Week 101

Hello world,

This is the first P-day of my last transfer. Last week was technically the first one, but I didn't have my new companion yet. So I only have... 5(?!?!?) more of these emails. I hope that some people have enjoyed reading them. I sometimes feel bad that I'm not a terribly talented writer and that sometimes things I say don't come across the way that I wish they would. I think that some ancient prophets have said similar things: "And I said unto him: Lord, the Gentiles will mock at these things, because of our weakness in writing; for Lord thou hast made us mighty in word by faith, but thou hast not made us mighty in writing" (Ether 12). I think that Ether might have been better off than me. He at least seems to think that he could speak pretty well. I'm not sure that I can claim to be good at speaking either. Lol

This week we got dropped by a friend who had met with us a few times to talk about the Book of Mormon. We weren't too sad. Just a little bit. His reasons for stopping weren't really the ones that I like to hear. They were along the lines of "I've thought about my future and I'm going to be moving pretty soon. I don't consider myself to be a very religious person, but Christianity kind of contradicts Japanese culture. I'm also pretty busy with school and final projects so learning about this stuff is kind of hard". If I had to pick one that I could most identify with it would probably be the busyness with school. But none of his reasons had anything to do with the truth of this message and whether or not the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the Earth in it's fulness. We told him that there will always be trials and reasons why it would be "hard" to follow Christ, but those are simply less important than the truth of the gospel. If we truly believe that we can live eternally with God, our Heavenly Father, and our families through believing in Jesus Christ and keeping his commandments then we will be willing to make sacrifices.

I got to have Thanksgiving dinner with the senior couple in our branch. They're super great! They couldn't do a turkey because Japanese people generally don't have ovens and Thanksgiving isn't widely celebrated in Japan, but they made mashed potatoes and some really good chicken. They also fed us a couple different kinds of salad. In the pictures you can't see any of the food so we decided that we'd have to have another one for Christmas so we could get a picture with the food. They're great. :)

I love you all (at least a little bit)! Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

week 99

Hello friends,

I've been pretty bad about sending emails lately.

A few weeks ago my companion and I lowered a couple of desks off a second story balcony with sheets and towels because we couldn't take them apart or get them through the hallway. It was pretty fun. I would highly recommend it. No pictures because at the time we were worried it might go badly and we didn't want any more evidence than was necessary.

Last week I decided to do as many push-ups as I could in a minute. It was fun.

This week we talked to a guy named Takahashi!! He is the first person who has ever asked me when he could learn more about the church. He's excited to come on Sunday!

I'm really grateful for the restoration of the gospel. All churches can talk about how happy they are and how much church has helped them, but this is the only one I know of that claims to have visitations from heaven, to have ancient records translated by the power of God, and to be led by a living prophet today. I know that there is a prophet today just like there was in Bible and Book of Mormon times. God loves us and prophets are the way that he has always used to communicate with his children here on the earth. I'm so grateful to know about the restoration of the gospel.

I have a few pictures from a recent district meeting. Some of them are better than others.

Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

Hello family,
I'm not sure that anything super interesting happened this week. We had interviews with President Sekiguchi. He told me that I can baptize two or three more people before I leave because I'm great. He flatters me. I would be pretty pleased if that were to happen. We've got a college dude that we've met a few times that thinks pretty deeply about Plan of Salvation sort of stuff and knows bits of lots of different religions. He needs to get baptized. We also found a super cool older dude that asked us when he could hear more about the church! I think that's maybe the first time that's ever happened to me. We told him a little bit about Joseph Smith and the restoration and he told us he was excited to come to church on Sunday! That was probably the highlight of my week. I hope that he really does come to church.

I realized that I have way more toiletries than I need to make it through the rest of my mission. I'm thinking I might sell some of my American toothpaste to some poor, unfortunate souls serving missions in Japan who might be in need of that sort of thing. I also bought a huge shaving foam can a few weeks ago that I'll have to open this week. There's no way I can use all of it either before I leave.

There is a pretty good hill that we have to ride up sometimes. I enjoy riding down it. I like to think that I can hit 40 or 45. I suppose I won't ever know for sure but it entertains me even without knowing the specific number of mph(mice playing hangman)'s.

College is right around the corner. So is go-kart racing. I don't know if you all remember that I've been having some minor withdrawal symptoms from lack of automobile racing, but I do. I thought you could all use a bit of reminding. :)

There's a pretty good restaurant nearby called Dodgers. It's pretty cheap. They also have unlimited rice and miso soup. I appreciate it.

I love you all the most!
beN

These are all of the pictures we ended up with after District Council Meeting. Some of them are better than others.

Week 98

Hello family,

Have I not said anything about my area/zone? I've been here for like a month. Shoot. It's the same zone as I was in last transfer. It's called the Morioka zone. It used to be one of the biggest but this transfer became the smallest. We only have like 20 people in it and three zones. But we've also been getting some of the highest numbers in the mission which is pretty cool. I like to think it's mostly because I'm one of the zone leaders. :) Akita is pretty good. The members are very supportive of the missionaries and it's a pretty big branch. Last week we had 51 people at sacrament meeting.

A week or two ago we got a baptismal date with a dude named Toma. I don't remember if he made it into an email. It got dropped pretty fast. He hadn't been keeping commitments quite like we wanted him to, but we felt like we could go for a baptismal date anyway. It was kind of a sink or swim thing I guess. We had tried other ways to get him to read and pray, but we thought that he might have a bit more motivation to do it if he had a baptismal date goal to work towards. He had clearly thought about it a lot but ultimately decided that he wasn't quite ready. He thought that he'd have to reject lots of Asian culture. And he would have to a little bit.

We are meeting with a dude named Yuki. He's super smart and seems to enjoy meeting with us and talking about stuff like prophets and the plan of salvation. :) Those are the two things we talked about last week. He's one of my favorite people. He has been to church three times and reads the things that we ask him to. We're supposed to meet him tomorrow too.

I've seen a few different people changing to winter tires in the last week or so. I'm a little bit worried about that. I've made it this far without buying snow boots and I'm not planning on buying any for just a few weeks either. I'll probably survive.

I forgot to say that I did a fitness test for myself this morning. I only did one thing and it was 60 seconds of push-ups. I got 47.5. I rounded it up to 48 though since I had to start my timer and then go. It probably cost me at least 3/4 of a push-up. Probably. :) I also weigh 167 right now. I was about 162 for a little while but then I had three companions in a row that all eat a lot. Elder Warner, Elder Bunderson, and Elder Richardson. It wasn't good for my slim figure. I've been dropping a little bit though lately with Elders Dickerson and Davis. They don't eat a whole lot. Maybe by the time I go home I'll be 150 again. Or maybe 135 like my drivers license thinks I am. :) Speaking of which I think that thing expires the April after I get back.

I love you all the most,
BeN

Week 97

Some Sadness. . .

I got a letter from the post office the other day saying that I needed to call them because I had a package from America. It was a very short letter and there was part of it that I couldn't understand even with my handy dandy Japanese app. So I called them and tried to figure out what was up because they would normally just bring the package to me. And if I wasn't home they would leave a delivery notice, not send me a letter (they actually knocked on the door for during dinner time and gave the letter to me in person which was kind of weird too). I called and talked to a lady that wasn't too happy to talk to me and she told me that the letter was referring to itself and I should enjoy its contents. I had told her a few times that it was from her and I even read it to her. After that we decided that we had to just go in to the post office and show it to them. We did so.

We ended up going to a smaller post office that apparently isn't actually connected to the distribution center that's a bit further away in the other direction, but the nice lady there looked at the letter and called the other post office for us. She was on the phone for a few minutes too. Probably six or seven. She came back saying that there was indeed a package, but it had been damaged in transit and they wanted me to go check on it. She said that some stuff had fallen out of it. We were leaving town that night for companion exchanges. We ultimately set up for them to bring it anyway because we couldn't make it to the other post office. I was pretty surprised when my companion told them we couldn't make it because if anyone can get to the post office it's the missionaries. I didn't know exactly where it was, but it would have been hard to fix because the lady helping us out was on the phone trying to negotiate for us with her fancy post office powers. We gave them two time slots we would be home for. One for two days out, last Saturday. And another one for the next Monday which would be yesterday.

After it didn't come on Saturday I was not really interested in waiting until Monday to find out what had become of the package that I hadn't been expecting and apparently had been damaged so I was like "hey we're going to the post office to check on it like they said we were supposed to do in the first place". So we did. It was relatively close to closing time for the post office so we kind of hurried to have time for whatever was going to go down. The lady didn't know about my package. She at first told me there wasn't one. I told her to try harder (nicely) and gave her some more information that might help. I hadn't brought the letter because I thought it would be pretty easy to look up with my name and phone number. And the letter didn't say anything on it anyway. I think she ended up calling her own customer service counter with the number that I gave her. I was a little bit frustrated because no one knew where my package was and kept telling me it didn't exist. I'm not quite sure whose fault that was. Probably twenty minutes later she came back with a dude that was clearly in the mail-handling side of things. He gave me his card and told me to follow him to the other section of the building. I liked him. He was really nice.

Breakfast break. This email is quite a lot longer than I thought it might be.

We followed him outside and around to the other section, took an elevator and went through a security door. He sat us down at a table and asked for my ID so that he could bring me the package. The table was in a very large room and there were several other people working there. He came back with a brown box and a camera. He said that a lot of stuff had fallen out. He wanted to take pictures as we opened it together. Inside the brown box there was a white and red one that looked more like the kind that I've gotten packages in in the past. Except it was ripped from top to the bottom. It had a lot of post office tape that had been put there in order to close the box again. I wondered if they might have replaced some things that had fallen out. It looked like the box might have a decent amount of stuff still in it. He opened it up and showed it to me. It was 90% gone. There was a picante sauce and a few candies and granola bars. At this point it was probably a little after five when we were supposed to be setting up for a Halloween party. We sent the other missionaries a message saying that we'd be late.

He wasn't too confident in his English ability so he had me tell him everything that was supposed to be in there and we looked and counted the things that there were. There was no peanut butter. He circled that in red. There were no triscuits or hand warmers. That got circled too. We made it through the whole thing and ended with a 1 next to Picante Sauce and a 7 next to the granola bars and candies. He said that Tokyo had repackaged it and that it had been broken when it got to Japan. He would send his report and all the pictures to Tokyo who would talk to America and see what they could do. I was supposed to contact the sender of the package and let them know what had happened but he guessed that you would probably also get a call from U.S. Postal service. We barely got to the Halloween party by six when it was supposed to start. Fortunately the Sisters and our Senior couple had set everything up already.

That's most of the story. I took a couple pictures too after we finished. Just one of the box and one of what was left. I'll send them if you would like them. What do you think? Have you heard from the post office already? I was a little bit sad about all of the food that disappeared but there wasn't anything in there that I should have been more sad about was there? I was worried that there might have been something at the bottom that said "cards". I wasn't quite sure though. I wasn't sure exactly how I should feel when I saw the package either. I know you still love me a lot to send me a package of all of my favorite things over the Pacific ocean even the post office didn't love me enough to deliver it to me.

I love you the most,
Ben

Week 96

This week was pretty good. We started it off by attempting to get some extra desks out of the Sister's apartment. Their apartment is way nicer than ours, by the way. Their fridge probably cost a good three times what ours did and is probably twice the size. I'm not sure why. We eat probably double what they do. Anyway, we couldn't get the desks out the doorway because the fridge was in the way and we weren't sure that even if we moved the fridge that we could get it around the corner in the hallway. Which meant that we had two options. We could disassemble them and take them out piece by piece, or we could toss them out the window/off the second story balcony. Sister Lee looked at them a little bit before we came back (after the first attempt we had to leave and teach English class so we went back the next morning) and discovered that it would be very difficult to take them apart. That left us with only one option. Raise your hand if you remember what it was! :)

So we couldn't actually toss them because they're big and would probably break one of the classy automobiles parked in front of their apartment. So we had to tie them with a sheet and lower them using some weird bath towel/blanket things that we found in our apartment. We got them out without breaking a single thing including ourselves. It was very fun. I would definitely do it again. 10/10. Unfortunately no pictures because I was worried that if our desks fell then we would have too much evidence. Since they didn't I feel fine about sharing the whole story with you. :)

We also went to Yokote twice this week. Yokote is a pretty small place. I got there and walked out of the train station and said "this is a small place". Or something like that. Before the mission I never thought about how big places were or how I would tell. But I think I'm okay at judging the size of places. The first time we went was for companion exchanges. I went with Elder Anderson who is half Japanese but went to some elementary school in Japan so his Japanese is very good. It was fun. I got katsudon there. The next time was for a couple of baptismal interviews that they had. He's the district leader and couldn't interview his own candidates so I got to go do them. That time we went to a fancy udon place.

I love you the most!
bEn

We also got ramen with our friend, Tsukasa. He's pretty cool. :)

We got ramen with our friend, Tsukasa. He's pretty cool. :)