receive their assignments and learn who their first companions will be. The next morning is an unbelievable flurry of activity as we shuttle them to meet planes, trains and busses, routing them to their fields of labor and connecting them with their companions.   By noon the new ones are all gone, the 10 missionaries returning home after an 18-24 month tour of duty have arrived at the mission home, and the dust has settled on another transfer day in the mission. 

Logistically it was a shipwreck which somehow righted itself at the last second and everyone, more or less, got where they were supposed to be. Statistically, 52 missionaries were engaged in this musical-apartments game this time; they took 17 flights by plane, 18 train rides, 38 bus rides and any number of trips by local mission vehicles.  Financially, as book-keeper of the mission, I shelled out approximately 625,000 yen (roughly $6,500) for this escapade, not counting international travel.  Under the mission president’s oversight, 20-year old kids organized all this and made it happen with more skill and good sense than could rationally be expected of them – but then, we are talking missionary work where miracles abound and rationality carries little weight.

For us old folks, it is a refreshing marvel to witness these eager young men and women, embarking on their missionary adventure here in Japan with such confidence and enthusiasm, and it brings to mind the words of the Lord to the 20-something Joseph Smith 183 years ago…..“I call upon the weak things of the world, those who are unlearned and despised, to thrash the nations by the power of my Spirit; and their arm shall be my arm, and I will be their shield and their buckler; and I will gird up their loins, and they shall fight manfully for me...and by the fire of mine indignation will I preserve them.  And the poor and the meek shall have the gospel preached unto them....”  (D&C 35:13-15)

Hanging on for dear life, we are your faithful far-eastern correspondents, 

Mom and Dad

.Finishers dinner for Maxfield, Lee, Evans, Del la Mare, Hinode, Tokizawa, Stevenson, Kurose and Amor.