Week 51-54-Mission Blog

Its been a while. I’m sorry. Looking at the Google photos is probably better than this email though still because it’s hard to describe a lot of the stuff that’s happening.

I had a few questions from mom and dad. Sorry if I missed any: Did you make it to Abashiri with your mixer and your flour?

Yeah, I made it to Abashiri safely with the mixer and the flour but both of them I couldn’t ship because there wasn’t enough room in my bags. So the flower I carried in my back on in a backpack and the mixer I just basically had to hold but I attached some straps to the mixer box so ended up being okay. I had everybody in my going away group, like the people that were seeing me off, try lifting the bag because I still had 20 kgs of flour. And because it’s mostly old Grandma’s none of them could lift the bag at all. But my new companion and I go to the gym every like five times a week and so it was just good training. A good prep for the transfer.

My hair and skin are also enjoying the extra moisture in the air.

I know this one’s not a question but Japan is awesome crazy moisturizer. Two kind of interesting things that I think of when I see this sentence are: because Japanese hair is so thick whenever I use their conditioner my hair just gets so soft and it means I can no longer style it and it flips out like I have a bowl cut. The second is that all of my Japanese friends are able to get tanned but I’m so pale, and I got that from you Mom, that if I’m outside for 2 hours without sunscreen I become a tomato. However that was only in Nayoro. Abashiri is so chill and there’s clouds a lot of the time so it’s a lot harder to get burned.

Who is your new companion? Where are they from? Did you find a nice cupboard?

My new companions name is Elder hatch. He’s from Gilbert Arizona. And he’s on his very last transfer. And because of that I have a cool opportunity to work with someone who’s about to go home that has all of his knowledge and all of his Japanese that he’s built up over the past two years. Which mostly means I get extra learning opportunities. It’s hard to describe what the first couple days of the transfer has been like because it’s been so much fun just to do missionary work together without. And I really am excited to learn from his example. And I really think that if we work together and work hard we’re going to see a lot more miracles than I felt like ever been able to see any previous area. Maybe that has to do with how much I’ve been following the rules or my companions been following the rules. But I think I’m going to have a lot of fun this transfer and I’ll try to take more photos cuz I’ve been forgetting.

Does anyone get 104 days of summer vacation? Japan does not get 104 days of summer vacation either. But they also split up their breaks. So they have a slightly longer winter break but there’s summer break I think is only like a month and a half.

I was wondering if you could see Russia from Wakkanai? (more specifically Sakhalin island that is part of Russia) When I went to walk an eye I never had a chance to see that part of Russia because I went to the side where you could see rishiri. However I’ve heard that from one of the other tips of Hokkaido that you can see Russia on a clear day of course. Also when I was in nemuro you could see Russia from the coast however those were random Islands under Russian controls whether or not you count that I don’t know.

Hey that was all the questions I could find in the past couple weeks so now I’m going to talk about some cool stuff that I’ve seen I guess.

I’m going to talk about each of the aspects of missionary work which the first one is finding. Before we can teach someone we obviously have to find them first and there’s a lot of things that I’ve learned about finding that I didn’t know in my first through 7th transfers or that have basically just been a culmination of all of those transfers knowledge. Because the way I housed in my third transfer is so much different than I house now.

Housing isn’t just figuring out if they have an interest in learning about Jesus Christ. Because ultimately if they already had that interest then they would probably seek the truth themselves. It’s about cultivating seeds that will pique their interest or giving good interactions so that when they see us at a later date they’re more interested in what we have to say. Which is funny cuz a lot of times we just immediately get the door shut in their face, but not all the time, there are prepared people. But you have to put in the work to find them.

And in the Sapporo Mission especially in Nayoro we had Circle finding, a lot of circle finding. And to make circle finding effective you have to be the kind of person, and it has to be the kind of circle, that allows you to walk up to someone make a relationship with them and then cultivate their interest very slowly over time. So if it’s a sports Circle it’s kind of hard because you’re so constantly focused on the sport. And so the way to do things in those circles is you have to show people the light of Christ through your character and through your words. And then when you have breaks in between sets or games you invite them to your activities and to be able to try out church or something. In Abashiri there’s not a ton of that because me and hatch Chourou agree it’s not very effective for us. But he does other non-conventional finding like going to the gym and talking to people at the gym. Which is kind of his specialty because he went to the gym before the mission and he’s been going to the gym for three transfers now.

But I guess the point I wanted to hone in on for housing or finding is that it doesn’t take asking them about Jesus Christ it’s more important to become a friends to them and show them that the church isn’t just us yapping about Jesus or forcing people to come to church and waste their Sunday. It’s trying to show a light or a hope that there is better things out there that you could improve yourself and you can feel Joy. And so inviting people to church doesn’t have to be a crazy thing. I know even before I became a missionary I had to get that invitation from the missionaries and think 「 oh so scary 」 but really what they’re asking you is to go up to a friend and say hey we do this cool thing on Sundays and I think it’ll be really cool if you join me this time so I can share this cool thing with you. And I really do hope that all of you guys seeing this and reading it will think of a friend and if the timing seems right the next time you see that friend invite them to church it could even be a member. I think one thing that we also forget is that members aren’t perfect. Conversions everyone, in Japan or America, is still working on their conversions. And just being a light to them or showing that you care when they come to church, and that could make a huge difference for them. And maybe it won’t mean anything. Maybe they’ll just move on with their life. However it’s also not just about them being shown the light of Christ. It’s about you trying to do your best to help others and to be your best person as well.

And the second aspect is when you get them to church when you get them to be interested is teaching. Most of the time that’s the missionaries job so you don’t really have to deal with that outside of missionary work. But recently I just got to Abashiri, and I wanted to share what happened this previous Sunday. It’s not my first time teaching a lesson in second hour. However when we were able to teach a lesson to someone who we didn’t even know how to gospel interest, he let us teach him what was important. In one session with him we were able to teach him that if he reads the book of Mormon and to pray to feel the truth through the holy Spirit then he can know the truth for himself. We were able to teach the doctrine of baptism why we do sacrament meeting and all of that. But ultimately my favorite thing that we taught him was how he could self study the scriptures himself. Because being given the tools to learn on your own and to know the truth on your own are so important, so very very important.

Man it’s going to take a while to talk about all this stuff. I guess that’s why I’m not supposed to wait so long to send an email. But ultimately most of this stuff has come up in the past couple of days so there’s not a lot that could be done about that.

The next aspect is baptism. There’s a friend in Abashiri who has only been taught for a month and a half but he received baptism right before I got to the area. And one of the cool things that I really like to see about that, is that we were talking, me and my companion, and we were thinking about the after baptism lessons. Obviously because he was baptized in such a quick time it was hard to teach him all of the principles and great detail. However he had enough knowledge to know that baptism was the right choice to start his covenant path. And we get the opportunity to teach him more of the nuances and cool parts of the gospel. But the thing that I think is really cool is the members have been constantly trying to help him asking if he needs a suit or seeing how they can get him to the temple for the first time we’re checking if he can come to church and just seeing if they can start to create relationships with this person so that they feel so welcome at church even if their favorite missionary transfers. So I also want to invite you to find someone in the ward you don’t have the relationship with or find someone outside the ward that you don’t have a relationship with but you could think that you could make a good friendship with, and then try to build that friendship.

And one more aspect I wanted to talk about with missionary work is prayer. And this is something that I’ve only really realized last night. And specifically because of Elder hatches influence. Because as a missionary you’re constantly praying, you pray to leave the house, you pray when you leave the church, you pray when you start a study, you pray when you end a study, you pray when you start housing, you pray with events, you pray with the church, you pray with meals, etc. But despite all of those prayers that we have to say, Elder hatch still finds time to fit more prayers in and to find more time to have personal communication with his heavenly Father. For me a lot of times I’ve seen prayer as a chore because you have to say it so much is a missionary. But his example of really going farther and doing more than your asked being a consecrated missionary is one of the greatest things I’ve been able to see one of the greatest opportunities I’ve had. I know it’s hard to do all of this stuff it’s really hard to push yourself really far. Even as I’m saying this I’m crying because of how important it’s been to me. But I invite you guys really try to go above and beyond not just for your personal conversion but also because when other people see you guys they can be inspired. Inspired to know the truth of the Gospel, inspired to improve themselves just one more day, inspired to try to coming to church because it’s an experience they really haven’t had. But I know that all of you guys have more opportunities then you may be thinking about to improve your relationship with your heavenly father. And I want you to start finding more ways more opportunities that you can pray, that you can study the scriptures, that you can invite friends to church. And if the missionaries in your area doing their job right and you bring a friend to church hopefully they can continue sharing more about the light of Christ.

It took 30 minutes to write this so I’m going to end off there. And I used voice to text so I’m sorry if there’s a lot of grammatical errors. But I did want to say that Jesus loves you you have a loving heavenly father and he wants what’s best for you. And so go out there and do your best everyday.