Elder Jacob Matthew Preciado Kobe, Japan 2014-2016: Greetings from 1st week in Japan!

Greetings from the land of the rising sun!!

My oh my everything has just been dandy here let me tell ya. started off my first few days at the mission home meeting President and Sister Welch. They're awesome :) First night was good, walked into the apartment at the mission home and saw a futon on the floor, Elder Stirling, the AP said welcome to 2 years of back problems! haha whatever it wasn't bad, only bad part waasss a FAT cockroach was found on one of em. yeah im gonna die. oh and there are spiders here the size of your palm. so ill die some more. next morning, we woke up and ran up a mountain to where we did a dance in the park with a ton of old people haha. after that we sprinted down the streets and running down the mountain and during that i remember thinking, i'm just frolicking down the streets of japan running at high speeds! god is good! hahaha

I have been assigned to serve in the city of Hashimoto which is about 2 hours away from Kobe. My Trainer is Elder Scowcroft from New York, really cool guy, i guess he is really impressed with how prepared i am? haha had a recent convert lesson that first night. took 3 trains to get there, trains everywhere i've ridden more trains that day than i have my whole life haha. anyways the lesson was good, i was able to testify of the atonement in japanese perfectly. they were impressed! i still have a LONG ways to go. Next day we taught Panchhi San, a man who loves indian culture and has an indo curry restaurant. we traveled to his place and taught him during break in the restaurant. Lesson went really good, he could potentially be our first baptism in our area. We had Dinner at the branch presidents house which was nice, they felt like they had to keep feeding me which was really funny but i wasn't that hungry. Food has been great of course, lots of rice, and Nashi! Nashi is a Japanese pear, superdelicious. The weather is warm, its starting to not get as humid and that's when the cold weather will start to come, buildings are just like any others haha, but some houses are built the traditional way and they are sick! mountains everywhere, after all, japan practically is a mountain

We had church that next day, oh man...... hhahaha ohhh man. ill never forget this day. I was asked to bear my testimony in front of everyone so i got up and told everyone i was 18, got to japan five days ago and that my Japanese isn't the best and to bear with me. i began speaking about myself a little bit, and wanted to end with saying, i'm very excited. the term for excited is waku waku, but instead i said, muki muki, so what i really said was, i am very buff. EVERYONE started busting up and i got really red and embarrassed, Whatever! everyone loves me now because i was able to give em a good laugh, especially a little old Japanese Lady that wouldn't stop feeling my arms and kept telling everyone else to feel my arms. pretty weird but funny, its been a good first week! Well, onto another awesome week here in japan! :)

Love you all!
あいしてます

Elder Jacob Preciado