Whose idea was it to swap heat for rain anyway? 23 Jul 2012

Wow man, it's almost the end of July?!  How in the world did that happen?

Ok, so the big news that everybody wants to know.... Transfer calls.  Ok, so here's the low down: I've been here for 3 transfers, Elder Gandy for 2, Elder Tipton for 1 and Elder Peterson for 1.  So with the Beppu elders, well, they whitewashed in (came in as two new missionaries to the area) so they both stayed for a second one together, and Elder Gandy gets to stay another one in Oita, and his companion for next transfer is going to be..... Me again!  That's 3 transfers that we'll be together, or in normal people time, 4.5 months.  If you're interested at all, here's how the rundown of my companions has been.  Elder Clements: 1 transfer, Elder Koyama: 1, Elder Beckstrand: 1, Elder Okada: 3, Elder Takahashi: 1, Elder Gandy: 3...... I think I'm just not a fan of even numbers.

This is going to be interesting staying in Oita for a 4th transfer!  It means that I'll be here for about 6 months as well, but, man, in no way does it feel like that at all!  Oita has been one of the places that I've most enjoyed in my mission (which probably explains why when I went through my pictures almost all of them are from Oita!).  There's just been a ton of work to do here, and it never seems to stop.  One of the hardest things that we've done so far this transfer, that both Elder Gandy and I agreed on, was to drop a good number of our investigators, those who just weren't going anywhere, and look for people that will be more receptive and excited for the gospel.  It's hard to stop working with people that you've worked long and hard with, but we feel like it is for the best.  One of the most important things that I've learned in the past couple of weeks is that, just as important as doing the right thing, is doing the right thing at the right time!  That's a little bit of advice that we got from Elder Dallin H. Oaks when he came to visit the mission earlier this year.  And it's one of the things that I have been gaining a greater testimony of as the weeks past, timing is just as important as almost everything else we do!

One of the less active families that we've been working with has been having a pretty hard time coming to church recently.  We've been having a hard time meeting with them too, but we finally managed to get in contact with the mother this Sunday and had a super lesson with her.  We talked about the importance of church attendance, and how possibly the hardest step is making it back to church on the first Sunday after being absent for a long while.  We talked about how the devil hates it whenever we decide to make a decision to better our lives and will do all in his power to bar our way.  Elder Gandy has a sweet quote that he has hanging on his wall.  It goes something to the effect of "The closer a man comes to God, the greater effort the Adversary will exert to prevent him" (yeah, I kind of forgot how it went but that's kind of close to it.)  But it's so true.  Every time we go and try to do what's right there will always seem to be something to distract us, stop us, side track us, or makes us feel like we're not even worthy to take part of the gospel, and there is nothing that could be further from the truth.  You are all a son or daughter of God, and He is waiting for you with open arms, for whenever you finally decide to come.  

Well, at least for the next couple of weeks I am going to continue to e-mail from Oita, and I'm sure we'll have many more stories and adventures to explain along the way!

Oh, speaking of adventures (before I forget) … This past Saturday we went to visit an investigator who lives in Usuki city, about an hour or so away, and stayed and watched a samurai festival there.  The city is the home of the Samurai Otomo Sorin, who was the only Christian Samurai.  During the time of the unification of Japan, there was an extermination order for all Christians, and Otomo Sorin created the cities of Oita to be refugee cities for what they called kakure kirisutokyou or the Hidden Christians. They had a sweet festival with people dressed up as oni (demons) and the holy warriors that slay the beast!  There was also akenka matsuri or a fighting festival where they had two groups of young men gather together to pull a wheeled shrine and race toward each other with the shrines making a crisscross across the city.  The whole time they had people banging on the Taiko drums and making all the noise and racket they could.  It was probably one of the most Japanese things I have seen on my mission, and all in the shadow of the remains of the castle from Otomo Sorin!  Cool stuff with the summer festivals all over Japan!

Well, have a great week everybody, and go do something cool!

Elder Benjamin C Everett

Japan Fukuoka Mission

9-16 Hirao-josuimachi

Chuo-ku

Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka

810-0029

JAPAN

What? 18 weeks in Oita??

WHAT, it's the last week of the transfer!  That's crazy!  This really has been a crazy week.  Usually time seems to go by slower and slower as the end of the transfer comes but this transfer continued to speed to the end.  It really just feels like yesterday that I was typing the last letter!

Ok, so what's been happening around Oita.  Well, first off, we've been in the middle of the worst rainstorms that there has ever been in the history of Oita and Kumamoto!  It's been raining for days on end now and it's been crazy to watch as the rivers rose to above tree level and just went everywhere!  We took a ride with a member to go visit him in the middle of the biggest  bit of the rain and he had the news on in his car so we got to see the floods around Oita and Kumamoto.  It was absolutely crazy to see that much water everywhere.  But in the midst of all this, I have to tell you all about Elder Gandy's magic raincoat.

Ok, so we knew that it was the rainy season in Japan and we didn't have raincoats that were any good for the rain in Japan so we went and bought Elder Gandy a new raincoat a couple of weeks back.  So right after we bought the raincoat it started raining like crazy here.  The thing is though, in the middle of the worst rain that Oita has had, ever, we have not been rained on a single time.  This whole month we've experienced nothing more than a light sprinkle.  So pretty much the pattern of every day has been: wake up and it's pouring, do the morning study, and then get ready to leave, put on the raincoat and by the time we get down stairs, it's all dried up.  Then we'll ride to where we're going, see the rain pour down while we're in the church or talking to people, then as soon as we get up to go, the rain stops.  Once we get home we think that maybe the rainy season isn't that bad and decide to look outside the apartment to see how it is, and it's raining cats and dogs again.  I don't know what it is about that rain jacket, but, we're pretty convinced that it's got magical powers!

As far as the weather goes, though, right now it's hot, humid, and sunny!  Which was perfect for yesterday because we had a ward BBQ!  We traveled up to a beach 2 cities over and had a big ol' barbecue under some trees over there.  It was a really fun event, and we had a great turn out.  I think I counted a good 50 people there with several less active members and people visiting from all the way up in Yamaguchi (they heard that there was a BBQ down in Oita and decided to take a road trip that day and see how everybody was doing :D)  In the original plan I was going to be in charge of a big group activity for all the primary children, but I lost out to the ocean, and all the kids just spent the day out in the surf.  Things I learned from the BBQ: Japanese sand castles are based off of actual Japanese castles; People use hand fans to get a flame going, and blow torches to light the coals; Oceans are really nasty after a big storm, and the wood debris on the beach is all bamboo; Beach frisbee is way fun, even if you're playing with 3 year olds and 73 year olds. I think it was a good ward activity!

Earlier in the week, we were planning on having another BBQ on Saturday, but due to the rain, it ended up being canceled.  The thing is though, we forgot to get in contact with the member that we had arranged to take us there and he showed up at our apartment while we were teaching Eikaiwa!  The BBQ was supposed to be in place of Eikaiwa so we were going to do it there. As soon as the BBQ got canceled we sent an e-mail out to all the students, but we just forgot to make that one call..... oops!  He was a really good sport about it, and even came to Eikaiwa with his food and we had a small party up at the church.   

Working here in Oita has been awesome.  It's weird thinking that it has already been 18 weeks since I first came here, because it seems like so much has happened here in that time.  I've had my hardest time on the mission here, I've had the best time on the mission here, it's been a roller coaster for everybody in several different ways, and I love it.  Here I've learned to really just love people for who they are, what good they do, and to try and view everybody as the child of God that they are.  I've come to realize, in a very real sense, that the power of the atonement is more than just overcoming your own sins, but it is also strength in times of hardship, hope in times of need, a person to talk to when nobody else is around, and sometimes, the only place of solace you can find.  

At this point I don't know if I'll stay of if I'll go, but I know, whether it's me or Elder Gandy who stays, that Oita will be in good hands and this will continue to be an awesome place for everybody who comes (Including the mission president who is coming on the 5th of August to see if we really can make a branch in the other city we work with).  I wish you all good luck in all you do this week, and have a great day!

Love you all lots,
Elder Everett

July 9th? Time flies in Japan!

Wow, the weeks are going by super fast!  This Monday is the start of the last full week of this transfer!  It's so hard to imagine that I've already been in Oita for 4 months! 

Well, this was one jam-packed week, and it seems to get even more hectic as the transfer wraps up!  This past week the big event was our Thursday mini-zone conference to meet the new mission president: President Gustafson.  It was really cool to go and hear the vision and the goal that he has for this mission.  We hear a lot of the time about the great promises and blessings that have been pronounced about Japan regarding missionary work and we've heard of many prophesies that are to be fulfilled some time here in Japan, but it's always seemed like “sometime” it will happen.  What we learned this week is that the time is now; the prophesies are being fulfilled and we need to go out and "let's go fulfill some prophesies"!  How's that for a theme!

So apparently President Margetts decided not to give President Gustafson any information about anybody in the mission, so everybody in the mission has a relative 'clean slate' to start over who they will be in the mission.  Apparently there are some horror stories that circulate around mission presidents about coming into a mission and it just being full of rebel missionaries, and from talking to Elder Clements (who is serving as an assistant to the president during the turn over) I learned that hardly a day has gone past that the Gustafsons haven't thanked President and Sister Margetts for leaving them the best mission in the world!  There's a beautiful thing that happens when people come and work together with singleness of heart and purpose; when people do the things they know they are supposed to and follow the rules.  That's when miracles happen, that's when you can go out and fulfill some prophecies. 

Well, as far as getting Dendo done in Oita, that was a little rough this week.  But that's only because we were in Kumamoto for 3 days!  We ended up going to Kumamoto earlier on Wednesday and I got to teach the Shimizu Eikaiwa again, almost exactly 1 year after the very first time I taught that Eikaiwa! There are only 2 people still there from when I was there but that was all good because Yoshiaki was one of them!  It was kind of sad because we didn't get to spend the 4th of July with our own Eikaiwa, but it was fun to spend it in Kumamoto with people that I at least had known before.  Truth be told though, the extent of our July 4th celebration was eating out at McDonalds..... and singing the national anthem to wake up one of our Australian friends in the mission.

As this week has come and more and more people are realizing that it's the end of the transfer and that Elder Everett is the one in the hot seat, we've had some great blessing come from it.  One of the less active members that we visit every Friday had a birthday this past Friday and I had my one year mark in Japan this past Saturday so we had a celebration and she bought us this awesome cake!  Then she offered to make a portrait of me in her art studio!  So I might be sending home a painted portrait of me in to near future. :D  And other members, less actives, and investigators seem much more willing and able to meet when they know that you might be leaving soon.  A ton more people have been trying to meet with us, as is evidenced in our plans for this week which has us either at an appointment or traveling to one almost every hour on some days!  Have I mentioned how much I love Oita!?

The big thing that's been happening in the ward is the efforts to create a new branch in Beppu.  That's the city that's up along the bay from Oita and has the college, APU, that Naoya and a couple of other members and investigators go to. Speaking of Naoya, we finally got to talk to him again this past Saturday.  We challenged him to read the Book of Mormon every day for 10-15 minutes, a challenge that I want to extend to all of you.  I'm sure somewhere in your lives you can find that short time that can change your life.  I know you have time, and I'm sure you can spare 10 minutes to improve your life (that's less time than it takes to watch an episode of Scooby Doo.)

This past Sunday was the first sacrament meeting there in Beppu and they had a great turnout of 26 people!  That's almost more than how many people we had come to church when I first started in Yasufuruichi!  If we can get that branch organized there then the people who haven't been able to make it to the Oita church due to money and time will have a place where they can worship, take the sacrament, and keep or develop their faith in Christ and in the Gospel.  There are many people there who are active in the Gospel, but not as active in the Church purely from the strain of time and money presented by being so far away.  But at least they're trying!

I hope you all have a good week.  And go do something hard this week!

Lots o' love,
Elder Everettエベレット長老

Happy Independence Day! (and 1 year in Japan!) Jul 2012

HELLO From the land of the rising hot, hot, muggy sun.

Well, it's official now, it's July!  This week has been, well, just a normal week … whatever a normal week may be.  Oita is doing really good.  We've had some really good meetings recently with some less active members in our ward and it's been a great success for the ward!  One of the funnest things I think I've been able to do as a missionary is to go visit the less active members of the church, some of whom haven't seen anybody from the church in years!  For many of the members we meet, they still believe in the church, they know, somewhere in their heart, that it is true and we get to enable and empower them and see in them the joy of the Gospel.  Here in Oita it has been one of the greatest responses I think I have ever seen from just about every less active member that we visit.  We keep hearing as missionaries that there are people who are hungering and thirsting for the Gospel, that people are searching for where they can find that pure happiness, and through the daily grind, sometimes it can be hard to find that person.  But something that I have come to realize, is that sometimes those people aren't investigators or non-members at all.  There are many times when the people who are the hungriest, the thirstiest, the people most receptive to the message of a loving Savior and Father in Heaven are the people who have merely forgotten what they once knew.  The Less actives of the church know in their hearts the power of this Gospel.  How great a blessing it has been to me to see that joy come back into their lives.  It's a pattern that we can all follow, if we just extend a hand of fellowship and go the extra mile to show them, again, the joy of the Gospel!

This week as we've been trying to find people to go and visit we've seen some really sweet miracles!  Our general pattern for dendo, as learned from President Margetts, is to go visit either a member or an investigator, and then go and visit all of their neighbors, and stay and go house to house around that neighborhood for the rest of that day, and usually every other time we go and visit that person.  So we've been following that pattern this week as well.  Now the usual response we get from people is like, "No, I'm good" or "I'm Buddhist", or "Get out," or you know, some other things that wouldn't be the best to write in a missionary e-mail.  So how cool it was this past Friday when we were going through this pattern and somebody showed a positive response!  I'm not sure what it is about when Japanese people yell through their door to talk to us, but somehow they always sound angry.  So this guy yells at us from his house and Elder Gandy and I look at each other and we're preparing ourselves for whatever response is about to happen.  You can imagine how surprised we were when the door opened to this huge smile.  We talked for a while and learned that he had just happened to have come back early that day and that we were really lucky to have been able to meet him that day.  He agreed to read one of our pamphlets about the restoration and is even willing to have us come back.  Lately it's been kind of rough for us to even have a conversation with people, and thinking back on it, it really was just a normal kind of contact, but there's something about being greeted with a smile and a warm atmosphere that just seems to make a whole day better.  

Well, this week was just one of those normal weeks of the mission, which is good because this coming week is going to be really wild!  We're only going to be in Oita for 4 days, we meet the new mission president, Junkai over in Kumamoto, are throwing a B-day party for a Less Active, setting up appointments, getting ready for the last full week of the transfer, teaching Eikaiwa in another area (but where will it be?) and just staying busy all around.  I think it was nice to have a normal week, we needed a break!

Well, I hope you can all do good things this week.  Remember to greet people with a smile, be a friend to a less active member, and have a sweet week!

Elder Everett
エベレット長老