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

Week 87

A scripture that I really liked this week was from Helaman 3. It goes like this:
"29 Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked—
30 And land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out."

I like the idea that anyone can choose to follow the example of our Savior and receive the associated blessings that go along with that; no matter what our current life circumstances are. I'm trying my best to be a "man of Christ" like it says in this scripture and I have faith that I can return to live with God again. I invite you all to lay hold upon the word of God this week and let it make you men and women of Christ. Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Mitchell

excerpts from an email to the family:

This week I got to interview two people for baptism (that being one of the responsibilities of the district leader - to interview baptismal candidates of those taught by people in his district). One was a 14 year old girl whose grandma is a member. The other was a 30ish year old man whose wife is a member. They both passed. The girl was baptized in the ocean in Miyako. The brother is supposed to get baptized tonight in the Morioka church. He was taught by the APs.

This week I went to Akita to get my new companion. His name is Elder Dickerson and he's from Heber Utah. He's the third of five children. He has two old sisters, one younger brother and the youngest is his little sister. He ran cross country in high school. His Japanese is pretty good. He's taller than I am. I'm kind of short. Umm.

I also went to Miyako for their baptismal interview and splits. It was kind of fun. We didn't have too much time in Morioka this week. And I'm supposed to go to Sendai this week too so that will mean some kind of short time in Morioka this week too.

I love you the most,
BEn

 Me and Elder Dickerson

Week 86

I'm in Akita because the other three Elders drove to Sendai. I'm hanging out with them for today and then bringing my new companion back to Morioka. We're at a Mexican restaurant right now. It's kind of an interesting place. I hope they bring me lots of food because I am very very hungry right now. I had to wake up a little hit before four this morning to catch the train here. So I had breakfast at about four thirty. And that was a long long time ago.

We got transfer calls last week. I'm staying in Morioka. My apartment has two Elders leaving. And then one more is leaving halfway through next transfer to get back in time for school. I'm not quite sure what's going to happen then but I'll be the only one left from last transfer in the apartment in a few weeks assuming that Elder Davies' leaving early doesn't affect me.

Elders Davies and Haskins have been very interested in arm wrestling lately. I beat them both.

My enchiladas are taking a long time.

The fourteen Elders in the apartment a while ago wasn't too bad. We had floor space for all of them. 16 would have been quite a bit harder.

I just got tacos!

I love you all the most,
Ben

Week 85

Sorry I don't really have any time to write at all. I did take some pictures from a hike we did this week though. We got an extra p-day yesterday so we decided to go hike Mount Iwate. It was pretty fun. The extra p-day was for getting close to our mission baptismal goal last transfer. We had the highest baptismal numbers for a single month that our mission has had in quite a long time (10).

The typhoon didn't really show up. I don't think we even had a light breeze.

This week at zone conference we talked about introducing the Book of Mormon. When we introduce the Book of Mormon we're supposed to make it sound really myterious. We make sure to mention things like the fact that Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ and that he was shown the place of an ancient record by an angel. He then translated that record by the power of God, which gives us the opportunity to learn first-hand what happens when people follow Jesus Christ.

I love you all!
Elder Mitchell

The view from Mount Iwate.

Week 84

We just finished up going fishing with Brother Shibata who got baptized last week. We got special permission to go to Miyako because apparently ocean fishing is better than other kinds. We unfortunately only got one fish. That's okay though. It was pretty fun.

This week Elder Richardson was bitten by a bug and almost couldn't fit his foot in his shoe because of how swollen it was. We had to go to the doctor and get some fancy medicine for it. Brother Shibata came and waited at the doctor with us. Then he bought us tonkatsu. He's great.

We recently started a thing that President Sekiguchi calls the "Siesta schedule". It's where we wake up at 5am but get to take a nap from 1:00 to 2:30 after lunch. That was actually started yesterday. So we've only done it once. I'm not a huge fan so far...

Our friend Tak is in the military and was a little bit worried about whether or not that was okay. We shared the Title of Liberty with him. For those who aren't familiar with it here is a quick excerpt from Alma 46, "And it came to pass that he rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it—In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children—and he fastened it upon the end of a pole. And he fastened on his head-plate, and his breastplate, and his shields, and girded on his armor about his loins; and he took the pole, which had on the end thereof his rent coat, (and he called it the title of liberty) and he bowed himself to the earth, and he prayed mightily unto his God for the blessings of liberty to rest upon his brethren, so long as there should a band of Christians remain to possess the land". This basically says that fighting is justified in order to protect your country, your freedom, and your family.

We talked to a pretty cool dude this week. He started with an English "No thank you" and started closing the door. But we're pretty seasoned missionaries and do our best to share the gospel and teach by the Spirit so with some persuasion and long-suffering we had a decent conversation and answered his questions about the purpose of commandments and who God is. He had met with missionaries from other churches before but didn't know too much about how our church differs from other Christian churches. We got permission to come back and talk with him again. :)

Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

 Most of my district.

Fishing with Brother Shibata.

Week 83

Mommy,

This picture was taken at a place called Iwayama. It's not too far from where we live. The baptism was really good. I kind of expected that the mission would post our pictures of it so I wasn't too worried about putting it on Facebook. I don't have good Wi-Fi right now so I can't send them. You can just know that it went well. :)

I feel like not too much happened this week besides the baptism. We had a lot that we had to teach him so we spent a long time meeting with him and teaching him all of it. The baptism did indeed go very well. I'm not sure exactly what kind of details you all want. I think there are some more pictures I can put on Facebook. Maybe that will happen tomorrow. As far as the baptismal service goes, we didn't do a whole lot. We had an opening hymn and prayer, I gave a short talk, Brother Shibata and I went in the river and got a little bit wet, then we had a closing song and prayer. He also gave a short testimony in sacrament meeting.

Today we tried to go fishing with a young part-member family. It wasn't great. I don't like sunshine. I know that this transfer is only five weeks but I don't know about other ones and I haven't heard about any release dates lately.

I love you the most,
BeN

 Mission Leadersup training on July 6, 2018

 Shibata San's baptism on July 29, 2018, in the Nakatsugawa river.