Week 30- 4/25/16 'tisms

What's up everybody? It's my turn to subject you to another five

minutes of what goes over here in the land of the rising sun. Speaking

of that, it's freaking hot. It's mildly okay riding your bike but the

humidity here combined with all the people, concrete, and asphalt just

turns everything into an oven. We haven't even reached the worst yet

and I'm dying. I can see why the missionaries funds here go towards

gatorades and ice cream during the summer.

I've got some news for all of you. We saw two baptisms down here this

last week. We also found two new investigators, who either just walked

off the street in the church, or told us they're looking for truth.

We're meeting with a college student from Myanmar today. He just

walked into the church parking lot, asked if we taught English, and

asked when church was. You can probably imagine we were all over him.

The only

problem is there's like no material in Burmese, which is what they

speak in Myanmar apparently. So we have to teach him in Japanese and

English. Oh we also have another baptism next week. Urayasu area

bringing them home!

Honestly this week went super fast. We made peach cobbler in the rice

cooker which was heavenly. I also saw a drumming man under a bridge on

the way to basketball today. I'll send the video in another email. So

our baptismal font here is not actually a font. It's a giant

inflatable pool. Elder Wilkes and I had the privilege of filling it up

because we were on splits. I'll also attach pictures of that.

Apparently members like seeing baptisms here because we got gifted

like seven bags of Japanese cereal. I specify this because Japanese

cereal is expensive and filled with sugar. Things are going quite good

down here in Urayasu. I actually really like this area. We just need a

new apartment. I'll most likely end up moving this apartment as well

as the Okegawa one. Anyways that's all I have to talk about! I'll

throw in some pictures.

Picture 1: setting up the font

Picture 2: our cobbler

Picture 3: the horse racing track in Funabashi. We went to the second

biggest mall in Japan

Week 29- 4/18/16 Totsuzen

Hey everybody! Sorry for the late email. We had a surprise temple p

day, which means normal p day ha pushed back. Let's recount some of

the things that happened.

Just so you all know, I didn't feel the earthquake. I honestly didn't

even know there was one, until we were notified about getting an

emergency training over the phone. We were actually doing a beach

clean up when we got the notification, and after the call, I've never

been so nervous being next to an ocean. Old nerves kicking in I guess.

It all feels like a blur honestly. We did some teaching this week. One

of the friends of the members finally warmed up to us and is now

taking the lessons. He has an immediate support system in the ward and

is actually dating one of the ward members (we think). We were finally

able to meet up with him and teach him the plan of salvation.

We had splits as well with the zone leaders. We biked up to Koiwa area

and I was with Elder Bennet for the day. He honestly hilarious and a

super awesome missionary. He has an obsession about cats. We were able

to find a bunch of people. And when we returned to our area, the

success just kept coming. We found two people within 5 minutes of each

other.

We also had some success playing basket ball. We got trashed by two

kids but it made them interested in our Eikaiwa program.

We were pretty busy this week. The day after splits we went back to

Koiwa for Zone meeting, where we were trains on our new English

teaching program. We also ate some of my favorite food in the world,

Indo curry.

Sorry for the short email. I'm writing this on the train on the way to

the Pokemon center in ikebukuro. I also learned today that kebab

sandwiches are very delicious. It was nice to be able to go to the

temple and see some old friends. Thank you for tuning in this week!

Picture 1: Tokyo East Zone

Picture 2: the kebab sandwich I ate today

Picture 3: the Pokemon center

Week 28- 4/11/16 The Pirates Life For Me

Hello again everybody! Yes I'm here to grace your inboxes with my presence.

This week was long and short at the same time. Because we're right

next to Tokyo bay, the wind is always blowing, and the weather is

usually less than admirable. It rained most of this week. That leads

to nobody being on the streets or wanting to talk. At all.

However we did have some interesting things happen this week. We

finally got to watch general conference! It was absolutely amazing. We

had to wait a week for all the translations, but we watched it in

English anyways. We had a bunch of people come as well! Probably one

of my favorite people in the area is a recent convert named Hitoshi.

Him and his family came from Sudan, and he's easily one of the

funniest people to talk to. In case you're wondering why a Sudanese

man is named Hitoshi, he just goes by that because he doesn't like his

Arabic name. We also had one of our Chinese investigators Sha come. He

is a miracle. Apparently he just walked in off the street wanting to

be Christian because all the Christians he knows are super happy.

However, he doesn't speak much English, and even less Japanese.

Luckily, we had the Chinese translation of conference downstairs and a

member to answer his questions.

I also got to go to the hospital this past week. I managed to catch a

minor case of pink eye, and we were told to go to the hospital.

However, I realized that biking in a very windy area with pink eye is

not a very fun activity so I stopped by the local drug store and

picked up an eye patch. It turns out that missionary is not very

effective with an eye patch. You will be laughed at. More than usual.

Drug stores sell all sorts of things. I don't know how I got pink eye,

but we all think it's from the apartment because it's nasty. We clean

literally everyday but we can't help it. There's so many problems with

this apartment. One of the other Elders also has what's called the

Rhino virus, which is a bad sore throat that no antibiotics fix, so

you suffer for a month. While at the hospital, I got bombarded with

Japanese I couldn't understand. All I could make out was "eyedrops"

"four times a day" "come back if it gets worse" which is all that

matters I guess. Since Friday (the day I got it) it's completely

disappeared and I continue to take the eyedrops just in case.

Anyways that's pretty much our week. We went to a place called odaiba

today which is this huge shopping center and tourist place. Amongst

the attractions are a 1/1 scale gundam (giant robot) which I of course

got pictures of. Thank you for tuning in this week!

Elder Moore

Week 27- 4/4/16 Didney Lan

Hey everybody it's that time of the week again, but this time I'm in a

different area. As you know, last week was transfer week. I got

transferred to Urayasu area. Urayasu is right on the Tokyo bay and has

Disney land in it. However, I can't go to Disney land as a missionary

which is sad but I get to go around it, and I can see it from our

apartment.

So the first two days of this week were pretty simple. Pack and say

goodbye to members. Really not much else was done in those days.

Wednesday was transfer day. I packed up my bag and headed down to the

station. With the new transfer rules, sometimes you have to transfer

by yourself but I had people going to to Tokyo in my district so I

didn't have to brave the train by myself. However they were late and

we missed our train. This in turn made me an our late in Urayasu, and

I was so tired from lugging my bike across Japan. Once in Urayasu, we

taught a lesson right away to a guy who was met last Monday. We got to

know him and he said he had interest in Christ but not a good reason

why he had interest. We walked him through the "Who is Christ"

pamphlet that we have for people with a non-Christian background. By

the end of the lesson, he said yes to baptism and meeting through out

the week. Starting strong in Urayasu.

One thing I learned throughout the week is there's ultimately two

types of people. The ones have have interest, which are the easy

contacts, and the ones who don't. However, just because they don't

have interest doesn't mean they don't have questions. One guy we

stopped this week said no right away. Later on we bumped into him

again but forgot we contacted him He laughed at my companion then

turned to me and said "actually I do have a question. Why are there so

many churches?" The fact that we contacted him got him to think. He

may not want to join the church, but we were able to teach him some

truth. It's up to him to decide what to do with that truth.

Urayasu is an interesting place. There's so many people here. It's

easy to contact now. Like the church is only really five minutes away

but it takes us 30 minutes to get there because we're just talking to

everyone. It gets a little tiring riding then stopping to talk, then

riding again, but stopping five feet later to talk but it's what we're

supposed to be doing I guess. Thanks for tuning in this week. I won't

be sending many pictures anymore because I found out we can only take

pictures on p day or in the apartment. Until next week!

Picture 1: the river and blossoms near our apartment

Picture 2: we actually went to the rainforest cafe, which was right

next to Disney land.

Picture 3: view from our balcony

Picture 4: more cherry blossom pictures