The Final Countdown!

If I were better at e-mailing every week I could confidently call this the 104th installment of the 'Beverett's on a Mission' blog, but I think this might actually end up being number 100 or so.... which in and of itself is quite a crazy idea.  

Ok, so I'm e-mailing late this week because of a couple of different reasons.  On transfer week P-day goes from Monday to Tuesday so that if you are transferring you can have plenty of time to pack and get ready.  However due to a series of events we wound up in Hiroshima on both Monday and Tuesday leaving today, Wednesday, as the final e-mail day in Japan!?  

Ok, so this was a pretty intense week.  Tuesday was our last district meeting so I had to come up with something to make it good.  We talked about the importance of the basics, and just how 不可欠 indispensable (I had to look up the English word......) the foundation for anything is.  Imagine playing Tennis without knowing the basic forehand, backhand, or anything else... but even further than that, even more basic, imagine Tennis without a net, or racket..... These things are the bare minimum to at least make it Tennis, everything else is then added on that to make the sport something amazing to behold.  Missionary work is very much the same.  There are bare minimums that have to be present for it to be the Lord's work.  Prayer, Scripture Study, Hearing the good word of God..... can you even imagine trying to come to know God, or even living without these basics?  It's not only a truly daunting task, it's literally impossible.  When you ignore the basics, the thing in and of itself ceases to be.  I'm not sure if that translated so well in English... In Japanese I said 基本を無視したら、そのものじゃなくなる。　(good luck you Japanese speakers out there)  

Working on the basics we had a junkai (companion exchange) with the Kure elders this week.  I was working with Elder Coelho, a new 18 year old missionary from Brazil, which was an awesome opportunity.  It was interesting, having a missionary at the very beginning of his mission and me at the very end, with less than a week left, going and doing the same work.  It doesn't matter how 'old' you are or what your experience is, a missionary is a missionary, and now, as I've come to realize more and more, a disciple of God is a disciple of God, there are things that you need to do, and everything else will fall into place.  Even if almost everyone we went to visit that day ended up not being home, that's okay, good things always happen when you go about doing the Lord's work.  (And sometimes you get an awesome reward at the end, such as being driven up to the top of a mountain to see the night view of Hiroshima!  Oh my goodness that was a beautiful sight to behold.... Everywhere as far as the eye could see, lights, cars, movement, and just....it's crazy!)

Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning all ended up being farewell parties!  It's so cool to see everyone that I've come to love this past couple of months here in Mihara.  We had Tako-yaki (Octopus in fried dough!) parfait sundaes (toppings were received based on of how many scripture mastery scriptures you could recite), yaki-soba (stir fried noodles) home-made cheese cake (seriously, they milked the cow and everything!) All over the various parties!  

My last P-day we were in Hiroshima and went to a bowling alley called Round-1.  It was my first time bowling in quite a while, so I was a little bit worried about how it would turn out, but the very first game I end with 7 strikes in a row to get 247!!!!!  TAKE THAT!  I was so excited, I wound up with an average of 181 over 6 games!  We also went to eat at an Indian Curry restaurant around the bowling Alley, which ended up being a miraculous place.  Working at the restaurant was a less-active member from Yasufuruichi that I had worked with over a year ago.  I worked mostly with her father and had been trying to get in contact with him since I came back to Hiroshima, but never really could.  But here, on my last p-day in Japan (which just happened to be pushed back a day, if we had been the day before it was her day off!) I was able to meet with his daughter, share my calling card, and let them know that they still have people thinking about them and hoping for their well-being!  (The logistics of God has got to be absolutely ridiculous)  

Well, tomorrow is the day... I get on a train at 7:40, and head off for the last time to the Fukuoka Honbu.  I've come to realize that 2 years does not feel like 2 years, learning a new language is a beast, Japan is absolutely beautiful, and that the Lord is really in everything.  Never forget that.  Even if we don't realize it, that doesn't stop the Lord from loving us.  How much better it is when we do realize it, and accept the love and help in our lives.  

Have a great week, I'll see you all soon.

Elder Everett

エベレット長老

Penultimate report from the Land of the Rising Sun

Oh my goodness, how has it already been 1 week?!  The Cherry blossoms which were in full bloom at the start of the week are now all gone.  There may be a few stragglers left over dotted somewhere but for the most part, it's over.  But that's okay, because there are so many other flowers everywhere in Japan!  

So this weekend we finally were able to watch General Conference. Granted, I was listening to the English version while I was e-mailing last week, but now it was officially shown (via DVD) here in Japan as well.  Usually members here in Japan all gather at the stake center to watch Conference on both Saturday and Sunday, but because Mihara is so far away, we were the only unit to watch it at our own building.  I kind of made it a rule of thumb to watch Conference in Japanese whenever we had an investigator there, but to watch it in English whenever we didn't.  Sadly we weren't able to have anybody come to Conference this time around, and I ended up watching Conference in English by myself on the computer monitor while everyone else was watching it in the other room.... It was a strangely quiet experience, being able to fully focus on the talks!  

Sunday we had more people come, including one family with 2 little boys, 7 and 4 years old.  We moved the English session to the primary room that day, so it ended up being me, the 2 boys, and the primary teacher.  I went from a strangely quiet, easy to focus experience on Saturday to a very rambunctious time with 2 boys, which, strangely was also a really good learning experience.  

One thing I felt during this past Conference was that there were an awful lot of talks focusing on Marriage and Families.  Until now throughout my mission I've kind of zoned out during those talks, or even tried to find ways to relate it to missionary work, but there just seemed to be an overwhelming pattern of forming a righteous home and family, marriage and courtship.  I'm sure it'll cause my mother to have a slight heart attack to know that her little boy took the most notes this past conference on how to prepare for marriage and a family!  

This past week we made our way over to Onomichi again to visit the members over there.  We received a 'top 5' list of less actives to focus on in Mihara and we've been focusing on visiting them and finding out what is needed to help them improve.  There's one woman that we've been meeting with who reminds me so much of my mother.  One of the first conversations I had with her was about Star Trek, and I've since introduced her to the TV show House and we talk very much like I was her American son.  Right now she still feels very reluctant to talk about religion or to even share a scripture, but she knows somewhere in her heart that the questions and the worries she has now can all be swallowed up in the Gospel.  Hopefully with this last week I can find some way to help her realize how much her Father in Heaven loves her, and help set her up to continue to progress and grow closer to God.  Nearly 30 years of separation from the church carries with it a lot of hardships and difficulties as the church comes closer to you, but the most important thing to know is that God and Christ are waiting for you with open arms.  They are ready to rejoice with you as you make  the effort to come to Them.  

Well, here I go to start my last 10 days in the mission and I plan on attacking it like it will never end.  I look forward to seeing and sharing with you all the wondrous things that I have learned and experienced this past 2 years.  Let’s go do cool things!

Elder Everett

エベレット長老

April Showers

You have just enough time to get a final letter to Ben, if you want:

Elder Benjamin C Everett

Japan Fukuoka Mission

9-16 Hirao-josuimachi

Chuo-ku

Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka

810-0029

JAPAN

 *******************

April is a beautiful time in Japan.  The saying goes 'April showers bring May Flowers' but here in Japan all of the prettiest flowers are in early April.  The purple plum blossoms and pink cherry blossoms are everywhere!  The mountains are really round here in Mihara and look almost furry with all of the trees on them.  Come cherry blossom season the wild trees on the mountains look like white spots on a giant green furry ball.  Or the not-so-wild ones meticulously planted along a mountain path create amazing views dotted all over Japan!  

This past week we had a plan to have a 花見 hanami, flower-viewing BBQ at a local park, but the day before we received news of a heavy storm coming through that day, and it turned into a board-game conference and sandwich party.  Our original plan of 40 or so people quickly fell and we wound up with around 15 or so people at the event.  But of those 15 people, 7 of them were not members, and had a pretty good time playing Uno, Shogi, Othello, and several other games.  (Playing Shogi and Uno at the same time is quite a bit more of a mental work out than you might think!) Our Branch president had bought 10 lbs of meat for the BBQ which almost all went unused at the game conference.  Steak, sausage, and pork belly, all to go back into the freezer from whence they came....

But fear not, the next day took care of the problem!  The next day was Fast Sunday at church and everybody, still wanting to go see the flowers, made a plan to go Sunday and see some cherry blossoms at a local Shinto Shrine after Church.  But the bad weather came back again and we all ended up going to the Branch President’s house and had an impromptu BBQ/family home evening with almost the whole branch!  We ended up with as many people at the impromptu FHE as we did at the planned conference the day before.... (Japanese yakiniku is so good!)

Sunday was awesome here in Mihara!  Fast Sunday is usually a really awkward time in a small branch because everybody looks around to see who's going to go up and bear their testimony.  You can almost feel the tension in the room half of the time.  This Sunday was following much of the same pattern, until suddenly from the back of the room we had 3 of our investigators come in!  A mother and her daughter (who have been absolutely giddy about reading the Book of Mormon picture book, "I finally understand what it was saying") and one of our other investigators who finally got a day off of work and came to church.  We hadn't met him in several weeks because he was so busy with work, but in his first day off in nearly 2 months he decided to use that time to come to church!  We finally got his phone number and he's looking to be really good from here on.  We've been having a bit of a rough time being able to meet with our investigators recently, but they are now coming to us!  The three of them coming to Sacrament meeting seemed to boost the branch members and there was almost an unending stream of testimonies until the time ended.  I was certain that every single testimony was exactly what the investigators needed to hear.  Fast Sundays are the best!

 As I was reminded in this week’s call-in reports that I have 17 days left as a missionary in Japan.... Here's to making it something to be remembered!

Have a wonderful week!

Elder Everett

エベレット長老

It's no April Fool .... it's my Last Month!!

HAPPY EASTER 復活祭おめでとう！

How was your Easter?  I'm sure many of you had Easter egg hunts, special dinners, church programs, and fun coloring eggs and playing games.  Well, in a country where less than 2% of the population claim to be Christian, none of that happens unless you make it.  So that's what I did.  Through several strange chain of events I ended up teaching Eikaiwa 3 days in a row this week, in 3 different areas: Mihara, Yasufuruichi, and Takasu.  In all of which I ended up throwing a surprise Easter Party!  We had Easter-egg hunts throughout the church and then colored the eggs once they were found!  Due to a lack of food coloring and Easter supplies of any sort, we used highlighters and markers, but it was just as good!  Prizes included Oreo Cookies, Pocky, Hi-chew (kind of like Japanese Starburst), and a Giant Hershey's bar.  Something about seeing 8 or 9 fully grown adults (many over 50) going around anxiously searching for eggs made me smile.  That's one of the best things about Japanese people, no matter how old they are, they're just as intense about winning when it comes to playing a game.

Some of you may have noticed that I mentioned Yasufuruichi in there, and there may even be some of you that realized that that is one of my former areas!  I ended up going on a Junkai to Yasufuruichi for 2 days this past week.  It was really interesting coming back to an area I was in before.  I still remembered all of the streets, all of the houses and the people around there.  I went with the missionary there to visit many of the former investigators and less active members that I used to work with there and helped them find new people to work with as well.  As soon as we got  there I started making phone calls and we managed to double their Eikaiwa attendance in a single day!  It's not often that you go on a junkai and end up getting fed every meal!  

Friday at our District meeting we talked about the いろは Iroha of missionary work.  In Japanese the Iroha is a way to make an ordered list and is similar to saying the abc's of missionary work.  I broke it down to 3 main basis.  いー祈り I-inori Prayer.  In all that we do Prayer is key in all that we do.  We need to be humble enough to pray, pray for us and all others, seek for answers, and have prayer as the base for all that we do.  ろー労力 Ro-rouryoku hard work.  As a missionary we have to go do work.  Whether its streeting, housing, making plans for teaching investigators, preparing something to give members or anyone else.... there's a lot of things to do as a missionary.  Last was はーはｐｐｙ　Ha-Happy.  I wasn't sure what to do for put for ha, so I used a bit of good ol' japanglish to emphasize the importance of being Happy and letting this eternal plan of happiness show in your life.  I talked about it as the basis for missionary work, but it is more than just that, I believe that it's very much part of the basics of our lives.  Prayer, work, and finding happiness in all that we do.  With those three things, what can't be done?

Have a great week! Go do something cool :)

Elder Everett

エベレット長老