Week 10 in Japan: What do I look like, a charity case?

So for starters, we had Stake Conference this weekend. Conference here is held on Saturday and Sunday. There is a Priesthood session, Saturday night session, and Sunday session. So in other words I had about 6 hours of just sitting there and listening to talks in Japanese. It was exhausting. Luckily I had a small heart attack on Saturday night to keep me awake. One of the speakers was sick and wasn't able to make it, so before the intermediate hymn they made the announcement that Elder Cuff will be speaking after the hymn, followed by the Stake President. As soon as they made the announcement, the Mission President, Stake President, and several other leaders all looked over to me, smiled and gave me the thumbs up. I gave the fakest smile I could and continued to die inside as I realized that I had to give a surprise talk in Japanese, and had a whopping 3 minutes to prepare it.  I was trying to talk about the purpose of trials and the excitement of challenges, but who knows what came out of my mouth. I'm still confused as to what I said exactly, but apparently it went well. Elder Sakae thought it was hilarious. 

Earlier in the week we had a funny experience. While knocking on doors an older lady answered, she had to be 80 at least. She got really excited and just started rambling. Then suddenly told us to wait, and closed the door. She came back with the US equivalent of about $20. As a missionary, we can't accept money. But now we were put in one of the hardest situations one can face in this life, saying no too a grandma who just wants to be generous. For the next 10 minutes we were trying to resist this incredibly persistent 4'10" ball of joy. Elder Sakae kind of froze up, so it was just her, duking it out and me. Me trying to tell her why we couldn't take the money, and her telling us that it’s okay as long as we don't tell anyone. She finally grabbed my frightened companion by the arm, stuffed the money in his hands, scurried inside, and closed the door. It was so hard to hold back from laughing. But we waited a bit, then knocked one more time, and gave her the money back. Luckily she understood, but Elder Sakae still seemed a bit shaken. In short, I'm just living the dream. My English gets worse and worse, but I wouldn't want it any other way.   

Much Love, 

Elder Cuff