Week 31- 5/2/16 Medically Related Selfies

Hello again everybody! Hopefully these aren't just going into your

spam box because I've got some good stories this week. I'll start with

my investigators.

We've got two we're really focusing on. One is absolutely amazing, and

the other is stubborn as a mule. I'll start with good news first. We

met Andy a few days ago and Elder Masterson and Elder Abercrombie were

on splits on the day we were supposed to teach him. However, I finally

got to meet him this week. He's sixteen, and wants to know about the

truth. Well we got it for you buddy. We went through the restoration

and told him how he can know truth. I think he really likes the

concept of prayer, because when we told him he could learn the truth

of all things through prayer, his next answer was "how do I pray?"

He's super awesome and really smart. Easily one of the nicest people

I've taught so far.

Our next investigator is Tomoki, and he's quite the adventure. He's a

referral from one of the families in the ward, and this means we get

told what to do a lot, which I don't particularly like. Tomoki said he

thinks our message is nice, and if it's true he'll believe, but won't

take any necessary steps to learning if it's true. He believes in the

Shinto belief about God, which means he believes in several hundred

gods. We told him that the only way to find out this message is true

is to ask, but he's a stubborn guy, and won't bother to do it. We may

end up just dropping him this week once we finish teaching him

doctrine, because it would be useless to teach commandments if he has

no intention of following them.

Other than that, our life is normal. We had interviews this week with

the Naganos. Oh and the sisters investigator was baptized. We have

effectively increased our baptism statistic in Urayasu by 400% in the

past 2-3 months. We set the standard for this mission as well so far.

By the looks of things, we'll be getting another few baptisms next

month as well.

Now here's the interest part of this email. I fixed my nose a few days

ago. It's always been a little crooked because an injury from

wrestling, but I got it knocked back straight during basketball. I

failed to catch a pass (with my hands) from across the court, and just

took it to the nose. It bled for a few hours and hurt like the dickens

for the next two days but the doctor said it was broken, or I just

re-aligned it. Anyways, thank you for the free plastic surgery! I had

to send in pictures to the doctor, hence the name of the email.

Well that's it for all of you. Thank you for tuning in!

Picture 1- Tsukushi, Elder Wilkes, Shohei, and I after Eikaiwa

Picture 2- Kei Nara's baptism

Picture 3- an old friend showed up to church. I met McKay a few years

ago at SMYC and he apparently lives here

Drumming Man video (I forgot last week)

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