NO LETTER:( Japan 4 months 1 week-28 weeks

Elder Mecham didn't send us a letter this week:(  We shall go on:)  He did send us a card full of fantastic photos. Enjoy;)

japan 4 months-27 weeks. 1/4 over

 

The crazy Kawashima san

Indian Curry this week!

This is where we ate food

This week was insane! I honestly can't remember any of it. It was so insanely routine that I barely remember it. But I am going to do my best. OH! We totally visited "do my best" lady this week! Okay "do my best" lady is Kawashima san. She is a grandma who is insane. She comes to Eikaiwa (english class) every week. She is about 56 years old and acts like a 12 year old. She is full of energy and talks SOO fast. Her english is really funny. She has been going to the missionaries english classes for about 3-4 years, but her english is still pretty bad. There is a phrase in Japanese that all Japanese people say, "Ganbate kudasai" It doesn't translate to anything in English so she just says, "do my best." all of the time. So she asked us to visit her before transfers (which is this week. I get my transfer call tonight) and we called her on Tuesday to set up an appointment for Saturday, when we called her she said, "come over right now I am ready!" It was 8 at night... We set up an appointment and the 4 Odori Elders went over to her apartment on Saturday at 6 p.m. The night consisted of cleaning her window blinds, eating a full clove of straight garlic, drinking 1 year and 3 month old rotten apricot juice (which was actually SUPER good) and looking at pictures of her when she looked like an Asian Grace Kelly. She actually was pretty classy when she was young. Oh and then we learned a dance from her. It was a mess. She speaks SO fast. I don't know how. She even spits all over her self on accident some times, but she is shameless so she just lets it happen. She reminded me how we are all human and we all love the same things. "Same things" means we all love being loved. She lives by her self and is divorced. She said that she gets a little lonely sometimes so coming over and visiting her definitely made her night. She is a really cute old lady, and we would have never met her if the missionaries 4 years ago decided not to talk to her. So MIRACLE TIME! This week Watabe Choro and I went on splits. We were talking about how we never see miracles on splits and how everyone talks about seeing miracles when they go on splits. All we saw the whole 8 hours of finding was a crazy guy yell at us for riding our bikes on the sidewalk. Oh and a crazy grandma that said we are "beautiful boys" (it was in english) Well it was time for us to eat and we were going to contact our last person for the night. When we contacted him he said that he was walking home and wanted to talk to someone when we came up and talked to him. We began talking and he told us a story about how he saw an accident a few years ago and really thought about death. He has felt a lot of guilt and pain and felt that he can be healed through Jesus Christ. We testified to him and we know he can be healed and can find the happiness and peace he is looking for. We set up an appointment and we are meeting with him tomorrow. I am excited to see what happens with him. But we both saw our first miracle on our split. That was probably the greatest thing that happened this week too. This week was really painful. We walked so much and just found the whole day, every day. We have one investigator right now who is ignoring us. So we have to do a lot of finding. I am sorry that this is a really scattered email. We are busy with transfers and 19 new missionaries coming in. BUT I love you all so much! Keep being excellent to each other!  

japan 3 months 4 weeks-26

This was at his apartment. Please enjoy the translation he said. This was a facebook post. 

Ice cream break. 

Classy Indian Curry. I was drinking some Lassie. Super good yogurt drink thing. 

Toyohira river. One of my favorite rivers. 

Sometimes it is hard to wake up. This is watabe choro.

Oh no. I am at 6 months... 

Well. There goes 1\4 of my mission. So to not focus on how crazy that is I am going to talk about this great week! This week was very fun and very long. It was so long and so short and really boring. That makes sense right? Well on Monday we went to a member named Brother Nomiya's house. We went there at 6 and planned to only stay for an hour. Oh he was also the first Church member I met when I came to Japan. He is one of the weirdest people on the planet. I love him so much. He is about 60 ish and wears the same suit everyday. He lives in kind of a sketchy apartment so we were kinda scared to see what he would feed us. Turns out he is a REALLY good cook. He fed us some great pumpkin soup and the greatest spicy soup curry I have ever had. So a funny thing about him is that he loves Facebook. He is probably the best facebook stalker on the planet. When we first got to the apartment he immediately had to show us his facebook page and the new friends he has. He also showed us all of the people he stalks. Seriously though be safe. He is the funniest guy on the planet and extremely harmless but he has probably seen your facebook page. He knows where you sleep. Tuesday was our last day of English Class because the church where we teach it at is getting remodeled so we will no longer be teaching. We played a game that involved English and the only thing I remember is losing and getting so angry. I lost to people who don't speak English at all. That was pretty funny. I would love to tell you what happened but for real I was so mad I don't even remember hahaha. Wednesday we met with Sasaki san. We talked about baptism and he said he wants to get baptized but he is still having a hard time with coming to church. So the lesson was pretty awkward but we are still doing our best to teach him. Thursday we went to the Sakurai families house. They live pretty far from our apartment so we had a pretty long and amazing bike ride. The area I am in is really city and there comes a point when you are biking and all of the sudden you are on a giant bridge going over a river with a ton of trees and the city just stops. It is really cool. At the Sakurai families house we talked for an hour and a half about missions. The mother served a mission and it was amazing to hear her experiences. 4 missionaries that are serving in Japan right now are here because of her. They are her converts children. It is amazing. It made me think about how big of an impact we have on everyone. Friday I had a split with Uekubo Choro. We went to teach a guy named Wakinaka san and after we taught him he made us all watch the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the commercial for Titanic. Hahaha it was a lot of fun. He has a HUGE TV and 18 speakers so we had a party. Saturday we found for 8 hours. We did nothing but talk to people who said they have no interest. It was very difficult. I don't remember much about what happened because I got really angry. Sunday we went to the Tsujimoto Families house for dinner. They are my favorite family ever. After we finished eating we were in charge of the lesson. I said 'okay I need a bible' all of the sudden their whole family (8 people) took off to their rooms to get their bibles. It was so awesome. They were fighting each other to be the first ones to be back. Then they made us sit in chairs while they sat on the ground and listened to us. I had so much fun. I wish I took pictures but I was angry. This week I learned about how much anger sucks. You can't do ANYTHING when you are angry. Getting angry does nothing for you but make your life worse. This week was pretty hard for me just because of that. I would let really stupid things get to me. Like 'why did that car pull out in front of me?!' 'I am sweaty!' 'My throat hurts' Seriously stupid things. I did not pay attention to the important things that were happening around me. I was too focused on me to even realize how stupid I was being. I learned how important goals are. Thank you LEAP. When I had specific goals for what to to when I got angry, I had no problems. I was able to have more fun, remember what was going on, and focus on others. Basically forgetting about yourself is the hardest thing, especially if you are full of pride like me. But the easiest way to forget about yourself is remember who you are working for. I am working for God. I am serving His children. I am here to help my future family. I am here to bless my family and friends. I am here to show everyone I see that God loves them. If I am angry and focused on myself, well that sucks because they don't get to experience what I could have helped them experience. I had to say to myself many times, "GET OVER YOURSELF" It was tons of fun. Just remember how much God loves you and how much we should love Him. AND I LOVE YOU ALL!! Be excellent to each other. 

Mecham Choro. 

almost 1/4 done japan 3 months 4 weeks-26

Yesterday this one member named brother Yamamoto came up to me and said (in english) "You are very nice guy. I like you a lot. You very very nice. I am man right now. Moshi (if) I become woman later, we get married." Yeah... That is the Moiwa ward for you. That is the ward I am currently going to. Probably the weirdest ward in the whole Sapporo mission.

(my conversion story. WARNING IT IS DRAMATIC!) 

Well for me before I left on my mission I KNEW that the church was true. I felt the spirit sooo much in my life. I have seen many miracles and because of my family my testimony was strengthened. I have grown up in the Gospel and lived in Happy Valley Utah my whole life where it is weird if you are not Mormon. So coming to Japan was my biggest testimony shaker. I had to really KNOW for MYSELF that this is the true church. Before I could rely on others and my family, but then when it came down to it and I was all alone with no body to help back me up, when I had to testify to others that this church is true, when others would tell me that I am wasting my time, money and energy, when I was (to be honest) thinking about going home, I remembered something. This is a verse in Moroni 7. I don't know which verse, but it says that every good thing is of God. I looked back on my life and remembered how happy this gospel has made me. If I did not have this Gospel in my life I would be SOOO depressed. I wouldn't know that I would see my family forever. I would have to handle the guilt of my mess ups in life, and I would have felt more alone than I have ever been in my life. My testimony isn't something I keep and have always. It is something I have to work on EVERY DAY. If there is ever a day where I stop and just let my mind make up ideas and try to explain things that I don't understand, I lose my testimony. I have to strengthen it everyday by doing what God wants me to do and by trusting Him. I may not understand why we have specific commandments or rules but I KNOW how happy it has made me and I KNOW it is the ONLY way to true happiness. The only way to know it is by testing your own testimony. Sometime when I am testifying to others I feel like I am just saying words. Well the fact that I can even say it and that I am in Japan with the desire to know, shows how much faith I have. There is a talk from the last General Conference called Lord I Believe, by Elder Holland. That has helped me sooooo much. I wanted to believe and I wanted to know that this is exactly what I am supposed to be doing. Well I prayed soooo hard and I worked my hardest to know. Then one day I just thought, life would suck without this gospel. I would just be sad. Why would I not want this gospel? So to sum it all up I am still working on my testimony and I will for the rest of my life. I just do what Alma says and "let the desire burn within me" until I have the faith to say I know. Basically just keep on keepin' on.

Japan 3 months 3 weeks-25

Dearest readers of the blog I have never seen, 

This week was a great week for me. So I have this investigator who is one of my favorite people on the planet. Her name is Nada Takako san. She is 29 years old and had 2 amazing kids. When we first met her she was basically asking for us to come teach her everything we know. She has such an awesome family and she said that what we have to teach her would really help out her family. We taught her 3 times in 2 weeks and then she said that she is going to busy next week but we could meet with her after. Well that was 3 months ago. We never saw her since. This week we went again (probably for the 15th time) to see if she was home. She was ignoring our calls so I felt like we needed to leave her a letter. I wrote her a letter asking her if she is doing all right and said if she is busy she can always email us. Well on Friday this week we had a REALLY hard time. Everyone we visited was not home and everyone we contacted ignored us. Right after we tried to visit our last person we were biking back home and we contacted this one short, fat guy. He attacked our beliefs. He just kept yelling at us and telling us we were wasting our time and money. We testified to him that we know that what we are doing is important and will bring people the true happiness they are looking for. That just made him more angry so he attacked even more and then we left. After we contacted somebody that we already contacted before and he said that we are annoying. That was hard. So by now we were in HORRIBLE moods. Then our phone went off. Nada san emailed us back. She said that due to family issues she had to get a job to support her family. She leaves at 6 in the morning and gets back at 6 at night. So she has been unable to answer our calls or call us back because of how busy she is. She was also never home when we visited her. She said she had a lot of fun meeting with us and when the time is right and she can, she will call us to meet with us again. Well I don't think I will ever see her again, but I know that we helped to plant a huge seed. This was really hard for me. I wanted to meet with her again soooo bad. So Friday was hard. Then Saturday came around. That was miracle day. There is this one investigator I found named Kitabayashi san. He is a mircale in itself. I found him and contacted him by myself. Because of the way the doors were in his apartment my companion was unable to be seen so it was just me talking to him when we found him. He said that he hated missionaries before, but when he met me it changed. We found him on the only day that he had off from work for 2 months. Well Saturday we had a Jazz Night festival. I felt like I should invite him and he said yes! He not only showed up, but he brought 3 friends. We had so much fun with them. We ate so much food and talked about a lot of things. They even expressed interest in prayer. This was Saturday. Then Sunday we met with a guy from Tokyo who is visiting Hokkaido for a few weeks. We met with him at the church and talked for 2 hours. We taught him so much. He had a lot of questions. At the end of the lesson he said, "can you please give my info to the missionaries in Tokyo. I need this message. I need to meet with them again." Well of course we would be happy to do that. After there happened to be a wedding reception at the church so he was invited and he met a ton of amazing members. He said that he loves how family oriented our church is and he said he felt sooo much love from everyone and that this is exactly what he was been looking for. Well that is right. Blessings come after trials. The Trials suck so hard, but you just get over that, because the blessings are just so amazing that you don't even care about the trials anymore. That is what has happened this week. I have no time so I am going to attach some emails that I sent to some of my friends. I love you all. Be excellent to each other. And in the words of one of my greatest best friends, "be more excellent today than you were yesterday" -Sarah Campbell. 

Weeeeeee. 

-Jake Snow Mecham Choro.