Catalyst Castle

On March 14th, a week before yesterday, I met with some brothers and sisters to preach to Japanese speaking people in the Orlando area. The nearest Japanese language group is in Atlanta, Georgia and their territory covers a vast area including all of Florida. Of course, that's quite a distance to travel, so people in the Atlanta group asked some friends from the local area to cover the territory as they could down here.

There were 8 of us in service: Kelly, Jimmy, Nico, two couples (can't recall any of their names, sorry), and myself. Unfortunately, most of the group had prior obligations in the afternoon, so we were only out for a couple of hours in the morning. Because we only call at homes where we know there are Japanese speaking householders, the territory is very spread out. I think that between the two car groups we were only able to visit 4 or 5 houses. In general, it wasn't a very successful morning, but at least we tried. I'd love to do it again, but hopefully next time we could be out longer.

After service we had lunch at a genuine Japanese restaurant on International Drive. That was only the second time I've had Japanese food. This time I passed on the sushi and enjoyed the steak tariyaki.

Yesterday afternoon I had my first official lesson in the Japanese language. Kelly is pretty fluent in the language and he's teaching a couple of other brothers and myself. I'm looking forward to learning the language. I've tried to pick up a little on my own over the last couple of years, but I haven't made much progress. Hopefully having actual lessons will help. I'm going to post updates on my progress here. They say that sharing what you learn is a good way to reiterate it to yourself. More updates will be coming in the future.