Japan 6 months 2 weeks-37

So want to hear a funny story? I thought that Thanksgiving was always on the Thursday of the third week in November, so I already celebrated Thanksgiving! I was so sure that Thanksgiving was last week so we celebrated it on Thursday November 21st. I got an amazing Thanksgiving package from my terrific mother with lots of American Thanksgiving foods that we made for dinner. We had a feast!  It was a lot of fun, but I remember thinking that it doesn't feel like Thanksgiving. Not because I wasn't with my family or in America, but because it felt early. Well it was. A week early. That is okay though! I get two Thanksgivings now! 

Thanksgiving Week Updates-

This week we found a ton of new people. My first transfer in Tomakomai we only found one person who actually had interest. Just this week we found 5 new people with interest and we are teaching them! Tomakomai is an interesting place because I think only single mothers with children are allowed to live here. All of our current investigators are women, and the new ones we found are women as well. Well here is how we found them.

Sato san is a funny old lady with a blind lazy eye. We found her pretty late at night when we pinged her house. We talked about God and she said we could come back. We came back and taught her prayer and she said she is going to try it on her own! She is a really funny old lady from Kraft? Craft? It is an island in Hokkaido that used to be apart of Japan, but now Russia owns it.

Okabe san. She is a younger mom. I didn't find her. We were on splits with the Zone leaders this week and she was found at that time. They pinged her door and she just talked to them through the voice box thing. She didn't even come to the door. She said she was way busy and can't talk. They asked if we could come back and she said yes. Well we came back and turns out she does have interest she really was just busy. Most of the time when people tell us they are busy it is just a lie for ' I have no interest ' but she was serious and we gave her a Book of Mormon. 

Komata san. She is already an investigator, but this week her daughter turned 8 so she became a new investigator. Her daughter is amazing. We teach the mom (Komata san) but her daughter has the most interest. We gave them a Book of Mormon as well and the next time we visited them Komata san said that her daughter has been reading it every day and taking it everywhere she goes with her and telling all of her friends about it. I am excited for them. 

Doi san. She is a really skinny quiet mom. We taught her prayer. Throughout the entire lesson I think she said a total of 5 words. It was really funny. I would laugh and she would just stare at me. She is listening, but I am not exactly sure if she has interest yet. We will see. 

Shimizu San. She is actually an English Class student. So this week after Eikaiwai (english class) we were eating food when Shimizu san came up to me and said, 'Mecham Choro! You have a zit on your face! Look at you! You are so young!' I told her sorry that I am still a child and get zits sometimes. She then said 'You can't even drink yet! But you have been drinking before right?' 'Nope. Never' 'It's okay you can tell me. Just a little beer? I won't tell anyone.' Then out of nowhere a new student just jumped in the conversation and said 'NO! THE MORMONS REALLY DON'T DRINK' He hates it because he is a bartender. Well this lead into a discussion about our beliefs and why we do the things we do and turns out Shimizu san has interest. So I would encourage all of you to show off your zits, because you never know when they will help you share the gospel.  But really though you never know when you will have the opportunity to stand up for what you believe. I got an email from my fantastic friend in Germany #Schwartzenberg (The spell check for that is Schwarzenegger) She told me a story about how just by wearing her missionary name tag she was able to share this amazing message with another person. It's so true. You never know when or where it will happen, but there are always people who will want to hear. Just be ready for it! 

This week we were really busy meeting with new people and making appointments with them for this next week. I am SO excited to report about this next week. The real Thanksgiving week. It is going to be a lot of fun. I love you all so much. Be excellent to each other! 

Japan 6 months 1 week-36

We fed ducks at this pond and then the crows came and tried to eat us. 

They followed us... 

It was cold so we got ice cream. 

Selfie. 

A slide I went down this week.
So this week we had splits with the Muroran Elders. They are in an area that is about 45 minutes away by a fast train. In their area they had 4 inches of snow fall in one day, while here we have no snow and it is just cold and windy. I went on split with Elder Lee. The funny part of that day was when we went to go visit Nakao san. Nakao san hasn't been able to make any friends since moving to Tomakomai last year. She tells us almost every time that she really wants to make friends but doesn't know how. We tell her that if she comes to church she will make TONS of friends, but she never came. So we brought a member with us. Kotani Shimai is the one that takes us everywhere and buys us everything. She loves the missionaries almost too much. Well we went to go teach Nakao san with Kotani Shimai. The first thing Kotani Shimai does when she sees Nakao san is say, "we are friends now. I love you." Well.. It was definitely a bold way of becoming friends. Somehow I think it worked and right before we left Kotani Shimai ran up and hugged Nakao san before we left. Hugging is not normal for Japanese people. I even got a little freaked out. It was an attack not a hug. BUT the awesome part was it was exactly what Nakao san needed. 

The day before this we went out to lunch with Kotani Shimai, her friend and Tamori Shimai. Tamori shimai is a less active member and did not want the missionaries visiting her. Kotani Shimai somehow worked her magic and scheduled a lunch with all of us. We went out to eat literally a 20 second walk away from Tamori Shimai's apartment. The food was taking forever to cook so we had a lot of time to talk. Kotani Shimai just sat there and Kotani Shimai's friend did a lot of talking. She would ask us the weirdest questions and say the weirdest things. Tamori Shimai was the reason we were there and she kinda just zoned out for a bit and sat there. We eventually we able to get us all talking about something we all liked, food. Tamori Shimai was talking a lot and it was really good. Then out of nowhere Kotani Shimai says, "Oh yeah! When we used to work together making underwear!".... It was quiet for about 20 seconds then Kotani Shimai's friend said, "Yeah... Isn't that a little weird to say..." It totally made the day for Tamori Shimai. She thought it was so funny. Kotani Shimai's crazy attitude saved us once again. 

There were a lot of little 'crazy' things that happened this week that turned out to be exactly what we needed. But I learned something really awesome yesterday that helped me understand why we had these 'crazy things' #challenges happen so much. We were talking about missionary work at church and a return missionary in the ward said, " If you want your mission to be easy, don't work hard. If you work hard it shows you want to improve, you want to be more like Christ. When you work hard you get trials and you work through those trials. That is when you feel the most joy." This is so true. Lately missionary work has been a little rough for me. I felt like I wasn't fully there or what I was trying to say wasn't coming out right. I blamed it on my Japanese and kinda slacked off for a little bit. Then I kicked right back in and changed my mind. It was really hard to work through it and to get over myself. It didn't make everything easier or funner, but it made it worth it. Then I was happy. 

I love you all so much. I hope you have a great week. Be excellent to each other! 

-Mecham Choro. 

Japan 6 months-35 weeks

We went to the Ainu Village. It is the first people who lived in Hokkaido 

Baby face----This time they gave us a big spoon. 

We fed bears last monday for P-day

Too Good

This is what happened while we tried to walk to church in the morning. 

This week was full of a lot of miracles. We started the week with a lot of less active members that we wanted to visit. I have tried to visit them before when I was here with Tokuzawa Choro, but they were never home. Well this was the week we met all of them! My favorite was Iwai Shimai. She is a blind old lady with crazy hair. She really looks like a witch. When we visited her she was sooo excited that we came. She hasn't had a visit from the missionaries in over 5 years. She had this funny attitude about it though. She just kept asking why we haven't came over earlier. It was really funny. When we were about to leave we read the Book of Mormon to her because she can't see. It was amazing to see it calm her down as we read it. The whole time we were talking to her she was moving around and scratching her eyes, but when we read the Book of Mormon with her she calmed down, sat still, and listened. She then said thank you and said we have to come back soon. I am excited to visit her again.  

So the craziest stuff happened this weekend. On Saturday we had 2 member lessons. One with Masuko san and one with Chiba san. Before all of our lessons that day we had a goal to make baptismal dates with all of them. Well we did our best and invited them all, but they dropped the muri bomb on us. (they said it was muri which means impossible) But the amazing part was in Masuko sans lesson she said that her husband is working on Sunday so she can come to Church! Next was Chiba san. At Chiba sans lesson we planned to teach The Plan of Salvation. It started with The Atonement, moved to eternal families, then the spirit and then prayer. It was one of the craziest ways I have ever made an investigator pray. We didn't want to pressure her, but we really wanted her to pray. The member team ups said what if one of us prays first and then you try? That is a tool that we use often, but this time one of the other members said, YEAH! All of us will pray one at a time and then you pray last. There were 5 of us in the room. It started with my companion Elder Galeria, then me, then Chiba San's daughter, then Kotani Shimai, then Chiba san. After all of us said our prayers and it got to Chiba san it was quiet. We probably sat is silence for 2 minutes doing nothing. Then out of nowhere Kotani Shimai says 'Chiba san, go' Then she prayed. It was a one sentence prayer and I didn't even understand what she said, but she prayed! It was a huge miracle. 

Next we went to go visit a referral who ended up not being home. We decided that because we were close we should go visit Mizumasa san. When haven't met with her in a long time because she has been so busy lately so we had the intentions to just say hi and schedule an appointment with her. Well it turned into a long lesson about baptism and she said that she wants to get baptized but it is just really hard to quit alcohol and coffee. But she said that she is going to be coming to church on Sunday. 

Sunday was the craziest Sunday so far. It started with Typhoon number 3. We decided to walk to church because our bikes would blow away. We thought that nobody was going to show up to church because of how bad the weather was. When we got to church we saw Chiba san there. We then saw Ikeda Shimai who told us that Masuko san was on her way to church when she got in a car wreck. hahahaha of course. We felt so bad. She was totally fine, and when we texted her (cause we are not allowed to call her or her husband will murder us) she said that she is just embarrassed and will try to come to church the next time she can. Halfway through church Mizumasa san showed up! She was able to make it to sacrament meeting. It was so awesome to have all of them there. After church we had one of the scariest lessons ever. It was forced by a member, Tanaka Kyodai. He basically dragged Mizumasa san and us into the primary room and sat us all down and the first thing he said was, How is alcohol? Are you drinking? It was so awkward. We tried to hard to stop him from interrogating her, but he would just keep going. He stopped after 15 minutes and looked at us and said did you have anything you wanted to say? We said sorry for this crazy lesson. Mizumasa san was so nice about it and said that she knows how it was all out of good intentions. She said that she is going to come to church as much as she can this month. 

It was a crazy week full of a lot of miracles. My companion is working me so hard. I am getting so tired, but it is helping me out so much! I love you all! Be excellent to each other! 

-Mecham Choro 

Japan 5 months 4 weeks-34

Ladies and Gentlemen, Brothers and Sisters, Young and Old, Fat and Fatter, we had Transfers! I am still in Tomakomai, BUT I have a new companion. First sad news because it makes the crazy news sound so much better. This is my first American companion :( He is from Thousand Oaks, California. (Yes where the rich people live) Now the crazy news. The transfer before this transfer he was in the mission home because he was assistant to the president. Yeah... that means that I am horrible missionary so they felt like they needed to send me an incredibly strict companion. He has made many people cry. HAHAHA! I am too excited. His name is Elder Galeria. His first area was Tomakomai and his last area is going to be Tomakomai because he is going home very soon #expirationdate That is the exciting news of the week. I am also very low on time again because we are going to a crazy fish festival in 20 minutes. I also forgot the cord to upload pictures so if you only wanted to see pictures and not read an email please forgive me. 

This week was a lot of fun. I got to go back to Sapporo for Stake Conference on Saturday. When I first got to Japan it was Stake Conference. This means that I have been in Japan for exactly 6 months. Too crazy. Okay Two stories

ONE: Wednesday was my last day with Tokuzawa Choro and his last day in Tomakomai before he transferred on Thursday. We wanted to visit as many people as possible, but a lot of the people we wanted to visit were not home. We went to 3 members on the east side of the city and they weren't home so we went back to the mall to pick up something that Tokuzawa Choro needed before he left. When we were there we were talking about how we really wanted to say goodbye to Masuko San before Tokuzawa Choro transferred but that it is not going to happen because her husband won't let us visit her and she had work that day too. Right then we were about to leave when we saw Masuko San at the mall! It was awesome. She was so excited to see us. It was a little thing, but these little things mean a lot and have helped Masuko san and us so much. 

TWO: Yesterday we visited the Saito Couple. They are amazing. The husband was baptized in 2008 and 2 moths later they went to the temple. 6 moths after that they went on a mission. As soon as they finished their mission the husband got really sick and now is in a wheelchair, and can't make it to church anymore. They told us about how they want to do SO much but they can't because their bodies won't let them. I felt just like them. There was SO much I wanted to say to them and SO much I wanted to be able to do, but I just can't do it yet. We began talking and they said that we just need to do our best with what we have right now. Of course we have goals to help us progress, but we have to do our best with what we can do before we try to do something we can't. That was a great reminder. Right after we went and housed. I tried the things I new and I found myself learning new things and Japanese was flying everywhere. I ended up talking to this one lady for 25 minutes about service and I have no idea where the words I said came from. I learned to not be scared, but just try. Plus is it way funny when we mess up. My companion is doing a GREAT job at laughing when I mess up. I could choose to be upset or laugh too. Laughing is just a lot easier and so much more fun. This transfer is going to be amazing. We have already seen a lot of miracles and I know more are going to come! Sorry I am low on time again and I forgot pictures, but next week will have great pictures. Be excellent to each other. 

LOVE YOU. 

Mecham.