Week 69

Hello!

This week was transfer calls and I'm staying!!!!!! I'm now an 11th transfer missionary and this is my first four-transfer area. Moving all over the place is fun for a little while, but it got old pretty fast. I'm so glad to be staying in Iwaki again. Iwaki is the best!! The biggest change that will be happening this transfer is this: our apartment will now be home to four missionaries instead of just two. I'm sure that will be fun, but we have a pretty small refrigerator. Elder Bunderson and I have been filling that thing up every week and then eating it all over the following six days. Elder Bunderson suggested that righteous missionaries do a lot of fasting...

I came across a scripture that I really liked in 3 Nephi this week. It's a chapter very similar the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus gave in Matthew 5. Here's the part I liked:

3 Yea, blessed are the poor in spirit who come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
5 And blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

So if we're poor in spirit, come unto Christ, and also happen to be meek, then we get the kingdom of heaven and inherit the earth!! You all can probably guess which Christlike attributes I'm going to be working on this week.

Until we meet again,
Elder Mitchell

Excerpts from letters to the family:
 I did have to give a talk last Sunday but it was still an okay Sacrament meeting I think. My talk was about keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. I said that keeping the Sabbath Day Holy should be super easy because Heavenly Father is so nice. He gave us six days for ourselves and asks only for one in return. I told Iwaki that if I were Heavenly Father then I would make every day the Sabbath and make everyone keep all of them holy. :-)
We had some interesting weather this week too. We had 27 in the shade one day and then 14 the next. It was pretty interesting. Those are both Celsius. I think in Fahrenheit that would be 81.6 and 57.2. We wore short sleeves both days. The second day was slightly more chilly than the first was hot. 81.6 doesn't actually sound that hot. The thermometer in the sun read 32 the first day. That would be almost 90. Either way it was a pretty crazy temperature change and we were not ready for it to be that cold yesterday.


I'm not very good at taking pictures so here are some from a long time ago. One is with my MTC comp and the other is the drinking fountain in my first area's church building. It's not very tall.

Week 68

68 is a really big number. I'm a pretty old missionary.

I don't have too much time for email today since one of my favorite members called us this morning and asked if we wanted to go out to lunch and head to the beach. I am happy and healthy. I'm still learning a lot every day about the gospel, Japanese, and how to be a good missionary. Missionary work is a great opportunity to learn and grow, as well as to help other people and share the joy of the gospel. There are definitely hard times too, but they've all been worth it so far and I have faith in Nephi's famous testimony: "I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them." The Lord helps his servants.

Lots of love,
Elder Mitchell

Week 67

This week's email takes a rather unique format. Since I failed to write a mass email last week this one will cover both weeks. Normally I write my family first so that they can read it before they go to bed and then I'll correct the major punctuation/grammatical errors and maybe tone it down a little bit to make myself sound more like a missionary. You may notice that the first section of this email is written as though I think that Easter was two days ago. This is because most of this was taken from the email that I sent to my family last week. Here it goes:

I'm on the bus and guess what: it has wifi!! I think Iwaki might be my favorite area. Our buses between areas in the zone have wifi, we have a member that gives us donuts all the time, our branch has the Igari's in it and they're amazing, and Iwaki is a pretty big area so I haven't gotten bored with it yet. We also have our apartment on the first floor which means that I can do all the jumping and crazy exercise in the morning that I want to. And the grocery store right next to our apartment is almost like a famer's market and it's the best store I've shopped at my whole mission. I've also seen a golden lamborghini on two separate occasions and a red ferrari. This area also has one of my favorite branch mission leaders. One sad thing about Iwaki is that our district only has two young Elders so we only get ZL splits once a transfer. We don't get any district splits.

This week we had a zone blitz. The whole zone came to Iwaki for a day and tried to find all of th einvestigators. It was pretty fun. We were in charge of figuring out areas for people to go and buying some stuff so tht the ZLs could make us all curry for lunch. Going to a restaurant witht 14 missionaries would have been a little bit more fun I think, but they were worried that people might have no money and just starve to death. I think that in total 14 new investigators were found that day which would mean an average of two investigators per companionship. It wasn't quite equal though because the ZLs didn't find any and the STLs found five. My comp and I did find two.

Two days ago didn't feel like Easter. It was still a fast Sunday for us since we have General Conference next week, and it felt like Easter just snuck up on me this year and was gone as fast as it came. It was funny during testimony meeting when the most energetic senior citizen in all of Japan (who also happens to be a sister in our branch) got up and at the end of her testimony mentioned the fact that our one young man in the branch bounced and went to America, and the other young dude who happens to be 28 got engaged and moved way down south. Her suggestion for fixing the bias of our branch demographics towards old people was to have the missionaries get married and move back to Iwaki. It's not a terrible idea. Except that I'm not sure that I could live in Japan as an ordinary citizen. Japan is great, but America is the promised land of the Book of Mormon and they speak English there, so I'll likely end up east of the Pacific. Not in the Pacific.

I've seen and heard some of the changes at General Conference on Facebook and in mom's email to me this morning. There were some pretty big changes. That's exciting. I'm interested to find out how the ministering thing is going to be implemented. And what a combined High Priests quorum and Elders quorum will look/sound like. And I don't know if you all remember this, but I actually got to eat dinner with a dude known as 'Elder Gong' during my time at the MTC. And he actually looks just like a dude that got sustained by most of the world as an apostle the other day. :) I think he was the mission president over Elder Turk's home mission when he got baptized. So when Elder Turk got invited to dinner I did too. :)


Okay this is the beginning of this week:

I'm about to get a haircut. There's a poster of a bunch of haircut options and I think I'll probably go for either the executive contour or the scumbag boogie. I think President would approve of either.

General Conference was way good. I was asked if we watch it in Japanese and the answer is no. We watched it in the room next to the chapel with the Sister missionaries and the door open. In English. Except for a couple talks at the end of the Saturday afternoon session because a dude showed up that we had invited. He's a bit mentally handicapped and we didn't quite realize before he got to the church, but it was still fun to sit in the chapel with him and watch a bit of conference in Japanese. Or sleep through conference in Japanese. That's closer to what happened. It's really hard to learn anything in Japanese. :) Another question that I was asked went something like this: 'Do you get as much out of conference in Japanese as you do in English' and the answer is no. I don't claim to get a whole lot out of conference even in English and the comprehension rate in Japanese is (astonishingly) quite a lot lower.. Haha I actually do get some things out of conference. For example: I really liked Elder Bednar's talk about meekness. And his line in the priesthood session where he said something about the Elder's quorum change not being a High Priest takeover. I also thought it was interesting to hear the number of times that President Nelson fixing hearts came up. Both literally as a surgeon and figuratively as a prophet.

I recommend some further study of the general conference messages over the coming week. I'll be doing that too. :)

Lots of love,
Elder Mitchell

 The cake that the Sisters made for my birthday. Their message was Youがoldだ.

Me with some cherry blossoms.

Week 66

Excerpts from two emails this week: 

Our zone pday today will be in Koriyama and we'll be going to see the cherry blossoms at some park there. Our bus stop is called Koriyama Women's college but I think that will not be one of the places we visit, as fun as visiting a women's college would be. It sounds like our ZLs will be bringing a football and are planning to have some sports go down, so that will be pretty fun. I'm excited for that.

This transfer is halfway over. That's a little bit scary. Thinking about things in terms of transfers makes them feel really short. Like semesters at BYU. Or the amount of time I have left on my mission. Or the time that I have to wait until I can Skype you again. Or the time I have left as a teenager.

Okay I'm about to go hop on my bus since it's 916 now. I'll probably write some emails on the bus and get them sent out a little later. My bus might even have Wi-Fi. I don't remember.

Hello Family,

I'm on the bus and guess what: it has wifi!! I think Iwaki might be my favorite area. Our buses between areas in the ezone have wifi, we have a member that gives us donuts all the time, our branch has the Igari's in it and they're amazing, and Iwaki is a pretty big area, so I haven't gotten bored with it yet. We also have our apartment on the first floor which means that I can do all the jumping and crazy exercise in the morning that I want to. And the grocery store right next to our apartment is almost like a farmer's market and it's the best store I've shopped at my whole mission. I've also seen a golden Lamborghini on two separate occasions and a red Ferrari. This area also has one of my favorite branch mission leaders. One sad thing about Iwaki is that our district only has two young Elders so we only get ZL splits once a transfer. We don't get any district splits.

I'm not sure if you can tell from my writing up until now, but I'm not actually looking at my tablet right now. I'm on the bus with my keyboard on my lap and looking out the windows so that I don't get motion sick. It's kind of fun. My tablet is just chilling on the seat next to me. Hopefululy there aren't too many typing errors, but if there arer that is the reason.

This week we had a zone blitz. The whole zone came to Iwaki for a day and tried to find all of th einvestigators. It was pretty fun. We were in charge of figuring out areas for people to go and buying some stuff so tht the ZLs could make us all curry for lunch. Going to a restaurant with 14 missionaries would have been a little bit more fun I think, but they were worried that people might have no money and just starve to death. I think that in total, 14 new investigators were found that day which would mean an average of two investigators per companionship. It wasn't quite equal though because the ZLs didn't find any and the STLs found five. My comp and I did find two. Those were also the only two that we happen to have found all week, but we were pretty happy about it. Hopefully we can meet with them again and get them interested in living the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Two days ago didn't feel like Easter. It was still a fast Sunday for us since we have General Conference nexxt week, and it felt like Easter just snuck up on me this year and was gone as fast as it came. It was funny during testimony meeting when the most energetic senior citizen in all of Japan (who also happens to be a sister in our branch) got up and at the end of her testimony mentioed the fact that our one young man in the branch bounced and went to America, and the other young dude who happens to be 28 got engaged and moved way down south. Her suggestion for fixing the bias of our branch demographics towards old people was to have the missionaries get married and move back to Iwaki. It's not a terrible idea. Except that I'm not sure that I could live in Japan as an ordinary citizen. Japan is great but America is the promised land of the BoM and they speak English there, so I'll likely end up east of the Pacific. Not in the Pacific.

I think that mom said last week that the package you all sent to me for my birthday was 13 pounds. I'm not quite sure what you might have sent 13 pounds of. One of my guesses is that it could be 13 pounds worth of keys to all of the Ducati motorcycles that you got for me for after my mission. Maybe there are some STi keys mixed in too. I'm not sure. Or maybe you just sent my 13 pounds of money for groceries. Or 13 pounds of calendars of all of the hot dates that you've scheduled for me (for after the mission:-). Or something else. I'm not sure. I haven't gotten it quite yet. It's probably somewhere in between Iwaki and the Sendai mission office.

I've seen and heard some of the changes at General Conference on Facebook and in mom's email to me this morning. There were some pretty big changes. That's exciting. I'm interested to find out how the ministering thing is going to be implemented. And what a combined High Priests quorum and Elders quorum will look/sound like. And I don't know if you all remember this, but I actually got to eat dinner with a dude known as 'Elder Gong' during my time at the MTC. And he actually looks just like a dude that got sustained by most of the world as an apostle the other day. :) I think he was the mission president over Elder Turk's home mission when he got baptized. So when Elder Turk got invited to dinner I did too. :)

I did actually sneak a few peaks at my tablet and fixed some of the typing errors. There are probably still some left over, but I think that as it is you'll probably be able to understand most of what I said. I can't think of anything else to say except that I love you all the most.

I love you the most,
Ben

week 65

Good morning!!!

We had zone conference this week and learned that although smartphones won't be here for a while, we will be getting portable wifi so we can message people more easily. In the past we've had to make trips to the church or to a nearby 711 in order to message people. We're pretty excited about that. The work of the Lord is hastening and effective use of technology is part of it!! Fortunately missionaries aren't the only people who can have a positive influence on others through the use of technology. Anyone can do it!

By way of information, I broke my third rear axle on a mission bike the other day. Apparently the second to last one was a solid (rather than hollow) axle too. I'm not quite sure what to do about that. Maybe I just have too much passion when I ride my bike.

General Conference is starting later this week!! Unfortunately I won't get to see it until the end of next week when they have the Japanese translation done, but it will be a great opportunity to hear the words of the Lord through his prophets!!

Have a great week,
Elder Mitchell

These pictures were posted on Facebook this week with this caption:

 We were on our way to spread the #restoredgospel when we were suddenly attacked by the #fierydarts of the adversary. Fortunately we were armed with our #shieldsoffaith and the work of the Lord continues to move forward. Let's go see miracles!!