September 21st- Typhoon Clean-up

Hey everyone, it's a long one this week.  Holy cow this has been an insane week.

Nukaya Choro transferred and Horne Choro and I have been working as a futari (duo) since. It's actually been pretty fun. New missionaries have a special power to attract people and get their attention through their ignorance. I love it hahaha. Nukaya Choro transferred on Wednesday and we worked together that whole day. 

Thursday was crazy. We had Elder Whiting come to tour the mission and give the latest revelation from an apostle for us here in Japan. The meeting was in a place about an hour and a half away by train called Urawa. We use a special email account to handle all missionary matters such as letters from the honbu (mission home), zone leaders, other companionships, and investigators. Each companionship has their own email account and it is called an exchange email. Each month we are issued a new password for this account that we have to enter or we cannot access the information on the email account. Well, poor Horne Choro didn't realize that if he deleted emails from his account, it deleted them from mine as well because it is shared. So he deleted our new password, so we did not get the travel plans to get to Urawa. I looked up a route that got us there and hoped for the best. After riding four different lines we finally arrived in Urawa with no incident!  Felt pretty good. However, looking around and seeing no missionaries anywhere made us feel nervous. We called the zone leaders and they told us that the church was not near Urawa Eki, but near Naka Urawa Eki thirty minutes the other way...great. So we scrambled to call people and figure out how to get to the right Eki without getting lost again on all the crisscrossing lines and tracks.  We made it to Urawa by eight thirty, which was the time we were supposed to be seated.  We still weren't there though. The next step in my brilliant plan was to go to the nearest 7-11 and use the free wifi to find the church, but there was none to be found.  We wandered for about thirty more minutes and then finally went into a random store to ask for a map. The lady happened to have one and pulled it out showing us that the church was actually a fifty foot walk from the Eki, but of course we went every other direction in search of it.  So, we wandered in wet and late, it was pouring rain, right in the middle of Elder Whiting's talk. Not good hahaha. 

It was incredible. He talked about how he had created a nice slide show PowerPoint with the other area authorities showing members and statistics all for Elder Ballard to see. About a third of the way into their presentation Elder Ballard blurted out,"Well..are yuh dun yet!?"  Elder Whiting then said that they said, "Yupp..we're done."  M. Russel Ballard then looked out over every Asian authority and I guess he asked, "Gentlemen, why are we not baptizing in Japan?"  They gave out answers that had to do with the lack of Christianity, the language, the culture, to which Elder Ballard assured them those were all simple things and not the big issue. The meeting was silent for a while, then I guess someone said, "Well, I guess we don't have enough faith."  Elder Ballard sat back and then said, "THAT is the reason!"  So here in the Tokyo mission, the missionaries and members are in a faith crisis. I will be the first to admit that my faith to find and baptize was weak. I didn't think I would, and apparently everyone else thought so too. Elder Whiting told us all about this and then quoted some stats. In our mission, less than one percent of us extend the baptism commitment in the first lesson, and less than three percent of us extend it in the second. He asked us all how many of us had been told within 24 hours of relieving our call, if we had been told how little success we would have on our missions.  We all raised our hands. Over time, we took that attitude into the mission and created a culture that tells missionaries and members that we will not baptism or teach. Keep in mind I am relating the nice side of the story.  You could feel the fire from the pulpit as he spoke.  It was hard, and he warned us that it would hurt before he spoke, but it was exactly what we needed to hear. You could feel collectively in the chapel, that everyone from that point in was committed to changing the culture. It was a wonderful conference. Afterward he walked right up to Horne Choro and me and asked us if we overslept as he shook our hands. I took the fall and told him I got us lost.  Nagano Kaicho (mission president) came to the rescue and explained that I had just been put in this position and had never been to Urawa before. I was grateful for that haha. So please everyone, for the sake of the people here, and from the meeting that was held under apostolic authority which I attended, reject what you have been told about Japan. Don't even acknowledge it. Believing that we cannot baptize in this mission is the whispering of the devil. I am sorry for how my faith was weak, but I have committed to changing. It's a choice really, and I ask that you all change with me. Believe that Japan is a baptizing mission. The Lord works according to everyone's faith, not just the missionaries.

We returned to Kamagaya and had some time to do weekly planning. We blitzed through that and then biked over to visit a member. It was a little rough, we didn't have a lot of time to prepare, and the member's grandchild had a tragedy every two minutes.  They were thankful for the visit though. I feel so bad for Horne Choro. He looks at me all the time and says,"How do I say (      )?" And I just look at him and shake my head, haha. After that we finished daily planning and finally returned to our apartment to eat, for me to do call in reports, and then go to bed.

The Next day was Zone Meeting in Matsudou. So we woke up early and rode the trains there. I had no time to prepare but I was asked to give a training on faith, which was exactly what Elder Whiting talked on, so I think I received some crazy densha keiji ( train revelation), and made a quick plan for what I wanted to say. Zone Meeting was good, and the Zone Leaders were really happy with my training so that was good. After that we returned to Kamagaya, did our study, went to visit another member twenty minutes away, tried to visit another inactive about thirty minutes away, then returned home and finished study and went to bed. When I was reporting to the Zone Leaders they told me about how four different companionships had extended the baptism commitment to people who all accepted. The change has begun.

The next day (Saturday) we had planned to use just about every hour to study, do eikaiwa (English class), go visit some people, visit the same inactive members who were not home the first time, and a few other things. We got called early in the morning and were asked by a member to help their friends move to a new house for three hours right after eikaiwa. We already had barely enough time to get everything done, but accepted it of course. Looking back on the day I don't even remember what happened, but I know we got it all done, how..I have no idea. 

Sunday was even more busy. We had correlation with the ward mission leader, church, talked to some members about different things, a tiny bit of study time, a lesson at a park pretty far away, a member visit, another inactive assignment from the bishop and a bunch of people to call and talk to who called us earlier. The guy never showed up at the park, but we met a super nice Chinese man and got his number and gave him the Book of Mormon with an expectation to meet again so that was awesome. We visited the members and it was a little rough, but we made it through the lesson with only one of the four kids saying,"zen zen wakaranakatta" or, "I understood none of that."  Dang it. Oh well, the parents were very gracious and supportive of us. Next we biked over to an inactive family's house who we finally caught at home and set the expectation to visit again. That was nice!  From there we had enough to time get back to the apartment right before curfew.

Yesterday we woke up at five in the morning to go participate in the service for the flood and earthquake victims. About an hour away in this area called Tsukuba a river bank about thirty feet high broke and did some very serious damage. Horne Choro and I went out there with Takara Bishop and another member to do some service. Members and missionaries closer to the disaster area have been working there all week, but there is still way too much to be done. It was such an amazing experience. Last week when the members and missionaries all showed up in their yellow helping hands vests, no one trusted them. Little by little, through love and service, the victims soon realized that we simply wanted to help. By the time our ward got there the people all knew who the yellow vest people were and called out to us as the nice Mormons from time to time. Unfortunately, yesterday's activity was organized through a local government volunteer program, so just as you would expect the government made us wait around for four and a half hours before they could "find" someone for us to help. Ridiculous. We were assigned to help this man who lived right next to where the river bank broke. When we got there I looked inside and there was four feet of mud piled up on the floor. Towers of boxes, lumber, and building supplies had tipped over and were piled in a huge mess. Lift machines and vehicles were buried and smashed all around the space. It was a disaster. From there we got to work. It was soooo fun getting dirty and using my hands like that again. I've really grown fond of manual labor, and it's been a long time since I have been able to do any. We got to work and had a good rhythm going when the government forced us to take a mandatory one hour lunch break. Stupid. No one wanted to stop. Anyway, Horne Choro and I walked outside and got our first real good look at the damage. It was incredible. Right where the river bank broke there was a community of one hundred houses. All but one had been completely flattened and buried in mud. There was a huge swath of earth carved out where the water rushed through which tore the road in half and threw houses and cars all over the place. Stone and concrete walls were washed out and broken like toys. We all see the aftermath of disaster on TV and in pictures, but nothing prepares you for the first hand experience. It was so sad thinking about all the people who are literally left with nothing now. Takara Bishop then talked to us about how bad the 2009 tsunami had been, and from what we saw we realized that there is no way we could comprehend the magnitude of what he must have seen. Crazy. After our mandatory 'rest from helping people "because we want you to and we are the government," we got back to work. Each time we got working really hard the people made us take mandatory breaks! I couldn't believe it! JUST LET US WORK!!!! So aggravating, but it was still really great and we got A LOT done for that guy. Unfortunately the volunteer association gave us one more kick in the teeth and made us quite at three, so we really only got about five hours of working time in. It was great though, I can't really describe it any more than what I have already attempted. I have never seen a disaster scene before, and I really am so grateful to have been a part of that. I'll send some pictures for you all.

From there we sanitized, and returned to Kamagaya. We had no time to proselyte after cleaning up so we ate dinner and then I did call in reports for the sisters. It may not sound like it, but this week has been the busiest of my entire life. I got done with all my calls last night and just sat there looking at the ceiling. I was soooo tired haha. It felt good though. Getting to the end of each day knowing you probably didn't do everything in the best way, probably didn't get enough things done, or probably made a bunch of stupid mistakes can be overwhelming and hard. But each day I know that I gave my all to the Lord and the people when I sit back in my chair and finally take a breath. It's a great feeling, and I know I will improve on being more organized so I can better serve the people, Horne Choro, and the district. Man what a week.

So that is why I am writing to you on Tuesday this week! Unfortunately all the work and stress has left Horne Choro and I with some battle scars. We both came down last night with a super bad sore throat. Today I was still able to exercise and feel okaaayyy, but Horne Choro is a sick little puppy. Still has a great  attitude though. One more funny thing about him. Each time we stop on our bikes he does the most ridiculous thing. He sticks his butt out behind him in one sudden fast movement so his arms are stretched out strait hangin on to his handle bars, and his butt is hangin over the back wheel behind the seat. Needless to say it looks ridiculous and I finally asked him why he does it. He says that if he doesn't he goes over his handle bars every time hahahahahaha. Horne Choro is so funny and quirky. He is a little clumsy but I love him to death, I only hope I am doing okay with training him. 

Can't think about anything else. Sorry for the mega long email, I had a lot of time in the car going to and from Tsukuba and ran out of potential investigators to call. It has been a good week, but I am so happy p day is here. I love you all so much! 

Thanks for all the letters Natalie, Danielle, Kristin, Lisa, and Macsen! I love you all so much.

Love,

Viehweg長老

September 14th, 2015

Hey everyone,

This week has been insane. I was really relieved when I found out that I would be working in a three some with a transfer sixteen to help contain the new missionary. We are still trying to find unity and work together the best we can, but with three brains and differing abilities, it is pretty difficult. Each day there are so many incredibly awkward encounters we just slap our faces and laugh. Luckily both Elder Nukaya and Elder Horne are really good workers.

This last week, as you may have seen from the news, we had a typhoon race through. It rained all day everyday for a week pretty much. Much of the time it was going sideways into our eyes and faces while we tried to ride our bikes and 'talk' to people, haha. We did a lot of housing on those days, and got really wet. I'm pretty sure much of what I own will still be wet for another week or so. The sad thing is that there was a lot of flooding around the Tokyo area and we were hit with a fairly good sized earthquake which shifted all the wet earth and caused some pretty good landslides and stuff. Luckily all the missionaries are okay and the earthquake was actually pretty fun!

This week we have tried to meet with a lot of people and haven't really been able to get ahold of any. We did get called by one man who met us at an Eki to talk about the church. This never happens so we were all really pumped about it. He ended up bringing a friend and we walked to a nearby restaurant to talk for a while. They were pretty much golden investigators the whole time. They asked awesome questions and were very polite to us. We ran out of time and were able to make an appointment for this next Sunday to teach a lesson about God and they agreed to come. We got back to the apartment feeling really great about it all until we opened the area book and read his teaching record. Apparently these two trick missionaries into thinking they are interested, and then two or three lessons down the road ask the missionaries to meet them at their Buddhist temple, where they pretty much try to keep them there until they denounce their faith and God. The history said that they would get pretty worked up, almost scary, and advised us over and over to not meet with them. That was a pretty big bummer, but we are really grateful that we decided to look into the history before having them come meet us at the church. We may still meet with them now that we know what to expect, but I doubt it will go anywhere past that.

On Friday the rain finally stopped and we were able to work outside without getting immediately drenched in the monsoon type weather. We went to a nearby small Eki to do some street contacting where we had had some good contacts before. As we were walking, I was looking down at my shoes and brought my eyes up to the road in front to see this ancient, crotchety old man riding his jitensha (bicycle) toward us with a big toothless smile pasted on his face. He held up his fist and in it was a baseball. Looking right at me, he tossed it through the air into my hands, waved and sped on by and out of our sight. We sat there for about thirty seconds just trying to process what happened. The old Japanese men are usually the ones who ignore us or yell at us the most, so we couldn't believe what had happened! At that point we just started laughing. Nukaya choro was sure to tell me to write that story down because it will NEVER happen again hahaha. The baseball is sitting in my desk.

We did manage to meet with one other person this week for about ten minutes. His name is Suzuki Daisuke. He is a twenty four year old who dropped out of high school and became a pro sumo. He isn't far along, but one of the super strong tree-trunk like people. Anyway he was horribly injured and spent about a year and a half in the hospital. It really humbled him and now he is taking night school class to catch up and become some kind of city officer. He is super kind and loves that he can talk to us and relieve his stress, just feel better about life. I think he has some serious family concerns, but he won't tell us about that. This last time we really got into why we are here and what we do, and he said he knows what we do and really respects it, but he is so stressed about life that he really doesn't have time to meet regularly. It was a heartbreaker. You can feel a very strong and sweet spirit when you spend time with him. We assured him that if he ever needed help we would be happy to help. He said he may call us for help learning English so we will see where that goes. Such a bummer. He says he doesn't believe in God, but he likes talking about it so he really has so much potential. Maybe future missionaries...

The sisters had an awesome week. We have fed them a bunch of referrals, because women are really the only ones who listen most of the time, and a few of them have led to some really good contacts. Being the district leader and hearing about how awesome they do each day has really been a blessing for me. I love hearing about how they help the people they teach. On Sunday they had three investigators at church which is basically unheard of for Japan. That NEVER happens. It was perfect. The lessons were all on the sacred calling of motherhood and all of them Just ate it up being mothers both young and old. It was a really great day. They do work with people we never could do as elders.

I gotta say how hilarious elder Horne is. His voice is still so loud, and bless his heart he sooooo clueless about the world and everyday life, hahaha. It's really funny. He simply acts like the eighteen year old kid he is, which isn't a bad thing at all! He's learning and adjusting like we all do. Each night he still rolls over and mumbles something outrageous in his sleep haha. He acts so American and like SUCH the typical Utah boy it is really funny. Sometimes I just shake my head and giggle. I have to answer a lot of questions about why things aren't like America in one way or another. He just doesn't get that there are different places than Orem Utah! I love hm to death and hope he stays patient with me, because I really don't know how to be a trainer haha.

On that note, we received some pretty crazy news this week. Last night we got called by the assistants at about ten twenty five. So it was about as late as a call could be. Assistant Chugg asked for Nukaya Choro and they talked for a few minutes. From what I heard it was something big. He looks up at me after the call and says,"I'm leaving..." I thought he was lying since he is a pretty funny guy and likes to joke, I called him on it about ten times. Then I realized he was serious. Originally he was supposed to be training during this transfer and I was supposed to be alone with the new missionary here. The other trainee had visa problems so they stuck Nukaya Choro with us. And now he is leaving tomorrow morning to pick up the missionary who resolved his previous visa problems. Needless to say I said an extra special prayer last night. I'm pretty intimidated. I have just barely started to get the hang of talking on the phone with people and still don't understand most of it sometimes. Those are the times I just hand it over to Nukaya Choro and he prevents the disaster. It's the same thing with talking in the street or helping to train elder Horne and help him know what to say in Japanese. Soooo that's a pretty big Boulder looming over my head, but president Nagano gave me some really good council. He said in his letter,"ultimately, it doesn't matter what you think or whether or not you feel like you are not good enough, God called you to do this, and he knows what he's doing". So I'm just taking the step off the edge of the cliff this week. A 'Jesus take the wheel' kind of thing. Should be fun! And I should learn ALOT from this transfer.

Dad I'm really sorry I didn't wish you happy birthday in the last email. I sure do love you and can't thank you enough for all the time, sweat, and energy you put into our family all these years. You are my hero and I can't tell you how much I love and look up to you. You are the greatest man I know.

Danielle and Krisitin thank you so much for the letters. I love hearing about your lives and Mazor sounds like he's a blast. 

I love you al, so much and pray for you each night.

Love,

Viehweg 長老

Nukaya Choro at church

Zone Conference P-day

Sunset after the Typhoon

District Leader September 7th, 2015

Hey everyone,

This has been a week of adjustment for sure. I think I spoke more English in the first two hours of my new companionship, than in the last twelve weeks with Tsuchida Choro. It feels so weird. We talk about our study in English, practice in English, and speak English

around the apartment. Now my brain is all confused and starts going in

and out of English and Japanese at random times. I found that I really

can't teach that well in English. Sometimes when I am praying I will

start in one language and be talking, then suddenly realize I switched

somewhere along the way. It's really confusing haha because all the

grammar and pronunciations switch up.

I am in a threesome now. It is me, Nukaya Choro from Idaho Falls, he

is full blood Japanese but more American than me, and Horne Choro from

Orem Utah. They are both really good guys. I am so thankful to have

elder Nukaya here to help train while I train and try to be the

district leader. He is on his last transfer so we are killing him (sending him home) in

five weeks, but that means he is ped (fluent) and knows how to do

missionary work, which I still don't. Horne Choro is sooo funny. He is the

typical Utah boy who has never seen anything but home and never tried

anything to crazy haha. He talks SOOOO LOUD hahaha. He will say hi to

people and basically shout at them, from their point of view. It's so

hilarious, and he is fearless so it makes for some really funny street

contacts. He's a good guy and is out here for all the right reasons.

Has a great attitude as well. I'm excited to work on being more

unified with them from here on out and working together for these

people.

Having these new responsibilities has been pretty stressful. Doing

call in reports each night, and thinking about the district vision,

meetings, trainings, and also planning each day since I "know the

area" has been a little bit of an adjustment. I definitely have no

time to do or think about anything but what is needed by our people, and

missionaries. It's nuts. I didn't think I could focus so strongly on

one thing for such along time, but I woke up today and honestly I forgot

I needed to email all of you. Sorry. We received some training from

the zone leaders, but it wasn't really training. They talked about

their vision for the Matsudou zone and they pretty much left

everything else up to us. I really have no idea what I am doing, but

I'm doing my best so if it's not good enough, then somewhere along the

line of revelation someone goofed! Just kidding, I know hat being asked

to do this means I have something to offer, but more importantly I have

something to learn. One thing is for sure I have never before been this

tired for along time haha. You slowly adjust to what you are asked to

do, and then the Lord decides it's time for you to hit the gym again and break

down your foundation to build something new. It's a beautiful, painful

process, but understanding that concept has really made me grateful

for these times and it makes it much easier and more fun to go through

trials, challenges or changes. Anyway, for the missionaries sake,

please pray that I can figure out how to be a missionary, and district

leader, and how to be a trainer too, haha.

This past weekend we had stake conference. It was soooo great.

Yamashita Choro from the Seventy came and THREW DOWN.  His talks were

the exact opposite of how a Japanese person "should act.”  He was loud,

animated, and so funny. The talks he gave were pretty much all geared

toward lighting a fire underneath the members seats. In Japan sharing

the gospel is so hard for the members because of their culture, and he

took that delicate culture and smashed it with a piano. It was

perfect. BEFORE he came Nagano Kaicho taught us his mission culture

which is geared toward serving the members and in particular the

bishop. So we ask all the members what we can do to help them,

sometimes four or five times in a row, and they refuse, because they

are Japanese. Yamashita Choro told about how important they are for us

missionaries and how we need them to do this work. It fed perfectly

into what Nagano Kaicho has been asking us to do. Basically missions

are lead by God and we should all do what mission presidents say. An

easy concept some would think, but you would be surprised how timid

people are to really commit to and follow, truly follow the council of

church leadership. I know I definitely didn't in the past. Anyway that

was really great and I understood a lot of it. Church has gotten to

the point where I understand probably seventy five percent of the

words, but putting all the words into sentences is still tough. I get

all the main points now though so that's nice. At the meetings they

had an English translation room, but Horne Choro was pumped to test

out his Japanese so we went to the chapel. Within ten minutes he was

out hahahah, we let him sleep. Poor guy has taken jet lag pretty

hard. Each night at ten forty exactly he rolls over, shouts,"Jesus!"

mumbles a few things and then proceeds to snore for ten minutes.

Exactly. Then it's quiet again. It's soooo funny haha. Love the guy.

Anyway, after the conference when I called the zone leaders for my

nightly report in the district, I was told that that very night, in

every area, ours included, the members fed the missionaries and had

really cool lessons with them. Hopefully their attitude continues to

become strengthened.

Already Horne Choro has talked to more people than I did my first two

weeks here, he's a great example and I feel like he is training me in

a lot of ways.

This week we had a few really cool experiences. So Tsuchida Choro and I

had called through the area book for hours over the last twelve weeks

and never found a single person who wanted to meet again. The first

time Nukaya Choro tried to call someone he agreed to come to church

and meet with us. I was blown away. Something like that has not

happened the whole time I have been here. Since I cam to Kamagaya we

have slowly lost all of our investigators and dropped even more due to

disinterest, insanity, or inability to contact. Hopefully this is the

start to a new trend, we have cleaned the area book enough in my

opinion, but then again I'm not the one in charge. Still it was a

great tender mercy to at least talk to someone who wants to see us

again.

Training a missionary is pretty stressful, but it's so funny with

Horne Choro. He always forgets to take off his helmet so we will get

off our bikes and start trying to contact people, look at him and

just start laughing hahaha, he is tall and fairly well built but hasn't

really grown into his body yet, so he is a little clumsy. In a country

where everything is super close, he is always bumping into people and

hitting random things when he bends over hahaha. I feel bad we laugh

so much, but I can't help it! We assure him that he is doing great (and he really is!) and he is always really good natured about it. I often feel just as out of place and helpless as him, so I sympathize with him for sure.

Not sure what else to say. Have fun camping family! Danielle I'm sorry

to hear about Weston and his schools, I'll pray for you all. The story

about Mazer was awesome hahaha. Lisa that's is so crazy!! Such a small

world. Tell me his name one more time so I can tell bishop about it.

Thanks for all the birthday (insert English word I can t really

remember, not wishes).  I love you all so much.

Viehweg 長老

August 30th, 2015

Hey guys,

This new transfer is bringing some big and terrifying changes. We got the call from assistant Chugg this morning and found out Tsuchida Choro is transferring to a place called Abiko to be the district leader and follow up train a greenie, and I will be taking over Kamagaya in a threesome as well as training a new missionary. I almost threw up when I heard that, but then I heard that the third missionary will be a transfer sixteen and he is half Japanese, so between the two of us the new missionary shouldn't have any lasting, permanent effects...

To be honest I don't know why the president felt this way about this transfer. I can't even talk on the phone with a native and understand them hahaha.  It's going to be a really tough experience, but I know I will learn and grow a lot as well.  So we have today and tomorrow we go to the mission home to pick up our new missionaries.  So weird.  Tsuchida Choro and I have gotten really close through this last transfer.  We spent our companion study time on Sunday just talking about the transfer.  We Both agreed that it has been one of the hardest experiences yet, and that we learned A LOT.  I sure am going to miss him, he has been the perfect trainer for what I needed to start off here in Nihon.  Definitely an inspired companionship.  So needless to say I need to start thinking about the district vision and spend A LOT more time on my knees. 

This week had some really good experiences. Earlier in the week, Sunday and Monday actually, we had exchanges, which I told you all about already.  From there we had an old investigator from the other elder's area book call and say he had time to meet.  He is about sixty and is a baseball fanatic. He plays every Sunday and travels to follow his favorite team.  Anyway he has a background in Christianity and was really glad to meet with us.  We taught about the plan of salvation and the atonement.  I'm not sure if he really has interest in what we teach, but he said we could come teach him again, which has not happened yet in the past six weeks with any other investigator haha.  So that was a good experience. 

On Wednesday night we had our weekly English class.  The week before I mentioned to this tiny older lady named Noboko San that I thought it was awesome she did kendo.  Kendo is basically sword fighting with bamboo swords and armor.  It's fencing without all the tights and fancy talk. Anyway this next class she decided to bring her entire kendo outfit, sword, and also some of her umis, super huge longbows native to Japan.  After eikaiwa we were eating candy with the students, and she waved me over and before I could say anything started throwing on all these clothing items.  Before I knew it I was fully dressed in a kendo uniform and every single student was crowded around me snapping photo after photo while Tsuchida Choro and the sisters just watched and laughed at me haha.  It was really cool, she kept wanting me to make all these poses and things.  I was a little embarrassed, but it really was so sweet haha.  After that she gave me a bunch of super complicated origami and two picture frames with these tiny, beautiful hand sewn kimonos in them. So Shannon and Natalie looks like you have some cool souvenirs coming your way.  I'll send a few pics if they are any good.  Most are blurry.  It was fun though haha.

Weekly planning was a little tough this week.  I really do hate sitting in the apartment for five hours calling people and talking, but I know how important it is for our week.  This last week we dropped a bunch more people who were not interested and unavailable.  Doing that is always rough. I t's like ripping off bandaid after bandaid for several hours.  We both were a little frustrated, but we have come to accept that our job this last transfer was to clean up the area book.  So many people who were labeled as 'investigator' really had no idea away what we did or who we were.  So while it didn't exactly boost our self confidence, we recognized it was important to set the tone for future missionaries.

Friday was a really good day.  We biked super far away, forty five minutes, to a town to visit a man from Nepal who owns an Indian curry restaurant there.  He has met with a lot of other missionaries, probably because they always eat his food, but we just had a lesson with him that day.  We talked about prayer.  He seemed to understand, but the language barrier is sooooo thick.  His nihongo is really bad haha.  There currently is not a Nepalese Book of Mormon, so he reads from the Hindu one, but really doesn't understand it.  He was super nice and prayed very roughly to close the lesson.  We don't know what to do, because he can hardly understand us and the gospel vocabulary, but he can't read about what we teach either...tough.  After that we got a really great phone call.  We had been calling this previous investigator who's teaching record had every indication that he should have been baptized.  He is a really young guy who is going to school.  Anyway we had called him several times in previous weeks and never got an answer, but he messaged us and said he could meet us at the church all the way back in Kamagaya.  So we booked it back while also trying to make our goal for Morumon shos, which we just barely did, and made it to the church.  We chatted with him for a long time and set up some really good expectations.  Apparently the reason he met with us is because from our voicemails he had found out that the missionaries had changed.  The other elders had really pressured him in the past.  So we just tried to reassure him, but also promise him that everything we taught was true.  His schedule was insane, so who knows if we will meet again, but it was an answer to prayer. That day as we were biking out to Shiroi, I prayed the whole time that we could REALLY help someone that day, not just give them a book, or a pamphlet, but really help them come closer to Christ.  This young man, Kikuchi San, was the answer.  The spirit was very strong as we talked, and he asked such deep questions for a college student.  He has a desire, but needs patience.  I have come to learn that here, missionary work is not lessons, or having people at church.  It's small, almost unnoticeable things.  So small the people who we help come closer to Christ often don't even realize it is happening. 

The next several days were really rough.  Pretty much ignored the whole time by a lot of people haha. We were yelled at by a few old grandpas for ping ponging their houses after seven at night...whatever, man.  Hahaha, we tried to just laugh it off.

So today was awesome.  Three weeks ago a Filipino girl called Tsuchida Choro and I, she spoke English so I talked to her.  She mentioned having a pamphlet and wanting to know where the church was in Kamagaya and saying she really wanted to come.  She lived in Chiba, which is over an hour away, but insisted on coming here since she received a Kamagaya flyer.  We explained the place and all the times and then referred her to the sisters.  When she came to church the next week, Tsuchida Choro recognized her.  She had approached him three months ago and asked for a pamphlet. Apparently in the Philippines she had gone to church with her friends, and has been looking for a Mormon church in Tokyo for along time.  Anyway she met with the sisters here twice, accepted baptism, and then THEY referred her to the Chiba sisters again haha.  Yesterday the sisters went to her baptism and said it was wonderful.  Her journey to the gospel was so crazy, random, and long, but God used all of us according our faith collectively to help her get to where she needed to be. Really cool.  Tsuchida has a gift for referring women.  This is the third or fourth woman who has approached him, heard him talk about the gospel, be referred to sisters, then accepted baptism.  I sure hope he realizes that he is just as crucial to their conversion as the sisters who teach them. Really great story.

I ate nasshi.  (Large Japanese pears)  It was soooooo gooood I think it may have been one of the fruits in the garden of Eden.  Anyway, I've learned that no matter what I eat, or how much, I'm always hungry.  Life of a senkyoshi I'm sure.  Sorry super random, but I don't have anything else really to talk about.  I sure do love you all.  I am absolutely terrified of being a trainer and a district leader.  I keep thinking about he New Testament scripture...not sure how it goes, but it's something like,"God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." I'll try to go back to that and not let the spirit of fear get to me.

I love you all very much. I can't tell you how thankful I am to each and every one of you.

Viehweg 長老

Gifts from Elkiawa

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Full Kendo uniform

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Kendo Uniform

Pumpkin Rice 

August 24th, 2015

Hey Mina San(Everyone),

Another week gone, and almost another transfer. It's insane really. It's going by way too fast already and I don't like it, haha. It makes me feel a sense of urgency and sometimes a little stress. All good though, if you're not stressed you're dead, or so I've been told, ha. 

I was very sorry to hear about the Gooch family. I will definitely pray for them each day. What a hard thing to go through.  Make sure they know I am thinking about and praying for them please.

Let's see where to begin for this week...? I never know how to do this, so sorry but here I go again. So obviously it is Tuesday here, we had temple P-day today which is always fun. It's like a big reunion each time and the temple workers always have to patiently tell us to leave and congregate somewhere else, hahaha. I saw elder Frazier, my MTC companion, and we ate lunch with him and one of our kohai (younger missionaries), which was really fun. He's such a great guy. The temple was wonderful of course, even if we had to wake up at four to get there and don't really get a P day because we contact on the trains, it's so wonderful to go. Not a lot of missionaries get to enjoy the same thing.

So we visited several more members this week. I swear it is getting harder and harder to do that. Everyone is always sooooo busy and it is nigh impossible to get them at home for longer than fifteen minutes. The first man we visited was Suzuki Kyodai. He is a nice thirty year old single man who lives in a tiny single apartment. We taught him the first lesson. It was pretty shaky, because we never teach really so I'm not so good at teaching the actual lessons. All I do is super condensed messages and get to know people, so teaching is a weak point for me. Anyway, I stumbled through, and forgot how to say some of the first vision. Pretty embarrassing considering you want to gain the members' trust so they refer people to you, but nothing can be done. What I said came from my heart, even if it was incomplete, ha. Tai hen (terrible!).  Later this week we visited the Yamamoto family. That was so nice. We essentially taught the same thing and it went much better this time. They were very supportive and friendly and gave us ice cream and donuts which is always great, ha. Their daughter is a piano genius. She is going to some big school as a music performance major, and her father had to basically scrape her off the piano bench to listen to us for fifteen minutes, haha.  Really talented though--she could do it for a living easily RIGHT NOW.  We have been visiting all these members because we simply are not finding people to teach.  As a mission we are trying to get the members more excited about missionary work because we definitely can't do it alone.  Elder Tsuchida and I made a small paper with family missionary work goals and bring it out at every visit for the members. We made a bunch of copies and are slowly handing them out, so hopefully that helps a little. Other than that we visited two people in Shiroi, about a fortyfive minute bike ride away, and found out they really have no interest. They both sat there and admitted to how wonderful it felt to be with missionaries and learn, but they have decided to use their agency to reject those feelings.  Absolutely heartbreaking for us.  Nothing can be done though, as sad as that sounds it becomes more true for me each day. 

Apart from those visits we have been finding on our bikes, housing, streeting, and going to ekis (train stations).  Busy busy busy which is always good.  Sometimes it gets pretty monotonous without lessons or people to teach, but that's just part of the work here.  Gotta stay focused despite what is happening around you.  We had one pretty cool experience the ore night. We have been struggling to accomplish any of our goals lately which has been a bit of a downer, but we never let it get to us.  The other night we had twenty minutes to find before we had to get back to the apartment for planning and decided to street contact at an Eki. We met one really nice high school student who wasn't too interested but took a Book of Mormon, and right after that we were walking by a convenience store when another high school kid zipped by on his bike.  I looked at him and decided to keep walking.  Then, for whatever reason I turned and threw my hand up calling out to him.  He slammed on his brakes and walked his bike back over to us.  As we introduced ourselves he looked at us and just asked, "So are you catholic or Protestant?"  Those who served in Japan know this is a very rare question for a high schooler.  We talked about how we were neither.  His next question was, "So how is your church different from the others?"  Golden question.  That's when we brought out the Book of Mormon and told him about it.  He then began talking about all this Bible doctrine and church related stuff I didn't even know.  At that point he said something like, "I get that there are different sacred texts..but what REALLY makes your church different, what is so special about this church?"  That's when we basically gave him the first lesson in the parking lot in five minutes.  All in Japanese of course.  It turned out that he had attended a church school and was forced to be baptized, so he was a little wary, but still very open and inviting.  At the end of our chat I had him read the last two paragraphs of the Book of Mormon intro which he thought was awesome.  You could tell it really provoked thought.  He asked where we meet and what time and we tried to get his number, but that's when he got a little nervous, so we backed off and told him to call anytime.  He was an example of those 'prepared people' you always hear about.  A really great experience totally led and guided by the spirit.  Unfortunately we never heard from him since, but he may call in the future I suppose.  I was grateful for the experience though, just to know those people really do exist, haha. 

Sunday night we exchanged with the zone leaders.  I worked here in Kamagaya with Prince Choro from Las Vegas, Nevada, and Tsuchida Choro went to their area in Tsukuba to work with Maki Choro. I was jealous because Tsukuba is really inaka(out in the country), rural, and has some mountains, but working with elder Prince was awesome.  He is a transfer fifteen and I don't know if any of you will remember, but he is from the same hometown as the first zone leader I worked with my second week here, Higby Choro, who went home last transfer.  Both are actually good friends and went to high school together.  Anyway he was great.  I planned the day for us, and the day essentially went backwards, hahaha.  We went to a park to contact about twenty minutes away, and normally we stop and talk to people on the way, but that day NO ONE WAS AROUND, except for obachans and ogichans (Grandmas and grandpas).  So that was tai hen, haha.  At the park, again it was old people only, hahaha.  Some were nice and willing to talk, but not many.  From there we biked another twenty minutes away from our area to surprise visit some members.  They weren't home.  On the way back we met one old man who was quite interesting.  He asked us why we stopped to talk to him, because he had no relationship to us.  We just told him we wanted to talk.  He said as a Japanese man he didn't talk to people.  We told him we were just being friendly, to which he said that Japanese people aren't friendly.  We then asked him how he made friends if that were the case, and he just said he didn't make friends, and that we should learn Japanese culture before we go around being rude. Unfortunately, that is the attitude with a lot of the older people.  We patiently continue to talk to them and eventually find out something like their kids all ditched them and they were divorced and simply lonely.  Normally they open up and start being more friendly, but this man didn't.  It was really sad.  If anyone needs to feel Christ's love it is him.  After that we stopped another grandpa who was wandering and stumbling around.  When I stopped him to say hi he looked up at me and fell over onto me and my bike.  Almost tipped me over.  We asked him several times if he was okay, and he assured us he was, but he wasn't making any sense, didn't know where he was, and couldn't speak because his throat was too dry.  We sat him down on the street and told him we would go to the store and buy him some water, so he sat down and we took off for a store around the corner.  We were waiting at the crosswalk on our bikes, when I glanced over and saw him wandering down the road toward us.  He stumbled in a step and fell, got up and kept walking.  I was shaking my head at this point.  This man couldn't even function.  He stopped and looked at us, jumped a little, and said, "Have we met before???"  That's when we decided to just walk with him to the convenience store.  I kept having to hold him and catch him because he kept walking into my bike pedal.  The whole time he was saying he was Buddhist, he didn't reallize that at this point we were just trying to save his life, haha.  He knew he needed help though, so he walked with us to the store.  We bought a half gallon of water, sat him down, and he drank all of it...he was suffering from severe heatstroke.  As an eighty year old man that's pretty serious I would think.  He seemed a tiny bit more steady after that, but we bought him more water and gave it to him to carry.  He wouldn't tell us where he lived, so we just left him to his own devices and prayed for him a little.  Hahahaha, it was so weird.  That whole day, Monday, I think we met every crazy in Kamagaya.  That night we tried visiting a member I had planned to, but couldn't find their house.  It was hard not to feel responsible for the poor day.  After all I planned the whole day, and led off on everything.  Some days just go bad though.  Luckily we managed to laugh most of it off, and elder Prince had some really great things to say during our splits review. It was a good day.  Tough mentally, but good. 

That pretty much sums up our week. There is always so much more, but it's just tiny details and things while trying to find investigators normally.

Danielle I'm sorry Mazer pooped in the bathtub again, haha. 

Nattles thanks for your letter sweetie! Love you.

I love everyone back in American and miss you very much.  Oh I almost forgot!  Don't send anything to me, just send it to the mission home, they send it out and handle things during transfers, so if I move they will get it to me.

President Nagano

4-25-12 Nishi-ochiai

Shinjiku-Ku Tokyo-to 161-0031

Japan

Thank you for all the support!!

Viehweg Choro

Elder's lunch after a temple trip

Elder Prince