Week 75

Hello!!

This week we got transfer calls and I've been asked to leave Iwaki. But I'm really grateful for the time that I've been privileged to spend here. I was here for four transfers, or six months in normal people time units. I've learned a lot from my time here and come to love a lot of people here. Some of the things that I appreciate the most about Iwaki are these: The Sisters in the branch sometimes have cute little arguments (this actually only happened once but it was pretty fun) about who gets to take the missionaries out to eat on pday, there is a member who works at Mister Donuts and frequently shares her spoils with us, we have a fantastic grocery store within three blocks of our apartment where we can comfortably purchase all of our fresh produce, we have a nearby restaurant with 540 yen lunch days on Tuesdays and Fridays, we have a rather wide selection of hills to suit my various moods and thirst for reckless speed, our mission leader recently gave us 25kg kettle bells to amp up our morning exercise, the church is within five minutes of the apartment if we're really interested in getting there quickly, we have several housing developments that I haven't had the chance to visit because our area is so big, and there is an interestingly large number of exotic supercars that can sometimes be spotted disturbing the peace in downtown Iwaki.

We also had a conference with the President of the Asia North Area. He advised us all to eat natto in order to improve our Japanese ability. Natto is fermented soybeans. I think the idea is that we'll better understand Japanese culture and have a stronger connection to Japanese people.

Have a great week!!
Elder Mitchell

Excerpts from a letter to the family. . .
Hey,

Sorry this email is a little late. I hope that everyone is doing okay. I don't have quite as many emails from family members as I normally would at this time of day. I am healthy and happy. A little bit more so since we have an investigator that took us out to eat. It was ridiculously good tonkatsu and it was pretty dang big too. It was funny because his plan was to pay for us but then his friends own the store so they paid for him. So we had a double cover for not having to pay for ourselves. :)

You may have seen the transfer post that President Sekiguchi put on Facebook the other night. I'm supposed to head to Morioka tomorrow morning. I'll be the district leader again there and I'll have ten people in my zone. I'll have two of the four APs in the mission, my companion and I, a sister currently on a plane on her way to Japan and her trainer, a sister who finished her mission in Tokyo South and is here to help with an odd number of sisters in the mission and her comp, and then the Elders in Miyako where I served for two transfers with Elder Reber who is still not married. I'm not quite sure why that is.

I just told mom I'd have this done in three minutes so it's wrap-up time.

We had a conference with Elder Choi who is the area president of the Asia North area. He's a pretty cool dude. He was a bodyguard for the Korean president or something like that. He spent some time telling us how we need to all eat natto in order to get good at Japanese. Natto is fermented soybeans. But since he promised blessings I plan to eat more natto in the remainder of my time here in Japan. That will be fun.

I love you the most,
Benny Boy

Week 74

This week was okay. We had our last DTM. It was only our third one. We normally have them every week but for some reason they cancelled the first one, the third one conflicted with what they called MLT (Mission Leadership Training which basically meant that they were worried that all of the District Leaders were bad at their jobs and needed help), and the last one is cancelled due to a visit from the Area President. It was a good DTM though. We took a picture of the senior companions carrying the junior companions. That was an idea had I believe mostly for my benefit. My companion is a little bit bigger than I am. :P

We also had our two district splits this week. I didn't get any pictures with them. Oops. They're the other two Elders in the DTM pictures. They're pretty fun. I do have a little bit of beef with one of them though. He likes to tell everyone that he doesn't have any money. And it's true. He spends it all on candy and ice cream. And that's his excuse for not participating in apartment food purchasing. So then he just sort of bums off of everyone else and also buys a bunch of candy and ice cream at convenience stores while we run out of money on regular groceries. I might have to fight him.

We get transfer calls this week. I've been here for four transfers. That means that my possibility for transferring is what the members here call "abunai". But one of the members realized that and is too nice so she planned a BBQ for all of the missionaries. And is inviting all of her non-member friends so that we can all come. She's one of my favorite people.

For the area president conference we're supposed to think of questions that couldn't be answered by anyone else. Just meaning that our mission president is going to be salty if we ask questions that we could ask him in a weekly email or zone conference. Do you all have any ideas? I'm kind of lacking good questions right now.

Lots of love,
Elder Mitchell

This picture was taken at an arm-wrestling activity that my 

companion wanted to do. We set up a table next to the train 

station and challenged high schoolers to arm wrestle us. It wasn't quite 

as effective as we had hoped. It was pretty fun though. 

Week 73

This week was pretty good. We had some ZL splits and they also crashed our DTM. They stayed for three nights so they could make all that happen and get in some splits with the other Iwaki Elders too. They usually like to get splits with all of the District Leaders and all of the new missionaries which qualified both of the companionships in my apartment. It was pretty fun. Our Zone Leaders are really funny. But I don't have any pictures with them from splits. Sorry. I'm not very good at getting pictures.

We also had a service day. It was fun. We got to hop in a car with a member and they drove us to Bandai. I think it's a volcano. Anyway, there's a place there that gets used by the members for youth conferences and missionary conferences and stuff like that so we went and cleaned it for a few hours. It was almost all of the missionaries from my zone and a few members from a few different branches. I think it started as something focused more on members but somehow all of the missionaries ended up getting invited too. The only picture I have is the one of just the missionaries.

We have a mission conference coming up pretty soon which will be visited by Elder Choi who is the Asia North Area President over the missions in Japan and Korea and maybe some other places. Japan is the most important one. :) We're supposed to learn how to sing Called to Serve in Korean because that's Elder Choi's native language. I'm not very good at singing. Singing even in English is pushing it. Japanese is a little bit worse. And I don't know how they think I'm going to sing in Korean. It should be fun though.

I've been reading in Mosiah lately. This may not be the most profound realization, but I've come to appreciate the importance of running away. There are three pretty good examples of people packing up and leaving in Mosiah. The first one is Alma taking his 450 people that he just baptized and heading off into the wilderness before King Noah's army gets to them. Then there's King Limhi sending a bunch of wine to the Lamanites standing guard over them as a present and leaving in the middle of the night while they're all passed out. And finally Alma picking up and bouncing again after the Lamanites find them and break a deal. We, like the people of Mosiah, may have things in our lives that seem unsurmountable. But it's not always required of us to square up and fight. Sometimes we can go for a change of scenery and find a place where our trials don't mean anything anymore.

Have a great week!!
Elder Mitchell