A Week of Bus Rides! 26 Jun 2012

Am I looking at this right? It's June 26th?!

Ok, I don't super have a good excuse for why this is 2 days late.... but it wasn't because of the Typhoon, we were in Kumamoto the whole time it was around the Oita area, and it never really made landfall over here, so it was just a lot of rain, and that was about it.

But, Wow this has been a super quick couple of weeks!  This week especially went by super fast!  So we headed off to Kumamoto on Monday, had a nice 8:30 bus ride for 3.5 hours, and spent the day at the Kumamoto Castle!  It was way fun to go see the castle again!  I think we ended up having a group of 16 missionaries or so raid the castle.  There were a bunch of volunteers this time working as Samurai, Ninja, and dressed in other fun Japanese costumes.  There was an old Samurai from Alabama, and 3 others that just liked to pose with everybody.  We got some fun pictures.  :D

That night was a little intense because 12 of those 16 elders at the Castle all went to go stay at one of the apartments over there in Kumamoto (Actually the Shimizu apartment where I first started my mission) and because of the rain the veranda wasn't an option this time, so we ended up trying to cram everybody into the rooms.... it was a little bit cozy.  

The conference on Tuesday was a really awesome one!  It was the very last one for President Margetts and it was an awesome send off!  We had training on the importance of social media in proselyting! Ok, so we don't get to really use it while we're missionaries here, but we've been encouraged to get familiar with the site Mormon.org, and create a profile on there.  Soon I should have my profile up... I think, and there is a ton of cool things to look at on that site!  They have videos from a bunch of different people, information on our beliefs, our values, and a whole slew of neat stuff to see on the site.  It's definitely been a fun way to Dendo recently, just inviting people to go see the site (it's been a little hard because it's all in English but by September they'll have a Japanese one too.... hopefully).  Also they focused on how easy it is now when we come back from the mission to encourage our friends with just a little push of a button.  It's sometimes hard to talk to people you know about the gospel.  But to send them a link, no strings attached, just a cool video, a good thought, a feel good video … we all can do that!  

Then President Margetts gave us his last talk on just some life advice.  Right now I don't have any of my notes with me so I'll just say the one that still sticks in my mind.  "First pay the Lord, then pay yourself (have some fun), and then go pay your bills." If that tells you anything about our mission president :D.  We also had these really cool slide shows all about the mission.  We had one chronicling a day in the life of the missionaries in the Fukuoka mission, a slide show of the entrance photos of all the missionaries, and then a slide show of all of the baptisms from the past 2 years!  It was a really special experience to share with all of the missionaries there and to really reflect on how the mission has been up to now.  (Which, looking back, is really hard to imagine that it's been nearly 14 and a half months! That's just crazy talk!)  Man this mission is great though!

 So this week was a little slow as far as missionary work goes, but that's because we spent half of the week in Kumamoto, a good 4 hour bus ride from our apartment... It took out Monday, Tuesday, and Sunday, then with Eikaiwa, weekly planning, and other things that come up, the time for Dendo was a little bit less this week.  But it was a good little bit of dendo time!  We always plan out our days the night before and write it all out in our daily planners; and one day we were planning and just came to a point where we had absolutely no idea what to do that day.  We thought about it, prayed about it, and thought some more and eventually decided to go on our fall-back plan we always have and just pick an area on the map and visit any member, investigator, or former investigator that may be around that area.  So this day we ended up deciding to go and visit this one member, mainly because I hadn't met with them while I've been here, and had that as our plan.  It was a good thing we decided to go visit that family, on that day, at that time, because they happened to have their inactive son there who hasn't even seen the missionaries in a couple of years.  One of the Daughters opened the door, and got really excited when she saw the missionaries there.  She let us know that they hadn't had any of the missionaries visit them for a little over a year, and how happy they were to talk.  We also got to have a really good lesson with the son about building your faith and going strong.  He even committed to try and strengthen his faith!  It'll be awesome to see if we can eventually get him to start coming back to church, too.  He tried to tell us that he couldn't come to church because he drinks, he smokes, he quit the church when he was 18, and that a person who does at that couldn't possibly come to church.  We just told him "Church is for everyone, it doesn't matter what you do or think, the door is always open waiting for you to come in."  As we come to know the gospel, and feel the love of the Savior, our desire to continue contrary to the commandments will diminish and we will slowly become the people that, deep down inside, we know we want to be.  Really, it just takes that first step back toward the church, and slowly but surely, everything else with come into place.  Just take that step of faith (Indiana Jones could do it and so can you!)

Well, that's about what I have for today.  Check out www.mormon.org, go do some cool things, have a good week, and I wish you all the best!

Elder Everettエベレット長老

It's Fathers' Day and the Start of Rainy Season 6/18/12

Happy Monday from the land of the rainy season!  

Well, it's June now, so that means that Japan has finally entered into the infamous rainy season here!  The rains started a couple of days ago and so far it hasn't been too bad, just very, very wet.  Going through the days we quickly realized that the rain jackets that come from the missionary store... they are not made for rainy climates!  The water leaks straight though them so as to dissuade any attempt at keeping oneself dry.  It pretty much just becomes, get wet and try to protect all the pamphlets and Books in your back pack.  It's been a fun exciting couple of days!

It has been a super good week though!  Monday we played sports and hung out with one of the Young Single Adults (YSA) in our ward and then went to go visit Less Active members with him.  It was way good to see the members get together and have a good interaction; really the best thing to keep someone in the church is a good friend!

When it came time to plan for Tuesday we had no idea what to do.  We didn't really have anybody to visit and we were at a complete loss.  We decided to pray about it so that we could know what the Lord would have us do.  We prayed and discussed what it is that Oita really needs, and we thought about our recent convert members.  One man's name came into our minds and we decided to call to see if we could meet with him that evening.  When we called him, he told us that he had just been trying to have a gospel related conversation with his non-member mother and wasn't sure how to do it.  We told him that, well, that was our specialty and we would love to meet with them.  Well, to make a long story short we ended up visiting him that Tuesday, met with both of them in their home, had a wonderful discussion, then went out for Sushi together for dinner!  (The sushi place is called a Kaiten Zushi type restaurant, which is where they just put sushi on a conveyor belt and your bill is measured by the number of plates you accumulate by the end!)  It was Elder Gandy's first time at a sushi place, which is always fun :D  I think he ended up eating just as much meat as he did fish, which the member picked up on right away.  In response he commented in Japanese "American's do eat a lot of meat huh," then in English he said "Meat, meat, meat... Meat Festival!"

I love Japanese members!

The interesting thing about going out and finding people is that sometimes we don't actually get what their name is.  Either we forget to ask, or they feel awkward about giving it, or any number of reasons, but, when those times occur, we have to figure out some way to refer to those people, right?  So recently we've been visiting people such as "That one lady" and "Nightmare before Christmas guy".  Maybe we should work a little harder on getting people’s names.....

Thursday we got in contact with one of our former investigators who just so happens to be a captain of an Ultimate Frisbee team here in Oita!  We joined them for their Practice, and it was so natsukashii.  It’s the Japanese phrase for nostalgic, but it doesn't quite sound as stiff and uptight.  Truth be told though, my legs still hurt from it.... man, I haven't done any sort of sports exercise in a long, long time!  But I do have it up there as one of my favorite ways to Dendo so far (Dendo means to do missionary work: Frisbee Dendo, Phone Dendo, Lehi Dendo (where you sleep and receive revelation in a dream), Dance Dendo, House Dendo, Member Dendo.... and the such).  Hopefully from the coming weeks something will come out of this awesome group of people!

Some other cool thing from the working this week:   Members like to give us food!  It definitely is a plus from working with a lot of less active members because just about everyone wants to give us food!  We get packets to make Au Gratin, oreos, bananas, chips, drinks, eclairs, and a ton of great stuff!  We even managed to get some more Less Active members to church again on Sunday, too!  I have to say, I am definitely a fan of people being at church.

Oh, I really should put in a plug about being in a four-man apartment again; essentially every night is like a Junkai night.  Games, pranks, really long conversations abound in the apartment now.  (Well, Games have always been around while I've been in charge, that's just who I am :D)  It has been a little hectic as far as cleaning, food distribution, and other such things that become strained as you double your numbers.  

Well, we've got to go hit a bus to go to Kumamoto in less than an hour.  We have our last Zone Conference with our Mission President before the new one comes in on the 29th of this month.  It'll be an interesting last ZC, and everyone is super excited for it!

Have a good week (and hopefully we'll somehow miss the super typhoon that's barreling toward us)

Elder Everett
エベレット長老

Thus begins the transfer ... 11 Jun 2012

So transfer weeks are always exciting, they always make you wonder what's going to happen on the call Wednesday morning or if something weird is going to happen and you get a call that Monday before.  Well, keeping with the pattern I seem to have been making, Elder Gandy and I received a call from the APs at 5:00 Monday afternoon.  I felt like I just had to tell Elder Clements (he's the one that called me) that this would make the 4th call I've received from the APs on a Monday, and I've only been through 8 transfer calls.... I'm not sure if that counts as a good track record or not.

Ok, so this is how it went down:  Elder Gandy and I are both staying here in Oita for another 6 weeks, and we became a 4-man area.  The other two elders are going to be focusing on Beppu, the other main city that we have members in.  Missionary apartments are always a completely different feel when there are more than just you and your companion in there!  We now have Elders Tipton and Peterson with us here in Oita!  Let’s see how this goes with what essentially is a 6 week long Junkai!  Usually you can tell how old/experienced a missionary is based on what transfer they are on, for instance, I'm on transfer 9 (that's CRAZY) which puts me about middle aged, and Elder Gandy is on transfer 2 (still really young).  Elder Tipton came here on his 11th transfer and Elder Peterson is hitting a big transfer 14!  My oldest previous companion was on transfer 8 when he was with me, so it'll be a big change living with Elders that have been out for well over a year now! 

The work in Oita continues to progress.  The members here are awesome and investigators seem to keep coming!  Monday we had lunch with Naoya at a curry restaurant here in Oita and ended up talking there for a good 2 or 3 hours! Naoya is doing really good, and somehow we got a really good lesson in with him, too.  He said that he wanted to come to church again sometime, which, personally, I support 100%!  Naoya was actually with us when we received our call from the APs on Monday.  I had made a big push to meet him that Monday because we didn't know whether I was going to get transferred or not, so it was really good to let Naoya know that I was going to be here for another 6 weeks, at least.  There were actually a couple of days where he was the only one in the Oita prefecture that knew what was happening with the missionaries.

With the new missionaries coming in we had to convert our apartment so that it could accommodate 4 people.  So Monday night, most all of Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon were spent cleaning, organizing, and getting it at least fittable for 4 people.  After the two made it in there was more gutting and getting the apartment ready to actually be a comfortable 4 man space and not feeling like we're living in a closet (which I sort of am now; we ran out of space in our sleeping room, so I, the shortest elder, have the closet for my bed.:D).

So they say that Oita has entered into the infamous 'rainy season' but it really has only rained 2 or 3 days so far.  We keep flip-flopping between downpours and bright sunny days, but it's really not as bad as everyone was making it sound.  That might just be because it's the start of the season, or maybe because Oita never seems to have it that bad, but I have to say that the weather has been really nice recently, and man, the scenery has just gotten beautiful. (I typed that last word extra slowly to add emphasis, then realized none of you will ever see it......)  Have I ever told you how pretty Japan is, because this is a pretty country!

Sunday we had an unexpected surprise at church.  One of our Eikaiwa students decided to come out to church!  We always try to put in a plug about church at the start and end of Eikaiwa, and it finally worked!  He said he only came to hear the English Translation, which I ended up doing for the first time over the headphones. I have never done a translation into one of the earpiece systems for sacrament meeting before, so it was a little bit hectic for the first time.  Man, it's a different beast translating for a broad swath and not a one-on-one or a one-on-two!  There are always going to be a bunch of words that I don(t know (especially words that they used especially for little kids... man, those are like impossible!) but I do tend to get the meaning.  The hard part is putting that into something that sounds almost like regular English. He actually ended up staying for all three hours, and during Sunday school and priesthood even translated for Elder Gandy :D.

This transfer looks like it's going to be off to a good start!  Today we plan on going to a sports park about 30-40 minutes from our apartment, with some of our members!  With more missionaries we get to talk to our members a little more, encourage them, and become better friends than we could before.  Because one of the more important things that I have learned from my time on a mission, and from serving before, is the importance of helping Youth on the right path, and helping them stay on that path as long as we can. 

Have a good week!

Elder Everettエベレット長老

It's June already?? 3 Jun 2012

So, secret of the week, this is the last week of the transfer!?  What a crazy awesome 6 weeks it’s been!  It’s really scary to think that somehow it is already over this transfer; this has by far been the fastest transfer ever.  I remember when I was with Elder Clements at the end of my first transfer and he told me "Wow it feels like I haven't even been with you at all" which I thought was strange because my first transfer seemed to take forever, but I think I understand him now, this really has just flown by!  Let’s pick up with what happened this week!

Monday we had a district P-Day and had the Nobeoka Elders come up here and went to this place called Round 1 (imagine Adventure landing, a bowling alley, a gym, a karaoke bar, casino, skate rink, and other like activities all rolled up into one building) which ended up being slightly more expensive than we previously thought.  We made the mistake of going to the bowling and the Sports section, which you have to pay for separately so that ended up being all my money..... BUT it was an awesome time! (probably a once every couple of months type of activity though......)  It’s always fun going bowling in Japan, because they always have some sort of crazy thing going on, such as their crazy 'moonlight' bowling that they put on once an hour and see who can bowl the first strike with all the lights off and intense techno music going on in the background.  Somehow as soon as the game started it fell on my turn and within 10 seconds of them saying start I destroyed the pins at the end of the lane for a strike!  They gave me a lei and I got to wear this sweet Bowling Pin outfit for pictures. :D.  

Tuesday we had another Junkai with Nobeoka (we seem to always have a lot at the end of the transfer).  I went around with Elder Eckman, he's on his 2nd transfer, and we ended up visiting our Bishop's family for family home evening.  Elder Gandy and I had set up that appointment, purely because we were trying to meet with members, but somehow it turned into us teaching their family home evening (which I didn't know we were doing until he called on us to teach after dinner).  I ended up teaching the lesson based on Alma 32:28 and the parable of the seed. It’s a good thing that we've been developing that lesson recently with all our visits to less active members recently, because it's always a little bit difficult to come up with a lesson on the spot as you teach (even if that is how I always taught before the mission.... sorry guys) For dessert we had chips and little cups of jell-o (which I think is a dangerous thing to bring out for kids, and more especially missionaries....no matter how much you jiggle it, it always keeps its shape, and believe you me, we jiggled it quite a bit.....)

Going along with our pattern that's developed over the past couple of weeks, the rest of the week was filled with visits to less active members.  We met with one member for his first gospel visit in over 3 years, and continue to meet with some of our recent converts to strengthen them, and to give Elder Gandy a chance to practice his Japanese in a non-hostile environment, or at least as close as we can get. We've been meeting this one family at a beach near us and it's just been a ton of beautiful scenery as we've been talking about the gospel.  I think I've really enjoyed teaching outdoors and in parks!

Eikaiwa has also been doing really well.  We've had new students come recently and it's been really cool to see all our 'regulars' reach out the hand of fellowship for each new eikaiwa student.  Now if only we could get that same effort and atmosphere in our ward, that would be awesome.  There are sometimes I think that our Eikaiwa students are better at fellow-shipping then our members.  I really like our group that we have at eikaiwa!  They may have brought out the inner geek in me, but I think it's been a great way to create relationships with all of them.  I actually overheard one of them talking to one of the new students, explaining to them who the teachers were, and he described me as a Japanese, born and raised in America.  Man, I would make one very southern Japanese man :D

Sunday we had at least 6 less active members make it out to church!  We also had this family that's visiting from Utah come to church, too.  The mom is from Oita, and apparently comes to visit every couple of years, and she brought two of her kids, 15 and 13, both of whom don't speak Japanese, so I got to translate for them!  I don't know why I enjoy translating so much, but it’s always a way good time!  Well, the week is coming to a close faster than we really have time to do anything, but I'll leave you off for today.   I have to get ready because we're having lunch with Naoya today!

Peace out from the far east,
エベレット長老
Elder Everett