Monday, December 17, 2012

   (Almost) Merry Christmas! Christmas is in just over a week! Are you guys ready yet? It's coming up pretty quick. I'm probably not going to see a white Christmas in Japan. It's not quite cold enough to snow. I guess Tokyo is kinda like Washington in the aspect that it doesn't snow very often, but it still rains even during the winter. I'm looking forward to Christmas though. There's going to be quite a few fun things going on.

   So last week for p-day we went bowling as a district... again. You know, when everyone said that I'd be playing a lot of b-ball on my mission, I thought they were talking about basket ball, not bowling. Haha! But yeah, that was really fun. There are some really cool missionaries in our district, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to serve with them. Let's see, what were some other highlights...

Christmas cards we made for people here

   So, our recent convert Sister Ishihara brought her son with her AB lesson this week. That means that instead of teaching an AB lesson like we thought we were going to, we ended up teaching a first lesson to her son. He's 17, and a junior in high school, but he's pretty cool and he has a pretty strong interest in the church. I'm sure his mom being baptized may have had something to do with that. So that was really cool, but the miracle doesn't stop there! On Sunday, Sister Ishihara came to Church with her son. But, not only did she bring her son, but her husband (who we've never met before) also came to church! We totally weren't expecting it at all. She's told us before that he doesn't really care either way if she wants to go to church, but he has no interest in it himself. So when they showed up we were all really surprised. He said that he had a good time though, and that he thought everyone was really nice and he wants to learn more. This is why it's so important to be friendly to people you don't recognize at church! You never know what kind of impact you might have in their conversion.

    So, backtracking a little bit, Friday was an interesting day. During personal study we get a phone call from President Budge. Well, that's never a good sign when the Mission President calls you directly, right? Well, he then informed us that we were having an emergency transfer, and that a new missionary would be coming to join us the next day (Saturday) and then Elder Nakamura would transfer to the mission home on Tuesday and begin being trained as the comissarian for next transfer. That means that we're now in a 3-man companionship until tomorrow, and then Elder Nakamura will be leaving me for the last two weeks of the Transfer. My new companion's name is Elder Holden, and he seems pretty chill. So I guess that means I'll be celebrating Christmas with him instead of with Elder Nakamura.

    Saturday was a pretty good day too though. Elder and Sister Harrison had a Christmas party with their neighbors, and they invited us (since they don't speak Japanese and we do). They have some really nice neighbors. It's actually really interesting to see them interact, because they're all like really tight friends. That's something that you don't see very often, in Japan or America. I think it would be pretty cool to live somewhere where you could be best friends with your neighbors. That wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

 

That's about it for now! I hope you all enjoy Christmas!

 

Elder Blake

Monday, December 10, 2012

   Hey there everyone! So I have some interesting news for you. Sometimes, in Japan, the ground moves. It's this crazy thing called and earthquake. Woah. So, as I'm sure you may have already heard, there was a 7.3 earthquake in the Tokyo area. You may not have already heard, but all the missionaries are safe, so it's all good. We were actually in our apartment eating dinner when it hit, and over where we were it was only about a 2, maybe a 3, so we didn't even think about it. About 10 minutes later we got an email from the mission home informing us that parts of the mission just experience a 7.3, and told everyone to check in with their zone leaders and let them know if we were ok. So, in our case, it really wasn't all that exciting. What was really fun though was a few weeks ago when we were at a member's apartment and we had a 5.0 earthquake hit. Yeah, things did a little more than just shake a little bit. That was interesting. But, Japanese buildings are designed for these sorts of things, so there probably is no safer place to be in the world during an earthquake than in Japan.

   Other than that, things have been pretty busy this last week. Christmas is coming up soon, and Elder Nakamura and I decided we want to make Christmas cards for all the families in the ward. We took some time to buy paper and some markers and a few other things, so we're going to be spending a little time over the next couple days getting those all put together. Other than the typical activities of teaching investigators and trying to find new people to teach, there have been a few good highlights. For example, we went to a wedding reception on Saturday. It's really kind of interesting being a missionary in Japan actually. In the states you see the missionaries at church, you invite them over for dinner once in a while, and you don't really expect to see them much more than that unless you see them riding around on their bikes. Here in Japan (or maybe it's just the Yamato Ward), the members always invite us and expect us to come to ward activities, ward parties, and apparently even wedding receptions. So that was fun.

   One of the members in the ward, Brother Akasaka, has a less active son that we've been trying to contact for almost as long as I've been here. He's a high school teacher, so he's really busy all the time. Well, we managed for finally make contact with him on Sunday! Brother Akasaka is a way cool guy, and he's really nice, but if I didn't know already that his son is his son, I don't think I would have ever guessed. They don't look anything alike. He seems like a really nice guy like his dad though, so that's good. We're hoping we can start meeting with him once in a while, and hopefully he'll start coming back to church. That would be great to see.

   On sunday we also watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. Basically it's just a small devotional from President of the church and his two counselors. They each share a 10 minute message themed on Christmas, and there's also music and singing. I highly recommend watching it. Here's the link: http://www.lds.org/broadcasts/archive/christmas-devotional/2012/12?lang=eng  There was some really good stuff that was said. I especially like Uchtdorf's message. Many times in an effort to improve ourselves and focus on giving, we almost become trained to think that receiving a gift is a bad thing, and we forget how important it is to be a grateful recipient. As he said in his message, there is no joy in giving a gift if the recipient is not grateful for receiving it.

 

   So, I've been waiting some time now for this legendary Japanese fall that I always hear so much about. You know, red leaves and all that. The kanji for fall is actually the kanji for tree and fire combined, so that should tell you something. Well, now that we're in December, we finally found some red trees. It's actually kind of interesting, because some of the trees just had their leaves die and fall off kind of like in Arizona, and thy already have no leaves left. Then there's these trees with all their red leaves, and then there are other trees that haven't even started changing colors yet. So I'm not entirely sure when fall actually started around here.

That's about it for now! Oh, and one last final thought. I can't remember where I heard this, but there's quote that's been bouncing around in my head for a couple days. "There are two types of people in this world: those who say to God 'Thy will be done,' and those to who God says 'Alright, have it your way.'" Humorous, but I think it gets the point across. So yeah, take care everyone! More adventures to come next week!

Elder Blake

Captain's Log, Entry 12.3.12

   The weather has been really nice since about October, but the last week or two the temperature has started to drop some more. I'm quickly finding out that humidity is a double edged sword. During the summer you feel gross, and during the winter it makes it feel twice as cold as it really is. But yeah! At least we have seasons in Japan!

   It's been pretty uneventful this week. Not much went on in the way of exciting news. There were a few highlights though. Last Monday, we were invited over to the Anderson's home on the base for dinner and Family Home Evening. The Andersons are a way cool family, and it's always a treat when they invite us over. Well, for Family Home Evening we got to participate in one of their family traditions that they do for Christmas; we got to help set up the nativity scene. The way they do it is pretty cool. The pieces are all wrapped up in newspaper in the box, so you can't really tell what the pieces are until you open it up. You go around the room, everyone taking one piece at a time. You open it up, share a little bit about what its significance is in the story of the Birth of Christ, and then place it on the table where the nativity would be displayed for the rest of the Christmas season. Some pieces are obviously less obvious than others, like a cow for example, but it was really interesting to hear everyone share their thoughts on the birth of the Savior and what we can learn from all the different players that took part in the event.

   So there's this sister in the Yamato Ward, Nami, who referred a friend to us about two months ago or so. This friend of hers lives nearly an hour away by train though, so we ended up passing him off to the Elders over by where he lives. I was talking to Nami at church the other day, and she told me that this friend of hers has a baptismal date now. Awesome! He's looking pretty solid too, so we're all expecting it to go through. The best part about it is that she only recently returned to activity in about July, shortly before I arrived in Japan. It's been great to see her coming back to church and already getting involved in the work. There are so many of our Brothers and Sisters all around us with so much potential to serve the Lord and receive the blessings he has to offer, but sometimes they just need that helping hand to get back up and moving on the path. It's really great to see the difference and improvements that can be made in just a short time.

   As we approach Christmas, as a mission we're focusing on two things. First, is what each of us, individually, is giving to Christ every day as we enter the Christmas season. Secondly, we're focusing on recognizing the miracles that we are blessed with every day as we serve the Lord. One of those miracles that we've had recently just happened last night. We have an investigator named John who we haven't been able to make contact with for nearly two months. He's Phillipino, married, and has 3 young children. The thing is, he works construction 6 days a week, and his schedule is always changing. He was having phone problems, so he got a new phone with a new number so we haven't been able to call him. The only way to get in touch with him has been to drop by his apartment and hope either he or his wife would be home. Well, as I said, this went on for nearly two months. Last night we get this impression that we should try to go visit him again, despite having just dropped by the other day. Well, when we went by, as we were parking our bikes, his wife walks out the front door. "Hey, is John home?" "Yeah! come on in!" Awesome. We were able to find out that he now has a regular schedule, so we can start meeting regularly again, and we have his new phone number. Hopefully things will continue to go up from here.

   Other than that it's been fairly routine this last week. Rations are running low, the weather is getting colder, and I've heard rumors of mutiny among the crew. Nothing out of the ordinary.

 

Captain Elder Blake

 

--End of Entry--

Monday, November 26, 2012

   Well hello! Another week has gone by here in the promised land, also known as Yamato. Things have been fun, that's for sure. There have been quite a few different things going on. To start out, there's a Peruvian invasion going on right now in Yamato. There's a Peruvian woman who started coming to our weekly english class a few week ago, there's a peruvian man that we found on the street who's family are members but he isn't (he came to church with us last week), and we found another Peruvian man while we were knocking doors earlier in the week last week. Oh, and here's the best part; all 3 of them are fluent in Japanese, so I can still talk with them even though I don't know spanish! Although, it does help that I know the few simple phrases that anyone who's lived in the southwest for any period of time will pick up. You know, things like gracias, como estas, that sort of thing. But yeah, 3 Peruvians. In Japan. And none of them know each other.

He carved the turkey and there's nothing left!

   Thanksgiving was pretty good for us this year. Seeing as how I'm in Japan and Thankgsiving is an American holiday, it was a bit different than usual. However, depite being in Japan, we celebrated Thanksgiving twice. How? Well, allow me to explain. First, on Thursday, we went on Atsugi Base and had Thanksgiving dinnner with the Smith family. That was really fun. The Smith family is awesome. Elder Nakamura has never celebrated Thanksgiving before, seeing as how he's Japanese, so I tried to explain the holiday to him. It went something like this "What's Thanksgiving?" "Well, it's a holiday to express thanks for what we have. Give thanks." "ok. so what do you do?" "umm.... We eat alot?" Haha! Yeah, I don't think he was prepared though. You could tell he was suprised at the staggering amount of food: a typical Thanksgiving dinner with potatoes, stuffing, corn, a dozen other dishes, and of course turkey. So that was our first Thanksgiving. Our second Thanksgiving was on Friday. The Kaimori family from the Yamato Ward invited us over for their Thanksgiving celebration on Friday. Why did they celebrate on Friday? Well, that's because in Japan Thanksgiving is actually on Friday. It's just a calender holiday though, nobody really does anything. But, Brother Kaimori's wife is American. That means that they celebrated the American way: eating alot. So that was our second thanksgiving. It was really fun.

   We've been able to visit quite a few of the Yamato members in their homes recently, which has been really good. We're trying to get the ward members more involved, so what we've started doing is we're passing around a calender for them to sign up and have us come over and teach a practice lesson with them. These practice lessons usually end up turning into us going over for dinner and then having a practice lesson. But hey, I'm not complaining. Since our focus is to help involve the members, we keep our practice lessons really short and simple, as a way to demonstrate that sharing the gospel doesn't have to be really lengthy or complex. It's been having some effect already, we've had some members really get excited about missionary work recently. Speaking of which, President Budge spoke at the adult session of Stake Conference for the English speaking stake. He shared about a friend of his who keeps a Book of Mormon with him at all times, everywhere he goes. That way, if he ever finds himself in a situation where he could give someone a Book of Mormon, he has one available to do so. He then went on to explain that many of us pray for missionary opportunities. But if two people pray for missionary opportunites, and one of them has a Book of Mormon and the other doesn't, who is the Lord more likely to send that prepared person that would accept a Book of Mormon to? He then challenged everyone to do the same, and keep a Book of Mormon with them all the time, in the car, in your bag, or somewhere. I also find it important to note that his challenge didn't have a deadline. He also didn't challenge everyone to give away a certain number of Book of Mormons. He simply challenged everyone to keep one on hand at all times so that if you have an opportunity to share, you are prepared and able to act on that opportunity.

Funny Engrish! Not sure what a rordside is...

   Sunday was also a good day. Sister Ishihara was baptized and confirmed. There was a really good turnout from the ward, which I was really grateful for. The Yamato ward is a really friendly ward, so I expect that Sister Ishihara will be well taken care of. Pretty soon, we may be able to start teaching her sons. In the last couple of weeks before her baptism she refered both of her sons to us, and one of them actually came with her to a lesson. If we could start working with her family and they get baptized too, that would be the best. After all, the church is all about uniting families for eternity. We're praying the Lord will open their hearts to the Gospel.

 

   That's about it for this week! I hope you all enjoyed Thanksgiving as well! Oh, and guess what? Christmas is coming! What will you give to Christ this Christmas?

Elder Blake

Monday, November 19, 2012

Today is the start of a new transfer, and I've once again made it through unscathed. I'll be staying in Yamato again this transfer, along with Elder Nakamura. That means I'll be here for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm excited.

So it's actually been a rather interesting week this last week. To start off, on Monday we went to a train station out on the edge of our area that we've never been to before. As we were out and about, we heard some music playing that sounded really interesting. It was definitely live, but we couldn't figure out exactly what they were playing. We decided to investigate. As we got closer to the sound, we realized it was coming from off the playground of a preschool. Well that was odd. What reallly caught us by suprise was that not only was it coming from the preschool, it was being played by preschoolers. A preschool marching band. And they were really playing, it wasn't some recording. Wow. I definitely wasn't expecting that. I wasn't sure if I should be impressed or depressed. Whatever I was though, it was pretty big.

Since it was the last week of the transfer, we went to the temple again on Tuesday. After the temple, we went to eat lunch with a few other missionaries. We decided to go get shabu shabu at a fairly well known place (among missionaries) over in shibuya. If Shibuya rings a bell for you, or even if it doesn't, Shibuya is home to the world's largest crosswalk. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I heard that Shibuya is considered the most urban place in the world. I'd believe it. The buildings aren't as tall as you would expect, like in Manhattan or someplace, but there were literally people EVERYWHERE. It was ridiculous. That was really fun.

Later in the week we found a young man by the name of Scott. He called out to us as we rode past on our bikes, so we stopped to talk with him. He's 19, and he's American, but he's never been to America. How is that possible, you ask? Allow me to explain. His dad is navy, and Scott was born in Spain while his dad was stationed there. They went straight from Spain to Japan, and a short time after that his parents divorced. His dad went back to the states, but he and his mom stayed in Japan, where he's been ever since. Yeah. Strange, but true. Anyway, Scott's a pretty cool kid. We're planning on meeting with him again soon, and hopefully that will go somewhere. It was actually really funny when we traded numbers, he told us that he wasn't very smart but if we ever needed any help with anything like moving heavy stuff or something to give him a call. In my head I was just like "Hey, that's our line!" Haha! He's a really nice kid.

Oh, this one's pretty fun. So I don't know if you remember anything about Eduardo, the Brazilian we found a few weeks back, but he's the one who's lived in Japan for 20 years, married a Japanese woman, and he's pretty much fluent in Japanese and English, and he's wicca. So he's a really nice guy though, and we've been trying to meet with him for a while. We actually had an appointment set up, but when we went to visit him, nobody was home. We came to find out that he had thought we would drop by his work, and we misunderstood him and went to his house. So, after we got that straightened out, we set up another appointment. He asked us to come by on Friday when he had some free time, so that's what we did. Well, it wasn't until we showed up at his work that I remembered that he told us he was a tattoo artist. Yeah. So we had a lesson with him inside his tattoo shop. Hopefully next time we can have a lesson somewhere a little more conducive to the spirit...

So, this might be kinda random, but I saw an ad in a train that I though was pretty funny. It's just a picture of a guy wearing a really nice suit, staring off into the distance with this look of deep thought on his face, while he's holding a can of beer. The only other thing on the ad is a caption which says 「ビール好きなあの人に」, which means "To that guy who likes beer..." I'm not sure why I thought it was so funny, but maybe you'll get a laugh out of it too.

Anyways, those are some of the more interesting bits of the week. Other than that, things are going well. Ishihara has her baptismal interview on wednesday, so if everything goes the way we expect she'll be baptized on Sunday. This next week looks like it's going to be pretty busy. Yamato is really taking off right now. I'm glad I get to stay for one more transfer and be a part of it. I'll be sure to let you know all about it! More later!

 

Elder Blake

Monday, November 12, 2012

Well, the weather is still trying to make up its mind over here. Earlier in the week it was cool enough that wearing a suit was comfortable, and then Saturday was warm enough that I went back to a short sleeved shirt, and now this morning (Monday morning) it's dropped again and is pretty chilly in the apartment when you first wake up. It now makes sense why so many people get sick during the turn of the seasons.

So it's actually been a fairly eventful week. To start with, last Monday, Elder Nakamura and I went to Enoshima Island with Elder Burningham and Apalonio. It was actually the first time Nakamura and Apolonio had been to the island, and they really enjoyed it alot. It was a little different with only the four of us instead of the whole zone, but in some ways it was kinda nice. It was much easier to spend time in the places we wanted to see and skip over the less interesting bits since there were only 4 of us. Also, with the weather cooling off, there were far less people at the Island this time too, so we could go see pretty much anything we wanted to.

Tuesday was an interesting day. One of the people we're teaching, Yohei, is about 17 or so. His parents are actually members of the church, but haven't come in a really long time, but he's never been baptized. Well, his Grandfather passed away last week, and the funeral was on Tuesday. Elder Nakamura and I went to that to pay our respects and show our support. Not only was it my first time to attend a funeral, it was a Buddhist funeral. It was pretty interesting. Considering this is my only experience with attending a funeral, I'm not sure how much is pretty much standard and traditional, and how much was unique to this particular funeral. For the viewing, they brought in the casket while everyone was already there. He was covered with a white sheet, and the only thing showing was his face. There was nothing else inside the casket. They passed around these booklets with different well-wishes and sentiments written in kanji, and people would tear out pages they liked and placed them in the casket with the body. After that, everyone took flowers that were provided, and placed them inside the casket until the casket was pretty much filled with flowers, but the face was still uncovered. When they placed the lid on the casket, everyone stood around the casket and placed a hand on the lid and lowered it together. Some words were said, and then the body and the direct family headed off to the crematory.

Wednesday we had a pretty interesting experience during district meeting. Towards the end of the meeting, this guy walks in and just stands in the doorway. He starts talking about how he came by, saw the church, and decided to go inside and talk to whoever was there. He then pulls this really gnarly looking Book of Mormon from his bag, then bowed and thanked us. We tried talking with him to figure out who he was, where he was from, etc, but he kept dodging our questions. I'm not quite sure if he was all there in his head from the way he was acting. The only thing we were able to figure out for sure is that he's not a member of the church. He wouldn't give us his contact info before he left, but we did trade his really nasty Book of Mormon for a new clean one. I really want to know who that guy was...

Seeing as how Elder Nakamura is the district leader, we've been going on splits a lot this transfer. So on Friday we went on splits again. This time we went on splits with the Hodogaya missionaries, and Elder Gallacher came here to Yamato with me. Elder Gallacher was Elder Crandall's (my MTC room mate, just as a reminder) trainer. He's a really cool guy, and a great missionary. I found out that he's actually from Mesa. And not only that, but I've actually probably seen him before I left on my mission. In fact, If you've been to the Hale Center Theater in Gilbert, you've probably seen him too. He used to work there. And he's done everything there. Ushering, ticket box, backstage, light and sound boards... everything. So yeah. That would explain why he looked so familiar the first time I saw him.

 

Saturday was a busy day. In the morning we went to help the Yamato Ward clean the church. Pretty much everyone who saw us there was surprised we came. I'm not really sure why. We use the church too, so it only makes sense that we help clean it. This was a little different from the regular weekly cleaning though. I guess in here in Japan they do a really thorough deep cleaning once a year. The whole ward was invited, and we had about 30 people show up. We did everything from vacuuming, to washing the windows, to pulling weeds out front, and there was even a group with a small steam cleaner cleaning stains off the chairs. Elder Nakamura and I ended up washing most of the windows, because as Sister Honda said, “Elder Blake is tall and he can reach the tops more easily.”That was really fun though, and there was even lunch provided. Saturday night we went to Fujisawa for a baptism. Hirokazu, Elder Jone's and Fuller's investigator, was baptized Saturday night. The whole district ended up going, because he's almost like a district investigator. Elder Fuller and Jones taught him 99% of the time, but I've taught him before on splits, and everyone else knows him really well because he comes to sports night every week and participates in other stake activities. It was a really good baptismal service. There was lots of support from the ward that came, about 40 people or so. We were all really excited to see Hirokazu get baptized.

 

That's about it for now. As you can see, things are going well. I hope things are well for all of you as well! More to come later!

 

Elder Blake

Monday, November 5, 2012

Hello everyone! It's November! October went by way fast. Oh, and as of Friday, I've been out for 6 months. That's crazy... It's been a pretty good week here in Yamato though. To start with, Halloween was on Wednesday. This year for Halloween I was a missionary! I know, big suprise, right? Bet you didn't see that one coming. Halloween is actually a really interesting holiday in Japan. Everyone knows what it is, and you can buy Halloween decorations, candy, trick-or-treating bags, etc, but nobody actually knows what you do on Halloween, and nobody goes trick-or-treating. It's actually really funny. However, we did end up celebrating Halloween. Since Halloween was on Wednesday this year, and the weekly English Class we teach is on Wednesday, we had a halloween party after class. So I was able to put the box of Hallowen brownie mix that was included in my birthday package to good use. Everyone enjoyed them. I can't remember if I mentioned this to you all already, but since we don't have an oven I ended up improvising and cooking the brownies in the rice cooker. My Mom was slightly suprised by the idea, but the idea wasn't really mine. I'd heard from other missionaries that you can bake cakes in the rice cooker. I figured brownies and cakes are fairly similar, so it should still work, right? turns out it does. You just have to run the rice cooker through 5 or 6 cycles, and it takes a couple hours.

Friday night Jun came to sports night. I usually sit on the side and chat with the members and investigators, since sports night is actually code for basketball night. Jun made a comment that he wanted to see my play, so this time I brought my stuff and actually played a few games. It was pretty fun, but I still don't like basketball all that much more than I did before. What was really good about sports night though, is that one of our investigators who we haven't seen for a while ended up going, so we were able to talk with him a little bit. After sports night we went on splits with the Zone Leaders. I went back to Yamato with Elder Jones, and Elder Nakamura went to Fujisawa with Elder Fuller. We both ended up learning alot, and it was a really good day for the both of us. Elder Jones is a fantastic missionary.

Sunday ended up being fairly interesting. We were temporarily made into a trio for the day. Elder Call, a first transfer missionary, came to Yamato and stayed with us Saturday night through Monday morning while his companion Elder Vandegraff went to Sendai with another Elder Watanabe (a Senior Missionary) for a baptism. I was really curious as to why a missionary would be going all the way to Sendai (a 6 hour bus ride) for a baptism, so I asked about the story behind this guy being baptized. It's actually really cool. Elder Vandegraff found this guy about 6 months ago in Tokyo. He said that he actually lives in Sendai, and was only in Tokyo for the day for business. He was willing to have a lesson on the spot, and said that he'd be coming back for a day the next week and wanted to meet again then. They did this once or twice, and then this guy told them that he would only be coming back to Tokyo one more time, so he wanted them to teach him everything. At the time, Elder Vandegraff and his companion were still pretty young missionaries, and didn't speak Japanese that well, so they needed some help. The gave Elder Watanabe a call, and asked if he could help teach this guy. The next week rolled around, and they spent pretty much all morning and a bit of the afternoon teaching this guy all the lessons. Now here we are, six months later, and this guy is getting baptized. Crazy.

Those are most of the highlights from the week. I've gotta get going. Elder Nakamura and I are going to Enoshima Island today. He's never been there before, so it should be fun!

Elder Blake