The Chronicles of Elder Blake

Monday, March 18, 2013

Hey Guys! It's hard to believe it's already Monday again. I feel like I just wrote you guys yesterday and have nothing new to share. I'll try to think of some stuff though. I hope you all are doing well! I heard that it's getting up to 90 again already for you guys. Sounds pretty warm. Over here it's not freezing cold anymore, but it's not hot yet either. We've been having just some really nice weather the last couple days. All the Sakura (cherry blossoms) are starting to bloom, so spring is definitely on its way.

Alright, time to think of some fun things to share... well, on Tuesday we did splits with the missionaries out in Mito. They're in the furthest area north in the mission, and it's still really far away even though Ushiku is pretty far north already. The split went well, but on the way home we had a bit of an adventure. Normally the train ride from Mito to Ushiku is just over an hour, but we ended up being on the train for nearly 3. Why, you may ask? Well, let me explain. We ended up being stopped at a station midway for almost 2 hours. All the trains on the entire line shut down for two hours. Well if that isn't crazy enough, wait until you hear the reason; It was too windy. All the trains got shut down for 2 hours because of wind. After two hours without the wind dying down, they decided to roll on out anyway, but really slowly. That was the longest train ride of my mission so far, and 2/3 of it was just sitting at a station.

Friday we met with the Comba family and had a great lesson with them. They're doing really well, and our lessons with them are probably the thing I look forward to the most during the week. During the lesson, their 9 year old daughter, Larisa, asked us if there were sister missionaries. We told her that there were, and then she said that she wants to be a missionary and go on a mission like us. Well that was pretty cool. Saturday we met with them again, except there were Brazilians all over the place. Literally. 11 of them, and the 2 of us. I could try to explain how they're all related, but that would probably be really confusing over email, so I'll just leave it at they're all related somehow. If I end up gaining weight on my mission, I blame our Brazilian investigators. They made tons of food. It was all really really good too. I'm getting to try all sorts of Brazilian foods.

Sunday was a pretty cool day too. In Sunday school I learned a pretty neat little object lesson, but it only works in Japanese so I'll try my best to explain it. This is an object lesson about becoming like Christ and having his image engraven on our countenance. When we look in the mirror, we see our own reflection. The word for mirror in Japanse is kagami. If we take away ga (ego or pride), it becomes kami, which means God. If we can humble ourselves and eliminate our pride, we can see his image engraved in our countenance pretty cool, huh? After church, we had an appointment with some members to teach a practice lesson. The practice lesson went well, and we were getting ready to leave. The wife come over with this big bag full of food, and tells us that she was planning to make dinner for us, but since she was tired and not feeling well decided to give us what she was going to prepare so that we could make it ourselves at the apartment. We look inside the bag and found everything you need to make burritos. We were both really surprised Now that I say it, it probably doesn't sound that surprising to all of you back home in Arizona, but for Elder Mangum and me it was pretty special. Last night was the first time I've had Mexican food since leaving on my mission. And it was delicious. We're definitely going to be thinking up something pretty cool to thank them for it.

Oh, and random fun fact for the week: my nephew Spencer is a year old now. Happy Birthday Spencer!

Elder Blake

Monday, March 11, 2013

Elder Mangum pretending to be that Star Wars guy
[my sister doesn't know his name.. shameful]

Hey everyone! Hope you're all doing well! Things have been pretty good for us out here this week. It's been warming up, so that's nice. It got warm enough by the end of the week that we were going out in our short sleeved shirts again. Yesterday was super windy, and there was a pretty big dust storm. Apparently all the dust had been blown over from China. That's what everyone said anyway. Either way, the wind was cold, so it's pretty nippy today, but the forecast says it'll warm up again by the end of the week.

One of the nicest gardens I've seen
while out and about in Japan

So, the letter this week isn't going to be very long. Sorry. We've been busy, but there hasn't been a whole lot out of the ordinary that's worth sharing. The Comba family is doing really well. We were actually able to meet with them twice this week. Sheila, the mom, actually told us a pretty cool story. I guess in her family, everyone is going to different churches. They've all been looking around trying to find whatever works for them. Sheila was invited by a friend to attend a Mormon church back in Brazil, so she went and checked it out. She loved it, and said that she really felt something different that she had never felt before. For whatever reason she wasn't able to go back again, but she said she never forgot about it. She could never get it out of her mind. When they came to Japan, she was really sad, because she thought she'd never be able to go to that church again. She thought it was just some tiny local church in Brazil. Well, when they moved here, they met the Mitake family, an one of the first things they did was invite the Combas to church. Well, to Sheila's suprise, wouldn't you know it, it's the same church she had gone to in Brazil. She had no idea that we were a global church like that. So, needless to say, Sheila is really excited. We just need to work with them a little longer until they're ready. I'm really excited.

Today we had zone p-day. We actually had a combined zone p-day, with us and one of the other zones. We all met at the church in Matsudo, and had a field day essentially. The Zone leaders set up tournament brackets and we had zone vs zone competitions in volley ball, ping-pong, badminton, dodgeball, hand ball, and the game where you tie a balloon around your ankle and everyone tries to pop everyone else's balloon. It was way fun.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. Like I said, it's short this week. Sorry. Hopefully there will be more to share next week. Later!

Elder Blake

Monday, March 4, 2013

Hey everyone! Hope you're all doing well! Things were pretty good over here for us this week. The weather is a bit bi-polar right now with spring on its way. Earlier in the week it go so warm that we were comfortable in just our white shirts, but then by the end of the week it dropped back down again and was so cold we put our heavy coats back on. I think most of it probably was because of the crazy wind we've been having the last few days. It's been really strong, blows all day, and it's cold. As soon as you step out of the wind, you can feel the temperature jump up immediately. So that's fun.

We went over body parts for English class.
I was surprised at some that they
came up with.

Last Tuesday we went on splits with the Elders in Mito, so Elder Crain-Zamora came here to Ushiku with me. What kind of name is Crain-Zamora you say? Well let me explain... No, there is no time to explain, let me sum up. His Dad is half Mexican, half Irish, but his parents weren't married and the dad split before he was born. Crain-Zamora's Dad was adopted and raised by his uncle. His mom's side is the Mexican side, so he goes by Zamora. After Crain-Zamora's dad got older, he found out that his real Dad's last name is Irish with the last name of Crain. So, when Crain-Zamora was born, his dad wanted to give both names to his children. Hence, Crain-Zamora. Did you folow that? Good. But yeah, the split went pretty well. It was fun.

Thursday was an interesting day. Elder Mangum and I were talking, as we tend to do, and we found out some pretty cool stuff. It's been really interesting to see how many odd similarities we have. We live 10 minutes away from each other back home, we both have a family of 8, we both went to Yamato for our first area, etc. Well, in the course of our conversation on Thursday, we found out something really cool. It turns out that we have indeed seen each other before the mission. My sophomore year of High school when I went to prom, Elder Mangum was there at the same dance. He and his date started people watching from the wall about half way through the dance, and my group of friends was over in the exact same part of the dance floor he was. We were dancing literally about 15 feet away from him. There's a good chance I may have even talked with him. Who knows.

Friday was an awesome day. We had a special all mission conference that Elder Nelson came to. It was 3 hours long, and we got to hear from a few other speakers, but the bulk of it was Elder Nelson speaking, and he opened the floor for questions. It was pretty cool. I loved being able to just see him interact with everyone. He was cracking jokes and telling stories just like you would expect from an older guy like him. When one missionary asked what a good way to deal with people saying they're too busy to talk is, Elder Nelson suggested inviting them to have lunch somewhere. What he said was ask them "do you have time to eat? Do you like rice?" Everyone got a good laugh out of that. Maybe it doesn't sound as funny over email, but it was pretty funny when he said it.

Saturday we had some free time in the afternoon, so we decided to go exploring ad check out a part of the area we weren't super familiar with. I had only been there once when Elder Christensen and I went to visit a member who lives over down that way. When I went that time, we rode our bikes, which took just over an hour, but there's a train station literally a 30 second walk from the guy's house. I wasn't sure why, but we did. Elder Mangum and I decided it would be far more time efficient to take the train. We looked at the map, and the train line splits one station down from us. One line goes to Tokyo, and that's the one we usually take. The other line leads past this guy's house. We get to the station where the line splits, and we get off to transfer. Well, we wander around looking for where the platforms are for this other train. We don't see any signs that say anything about it in the other line, so we figured it must be in a separate station nearby because they do that sometimes. So we go outside, and we still can't find anything. After a while we finally found a sign that looked promising, and it sent us down this really weird hallway that looked like it dead-ended. At the end of the hallway there was a doorway on the left that you couldn't really see until you were right up on it. We go in, and there's nobody there. we walk up onto the platform, and it is the smallest platform I have ever seen. There was only enough room for maybe two trains cars. We looked at the time table, and trains only came every 40 minutes. Well that would explain why Elder Christensen and I took our bikes. Anyways, the train pulls up, and it's only one car. It was a one car train. That was really weird. Definitely not what we were expecting.

Sunday went really well too. Sister Ishihara's son, Nobuki, was baptized in Urayasu. After Sister Ishihara was baptized in Yamato, we met her son Nobuki and taught him a lesson. We found out that he actually lives in Urayasu, so we referred him to the missionaries over there. Since I knew Nobuki and baptized his mom, Elder Mangum and I got to go to that, and it went really well. The church in Urayasu is actually a re-modeled pet shop. That being said, there's no baptismal font. What they do have, however, is a room with a drain in the floor that used to be used for washing off dogs and other animals. So what they do is they set up an inflatable pool, fill it up, and after the baptism they just drain it all out onto the floor. That was pretty interesting to see a pool inside of a church. Nobuki was really excited though. I think he'll be a great influence on his family in helping the rest of them come to the gospel.

That's pretty much it for this week. I hope the extra long letter this time makes up for the short one last week. Everyone take care! More to come later!

Elder Blake

Monday, February 25, 2013

The largest whisk I have ever seen!
I could fit my head inside.

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a great week! Things have been fairly well for us over here as well. It's been really cold and windy the last few days. March is coming though, so it should be warming up soon. There hasn't been a whole lot that's happened this week, but there are a few interesting things that went on.

Thursday we went to the Hospital with Tasuku to visit Brother Comba. Tasuku has his mission call to Australia and he leaves soon, so we've been trying to get him out with us to do some missionary work. Conveniently, he has a drivers license, so he was able to take us to the hospital. Anyways, we showed up, went up to where Brother Comba was staying, and they told us that he wasn't there anymore. He had gone home. Well, that suprised us. He was supposed to be there for another two weeks at least. We gave him a call, and he's doing well, so that's good. Tasuku was a good sport about the whole thing. We felt kinda bad for having him take us all the way out to the hospital only to have to turn around and go home.

Apparently Elder Mangum likes
to doodle during scripture study

Later in the week I got a call from the Elders over in Urayasu. They've been working with Sister Ishihara's son, Nobuki, because he lives on his own over in that area. Well, turns out that he's getting baptized on March 3rd! I'm really excited about that. Hopefully this will be a good incentive for his dad and brother to get baptized now too. I heard that apparently his Dad is started to stop drinking, so that's a good sign. I really hope this whole family will be baptized while I'm still out here. That would just be the best, to see this family all join the church and then make it to the temple.

Sorry this week is so short. We've been pretty busy, but alot of our time has been spent looking for new investigators. Hopefully next week I'll have some more fun stories to share. Talk to you all later!

Elder Blake

Monday, February 18, 2013

Hey Everyone! Things were actually pretty great for us over here in Ushiku this last week. Elder Mangum is a way fun guy. I don't think I mentioned this last week, but he's actually from Chandler. He lives just on the other side of the 202 off of Elliot. Way close. But, like I said, things have been good over here. It's gotten a bit colder recently, but pretty soon it should be warming up for good now that spring is around the corner.

So valentine's day was last week. We didn't do anything particularly out of the ordinary. Just another day. But, there are a few other fun stories from this week. First of all, on Friday, Elder Mangum and I went out streeting for a while after zone meeting. We decided to just go out and keep on going far past our usual places. We wound up in an area of town I'd never been before, and we stopped in at a convenience store so Elder Mangum could use the bathroom. While we were in there, we bumped into a lady who recognized us. She's from Thailand, and she was asking us if we knew some lady named Mayumi. Apparantly she's Brazilian and goes to our church. Neither of us knew who she was talking about. She told us that Mayumi just so happened to live in some apartments just down the road, and described where they were at. Well, Elder Mangum figured we'd drop by, say hello, and see if maybe we did know this Mayumi person after all. We found the apartment, but nobody was home. We decided to knock on the doors of the nearby apartments, and one of the doors was opened up by this young Woman in her early 20's. Turns out they had just moved into that apartment the day before and were still in the process of unpacking. She's married and has a little girl who's about a year old, and she seemed way interested in the church. That was pretty much the only decent conversation we got with anyone just about all day. We got permission to go back when her husband was home and share a message, so we'll be doing that sometime this week. We'll see if that ends up going anywhere or not.

Saturday we were able to meet with the Bishop and sit down and talk about specific families he wanted us to work with in the Ward and how to help them. He even went over with us which members to work with to help these less active families. It was great! He's got lots of fire, and he's really excited about the work. The Bishop here is a total boss. When something gets brought to his attention, he takes care of it right then. We mentioned to him that our investigator was in the hospital for treatment for his glaucoma, and he volunteered to take us to the hospital to visit him. We asked him if he had had a chance to get a list put together of families he wanted us to visit. He hadn't, so he talked with us about those families right then and there. It's great. Having the Bishop on your side makes the work go so much smoother.

Sunday was just an interesting day all around. After church but before everyone went home there was some guy that walked in on his own. He said he wanted to listen to some people talk, and we told him that church was already ended. He said he'd come back next time then, so who knows if we'll ever see him again. I wonder if he might have been homeless. His teeth were pretty nasty and he smelled like he hadn't showered for a while... we'll see. After that we were supposed to have a practice lesson with the Sato family, but they ended up having to move it to another day. After that we went to the hospital with the Bishop to go see Brother Comba. Apparently, there's an area 70 called Elder Nishihara that lives in the Ushiku Ward, and he was staying in the same hospital as brother Comba. They both have eye problems, so they both were staying on the same floor too. We figured it would be a good opportunity to introduce them, and then they could still talk about church even when we weren't there. So that's what we did. Elder Nishihara is way cool, and really friendly. He got along great with Brother Comba. So yeah, we had a general authority teach a lesson with us. That was pretty cool. Before we left we gave Brother Comba a blessing. The Spirit was way strong, and I'm sure that it will have a great influence on Brother Comba's progression. So yeah, it was a great day.

That's about it for now. I hope everyone has a great week this week! more to come next week!

Elder Blake

Monday, February 11, 2013

I found a leather trenchcoat at a
second-hand store for $5.
Too bad it's 5 sizes too small

Hey everyone! So today is the first day of a new transfer! And allow me to say that I totally called it. What does that mean? Well, let me explain. When we went to the temple last week, I saw Elder Mangum there afterwards. He's half Brazilian and a way funny guy. I started talking to him, and told him to start packing his bags and get on over to Ushiku so he could help us baptize this new Brazilian family we're working with. Well, transfer calls came Friday morning, and wouldn't you know it, Elder Mangum is coming to Ushiku. I started laughing so hard. So yeah, He'll be getting here around 5 tonight. Elder Christensen is heading off to the mission home this afternoon around 2. From 2 to 5 I'll be with Brother Sato from the ward, and it sounds like he's got some sort of plan hatching, so we'll see what that's all about.

This last week has been pretty good. Elder Christensen has been getting ready to go home, which has made it a little harder to get things done. He didn't really get trunky until this last week, but when it finally came it hit hard. So that's been an adventure in and of itself, but I won't get into that. Wednesday we had a zone conference that President Budge came to. There was a lot of good stuff that went on. President Budge shared with is a theme of sorts (I guess you could call it) that the Kobe Mission President has been using recently: teach simply, testify powerfully, and commit boldly. Well, that about wraps it up right there, we can all go home now! I love that though! That says exactly and concisely what I've been thinking about and trying to put into words for quite some time now. Funny how things like that tend to happen. Also, Last week my Dad was talking to me about belief, faith, love, and charity in his last email. What he had said was that belief and love are inward decisions, but faith and charity are outward expressions of those decisions. Well, wouldn't you know it, that came up during zone conference also. That was pretty cool.

Ushiku Daibutsu
Holds Guinness World Record for tallest
statue; 3x as tall as Statue of Liberty

So, here's an update on the Comba family; they're doing great! Brother Comba is in the hospital for now, He has glaucoma. They've already operated on one eye, and they'll operate on the other eye in the next couple of days. Due to his eye condition, he's not able to read, but he's agreed to read the Book of Mormon out loud with his wife in the meantime. His ears still work perfectly fine after all. Also, Brother Mitake (the Mitakes are the less active family that brought the Combas to church) told Brother Comba about the audio version available for download for free from the I-phone app store. Seeing as how he's got nothing else to do all day except sit in his hospital room, he's going to start using that too. So anyways, seeing as how he's in the hospital, that means our last lesson with them was there at the hospital. So that's all way exciting, but there's even more good news! Sister Mitake has a younger sister named Hoberta who is inactive. Hoberta and her husband Ronaldo are friends with the Comba family too, and they've been at both lessons we've had with the Comba family. I just found out the other day that Ronaldo isn't a member at all in the first place. Well, he's been listening really intensely to the lessons, and he's just soaking it all in. Before we left the hospital, I talked with him a little bit. I asked him if they had a Book of Mormon. He said no. I asked him if he wanted one. He said yes. I told him I'd bring him one to the next lesson. When I was talking to Brother Mitake about it on the car ride back from the hospital, he was way surprised I guess Ronaldo doesn't really like religion that much. In the past, if he was ever over at Brother Mitake's house and the missionaries came over, he would find some excuse to leave. That surprised me. Since we've met Ronaldo, he's been really friendly, and he's seemed super interested. People can change. Maybe he's ready this time.

So, this is kinda random. There's this song I heard at a convenience store the other day. Maybe it's new, or maybe it's 9 months old, I don't know. But, the chorus goes "Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number, so call me maybe". That song is TOTALLY a missionary song! Every day, we're walking around talking with people, and we're all like "hey, I know we just stopped you in the street like 2 minutes ago, but let's trade numbers and we'll talk with you some more later". Yes, that's that.

Well, that's about it for now! Everyone enjoy Singles' Awareness day on Thursday!

Elder Blake

Monday, February 04, 2013

Hey there everyone! It's been a great week over here in Japan this last week. The weather warmed up some, we got work done, and nobody is dead. It's great! Although, the weather is cooling off again. Friday and saturday were warm enough that just wearing the suit jacket was plenty, but then yesterday it dropped again and wearing a coat was definitely a must. I've been told that there's a possibility it will snow again this week. If it does, it won't stick very long. The snow so far has all melted off less than a week after it falls.

Scavenger Hunt: Find a giant, yellow duck

So last Monday we had zone p-day. We went to Lake Town, which the zone leaders claimed is the biggest mall in Japan, and we had a picture scavenger hunt. That was pretty fun, and there were quite a few funny pictures that everyone managed to get. The mall was actually pretty big. Well, actually, it was two malls that were right next to each other, and connected with a sky-bridge. Regardless, it was big.

So not much happened on Tuesday, but Wednesday was pretty good. We had district meeting that afternoon, and Elder Taylor said something I really liked. We were talking about repentance, and how when we repent the Lord promises to remember our sins no more. We are not promised, however, that we won't remember our own sins. This is something that comes up in Sunday school quite a bit. Many people wonder if they are really forgiven if they can still remember their sins. What Elder Taylor said to help explain this is really simple, and I think it's actually really helpful. He said, "that's why we sometimes have scars: so that we can be reminded not to do the same thing again". When we first get a scar it can be painful sometimes, but over time the pain goes away. It stops hurting, but it's always there as a reminder of how we got it so that we can avoid making the same mistake again.

Everyone who came to zone p-day

Thursday and Friday we went on splits with the zone leaders. I went to Abiko with Elder Hansen. That guy is a beast! He is easily the best missionary I have ever worked with. He's dedicated, he's diligent, he's super nice, he knows what he's doing, and he's just good at being a missionary. I don't know how he does it, but when he talks with people on the street, he can get almost everyone to stop and talk with us for a few minutes. Most of the time, as soon as people find out we're not lost tourists they head off on their merry way. Not this guy though. He gets nearly everyone to stop and talk for a little bit. I definitely have a new standard to try and reach. It was a way fun split though. We played soccer with one of their 14 year old investigators. By the time we got to Abiko, we didn't have time to go back to the apartment and change, so we ended up playing in our suits. That was really fun... I guess. haha! No, it was way fun, but my shoes sure got pretty scuffed up. I had just shined them too. Haha! We also taught a lesson with a recent convert. She actually has a pretty cool story. She's in her 70's, and her husband was baptized 9 years ago. She was meeting with the missionaries for a long time, but she has Alzheimer's (spelling?), which makes it hard for her to progress. Some days she would decide that she liked the church, and then the next day she would forget and decide she didn't like it. After a while, she got to a point where she decided she wanted to be baptized, and she passed her baptismal interview and everything, but before she was actually baptized she forgot that she wanted to be baptized and decided that she didn't like the church again. The way Elder Hansen said it, is after that they just kept the font filled up 24/7 waiting for her to decide she wanted to be baptized. A week or two later, she did, and they got her down to the church that day and baptized her. Ever since then she's never forgotten that she was baptized, and she's never gone back to not liking the church. Crazy. It's amazing what the Holy Ghost can do.