Week 95

We had a District Conference in Morioka so I got to see Brother Shibata and Brother Kurosawa who both got baptized while I was there! That was pretty fun. I didn't get pictures with either of them which was a mistake, but I've always been bad about taking pictures. Those reading this are probably very familiar with the quality and consistency of my picture taking. On our way to District Conference in our Branch President's car we got a flat tire. But our Branch President is hilarious and he was like "We're going to drive on it until we can find a car shop". So we drove on a totally flat tire for probably ten or twelve minutes. By the time we found a new tire the old one was not just flat but totally shredded. Funny stuff. But we made it to the conference on time and our Branch President made us some way good soup for lunch afterwards.

While Elder Davis and I were crossing a bridge the other day we realized that there were some really big fish in a river a few meters below us. We weren't there too long before they had all spotted us and come to beg us for food. Silly fish. They reminded me of three goldfish that live in Kent, WA.

I still haven't been to a normal church meeting in Akita yet. Two days ago was District Conference and the week before that was General Conference. So I still haven't met several of the members. I didn't write an email last week so I don't think I mentioned that General Conference was FANTASTIC! One of the themes that I liked was the importance of families. Families are ordained of God and are important in helping us to learn and prepare to again meet God. The happiest people I know are the ones who love and prioritize their families and make continuous efforts to strengthen family relationships. Speaking of families, I recently got a really cool keyboard app (since my standard Samsung one stopped cooperating) and I can put pictures behind it!

I read Ether 6 this week. I don't remember if I said anything about it the last time I read it but I made a lot of parallels between the barges, the storm, the stones that shine in the darkness, and other stuff in that chapter to missionary work. I recommend that you all read Ether 6 while thinking about the stones touched by Jesus as missionaries/members of the church. I think it will be pretty fun. :) I'm also including a link for those people on this list who happen to not be in possession of a Book of Mormon because this part is one of my favorites:
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/ether/6?lang=eng

Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

Excerpt from the family letter: This week I got to go to Sendai for MLC which stands for Mission Leadership Conference. I think that President Sekiguchi maybe felt bad for me because I'm so old and had not been a zone leader yet. So he made me a zone leader. What a guy. MLC was pretty fun. I think that I ended up talking more than the average person because I had some ideas about how to improve the mission that were maybe a little different than other peoples' ideas. I think that President Sekiguchi appreciated some of them though. He thanked me for coming afterwards. :)


While Elder Davis and I were crossing a bridge the other day we realized that there were some really big fish in a river a few meters below us. We weren't there too long before they had all spotted us and come to beg us for food. Silly fish. They reminded me of Orange Juice, Fireface, and Lacy. :)

I only have about two and a half months left of mission. Hmm.

I read Ether 6 this week. I don't remember if I said anything about it the last time I read it but I made a lot of lines between the barges, the storm, the stones that shine in the darkness, and other stuff in that chapter to missionary work. I recommend that you all read Ether 6 while thinking about the stones touched by Jesus as missionaries/members of the church. I think it will be pretty fun. :)

I love you the most,
Ben

 Elder Davis

Week 94

Hello Mommy,

My week number just keeps getting bigger and bigger. 94 is a lot of weeks. I did love General Conference. I forgot to write in my last weekly how much I was dying to watch it. I don't remember exactly how many minutes I spent on that weekly but it wasn't very many. One thing that stood out to me from conference was the blessings that President Nelson and Elder Rasband gave at the end of their talks. I especially liked Elder Rasband's.

Elder Rasband
Take heart, brothers and sisters. Yes, we live in perilous times, but as we stay on the covenant path, we need not fear. I bless you that as you do so, you will not be troubled by the times in which we live or the troubles that come your way. I bless you to choose to stand in holy places and be not moved. I bless you to believe in the promises of Jesus Christ, that He lives and that He is watching over us, caring for us and standing by us. In the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.

President Nelson
Brothers and sisters, I thank you for your faith and sustaining efforts. I leave my love and blessing upon you, that you may feast upon the word of the Lord and apply His teachings in your personal lives. I assure you that revelation continues in the Church and will continue until “the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.”
I bless you with increased faith in Him and in His holy work, with faith and patience to endure your personal challenges in life. I bless you to become exemplary Latter-day Saints. I so bless you and bear my testimony that God lives! Jesus is the Christ! This is His Church. We are His people, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Another couple that I remember are the throwing the food out of the plane one, Elder Bednar's rope one, and President Oaks' family one. I don't actually remember what President Nelson's last one was about but Elder Rasband's daughter's question about whether or not to have kids was a good one.

My new area is very good. The members are way more supportive than Morioka and we have some good places to get groceries. We have a 業務スーパー, we have a fruit and vegetable stand, and we have a Don Quijote. There is also a pretty good restaurant right by the apartment that happens to also be pretty cheap. My companion is Elder Davis. He's from Arizona and has been out about 9 months I think. We have a few people that we're trying to work with but none with overwhelming desire to get baptized and join the church. We're working on changing their minds. :) The weather is okay. The last few nights have been pretty chilly. This side of the island is okay. A little bit less likely to get covered by water than the other side I think.

I love you the most!
BeN

Week 93

Hello,

い'ヴぇてょうghたぼうtどいんgてぃsふぉらうぃぇのwぶtねヴぇrはヴぇ.いじゅstぇftmyけyぼあrどんじゃぱねせもであんdtyぺdとmyへあrt'sこんてんt.うぁtどようてぃんk?

If anyone can read what I just wrote it would be Amy. I just left my keyboard on Japanese mode and typed in English. It was pretty fun.

(Amy's response: Okay, so that thing that Ben wrote in English using the Japanese keyboard says, "I've thought about doing this for a while but never have. I just left my keyboard on Japanese mode and typed to my heart's content. What do you think?")

Brother Kurosawa got baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday! His life situation is pretty poor but he has committed to improving it and believes that being baptized and following the commandments will help him do that. He's right as long as he actually tries hard to fix it. 

I'm transferring to Akita. That's where I picked up my current companion from last transfer. He really loved that area and the members are apparently way more supportive than they are here. I'm pretty excited for that. I plan to see lots more miracles in Akita! I need to pack because I did personal study this morning, then I went to lunch with Brother Shibata because it was our last chance. And then I had to talk to Brother Kurosawa on the phone for a little bit. So I haven't started yet. Hopefully everything fits in my suitcases...

Have a great week!

Elder Mitchell

 After the baptism.

Two of the district members couldn't make it to our last District 

Meeting so they were amateurly photo shopped in. :)

Week 92

This week we had a big mission sports conference. It was pretty fun except that I was last for pictures so I didn't get as much sports time as I would have liked. The night before the conference I got peer-pressured into getting a "king" size at Sukiya which is a popular chain restaurant in Japan. It wasn't very good and I ended up being the only one of the six there to finish it. They all went for take-out boxes.

I got a couple of pictures this week. One is the Sukiya. The other is with an Elder that I served in Iwaki with. He wasn't my companion but he's way funny. His name is Elder Nishino and he's from Sapporo.

We're planning on having a baptism this Saturday for Brother Kurosawa. Please pray for him to be ready by then. We still have a couple of things to work out with him before then.

Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

Week 91

This week we went to Yakiniku King. It was really fun. One of the Elders decided at the end that we needed to eat lots of chocolate cake and started ordering them by sixes. He ended up eating 12 pieces of cake. I think I only had five. I haven't ever been too interested in chocolate cake. I prefer other kinds of cake. And ice cream. And fruit pies.

I also saw a Lamborghini this week. It was white. My best guess is that it was a Veneno. I've been separated from the internet for a while so I couldn't say for sure.

We've met with our friend Brother Kurosawa almost every day for the past week. He has already cut his smoking in half! We're doing our best to help him prepare for baptism and active membership in the church. His date is currently for the 6th of October.

I've decided that I like asking people if they know why Jesus is so famous. Basically everyone knows that he resurrected after three days, so if they ultimately reject me, they have to by implication, ignore the fact that Jesus is the Son of God. Unless they happen to be Christian already. Then it turns into a discussion about Joseph Smith and the restoration. A lot of people think that anyone who sees God is crazy. And it's probably true that most people who claim to see God are crazy, but to rule out the possibility of God being seen would have to rule out either God's existence or his ability to make miracles. I believe in both God's existence and his ability to perform miracles. And I'm grateful for this time that I have to share my testimony as a missionary.

Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

Week 90

Hello everyone,

This week I had 35 plates of sushi in one sitting. It was pretty fun. The picture is a little bit before we actually finished, and the Elder I'm sitting next to is not actually my companion, because he sat at another table and didn't do the all-you-can-eat.

The work here in Morioka has been speeding up a lot lately! We unfortunately had to drop a baptismal date because Sasaki Kyodai's daughter doesn't like the idea of him joining a church. He is 87 years old, but we really wanted to baptize him. :( We have a couple new people that seem really promising though. One of our new people showed up to church on Sunday with a church address card and restoration pamphlet. He remembered meeting us but we didn't remember meeting him at all. We don't think that our failure to remember him showed... (Missionaries are not perfect :)) We had a great lesson with him and our recent convert, Brother Shibata, during the second hour of church and then another good one last night. We don't have a baptismal date with him yet but based on our conversation with him he believes that following the commandments and getting baptized will help him with some struggles that he currently has in his life. And it will! He's planning on coming to English class too. I think that part of the reason for our increased success is that we're praying not just to find prepared people, but for prepared people to find us. Our mission president asked us to do that at a recent zone conference.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

 Sushi

My companion and I with Brother Shibata

Week 89

Sorry I'm not going to write a weekly today. I had a grand plan last week to plan out a series of emails to convert all who read them. I didn't make that plan. I don't know when I would. Maybe during a personal study one morning or a night when the APs are gone. It's kind of hard to do productive stuff with four Elders all in the same apartment. I don't know if you all can imagine that at all but it's a thing. :) I think I might call that email series "The End is Near" or something like that. That sounds plenty dramatic to me. I bet it will grab the attention of all of the readers. :)

I bought some shoes today. They're Nike. Unfortunately there weren't too many other options. I got the second cheapest ones there. I might take a picture in just a second.

I've been thinking about perspective a little bit lately. This isn't just a this-week thing, I'm not quite sure how long it's been since I first had this thought but I thought I might share it. I guess we'll see if I can write it down and if it makes sense at all. Here we go: I read a comment on the internet one time. It was for a scientific article. The comment was something to the effect of "Here is science making progress while religion makes excuses". I didn't really like it for a few different reasons. One is because science people are way stuck-up and self-satisfied in how "conclusive" their results are. They're probably all BMW X5 drivers. I've decided I don't like those people. Anyway, the fact that they can keep making discoveries like they do means that there are still plenty of things to be learned about nature, space, and the world; which all happen to be God's creations. But somehow they think that each discovery they make is convincing evidence that God is not there. Hmm. That's like me opening the fridge and "discovering" milk, orange juice, pears, spinach, and however many other things I was interested in. And each time saying that the existence of those things means that there is no expired kimchi in the fridge. There are actually two expired containers of kimchi in our fridge right now. I've wanted to throw them away but haven't ever because they're on the other Elder's shelf. These kind of people ask things like "where does God live?" and take the fact that I don't have a post address as a reason to smile smugly and continue on with their silly version of "real life". Surface checkers.

Anyway, there are a couple of mistakes these kind of people make. The first one I would like to call the "refrigerator fallacy". I made it up just now. Just kidding there's probably a better name for it, but the fact that one thing exists does not cancel out the possibility of something else existing. They would have to know the existence of literally every single particle in the universe to use that logic and they're not too close to doing that yet. The other is to say that the evidence that God exists is too small to believe. This is what I planned on typing about when I said I was thinking about perspective. I got a little distracted. :) Anyway, I thought a little bit about how little evidence of God's existence we could have and still believe in him. Does God have a little evidence control that he sets for each of the worlds? Is the amount of evidence we have a lot? Is our setting only at 5%? Is it at .000001%? We have records of God and Jesus Christ coming to the Earth. The Bible is one of the most read books in the world. Is it too old? If it were 5000 years older would it be too old? If it were 100000000000000000000000 years older would that be too much? Would those accounts become untrustworthy? We don't have any idea how hard it is too believe in God because we don't know anything about any other existences. We forgot everything when we came to Earth. I don't know if we have "all" of the evidence that God exists, but all the things we do have are evidence of God. We have the testimonies of Book of Mormon prophets as well as Bible prophets. We have current living prophets today and modern-revelation guiding our church. We have commandments and covenants which when faithfully kept help us out immensely (that's becoming obvious even to those not of our faith). We have bodies made in the image of God received through the divine appointment of families. BYU has a surplus of beautiful women that make me want to have a family of my own. We have super-fancy technology that's getting better all the time. We have Subaru Impreza's and Mazda Roadster's (which I happen to appreciate. I might get one someday). We even have Pacific Raceways less than ten minutes from our house. What more could we ask for?? I'm not sure. But some people disregard all of that saying that it's somehow "not enough". I don't think they know what would be "enough". I didn't even mention the fact that we can study this stuff for ourselves and recieve a personal witness from the Holy Ghost that it's true. That was actually on purpose. I think that kind of destroys any chance the scales had of balancing.

Those are my thoughts on perspective. We don't know anything else so it's hard to say things like "too much" or "too little". Or even "too hard". Making judgements like that exalts ourselves to a level higher than He who sent us here. No level of experience we can have on this earth is more experience than God has.

I hope you all weren't bored by my thoughts on perspective. I thought it was a pretty cool idea even if I didn't write it out very well. Maybe you could all study and ponder about that this week and tell me how it goes next week. :)

I love you the most!!
BEN

 Some happiness I found at a fruit stand while we were knocking on doors. 

They were only 100 yen (93ish cents)

My new shoes

Week 88

Brothers and Sisters,

This is start of an email I just got:

Dear Elder Mitchell,

Can you believe it?  We are already preparing for your release on January 4  2019.  Would you please answer the questions below and send them back as soon as possible.

 Thank you so much!

I wasn't expecting this quite so soon. But something cool is that I will have been a missionary for parts of four different calendar years. I entered the MTC on December 28, 2016. That means I was a missionary for all of 2017 and will be for all of 2018 too. Maybe my missionary plaque will say 2016-2019. That would be pretty cool. :)

It being week 88 right now means that the number of opportunities I have to email y'all are becoming fewer and fewer with each week that passes. I don't have a good plan right now, but I hope to have my last several emails be even better than they've been up to this point. That may or may not be very difficult...

Recently our mission president has been telling us to keep talking to people all the way up until our curfew which is 9 pm if we don't have a lesson (rather than studying at the end of the day to spare people coming to their doors late at night) and this week we found the reason for it. Lots of people politely tell us that it's late and we should think about heading home (which wasn't a huge surprise) but this week was a little different. We were knocking on our last door at about 8:40 last Sunday before the 15 minute bike ride home and talked to a really nice guy that has studied Christianity a little bit but doesn't currently practice a religion of his own. He told us that he's not usually home, but if we came back at about the same time the chances would be higher! I don't know if anyone else in the mission has ended up finding anyone like that, but our talk with him turned into a 20 minute lesson about the Book of Mormon and he gladly accepted a copy! It was evidence to me that mission leaders are led by God and receive revelation to help prepared people hear the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Have a great week!

Elder Mitchell