Chapter 1.4 -- Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Beryl)
Chapter 1.5 -- Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Satomi)
More crushes.
Satomi Mihara.
Sister Mihara was a fireball of a missionary. As a fellow young missionary in my first area, Tokorozawa, she had lead out in ways that both helped the Elders and threatened their sense of authority. I was not the only missionary who developed a crush on her.
Some of the young male missionaries resented their feelings toward her, but she seemed able to catch them off their guard and put them at ease.
Something
about her attitude made it clear she was entirely devoted to the work,
not at all interested in romantic entanglements. She seemed to
understand the pure love of Christ and live it.
We were both in Tokorozawa for two months, and then I was transferred to Niigata.
About half-way through my mission, I had been assigned to Nakano Ward in Tokyo when Sister Mihara was there, and she had encouraged me not to give up trying to learn the lessons we were supposed to teach from. With her encouragement, I asked the mission president to allow me to study the lesson plans using the Kanji (the Japanese/Chinese logograms commonly used in Japan) instead of the Rōmaji (Japanese, written using the letters of the Latin script which we use in English and many other European languages).
("Rōmaji" and "Kanji" are examples of the use of the Rōmaji script.「ローマ字」 is "Rōmaji" written in Japanese script (katakana and Kanji), and 「漢字」 is "Kanji" written in Kanji. I'm sure you really wanted to know.)
I couldn't see the meaning in the words of the Romaji version of the lesson plans that most foreign missionaries studied from. Too many homonyms and near-homonyms with no familiar roots. The Kanji are the roots. Without the Kanji, I couldn't see the meaning, and without the meaning, the words and the ideas would not stick in my mind.
But Kanji
study had in the past become a strong temptation that some of the
missionaries had needed to overcome, and most of the Church mission
organizations in Japan strongly recommended against the non-Japanese
missionaries studying them, to the point of
making it the rule in those missions. My second mission president had
left the question somewhat open, but regularly warned us not to let
Kanji study take too much of our time.
So I promised the mission president not to study the Kanji themselves too much, and he gave me special permission to study the lessons from the Kanji version. And I finished learning them in a month.
Somehow, I developed a crush on Sister Mihara's companion, Sister Hummer, too. As I say, it was too easy for me to develop crushes.
While I was in Nakano, I had a dream in which I went in to the mission home for my monthly interview with the mission president, and Sister Mihara and Sister Hummer were waiting outside the mission president's office. At least, I thought it was them when I woke up. I talked with them in my dream, then went in to talk with the mission president, and he told me that I would next be assigned to a female companion. I asked who, and he asked me whether I had considered the two sisters I had met coming in. And I acknowledged that I had.
In the light of my experiences since then, I can see that this dream was at least partly influenced by the Holy Spirit, to help me foresee and work out essential parts of my path ahead, and that the particulars of the dream were not important. It was something of a dramatic demonstration of what my mission president would tell me at the end of my two years, that I would still be on a mission, so to speak, receiving my new mission assignments more directly from God, and that I would be required to choose for myself, to a certain extent, both my assignments and my companions in those assignments.
At the time, I found myself wondering whether I might find myself being called to get married before my two year assignment as a missionary in Japan was finished. The adversary of our souls has various ways to confuse us, including trying to get us to pervert our revelations of truth.
I talked with the mission president about that dream, and he acknowledged that there probably was some meaning in it, though probably not literal. On the next transfer, I was assigned to Edogawa Ward.
One
transfer later, Sister Mihara was assigned to Edogawa, as well. There,
during our branch study sessions, she coached me about my shyness, and,
in the process, told me she loved me. I understood her to mean it as a
fellow missionary, and responded by trying to get out of my shell a bit
more. It was not that she wasn't cute enough for me to become obsessed
with, just that both of us were focusing on the work. (And, of course,
there was the torch I was carrying for Beryl.)
Again, I was transferred out on the next transfer, to Kumagaya.
Sister missionaries were called for a year and a half at the time, and Sister Mihara finished her mission a few months later, while I was in Kumagaya. Missionaries of opposite gender were not allowed to write each other during their missions, but after the missions were done, there were no such restrictions. She wrote me a postcard while I was in Kumagaya, and I wrote back. Both of us kept focused on the work in our letters.
Now
I was home. And, after that conversation that went nowhere in the Texas Tech cafeteria, I figured my
mind was clear of concerns about Beryl. I wrote Satomi a letter, essentially as follows:
拝啓 (Haikei -- salutations),
お元気ですか？ (Does my letter find you well?)
学校の計画がうまく進んでいますか？(Are your school plans coming along okay?) 幼稚園のバイトはできますか？(Did you get that part-time job at the kindergarten?)
ボクはもう、テキサスに戻って、近くの、お父さんが教授を努めている市立短大に入学する準備をしています。 (I'm back in Texas, getting ready for school at the local college where my dad teaches.) また、しばらくして、もっと大きい学校に転入することを考えています。 (I'm planning on transferring somewhere bigger later.) 新聞配達で入学金を設けています。 (Working a newspaper route for tuition.)夏休みになったら日本へ、また大阪へと旅行しようと思っています。(I'm thinking about going to Japan for a visit come summer break, thinking about visiting Osaka.) 恐縮ですが、大阪に居る間、付き合っていただきたいと考えては過剰な発想でしょうか？ (It embarrasses me to ask, but would I be presuming too much to ask you out while I'm there?)
元気にしていらっしゃると嬉しく存じます。(Hope this finds you well, )敬具(Keigu -- respectfully yours,)
ジョーより (Joe,)
里美様へ (to Satomi-sama)
I don't think there is a way to ask that question that doesn't feel awkward, and my skill level with Japanese didn't help.
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