Monday, June 17, 2013

Hello Everyone!

   How are you all doing? I hope everyone is great! We had a pretty interesting week last week. Let me tell you about some of the more interesting bits.

   Last Monday we had Zone P-day down at the beach in Shonandai and did a sports day. Well, I say sports day, but the only two sports we played were rugby (touch of course) and sand volley ball. It was a lot of fun! But, unfortunately, almost nobody walked away without some pretty good sunburns. Everyone had tan lines on their necks from their collars, which is an instant recipe for disaster when you spend several hours at the beach with a t-shirt on. It was well worth it though.

   Tuesday we went to a funeral. That makes two on my mission, when most missionaries I know out here in Tokyo have never even been to one. However, unlike last time which was a Buddhist funeral, this time it was a church member who passed away, so it was very different. It was a great opportunity though. The man who passed away has a daughter who is a member, and she and her family are very active and strong in the church. He has another daughter who is not a member, and neither is her family. After the service though, both the daughter who's not a member and her husband (who had never attended any funerals other than Buddhist ones), commented that they really liked the service, and there was a really warm hopeful atmosphere. Maybe they'll start investigating the church. We'll see.

   Sunday we had a pretty cool experience. So Elder Hoshino and I are at the Hon-Atsugi train station handing out flyers. After we finished that, we walked over to a less active member's apartment to try visiting him, and then back to our apartment to wrap up the day. We swung by the church on the way home to grab some juice out of the fridge that a member had given us but we forgot to take home. We actually ended up not being able to find it. Either the member forgot to put it there, or somebody took it by mistake. Either way, we weren't too upset about the loss. We left the church and headed back to our apartment. We got out to the main road and had only gone about 50 yards down it, when we saw a guy on the opposite side of the street that Elder Hoshino had talked to at the train station while we were handing out fliers. We tried waving to him, but he didn't see us. He had one of our fliers in his hand, and it looked like he was trying to follow the map and get to the church. We watched him for a minute, and when we saw him wait to cross the road and make the turn for the church, we knew he was definitely looking for it. We immediately went back to the church using a different route through the neighborhood, and we ended up walking up to the church just as the guy came around the corner. He was just a little surprised to see us there. We ended up showing him the inside of the church and we traded phone numbers. Talk about perfect timing, right? And if we hadn't gone to pick up the juice that wasn't actually there, we wouldn't have seen him anyway. Pretty cool stuff. God is definitely directing this work.

   Well, that's about it for now. Next week I'll be able to tell you if I'm going to end up in the Tokyo or Tokyo South mission. We'll see what happens. Until next time! Take care!

Elder Blake

Monday, June 10, 2013

   Hey Everyone! How's it going? I hope everyone is doing well! That 110 degree weather sounds absolutely delightful right now... Haha! Ok, seriously, that's one thing about Arizona, as great of a place as it is, that I don't miss. But, the humidity in Japan isn't that fun either, so it all balances out.

   But yeah, so anyways, It's been an interesting week here in Atsugi. Right now we're really working hard to get some solid investigators, so a majority of our time right now is spent finding. That means this weeks letter might be a little short, because even though we've been busy, there hasn't really been too much this last week that's actually happened, if that makes any sense. There were some good moments though.

   On Wednesday, the area president Elder Ringwood did a mission tour, so we went to Fujisawa and had a conference there. A portion of it was opened up for QandA, and a lot of questions about the upcoming mission split were asked. From what it sounds like, pretty much all that's gonna happen is we're gonna get transfer calls like usual, and then whichever mission you happen to be in on the day of the mission split is the mission you stay in. So, that means this next transfer in two weeks will decide who goes to the Tokyo South Mission, and who stays in the Tokyo Mission. Both missions will still have laptops, and both missions will still have a temple day even though the temple is in the Tokyo mission. Other than that, not much was really said about it. One funny part from the conference though, after lunch, Elder Ringwood got up to speak again, and he was talking about the cinnamon rolls that Sister Budge had made. There was a sign by them that said "1 per missionary". Elder Ringwood thought they were pretty good, and jokingly tried to convince Sister Budge to let him have seconds. He said, "I even told her I wasn't a missionary!" Everyone laughed a little. President Budge, sitting on the stand behind him, says just loud enough to hear, "Every member a missionary!" Everyone almost died laughing then.

   Later in the week we were having a lesson with Andrew, an investigator from Uganda. Because he speaks English, he's going to attend church in the Zama branch, so we asked the missionaries over there to come join in on the lesson so that Andrew could know them already when he goes to church. One of them, Elder Peterson, is from California. Why do I mention that? I will explain. During Andrew's lessons, there's always a portion of time set aside just for him to ask questions, because he always has a lot. So we're talking about degrading morals in today's society or something like that, and Andrew just after mentioning how loose some moral standards had become said casually and almost without thinking, "Which we have courtesy of you, California", and he gestured to Elder Peterson. Elder Hoshino didn't think it was that funny (because he doesn't speak English that well and didn't catch it), but Elder Posy and I could barely contain our laughter. For some reason, the fact that he's from Uganda and not from the states made it that much more funny.

   So, like I said, it's not the longest letter in the world, but that's what I've got for you this week. Hopefully there will be some more exciting news to share next time. Take care everyone! Enjoy!

Elder Blake

Monday, June 3, 2013

   Hey everyone! How's summer break going for you all? Well, for those of you who have summer break that is. Haha! My family has been out of town visiting family and friends this past week, and I'll tell you what, their trip sounds exhausting. Haha! Then again, missionary work isn't all that relaxing either. It's kinda funny, a couple of months ago I realized that even though I'm getting more sleep every night on my mission than I ever did in High School, I'm still more tired on my mission than I ever was then. So yeah. Anyways, on to what's been going on this week!

   So there's been some pretty fun stuff that happened this last week. First, I would like to share two stories that are completely unrelated events, but similar in nature. And what I say when I mean that is they're both the antics of young boys on the trains. First of all, I suppose I should explain that Japanese people are usually depicted as really quiet polite people. That's true. But when you get a group of friends together (especially younger guys), they become more bold and daring, and sometimes quite obnoxious. For example, if we try to talk to a high school student by himself, he will almost always listen quietly and respectfully, even if he has no interest whatsoever, simply because we're older than him. Get a group of them together though, and when we try to talk to them, they'll say something (anything really), usually in English, their friends all laugh, and then they walk away feeling so cool because they "talked" in English with the guy who's not Japanese. So, that being said, one night we get on a train, and we're standing next to this group of about 5 or 6 high school guys, and you could tell they just finished practice because they're still sweaty and carrying sports bags. One of them notices me (not difficult), and says to his friends (in English), "I am tired. Very, very tired." I guess they thought he was pretty funny, because they start to laugh, and then I say to him (also in English). Me too! I am very, very tired. That surprised him. He wasn't expecting me to actually engage him in conversation. He fumbled a little bit, and tried talking to me in English, I would help him out and encourage him, using a mix of Japanese and English. After a few minutes, he finally caught on and realized that I was using Japanese to coach his English. He's all just like, "wait! you speak Japanese!?" "uh, yeah." Haha! I thought it was pretty funny.

More Engrish! My pencil is pointing to my favorite.
Apparently they meant that you'll get a rash
by putting it in your mouth... I'm not sure how
that became bitten.

   So, the second story about young boys antics on the trains. This time we were on the train sitting down, and this kids soccer team gets on with their coaches. So now there's about 15 kids or so with 5 adults all packed into one section of the train, and the adults are doing their best to keep the kids from being too much of a nuisance for the rest of the passengers. The kids were all maybe around 10 years old. So, kids being kids, they're goofing around, obviously. I start watching them because I thought it was funny. There were 3 or 4 of them against the door, and they were playing some sort of game that they had just made up. One of them would stand with his back against the door, and another would stand facing him about a foot or two away. They would wait until the train rocked or turned, and then the one facing the door would lean forward, almost falling into the one against the door, and at the last second he would put his hands up to catch himself from falling, leaving the person against the door trapped between his two hands. What's the point of this game? I have no clue. But they're playing this game, and one of them kids goes to stand against the door. The other kid gets in place facing him. But instead of leaning forward and catching himself like they had been doing, he reached up and hit the kid in the forehead, which made him hit his head on the door. It wasn't very hard, just enough to make a really loud noise and they all start laughing hysterically. Well, except for the kid who hit his head. I must admit, I was not successful at keeping myself from laughing.

   So, on a completely unrelated note, we had a pretty cool day on Tuesday. We didn't have any appointments, so we decided to go visit an investigator who hadn't been picking up his phone lately. He lives about 10 minutes away by train, several stations down the line. We ended up deciding to walk there, and do street contacting on the way. At every station we planned to stop and hand out fliers for 30 minutes. At the end, after we visit the investigator, we would ride the train home and finish the day. It ended up being a really cool day, because at every station we stopped at, something happened. At the first station, we met a man from Camaroon (sp?) who was baptized recently over in another area. He told us he was moving to our area soon for work, so we were able to give him information about when and where church is here in Atsugi. At the next station after that, we found a new investigator, another Philipino. At the next one I saw the branch president from the Zama Branch (the English branch in Yamato) and got to talk with him for a little bit. We finally made it to the investigator's house, but he wasn't home. As we walked back to the station to go home, we were joking about how when he comes home from work, he would have to take the street we were walking on, and how cool it would be if we could catch him between the station and his home. Wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what happened! He said he would call us the next day after he checked his wife's schedule, which he did. So yeah, it was a pretty neat day. And to wrap it all up, while we were doing street contacting, I say a yellow VW bug. But, it's not a normal bug. It had not one, not two, but three wind spoilers. Yes, a VW bug with three wind-spoilers on it. I wish I was able to get a picture of it so bad. But, I saw it as it drove past, so that was pretty much impossible. I almost died of laughter though.

   Yup, that's about it for now. I hope you all have a great week! Take care!

 

Elder Blake

Monday, May 27, 2013

   Hello Everyone! How are you all doing? I hope everything is going well for all of you! We had a pretty interesting week here in Atsugi. Not a whole lot that actually went on, but the things that did happen were really exciting.

Usually apartments here have names to make
them sound really nice even if they aren't.
However these are just the "OK Apartments"
and I'd have to agree haha!

So earlier in the week we decided to go visit a less active member that our ward mission leader had asked us to go visit. We looked at the map, and found out he lives about 20 Kilometers away. We figured that 20 Kilometers wouldn't be too bad of a bike ride. It would take some time, but it wouldn't be difficult. What we found out after we left and while we were on the way there, is that there's a huge mountain on the way, and we have to go over it. We start riding up it, but we didn't realize it was a mountain. Because the road curved and there were lots of trees, we just figured it was one of the many hills out here. But as the road kept curving out of sight, and we kept getting to the next point where I thought it must surely peak, it just kept going up. Even when we finally got to the other side, the entire landscape was sloped uphill. It made for a great ride home, but getting there wasn't quite so easy as we were expecting. It seems that events were determined to work against me that day, because after we rode our bikes over the mountain and we made it back home, when all was said and done, I got hit in the face by 3 (rather large) bugs, and 1 car. Haha! Ok, that sounds alot worse than it really is. I didn't actually get hit by a car, I almost did. That's a fun story too. While we were riding home, I riding behind Elder Hoshino. This car passes me, but then goes to turn left (remember, in Japan you drive on the left side of the road), which means she was about to turn right into me. I hit the brakes, but I'm not stopping fast enough, so I squeeze even harder. The bike starts to flip, but instead of getting thrown I just dumped the bike and jumped. I was heading right for the passenger side door, so as I was in the air I hit the window with my hand and pushed off so that instead of hitting the door I went off at an angle and missed the car completely. I landed on my feet, and the car immedietly stopped, as I'm sure you would too if you suddenly heard a really loud thud on your window and then a person appears in front of your car. I look at the woman who's driving, and wouldn't you know it, she's on her cell phone. She was really scared, and wouldn't believe me when I told her I was ok and wasn't hurt. All that happened is my bike got a new battle scar. So yeah, that's that. I'm sure my Mom wasn't happy when she heard about that, but I think it's a fun story. Haha!

   So I was told by one of the other missionaries in the district that Atsugi has a history of having all of its investigators stolen. I can see why. So far every new investigator I've found since getting here, with the exception of one, we've ended up referring to other places. We found an American, and after teaching him only one lesson found out he actually lives near Akihabara, so we referred him to the missionaries over there. We've found a couple of Philipinos, but since they don't really speak Japanese that well, we're probably going to send them over to the missionaries in Yamato since there's an English branch there. We even have an investigator from Uganda that they found before I came here, but he's going to be referred to the Yamato missionaries as well since thy have the English branch, and there are several members in the branch from Africa. In fact, the only investigator we've found these last two weeks that we get to hang on to is Vietnamese, and he doesn't really speak Japanese or English, so we'll see what happens with him. I'm not sure why we can't find any Japanese investigators. I mean, we are living in Japan after all. haha!

   That's about all for now. I hope you're all having a great time! Enjoy your summer break! Well, those of you that have summer break anyway. For those of us who have no summer break, good luck! Keep up the hard work! Haha!

Elder Blake

Monday, May 20, 2013

   Hey Everyone! Hope you're all doing well! It's been a pretty interesting week over here in Atsugi so far. It's a new area, which means I'm back to square one again. I don't know where anything is, I don't know who any of the members are, and I don't know any of the investigators. But it's been fun! It seems like it's going to be a really fun area.

   Ok, so maybe I exaggerated a little. I don know some of the members. There are a few people here that went sports night back when I was in Yamato, and there's actually a student attending the English class here that move to Atsugi about the same time I transferred out of Yamato. Definitely didn't see that one coming. It's been pretty fun though. There's a lot of fire in this ward. They're all really excited about missionary work. I'm excited to get to know them all better.

   Elder Hoshino is quite a character. I still haven't figured him out yet, but we have only been companions for a week, so I guess that's to be expected. He's 23, and is from Iwate. He's a pretty good cook, and can play the violin. He's able to pop just about every joint in his body on command, and it's pretty gross to watch, especially when he does his hands. He just wiggles his fingers around and they start going crazy like pop corn or something. He's only done it the one time to show me though, so that was good. I'm sure we'll manage to have a lot of fun together.

    So, on Monday, we went shopping and found something pretty interesting. Dragon Fruit! What is dragon fruit? I had no idea either, that's why we bought it. It's pretty good. Not my favorite fruit in the world by any stretch, but it sure looks cool. The inside of the fruit is just solid white with black seeds everywhere, so it looks even cooler when you cut it open. Speaking of dragons fruit, do you know what else is cool? Dragon flies! And no, dragon fruit and dragon flies have nothing to do with each other. Haha! So, anyways, I didn't know this, but apparently dragon flies bite. Nasty little buggers. I found this out when we were riding a train, and this dragon fly flew into the train car and got stuck. It kept flying into the window trying to get out, so I just grabbed it. While I was getting my camera out to take a picture, it started biting my finger. That was surprising. But, thanks to my years of intense training, I was able to get the best of the dragon fly, and keep hold of it long enough to take the picture. Haha!  

Sorry this week's email is so short. I can't really think of anything else to say. I hope you're all doing well!  I'll be sure to try to write a better letter next week! See you!

Elder Blake

Monday, May 13, 2013

Hey Everyone! Sorry this week is going to be a little short. I'm pretty busy right now, and don't have much time to write this week. Why, you may ask? I will explain. I have been transferred  Yay! *cough* Haha! But seriously. I've had a lot of great times in Ushiku, and I'm going to miss this place. I am excited for my next area though! I'm in Atsugi! It's right next to my old area, Yamato! It's gotten pretty hot the last few days, so because of that in my mind I will probably always imagine the Kanagawa prefecture (which has Yamato and Atsugi) as blistering hot, and the Ibaraki prefecture (which is where Ushiku is) as ridiculously cold. I find it funny that my times in my areas have coincided with the seasons like that so far. We'll see if that pattern ends up continuing or not for the rest of my mission. But yeah, because of the transfer, all day yesterday was spent packing and then traveling, and pretty much all day today was spent unpacking, cleaning, and setting up in the new apartment. Anyways, I'll be sure to write you all an extra long letter next week to make up for this pitiful excuse of an email.  I hope you all have a great week!

 

Elder Blake

Monday, May 06, 2013

   Hey there everyone! How's it going for all of you in sunny AZ? Over here in Japan it's been pretty good. Rainy season is on its way though. Here in Japan there's about month long period between spring and summer where it rains almost every day. Saturday night we had a pretty good thunder storm (the first I've seen since coming to Japan), and lots of rain. It's been sunny since then, but it's only a matter of time...

   So, first things first, I suppose I should start at the beginning. That would only make sense, right? So we've been spending a lot of time with our ward mission leader this week. They've been placing extra emphasis lately on working with ward mission leaders and coordinating the work with them, asking for help finding members to participate in lessons and other things the ward can do to help investigators. So, we did just that. During our weekly meeting with him, we had our list of investigators, along with all of our scheduled lessons, and we asked him who he would recommend asking to go with us to the lessons. He sits down and looks at it, and offers to go with us to a lesson on Monday  Oh, and since we were going to be together anyway, let's go visit an inactive sister... oh, well we're meeting early enough in the afternoon, we may as well meet an hour earlier than that and have lunch together too! And then he also offers to come with us Wednesday to see an investigator in the hospital. Later in the week, we got in touch with an investigator who recently moved to ushiku from tsukuba, and we were having a first lesson with him (the Tsukuba missionaries have been teaching him for a while, but it was our first lesson with him). We emailed the ward mission leader, described this investigator, and asked who he knew in the ward that would be good to go with us and could be friends with this guy. We get an email back from him a while later that says "The person in the ward that would be a good fit for this investigator is me, right? I'll see you guys tomorrow at 6!". We were just like, uhh... ok. Cool. Don't get me wrong, it's great that he's all fired up, and it's been really fun working with him, but I wonder if he knows that he's allowed to ask other ward members to work with us... Funny stuff.

This is from last Monday when we had yakiniku 

over at the Nakamura family home. 

It was delicious. And it was fun. Good times.

   Later in the week, Elder Miranda and I had a pretty fun adventure. We went to a college that's in our area to do some finding, and we took the train. The train out to the college is pretty small though (only 1 car). We have to get on this one car train at the end of the line, and the college is at the other end of the line (2 stops away). Yeah, this train literally only exists to get people to and from the college from the main train line that goes to Tokyo  Anyways, the train pulls up, we get in, and we have to wait a few minutes for it to go back. I sit on one side of the car, and Elder Miranda sits on the other side, so we're facing each other. Our plan was to talk with people on the train when they came in and sat next to us. People came alright. A group of about 8 Philipinos. They were all in their early 20's except for one lady who was maybe 40, and there was only one guy. They came in and two of them sat on either side of me one space over, and one sat next to Elder Miranda a couple spaces over(he was on the edge of his bench, so he didn't get surrounded). Elder Miranda and I look at each other, and we both had the same thought: this can't be good. The girls actually started talking with us in English  and they were being super flirty. What was funny about it was no matter how many times we would reject them (and not very subtly either), they kept going. Here were some of the highlights: In Japan, having a companion that can speak English is like having a companion you can speak code with. You can say whatever you want, and nobody will understand. After being in Japan for so long, you just get used to that and assume that if you say something to your companion in English  nobody will understand. Early on in this adventure, Elder Miranda looks at me and forgetting that philipinos can speak English  says across the car, "This isn't good." They all started saying "what do you mean this isn't good? What's wrong?" Haha! Later, during the course of the conversation  Elder Miranda asked one of them how to say hello in Tagalog  She said something, and he repeated it back. They all start giggling, and Elder Miranda asks, "wait, what does that really mean?" She says that in means beautiful, and then Elder Miranda just says "oops..." She wasn't too happy about that one. But, they persisted! They asked if they could take a picture with us, and I said, sure, but only if that guy there in your group is in it with us. They get all excited, and one of the girls scoots over to the seat right next to me, an I immediately stand up and go sit next to Elder Miranda, leaving the girl behind. She definitely wasn't expecting that. So now I'm in between Elder Miranda and this other girl, with one space between me and her. I look at the guy in their group, and wave him over, and pat the spot right next to me, telling to sit right next to me. The girl one spot over starts frantically trying to slide over and sit right next to me, telling the guy to sit on the other side of her, but she couldn't actually move over because my hand was on the seat. I finally got the guy to sit next to me, and they took the picture. After all that, I think they finally got the hint because they stopped talking with us. Crazy people. Haha!

   Now, for a more spiritual adventure. We had something pretty cool happen Friday night. We were doing our nightly planning, and the next day (Saturday), we had a lesson planned with the Combas at 7, and the whole family was going to be there (which has been increasingly difficult to have happen lately). We were really excited for this lesson, but then Sheila calls us and says that something came up and said they had to cancel, but maybe we could meet on Sunday. Well that was a bummer, but what can you do? About 15 minutes later, we get a phone call from Mito, telling us that they were just finished a lesson with one of their investigators who had a baptismal date before but didn't make it, and they just set a new date for next week. Well that's good news to hear. Then they tell me that his baptismal interview was scheduled for the next day at 7. That means that I needed to go to Mito to do the interview. Well, I guess it's a good thing the lesson with the Combas got moved to Sunday then, otherwise we would have had to cancel with them! Of all the things I can do, being in two places at once is not one of them quite yet. What appeared to be a setback at first actually turned out to be a blessing. God works in mysterious ways!

  Well, there's more that happened, but this email has already gone on for quite a bit. I'll leave it at that for now. 

More to come next week!

Elder Blake

PS I'm a year old now!