24 Oct 2011

こんにちは！

Ok, so this time I am e-mailing from the Office of a member in our ward (a little weird because it's in the middle of an apartment complex and they just rent one of the apartments as their office) which makes this the 4th place we've e-mailed from here.  Who would have thought that finding a place to e-mail would be so frustrating?  Our ward building (well, I say building but it's really just the second floor of some office complex) doesn't have internet, so we've been trying to find places where we can e-mail and not be surrounded by the smell of smoke, the sounds of video games/movies and just un-missionary-like stuff everywhere.  So if any of you know of anywhere in Hiroshima city, Asaminami ward, or even Asakita ward (ward here just means part of the city) let me know.  :)

Let's start with Monday.  Ok, so because we went to the Temple we didn't have P-Day on Monday, so that was spent doing "normal" dendo.  We still had to go shopping (I rather like to eat during the week) and there were some other items that we needed to buy because this Wednesday we have a cleaning check.  They do those periodically here because as trusted as Missionaries are, they are still a bunch of 19-25 year olds living on their own in apartments and their cleanliness has a bit of work to do.  Luckily both my companion and I are really good (as far as missionaries go) about cleaning up and making sure the Apartment always looks nice, so we didn't have a whole bunch to do extra for this check.  (If I may toot our own horn, the apartment looks fantastic if I do say so myself!)  We ended up staying at a member’s house for dinner that day and met with her non-member Husband and son.  Their son is 16 (we have 4 part member families with priesthood age sons but they are all non-members and the ward has no young men) and we got to talk to him and invite him to our sports activity on the 5th (Holy man, I'll be 20 then!) where we'll do some archery and Basketball!  If we can get all of the young men there, that would be awesome!  We also have most all of our young Women coming, it should be a blast!

Tuesday we had district meeting and talked a lot about prayer!  It was very good, and really it was a sweet discussion with a bunch of missionaries about how they use/teach/understand prayer and the role it has in our lives.  Prayer is cool stuff man.  We read Luke 18:1-8 together and learned that no matter who you are, what you've done, where you are, or what you're doing, you can pray, and if you follow the right steps, you will be blessed beyond what you can imagine.  Important steps in Prayer 1: give thanks, 2: be humble, 3: acknowledge the Lord in all things, 4: ask for what you need, 5: give thanks again.  I call it a “thanks sandwich” (oh man I almost spelled that like a Japanese person sandowichi)  and with that power, we will find that we can do just about anything.  Prayer gives us strength and is really how we communicate with our Father in Heaven.  If we can just remember that important fact, the conversations we have, the prayers we give, will guide our lives and will be more than a spasmodic plea for help in a time of distress, but will give us power in all things and will prepare us for whatever comes our way.

Usually after District meeting everyone gets together and goes out to a restaurant before they all head back to their respective area, but we just got a message that those meetings are now being stopped so that everyone returns home faster and gets back to the work of dendo, hopefully, faster than before.  Our problem is that we still had to eat, so when we got back, by the time we found somewhere to eat and started again we were back to the same time that we usually start again.  Really it's a little sad that we don't have that time with the other missionaries on Tuesdays, but I totally see where they are coming from (I even set an alarm on my watch so that we wouldn't spend too much time in those post-meeting lunches).  Oh well, no more all-you-can-eat Indian curry for now. :(

Wednesday we met with a less active (who Beckstrand thought was a former investigator) and had a way nice lesson with her.  We had Fudetani come and help (he's 25 years old and just came back from his mission; he was only ours for half a year so we're trying to involve him as much as we can so that he doesn't feel excluded by anybody)  and he was a great help in the lesson.  Ito san (the less active member) came to church on Sunday!  She took the sacrament for the first time in a very long time and was visibly moved by the blessing and the talks by the speakers.  Other than that, the day was mainly doing paper work are organizing our area's hundreds of forms and papers.  It's mostly all organized now and soon we'll have marked on the map where everyone lives so that future missionaries won't have to criss-cross the area. (saying criss-cross totally reminded me of the old Hot Wheels Criss-Cross Crash that I used to have. Oh man, I just had to have it for Christmas, but I think I played with it like 5 times, then never again......)

Recently it's been mostly paper work and meetings planning for activities and going out with the branch president to visit people all over our area.  It's been actually way good recently and with our Branch President’s vision it feels like Yasufuruichi is on the verge of something big.  With Transfers only 2 weeks away I hope I'm still here for when it happens.  Will I finally break the 1 transfer cycle this time, or will it continue?  (My secret goal is to hit 16 areas on my mission and I'm well on my way.... )

Alright, last bit of cool stuff.  Today we went and did Archery for like an hour.  Oh man, it was so good! The people behind us were doing Kyuudo (the Japanese archery style) and we had some fun spats with each other.  I definitely decided that archery is easier without a big ol' hole in my palm.  (I've reopened that thing like 3 times now......)

We'll we've got to head out now (I feel like I've taken too much time here again... oops)

Good luck to everyone wherever you may be. 

愛している！！ (I love you!)

エベレット長老

Elder Everett

17 Oct 2011

Cool things happening in Yasufuruichi lately!

Ok, so let me start off with a bit of a shocker … in 3 days I will be 6 months into my mission!  That’s half a year man, how in the world did that happen?!  It’s now this weird place where I see that the past has been ridiculously fast, but at the same time I have a ton of time ahead of me. I've found it's best to try and not think about it at all, but 6 months is just too cool to not mention!

Ok, so Monday we spent most of the day with a less active member who's been coming to church recently!  He's American but he's lived in Japan since about 1993.  We had a great time together and his sons' basketball team won by like 20 points!  It was way cool to see a Basketball game again, but it totally made me want to go out and play again, there just aren't any basketball courts in Japan (at least not any that aren't in a School or you have to pay for).  We taught him a bit from Conference for Home Teaching and he looks in a very good position to come back to church for a good long while, even get himself in a position to help his family come back in the future, just at what time, we don't really know at this point. 

The other big thing from Monday is that I finally had my first bike accident in Japan.  Took me all the way to 3rd transfer, but I felt it would happen when I saw the roads here (I can barely fit my bike on some of the pathways we take). So now I have a big ol' hole in my hand that, even now a week later, is still turning strange colors (I stained like 3 shirts ‘cause it oozed while I was asleep........) I think it looks pretty cool right now, it's in the shape of a wolf (I kid you not, everybody agrees when I tell them) and I think I mainly say that so as to not gross people out too much.  It does look kind of grody right now. 

Tuesday we had a special training session with the Assistants to the President and President Margetts himself!  It was way fun and helped a lot.  We had all of the junior companions come together and talk about what is hard about being a Junior Companion and how to fix it, and the Seniors did the same in their meeting.  I also got to see a bunch of people that I hadn't seen since the MTC!  Kwon and Tanaka 長老 (both roomed with Sonntag and me in the MTC for 2 days before they moved out) and Munro is now in my old Zone and I saw a bunch of people, it was way good!  (Again I don't have a connection cord for pictures so I can't really send a picture this week... sorry)

Oh yeah, Tuesday we also met this family who used to be investigators.  Both of their sons (they’re grown up now) were National BMX champions in Japan several times over and one almost went pro (He tore out half the muscles in his leg during one race which ended his career) and the family has a bunch of old American antiques.  Cool place, and lot of neat stuff there. 

Wednesday we looked at a local sports center for a Sports activity that we are planning.  We saw basketball stuff there, tennis stuff, ping pong, badminton, and (this made me super excited) an Archery range!  We're totally going there on the 5th and inviting everyone that we can, I want to teach archery again, AWWWWWWW man it was so good, I want to go so bad now.  That's what P-day is for.  Also recently I've been learning how to play ping pong (we have ping pong every night before Eikaiwa and we've had a couple of other ping pong activities) so watch out mister Gibson, (you know who you are) we'll see how much longer you can lord ping pong over me! 

This week our planning session ended up going a lot longer than previously planned, but we got out most all of little wrinkles in our companionship and had a very good planning session.  We talked about goals and becoming who you want to become, always keeping a vision of yourself in your head and doing all you can to become that.  Really, goals are just a foretelling of what you will become.  The greatest thing about Goals and Becoming, is that there is not an age restriction or limit, anyone can plan and change.  Really, that is the reason for life right there; you cannot stay still, you cannot just stay and be content, because there is no staying, you are always changing and becoming.  So, our choice is this: will you be in charge of what you become or will you just be a product of your surroundings?  Personally I'd like to become what I want to become, to be, as the Army puts is, all that you can be.  To do that, you must rely on the Lord and give Him everything.  There seems to be a paradox when the Lord teaches, "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."  It sounds a bit weird at first, save your life and you lose it; lose your life and you'll save it.  It can be a hard concept to swallow.  It takes guts, it takes gumption, it takes faith, the faith that as you forgo your wants, desires, and own ideas, and replace them with service, study, and the Lord's teachings you will see that you have become something far beyond what you could have ever become on your own.  When left to our own devices, it is rare for man to stretch and grow and improve, but with the push/pressure from the Lord to always improve and become, we will be stretched and pushed (those words don't sound very comfortable do they?) and molded into something better, something stronger, someone that can do....anything.

Saturday was super special.  We went to the Temple with the ward and saw one of our members receive her Endowments and a couple get sealed for time and all eternity.  Everyone came together and participated.  The Temple is an amazing place, not to mention that the Fukuoka temple is the exact same layout as the Raleigh one, and it was just awesome to see everyone at the temple together.  We even ran into several other elders (including De Jong 長老 who took care of me when I broke my thumb at the MTC) which was awesome.  Sadly, we were a week late to see the Tokuyama Elders who decided to visit the Temple with Hiro-kun and the Fujii family and the Kumamoto Elders who happened to visit on that same day (It was weird, both of my previous companions happened to meet up at the temple on the same day with 2 of my former investigators; I'm still not sure how in the world it happened.)

Well, that's about it here in Japan for now. I've been hearing that some crazy things are happening back in the States recently: two recent marriage announcements, (holy cow, congrats Richard and Kayla; Matthew and Leah!), more people heading out on their mission!  Bike trips, new babies in the ward, cool things happening back home.  It's a bit sad that I'll miss a bunch of it, but it's for a good cause, I think.  Hey, if anything else awesome is happening over that direction, send it my way … I'd love to hear from you!

"Give them your love, give them your time"

Go do cool things!

ェべレット長老

Elder Everett

10 Oct 2011

Alright, here we go, week 2 in Yasufuruichi!

There is a ton of work to do here in Yasufuruichi, but it's totally worth it.  We got our Home Teaching list (I think 15 people or so) and they are all Less Active members that we are working on finding time to meet.  Japan is a lot slower paced than America and you can't really just call up and see if you can drop by for a visit, you really have to plan things out weeks or even months ahead if you want any sort of attendance there.  Meeting people here has become that much more difficult, but that much more rewarding when we do.  Today we're spending most of the day with a Brother Shrubb who served here 20 years ago and we're going to his son's basketball game together.  He has been inactive for the past 5 years or so, but recently he's been coming back and hopefully soon with all this reactivation he will bring his family with him as well. 

So, trying to meet everybody means that I have been making a lot of phone calls.  Beckstrand 長老 helps out too, but I think I've made more phone calls this past week than I have pretty much my entire life.  We straight up spent a couple of hours the other day contacting former investigators, potential investigators, investigators, less actives, and members to figure out times to meet up with them.  As hard as it is to understand some people when they talk, add in a static-y phone and it becomes nigh impossible.  New favorite/most used term is すみませんもう一度いってください　Sumimasen, mouichido ittekudasai (Could you say that one more time please?) . 　

Recently all of our lessons have been amazing.  Many of the investigators who, I was told wouldn't progress, are now working hard and showing a desire to learn and understand more, and my love for them has been expanding, it's just amazing.  For one of our lessons with a guy who is completely devoted to video games and movies, I managed to use a metaphor for the gospel of Christ using Final Fantasy as the catalyst.  How exactly it worked I'm not sure, but he seemed to really grasp the concept.  Who knew?  The Holy Ghost can help you create ways for people to understand using any means possible, even through video games if it comes to that.  We also teach this one woman who is half Japanese and half American.  She speaks English a little better and so we teach in English.  She has some major problems in her life and I'm glad that we are able to give her Hope, the one thing she's been searching for her whole life. 

She made it with us to General Conference this past Saturday (It comes one week late here in Japan so that they have time to translate it all) and seemed to enjoy it very much!  She now has the Book of Mormon on CD (It's hard for her to read) and the spirit and testimony of the apostles and prophets to learn from!  How great is our privilege to hear straight from the man called of God to lead us in these modern days.  It's interesting, before the mission General Conference seemed to take forever, but this past weekend it just flew by.  My Notebook is now a couple of pages thicker and there's just so much that we get to study and learn, it's amazing.  You really can't just pick a single talk from Conference that really stands out above the rest, but I like stories, and man, did this past conference have some great stories.  President Monson and the Temple Dedication's surprise speaker; the story of the Titanic through the eyes of a group of missionaries and a nurse; mountain climbing with the family; swimming against an unforgiving current; a surprise visitor in the elevator when the world seems to be on your shoulders; and many others that we can learn and be edified from.  Go read the talks from Conference.  Visit LDS.org and print them out, pick your favorite, post it up on your wall, remember it, live it, and your life will change in ways you cannot even imagine!  So now the choice is yours, what is going to be your theme until next April? (Which I just realized, come next conference, I will have been on my mission for 1 year!??!)

This week our District's theme has been LOVE.  One of the most important things you can do for anybody that you teach is love them, and honor/sustain them.  Whatever you do, make sure you give them a piece of yourself, and show God's love for them through your love.  Our district is very young (our district leader is only on his 6th transfer and he is the 'oldest' missionary in the group)  So 6th transfer we have Stratford and on 5th transfer we have Bagley, Beckstrand, and Mitton (who was with Koyama in Tokuyama before I got there) then on 3rd Transfer there is Myself and Watanabe 長老 who is half Japanese and grew up in Florida.  We're are an interesting group, and I'm expecting great things from this group!

Oh, and Beckstrand 長老 and I tried to make brownies the other day, but in Japan there is no such thing as Jumbo eggs, and we had no pan the size we needed.... so our Brownies really became cookies, but they were darn good cookies.  At least everyone we gave them to liked them.  Also, we've been having cooking adventures in our apartment lately. We made fried chicken tenders, pancake funnel cake (totally by accident), deep fried oreos, gutted a fish, mixed various sauces that I'm sure weren't supposed to be mixed, oh man, this is a great companionship for cooking!  Who knows what we'll make, we certainly don't.

Well, I don't have much time, we're back in the internet cafe (we really have nowhere else to e-mail.....) and we have to pay by the 10 minutes, so I love you all, but not enough to have to pay for the next level up!  Well, maybe, but I'm already about done so I'll just end it. 

Go do cool things, wherever you are, and whatever you're doing, do it well, and wholeheartedly.  You will be rewarded at some point; the exciting thing is that you won't know when, the surprise will always be fun to find! 

I love you all 皆さん愛しています

エベレット長老

Elder Everett

3 Oct 2011

Well, last week was transfer calls right, so I'm sure everybody wants to know what happened, at least I do!  So the APs call on Wednesday and tell us that the new elder coming to Tokuyama is Kwon 長老 (the Korean that was in the MTC with me and was my roommate for a couple of days there) and I got really excited, just to find out that Koyama is not the one transferring but I am.  That brings me to my third transfer, third area, third companion, third zone; it's crazy.  Now I'm up in Hiroshima 「広島」 in Yasufuruichi「安古市」 (say that 5 times fast) with Beckstrand 長老.  He's on his 5th transfer so we're a pretty young couple of missionaries.  And this area is HUGE!  So I get to the apartment and I look at our map in the study room, and I think, well, this is pretty big but not bad at all.  Then I go to the kitchen and see the "full" map (I say "full" because even it has missing portions) and it takes up one of the walls.  That big ol' map I saw in the study room maybe takes up the size of my hand on that map.  We've got members clear out 2 hours away by train (and those just cut through the mountains (of which we have plenty)) and we have at least 2 colleges and probably more things that I can't even know.  Oh man this'll be an interesting transfer!

So the start of last week was spent going around to everybody we had worked with that transfer and having them all give Koyama their last good-bye (everyone was convinced he was leaving) and some extreme success at finding.  In the first 2 days we found 7 people who invited us to come back again and we started teaching another one of our English students the gospel.  (Which reminds me, Kwon and Koyama both don't speak English, so Eikaiwa just became very interesting in Tokuyama. It's still going on (we have 4 investigators attend) and I wish them good luck there.)  At the last Eikaiwa we talked about nature and I talked about camping (imagine that!) and it was a super good Eikaiwa.  Then I dropped the announcement that I was leaving.  Hiro-kun, the 14 year old investigator, had come to Eikaiwa for the first time because he didn't have cram school that day.  He didn't even know about transfers and when he heard it just about started crying.  When we met after class and gave each other a big hug he straight up broke down on my shoulder.  Oh man, I about died at that point, but I couldn't let him be super sad.  He knows that this gospel is true, and this may be just what he needs, the perfect first trial for him, so hopefully, without his gaijin (foreigner) friend there he'll still come to church and learn all he can.  I have nothing but faith that he'll do just that. 

Most of Wednesday wasn't spent packing as I had expected, (I finished by about 1:30) but was taken mostly for writing letters on my meishi　名詞 (business card) for everyone in the area.  A little bit sad, but I think it was way good for everybody there.  Thursday I left at 8 to head up to Hiroshima.  I'm now at the second northernmost part of the mission just in time for the weather to go cold.  This'll be interesting.  We met up with everybody transferring in the Zone at the Hiroshima train station and all went out to eat at this sweet Indian Curry restaurant with all-you-can-eat nan! (And not just the flimsy bread pieces I've had before, but they were about the size of my torso; it reached from my neck to my waistline!).  Shoot, I'm going to get fat this transfer. 

Beckstrand 長老 is from Utah and is so good.  He just loves everyone and has no trouble saying it.  He's just way nice and it's a really good atmosphere in the Apartment.  We have a lot of work to do making it clean (oh man, I've been working on making every apartment I've been in cleaner, I've overhauled 3 apartments now, but none as much as this one).  This transfer seems that we are going to be focusing on Less active members in our ward (we've got a somewhere in the hundreds).  We were talking about it while planning for this week and tried to understand how they all could have felt the gospel, the love of Christ so strongly and then just give it all up because it stopped being convenient. It really is because they give themselves just a little edge, they think one day that if they feel a little sick or anything, that going to church is just too 面倒くさい troublesome, and don't come again for the next 5 years.  That isn't an exaggeration, either; it describes most of our ward and the most common problem I've seen thus far.  If you know it's true, and you want to have the blessings, know that you HAVE to go to church.  Every time you feel like you don't want to, every doubt you have, every time church just seems too far away, too strange, too troublesome, just know that Satan is working on you something hard and that he is doing  all he can to deny you the privilege and the blessings from something as simple as church attendance.  Don't give up on yourself, don't give Satan that edge over you, because the moment you do, that's when he wins, and it's that much harder to come back.  All you have to do is come.  I'm not sure all of the exact details, what will happen for/to you or what, but everything will fall into place, if you do so faithfully.  So just try it, put that promise to the test, and prove it now herewith if God will not pour you out blessings that there shall not be room enough to receive it. 

I have to say, right now it feels a little odd to be writing my missionary post.  The only computers open to us here is a comic cafe (the libraries are all closed on Monday) and it smells like a bowling alley.  We're surrounded by comics, video games, and just about everything that could tempt a pair of 19-year-olds in Japan.  (I don't include the free drink bar in the temptations, that's just cool [I think I've had 5 cups of Melon Soda now]) But, it's good, because no matter where we are or what we're doing (as long as it is missionary related), we will be led and guided and protected wherever we are.  That's something I've definitely developed so far on the mission, it's the ability to step in and perform whatever role I'm assigned, whether it's teaching the youth Sunday school class, being told on the planning day that you're in charge of planning the Halloween party, a surprise call from a former investigator asking for the lessons again, organizing an apartment, setting an area in order … no matter what it is that you have to do, as long as you do it, and try to accomplish it for the benefit of others, you'll find success.  That's an awesome promise and has given me great confidence so far in my mission; and there is absolutely no reason why it won't translate everywhere else.

The Gospel is true, the Lord lives and guides the church today.  The Prophet and all of the Apostles are called of God and their words, the words freshly given at General Conference are true and for us in this day.  I have another week before I can hear them here in Japan (and it'll probably be in Japanese) but no matter the situation, I know that they are speaking the words of Christ, because that is what we do.  We speak of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we live like Christ (yeah, I changed it a bit) and that's amazing.  Good luck!

Some great quotes from the week.

"I hope you forget English." (Member in Yasufuruichi)

"If you can read Preach My Gospel, you can read Harry Potter." (Koyama 長老）

"You're from North Carolina, do you know Zaxbys, Bojangles, Pulled Pork Barbecue and Hush Puppies?" (Elder Rushing in the Zone, he's from Greensboro) 

"KFC? That's Christmas food!" (Branch President in Yasufuruichi)

"I haven't felt the spirit that strong in over 5 years." (Less Active Member in Yasufuruichi)

がんばって　

エベレット長老

Love from the Land of Festivals and Vending Machines

Elder Everett