Week 105

Merry Christmas!!!!!

Today was pretty busy with a video call to my family and district pday. We played ping-pong in the morning and went to the senior couples' apartment for a Christmas lunch in the afternoon. Then we played games (some of which will be very good for dating in a couple weeks :)) and went grocery shopping. I love my family so much. I haven't seen them in so long and I can't wait to see them in real life in a week and a half.

I love the Christmas season. I love that we still celebrate the birth of our Savior 2000 years after he lived on the earth. He and our Heavenly Father love us so much that Jesus came to the earth to give us the opportunity to follow him and receive eternal life. Some people get a little side-tracked on presents and stuff like that, but please remember the reason for Christmas and serve someone.

Merry Christmas!!!!!
Elder Mitchell

Week 104

Hello everyone,

I'm basically dead. I have two more weeks as a missionary. The time has really gone fast and I'm working hard to make the rest of my time count. If any of you have forgotten what the life of a missionary entails, it goes something like this: wake up at 6:30 and try to exercise for a little bit. After that it's time to eat breakfast and get ready for the day. We study and plan until 10:00am and then go fulfill any appointments we had for the morning and introduce ourselves to as many people as we can. The hope with the introductions is that we'll find people willing to listen to our church's unique message and have interest in learning more. Then we have lunch and study for another couple hours. Then we go back out into the world to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with everyone. If we don't have any appointments then we're searching for new people to teach. And then we come back for dinner. Lately dinner has been at eight because people don't really like it too much when we knock on their doors after that. Curfew is at nine. And lights out is at ten thirty. There's sometimes a little bit of other drama. We have district meetings once a week and zone conference every six weeks. Sometimes we decide that it's a good idea to go to another area and work with other missionaries so that we can learn from each other. We also have interviews with our mission president every other transfer, and sometimes we have mission conferences like we did for Christmas a couple weeks ago. I think that's about it. I guess we have church every Sunday. We're supposed to go to that... :)

Some thoughts that I have: A mission is exactly two years. Sometimes people have reasons to go home early, and in rare cases missionaries can stay for an extra transfer or two, but it's a very well defined period of time. And time waits for no one. Some similar activities are school, careers, going on a run, and eating a pizza. It doesn't matter how much effort you spend on making them last, how much you try to enjoy it, or how much you try to do other things at the same time, they will come to an end. And at that point all you can do is move forward. We have to make the most of the time we have now. I'm not sure if that's sad but it's definitely true.

Here's a short miracle that my companion and I saw this week! We had a goal of finding three new people who we could visit again and teach about the church and we were stuck at one all the way until Sunday night with a few hours left. We knew that we needed to find two more people so we found a huge line of apartments inhabited mostly by graduate students at a nearby college and started knocking on their doors. For some reason we had several contacts that were very high quality, but none of them would let us come back and talk again. We got down to the last hour and had a 40 minute walk back to the apartment in the snow. We thought about leaving and just trying to talk to people on the street, but we decided to stay and do one last building. One of the first doors was a super nice college kid that we taught about the restoration and got a preferred return visit time! About five doors later we talked to a college girl that also had interest in hearing more! We ended up being late because of how long we spent talking to people in that apartment building and made our goal for the week!! We said a prayer of thanks to Heavenly Father and then walked home.

Lots of love!
Elder Mitchell

P.S. I got bullied into dressing up like Santa Claus.

Week 103

Hello,

The most exciting thing this week was the mission Christmas conference that we had near the American Air Force Base in Misawa. It was really fun and the food they fed us was fantastic. I've always been really grateful for how much support I've gotten as a missionary. One of my favorite ways to be supported as a missionary is to be fed really good food. I'm probably the only missionary like that in the whole world... or maybe not.

I've been reading the Book of Mormon lately and been really impressed by all of the great examples of faith in it. They often found themselves in really dangerous circumstances, and faced brutal opposition, but were always blessed by their commitment to follow the prophet and keep the commandments. It's so easy to see the pride cycle happen in the Book of Mormon because of how quickly it passes through years and decades. The pride cycle generally starts with righteousness, and leads to prosperity and happiness. But then the people get prideful and start to believe that they don't need God or the prophets. Sometimes it takes a long time for them to humble themselves and give thanks to God, but they are always grateful that they did. Righteousness does not protect people from trials and challenges in their lives (because we need those to learn), but it does bring the promise that God will be with us. I hope that I will always have the faith and the strength to do what I need to to keep God with me at all times.

Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

I don't remember if the food was actually mine. It might have been. 

And the other one is all the stuff that the missionaries 

got from the members for what they call 'fruit basket'. 

I don't remember if I've explained it before. It happens 

every fast Sunday. They just bring us a bunch of food. 

It's pretty fun. Or at least I think so. :)

Week 102

Hey Family,

I feel like not too much happened this week. We did make a baptismal date with one of my favorite people in the entire world. That was pretty fun. He was a little bit difficult but we were difficulter. :) He ultimately agreed to the 15th by saying that IF he felt like the church was true before then he would join it but he didn't think that would happen. We made sure that he was willing to do the work necessary to find out that it is true, and he is!

The biggest obstacle we had with him is that he didn't want to pray because he felt like his heart wouldn't be in it and it would just be mimicking us. Yesterday he still wouldn't pray with us, but he said that he tried praying by himself and that it went well! He also now feels like he could actually decide that he needs to be baptized before the 15th!

I had my last fast Sunday as a missionary this last Sunday. That was weird. I bore my testimony even though I didn't really want to. Are you all proud? :) I don't think that anyone in the branch actually knows that I'm leaving soon. I've tried not to tell anyone except a choice few. And I swore them to secrecy.

I have a picture this week. That's pretty cool

I love you all the most!
bEn

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