Sensei, the two-cylinder nihonjin

My area is about a 40 minute bike ride away from our house. Elder Knighton, being the large man he is, we still don't have a bike for him. probably through this next week as well.

With that we have a pretty good week to tell you about.

First on Tuesday, we went on a hunt for a bunch of Potential Investigators that Mabuchi left behind for me. I used the gps function on the phone so much that it ran out of memory. I never knew you could do that. But all of them were duds. At one house we saw this guy ride by in a poncho. we thought "hey, that kid looks cool, lets go talk to him." So we walked over and the kid turns out to be a college student! In our city there are 2 and a half colleges.... well like 3 but the third is a special college. This past week we met lots of students, but he just graduated. As we were talking to him his room mate comes over and starts talking to us in English. Apparently the kid was taking English from a Russian woman. They were pretty sweet kids and they might come to eikaiwa (English class) soon.


I teach a kids English class on Wednesday because Elder Lee doesn't want to deal with the kids. It is so hard. Probably one of the hardest things I've done yet. I mean I love it but its incredibly difficult.

Thursday we taught A again. This was our best lesson with her. She opened up a lot and asked a bunch of questions. If she keeps progressing the way that she is now, she will be baptized soon.
We also found a lady named Nakamura. She was raised how to pray and realizes the importance of it. We may go back to her today or tomorrow.

Friday was probably one of my favorite days. First we went to visit a less active named Shiraishi. She called us because we were late. (She lives around 4 kilos away from the house and we were walking to it.) I told her we were walking and she starts yelling telling me how stupid we were. She then picks us up (because there are 3 of us its okay). We go into her home and it turns out one of her friends are there so we talk with both of them. We also get to share a little message of the Restoration with both them as well.

Here is probably one of my favorite parts of the week. We started to walk by  a elementary school. Some of the kids I teach ran out screaming "sensei sensei sensei!" they start freaking out and saying oh my gosh I cant believe its you. I high 5ed them. It was a joyous event. Because of that a huge group of children were around us asking us questions. Let me tell you, there are 2 people in the world that are almost impossible to understand. Old people and children. But it was fun. They kept asking me if I was Japanese. I used a joke I learned from Brother Sherman. In Japanese there is a counter for cylindrical objects and legs are cylinders, right? Wo when you have 2 cylinders it is nihon. Well the Japanese word for Japanese people is nihonjin. Jin being person. So I played the joke saying I'm a 2 legged person but it could also mean I'm Japanese. The kids loved it.

The best part about it is that there was this old man that spotted us from afar. I saw him and knew he was bad business. I would be too if I saw men talking to little children, especially about going to a free eikaiwa class. So the man came over and told the kids to reject us. Our thought was "man we can understand that you are telling these kids to reject us." But the kids were freaked out by the old man and said "why should we? They just want to teach us English. Please go away." I  had a happy smile inside. :)

Because we had walked a far distance, I noted to Elder Lee that we were actually pretty close to the area where Mabuchi and I did a lot of dendo. So we walked over and we taught a lesson to an investigator. It went really well and it seems she is starting to like it.  We went to another investigator. He wasn't home but we met the mom. That is exactly what I wanted. Before when we went, I saw a statue of Christ in the house. The kid said it was his moms. She came to the door and (at this point we have gotten really good at noticing if people are Japanese or from the Philippines) she was from the Philippines. "Perfect" I thought. 9 times out of 10 a Philippianjin is Catholic. She said she was busy.... in perfect English.... and we asked if we can come share a message about Christ... in English. She said, "yeah I'm usually free on Sundays"... in English! So we are going to teach her soon. Hopefully in English :).

A and R. The conference miracle.

We have been praying so hard to baptize someone on the 10th of May. Every prayer at church and personal prayer. We have been working so hard and talking to almost everyone. Before conference started on Saturday, we dendoed for 2 hours of morning dendo trying to get a last chance in. No luck. So we prayed right before the first session asking to send someone. Half way through the first session our door opened.

First off let me explain the set up. The Japanese members were watching conference in the chapel. while the missionaries were tucked away in the smallest room in the church. Why would you try to open the door to the small room when the chapel has double doors and a lot of noise is coming from it?

Anyways we see this head pop into our room. A girl around 23 appeared. She asked us what our church hours were. Elder Lee and I were confused and thought she was a visiting member. She told us that she just moved in 3 weeks ago and saw that our church was open and came in. She is a Christian and she wants to make friends. Well I thought, you have come to the right place. So we asked her to come on Sunday. her name is A.

She came to church and she first started out by saying she is wrong. She isn't Christian but she is Catholic. I about freaked out because I thought she was going to leave. But it turns out a member was near by and she said "That doesn't matter come in anyways." She said she wanted to take her sister first. So she left and came back with her 19 year old sister R. They sat in on Bednar's talk but then came to the English room because they said they weren't feeling it go in. They wanted to study English instead. That's really sad. But afterwards I was able to talk to them really well and somehow they want to come back again. Hopefully they can be the ones we can baptize on may 10th.

Please pray for them!!!!!

Love Elder Jameson

If you ever fall, we will come and pick you up

Our little outfit of 3 is pretty good. I'm not too great with asking questions to people, but Elder Lee is really good at that. I'm good with application and examples from my life, in which Elder Lee isn't the best at. We are having Knighton start contacts and as the contact goes on we urge him to speak. If he doesn't know, we just translate a little bit.

Fortunately for me, Elder Lee knows the area really well, I don't. To be honest Mabuchi and I only really went to one place all the time. A 600 apartment complex that we would hammer. Now we have many potential investigators and a few investigators there. (But it's kinda far by bike. Right now we don't have a bike for Elder Knighton because he is so huge so we are walking and it is too far to walk to.) So basically we are using Elder Lee's area mostly and finding in new places.

Unfortunately we don't have many investigators. Mabuchi did a lot of finding but didn't really find anything. The only investigators that Elder Lee has is ( what we believe to be) a mafia member and a prostitute. It's funny to joke about but in reality it's the people in the worst situations that can need to gospel the most.

Other than that we have this Chinese man that we can't really communicate with. We have to use both English and Japanese to explain things but i don't know how much he can understand.

Elder Knighton is adjusting really well. He has an incredible memory. He probably has a better understanding of the area than I do. He is actually leading us to places now. I got an extremely good bean. He is pretty good. He is blowing mine and Elder Lee's mind everyday.

This week we didn't have all that much luck finding mostly because we needed to meet certain potential investigators or investigators. Since we didn't have bikes it was a little taihen. But let me tell you about fast Sunday. That is something that really has been one of the best days in my mission so far.

So that "Danny" Nakamura leaves for America today and for a last effort attempt, he called one of our eternal investigators and a less active to come to church. Randomly that rich guy I told you about a few weeks ago showed up. He just comes to church randomly but since he has a sickness we don't know if he can be baptized. But at the end of church, well after the sacrament, the less active shows up. She walks through the door, (I didn't hear her but I heard the member next to me slightly turn and gasp) and I turned and smiled at her. She came and sat next to me. During the meeting all of the speakers addressed what I wanted to say to her so it was perfect, I just said "oh speaking of that blah blah bah." After church ended, the investigator showed up. It turns out the investigator and the less active are extremely great friends. They kept saying how they wanted to hang out and go to eikaiwa (English class) and maybe church together. We set an appointment to meet the investigator after eikaiwa on Wednesday.

After that, we came to a part of the church where the church members gather food for the missionaries on fast Sundays. They gathered so much food we only need to spend around 40 to 50 dollars compared to the 120 each week.

We started to dendo and sometimes I ask people "do you think God doesn't exist?" in oreder to get them saying possitive answers. One guy said "no I believe God is real. That he created out spirits and that we can receive help from him. It turns out his English is alright too so we invited him to eikaiwa and he said we can come back again. Please pray for Ryouta.

Then a house nearby a lady came to the door and smiled and said hello again! One second I'll be right back. She left the door and all 3 of us just looked at each other confused. She came back and said "oo my daughter, who is a member (of our church) is busy but please come again." Confused we said okay and walked away. Please pray for Mihou.

We dendoed more and met some more people. They all were very nice yesterday. One of our last contacts was an old lady who lives by herself. She says she often falls and can't get up so she stays there until someone comes to help. I gave her our number and said, "if you ever fall, we will come and pick you up" and shared a message about how Christ can do the same. I hope she can accept our message.

All in all we met a lot of amazing people yesterday. The power of fasting really does work. If you just go to work and forget that pounding headache and the grinding stomach, you can see many miracles.

Love you!!!

Jameson

Learning how to share a bean

Helloooo!!!!

So things are going well right now. The 3 man companionship is awkward but i'ts good. My bean gets to see how 2 different missionaries dendo. Sometimes it is bad because the other companion always (district leader) tells me how I should train my bean. Each person will train differently and it's only been about 3 or 4 days so there can't really be all that much information passed, especially when they still have jet lag. But it's good to have someone else. As a young missionary still (kinda young) I don't fully understand things so if luck has it, he will understand if I don't.

My Companions name is Elder Knighton. its funny because sometimes I say "nighty night Knighton". A little goofy but it's okay. We seem like things are going to go really well (our relationship.)  He is a 6'4" giant and it's really hard to find a bike. We have to go to Fukuoka on Friday to buy it so until then, we are walking everywhere.

Saying goodbye to Mabuchi

It was definitely sad to see Mabuchi go. He did say I love you at the end. That made me feel like I accomplished something.

My bean is pretty awesome. People listen to us more just because of his effort to talk. Yesterday we found 3 potential investigators with return appointments for tomorrow because he started the contact.

He knows a lot and soon things will be running in full motion. I want to help him so much so that he can become the best missionary he can become after I leave.

My giant of a bean!

It's a boy!!

3 sudden phone calls.

SO this past week. we had 3 sudden calls that change this area completely. On Thursday Elder Fender received a call to become the mission recorder. That completely took everyone by surprise. That also made us go into a 3-man which leads to a great miracle.

Friday night we had to combine our dendo times and pick an area both companionships had not done. We picked an area and went to work. It was nearing time to go to an appointment and then we would end our night. We came up to the last house and we wanted to skip it and go. But then we changed our minds and turned back. As we knocked, this lady came to the door and said she was baptized about 12 years ago. The crazy thing is she isn't in our less active book. Her record was lost. She said she was checking how the church was doing and because of the growth the past few years it made her think that this church is really a true church. She said she wants to come back. The thing that blew my mind is that morning about 5 minutes before we left, I found some really old files that didn't have a lot of information on them but on one of the files was her name. It clicked after she said her name.

Saturday the second phone call came for me. I'm becoming a trainer. I'm going to have a son!!!!! Tell Elder Gandy that he is a grandaddy again!.

Yesterday I went to this trainer meeting and 5 people from my travel group are becoming trainers with me.

Today we had another call but this call is for Elder Lee. He is now the district leader of our district. Our 3-man district. Yeah. We are a 3-man companionship and I'm a trainer, he is a district leader, and we have a bean. This is really crazy. I'm worried because the past week it was almost impossible to work our two dendo times together. Our eikaiwa has become extremely big too. It is really hard to teach with 4 teachers and now we only have 3 and one has no experience. I'm really worried about it.

But that's all I can say for this week.

Elder Jameson

Getting a peanut butter fix

Helloo all!

We all got our Lesson Mastery Pins!
(Thank you to Babcock Shimai for the photo from her blog!)

So this past week has been weird. Weird... not weird just interesting. We had a zone tai kai where the president taught us how to be better missionaries. It helped me and it was good to see some of my MTC district people again. I have 4 in my zone.

Wednesday was awesome! So we have our eikaiwa on Wednesdays. (English class) Two major things happened this day. One lady we found during last week showed up. It turns out she has perfect English. She is amazingly hilarious and loves to learn. This next part (to me is very important) is that she works at Costco. I asked her if i could get a fix of peanut butter. She said yeah if you give me money I'll buy what you want. So we now have a fix of american food in our apartment. Jokes aside, she has friends that are interested in learning English and maybe the gospel. So she is going to be bringing them along.

After eikaiwa, one of our class members pulled us aside and said "teach the first vision" (in English). We were stunned and confused but we just started to teach two women about our message. One was already an investigator but now her friend is an investigator. They might come to church next week for our branch tai kai. But the crazy thing is that the member asked our previous investigator if she has ever prayed if the Book of Mormon was true. She said no and he said "okay well come to my house, we will do it together." The member is a stud.

We taught the rich man (I talked about the other week) a little bit of the Book of Mormon. He has such a pure heart. He is a little mental but he has one of the kindest and most pure hearts ever. :)

Friday we drove up with that member (eikaiwa member) to visit a less active return missionary and his wife. The thing is he served in Iizuka 32 years ago. Same time as dad. He was on his mission when they changed the mission length back to 24 months. He and his wife were married in the Salt Lake temple. As to why he became less active, no one knows. But the ward has some sense of what happened. Anyways. the visit was like this... he just put up with us and when time was up, he wanted us out. It's weird because he used to be a great missionary. It's interesting to look at him. It's like looking at a car that you know is powerful but the engine isn't on. He once was an amazing man. You look at him and you can feel that power. But at the same time, he is empty on the inside. It's somethings I have been thinking quite a bit about. It's hard to see something like that.

We have been doing a lot of finding and we have a lot of Potential Investigators but we need to change them into investigators. The other Elders investigator came to church for like 10 minutes yesterday and they have many people wanting to come. So we are hoping we can do the same.

Talk to you next week!

Elder Jameson

The art of BRTing

Okays!!!

So I'm sorry that I honestly just forget to say things in my emails. Yes I do love the people. I love my mission. I though it wasn't necessary to let you know how much I love something. (Sigh. He is such a boy!)

I did receive the package. It was great! Mabuchi immediately put on the ties. He loves them. He hasn't touched the candy all that much but I already destroyed mine.

Nakamura Kyodai. He lives in Provo but his parents live here. He is here for a month and he is super awesome. We are going to go visit a less active that is 2 hours away on Friday. His English is pretty fly. He just loves helping the missionaries.

Well that is just japan. They love helping the missionaries. They basically baby us. Someone gave us an electric rug that gets pretty hot. We received 15 kilos of rice yesterday. That's like 3 weeks of rice. I've had my pants or suits fixed like 4-5 times already by members. These people really do try their hardest to help missionaries. Each week a group of women go to the temple and do work there.

Basically right now we are just hitting the street and knocking on doors. We don't really have any investigators. We have a few but it's because Mabuchi stretches the numbers a lot of the time, they aren't really investigators. It's just people we've met twice. no back ground really. This week we found 11 potential investigators. It is crazy the amount of people we found. A lot of them have some great potential to become members.

One girl we met had some awesome cats. I about freaked out and we talked about cats for a bit. Mabuchi did a great lesson off of it and now it seems like she has a lot of interest.

The art of BRTing. "Building Relationships" is hard. Lots of times people immediately just say "nope" or "I don't need it." Last night we had a great example of this.

Before we knocked on the door, I looked at the door and turned to Mabuchi and said "this is an American car!" It was a Dodge Ram 4x4. It was a monster of a car. SO when mabuchi introduced himself, they guy said he didn't need our religion. But then Mabuchi said "sorry we understand but can I ask you where you bought this car? My American friend says its from America." After that the man said wait and he came to the door. We talked for 25 minutes after that about how the car is slightly illegal. Haha that is actually a really funny story. But he told us to come back anytime, if we wanted a ride, come anytime. If we wanted to go to his farm and play, come back anytime. He listened to our message and asked us questions. This was all because we had a BRT. If we show people we aren't there just to shove a message down their mouth, they begin to realize we are just normal people.

Talk to you next week!

Jameson Choro

O-tou san

This week I asked Jarom a couple of questions. I thought I'd share them here:

What is the hardest thing about being a missionary?
Seeing that no matter your work, some people just turn you down. When you know how much this message can help them, you want to just scream it to them. But they just turn away.
2) What is your favorite thing about being a missionary?
Living everyday as a missionary. I love the special connection you have with the members. I love the connections you make with others.

Man I'm starting to feel like Pahoran. Everyone is sending me letters about how to make myself better and to not be so sad, that I need to stop thinking about myself. Granted I am very thankful for these things, but I'm seriously okay. I say some things that are concerning, but please stop worrying. I'm really grateful, I really am. I am fine though, so please don't worry about it. If it helps you at all, people call me Mr Sunshine. One elder said, Elder Jameson I can never see you being sad.

I'm doing fine. I will always be fine. I know I will because I have a family that cares about me.

Well not too much happened this week. It's basically a few things. We did a lot of finding. Like..... hours on end. We don't have much to work with but we found a lot of potential investigators. We did go visit one investigator.

M San is his name. He answered the door in his boxers.... and said his girlfriend was over. We sighed and walked away. Mabuchi Choro said to me. "Maybe law of chastity problem he has."  It was really sad.

We met an anti-Christ this week. Oh dear. It was awful. Mabuchi Choro told me his Japanese was really hard. I could barely understand him. Well barely is an overstatement. I could tell that he was railing on us by the Spirit leaving. It just flew out the window and I felt terrible. Mabuchi was fighting not to fight the guy. I called him father or in Japanese o-tou san. This is an affectionate term the Japanese use to everyone. Or call to their appropriate sibling status. And he started to yell at me saying that he wasn't my father. Then yelled at me to study Japanese and my religion more. But not that I realized it. I was just smiling at him the whole time.

We are just knocking and trying to find less actives. Not much is going but we are working hard.

xoxo
Jameson