Japan- 9 months 2 weeks-50

We saw almost too many miracles this week. It was amazing and I don't have time to tell you all of them, so I will tell you the greatest ones. 

Our ward mission leader is a return missionary who really likes focusing on numbers. A few weeks ago he went off talking about the importance of teaching a lot of other lessons. That was a week when we only taught 4 other lessons. 4 other lessons is not the greatest, but it is not the worst. For him it was unacceptable. Sooo we made goals to teach more other lessons this week. On monday I was scared. We taught no lessons, but met a crazy drunk guy. Tuesday we visited one of my favorite crazy less active members, who somehow remembered me and we sang hymns with her and she cried. Wednesday we took off. We first went to a members house to teach three active sisters a lesson about the gifts of the spirit. It basically turned into all of us sharing what we think others are good at and what their talents are. I said so a Sister, "Sister Machida is really good at being patient through trials." This was like the second time I met her and it just randomly came to my head to say this. She then got really quiet and we kept teaching. At the end of the lesson she said, "Missionaries really do have the spirit. I have only met you once, yet you know what I needed to hear. I was inactive for 10 years and just recently started coming back to church. I thought that I was really really patient through my trials, but I thought it was just me who thought it..." Well... That was basically how this week went. I had lots of random thoughts and ideas and I didn't exactly know if it was the spirit telling me to go somewhere or to do something, but I just went and did it. Even if it was just something that sounded fun. Later that day my companion needed to go to the bathroom, but I wanted to ping one more door. We pinged it and this is what we heard, "Who is it? The missionaries! Mormons? YES! Who is your prophet right now? Whoa, wait, what... Thomas S. Monson. OHhhhh that is who it is. I am sick right now. Come back later." I am so excited for that. Then right after we went to the bathroom I wanted to buy food cause I was hungry. Well this drunk guy contacted me before I could buy something and we ended up going back to his house and teaching him a lesson and he had TONS of interest. He has cancer in his lungs and wants hope in his life. He is scared about death and wants to be ready if he dies. I am so excited to meet with him. Thursday we met with our favorite less active member, Mita Kyodai. He gave us his poems he writes every year and a book about being polite in Japan. hahaha One of his poems is called 'Man in the mirrar'  and another is called, 'the satan' They are definitely helping my Japanese get better. Friday we taught 6 other lessons and met with our amazing investigators. Our favorite Grandma (Hasegawa san) is still sick so we haven't met with her but we met with 3 crazy deep thinking guys. We had REALLY longs lessons with them. 2 hours each to be exact. I was so lost, but it was a really good thing we were on splits that day and my companion was Japanese. I need to work on Japanese. Then Saturday we taught 4 other lessons. We met amazing people and right before we were going to go home and eat I wanted to see if Kitabayashi san (one of my best friends who I found my first month in Japan) was home. He is never home so I haven't seen him in 6 months, but we went and he came to the door! We talked for about 2 hours... I love him. He is only 20 years old so the Japanese he uses is really slang and hard to understand, but we had so much fun laughing about how I understood nothing he was saying. And to top it all of Sunday (Yesterday) we found a young family. We pinged a door and this nice mom answered the intercom and said that she would love to listen. That was already a huge miracle. Then we went into her amazingly nice house and taught about families. It was amazing. This week we taught a total of 13 other lessons. Pretty good. I think it is the highest I have seen my whole mission. But I am just even more excited to see what happens with all of these investigators next week. I love you all! Be excellent to each other. 

-Jake Snow Mecham Choro. 

Japan 9 months 1 week-49

I have tons of pictures of yuki matsuri But I am out of time right now. i will try to come back tonight and send more. This was the ski jump

This is sister Aota (Sunny Bunny) I am holding a pigeon. With my name on it... I am honored. 

EVERYONE AND THEIR DOGS!!! This was with Aoki san. We met with her this week as well. The lesson was okay. She has no interest so we are doing a english program with her now. 

?.....

My father is dying.... He is going home tomorrow. 

IKEDA FAMILY!!! The Ikeda family came to the fireside. I love them too much. Seriously there was too much happiness in the air. 

Teranishi san. An investigator that I taught a few times when I was in Odori. She is the greatest. 

Kotani Shimai. She gave me the craziest pictures ever hahaha. She is the member that took us on tons of adventures when i was in tomakomai, so she gave me pictures that she took from our adventures. Her pictures are a little insane... 

Our very fun maze lesson with the Henmi Family.

Our fridge broke, so all we can do is eat ramen. Hahahah I LOVE ramen... (It is so unhealthy) 

More ramen. 

Valentines Day in Japan is almost bigger than Christmas. It is definitely bigger than Halloween, so this week was pretty exciting. Last week was a huge downer because there were a lot of appointments we had with nobody home, BUT this week everyone and their dogs were home. (see picture) I just put a footnote in my email... I am way cool... We made 4 new investigators this week and taught 8 amazing lessons. For me this was a really really good week. Lately my mom has been asking me what my worries are or what causes me the most stress right now, but for real, this week there were no worries and it was amazing. We weren't able to meet with Hasegawa san because "grandmas cold is now the flu! You can't catch that! Run away!" But she says she is praying for us and we are praying for her. Hopefully we can meet her and her grandson this week too. This week we met the Henmi family (the family that just recently moved in) and taught them a lesson about the spirit. We have been focusing a lot on the spirit this week and from it we have seen a lot of miracles. We did this really fun game were we had them turn off all of the lights and gave one person a flashlight, then they had to do a maze that we drew for them. It was a hit. I think I had the most fun. We related that to the spirit and how without the spirit we might be able to make it through the maze, but we will hit a lot of walls, have to start over a lot, and it takes a lot longer to find the end. With the spirit you can do it on your first try. (unless you suck at mazes) Well that was an amazing lesson with them and they said that they really wanted to come to our music fireside that we had this Saturday. Well Saturday came around and we had one hour of dendo before we had to go to the church to have a dress rehearsal for the music fireside. We had 2 appointments and the first one they were busy so we couldn't meet them, but we felt like we needed to visit Iida san. A lady we met a few weeks ago. We went to her house and nobody came to the door. I was super confused. I felt like we were definitely going to meet her. We started to walk away when she came to the door and we taught an amazing lesson. She said that she read the pamphlet about the plan of salvation and wants to know if it is true. We taught her prayer and she said she is going to ask if it is true. She is the greatest. We then ran to our next appointment and taught an amazing lesson with our first new male investigator! Woot! We found a man! Then we ran to the church for music practice. The music fireside was amazing. Seriously. I am not just saying this because I am in it and full of pride, but for real it was amazing. I am so excited for the cd so everyone can hear it. (Actually I think it is on youtube) well The fireside was the day after Valentines and a ton of members came to the fireside with Valentines presents for us. It was amazing. I have so much chocolate now. The Henmi family came as well and they said they loved it. Basically I am on fire right now with the spirit. Life is beautiful. OH and Mother I saw my blog for the first time! Sister Aoto (a.k.a Sunny Bunny) showed me it on her ipad and she said she is in love with it. But for real it is pretty artsy. Mother you are on fire. Well done! 25 points to Gryphindor. (I don't know how to spell that but the spell check is endorphin...) I love you all! Be excellent to each other! 

-Jake Snow Mecham choro. 

Japan 9 months-48 weeks

Yesterday we tried to find a less actives house. We looked everywhere and hiked a mountain to find this. It destroyed. His house was 19-19 and this house was 19-18 

my companion likes the snow. 

half a house. I thought it was so artsy and it was at the top of a mountain, I tried to take a cool picture of it, but it just came out creepy and blurry.

Oh there is a picture of where we housed last night! It was sooo much fun.
This week was extremely busy. We only did about 3 hours of finding everyday this week. First I have to tell about the craziest thing that has happened so far. Okay maybe that was a little dramatic, but it was way freaky. 

This Monday right after emails we had planned to go out to eat with a recent convert. He has depression so we were really happy to be able to meet with him. He invited us and two other sisters to go out to eat with him at the sapporo train station. First he comes in and looks way happy and excited to go, then he ordered the taxi's and it started to get weird... He started to get a little off and agitated. We got in the taxi's and the recent convert ordered us into our specific seats. I had the front next to the driver. I was so scared to try and talk to the driver, but I got over that and we talked about how cars use chains on their tires to drive in the snow. It was super lame and I got way to excited about a boring conversation topic. So I quickly changed it to the gospel and he told us he was catholic. Then the recent convert kinda got weird and wouldn't let us talk to the driver anymore. We got to the train station and the RC (recent convert) says, 'First smoothies, then eel.' What??? Okay... so we went to the basement of the eki (trainstation) it is huge by the way. He made us walk around with him for about 45 minutes and eat anything he gave us. This was not even dinner. (keep in mind he doesn't work either, so we have no idea where this money is coming from.) At about 7:00 we made it up to the 8th floor of the eki to eat eel. He stopped at a soba( noodle) store and said, 'This is very yummy, you should eat it sometime.' Then he ordered us into the most expensive eel restaurant in the eki. We sat down right where he made us and already ordered for us as well. We ate over 500$ of food. I was sooo full. Eel is way good by the way. So we tried to share a spiritual message, but he was just ignoring us and not talking to us about the whole hour we were eating. It was 8:20 and we said we had to be back before 9:00. Well he then in english said, " I know elders always eat. GO TO THE SOBA PLACE!" oh no... we then had to eat as fast as we could. It was sooo scary. He was forcing us to eat and we had to because he has no money and spent sooo much money on us. Well we eventually made it out of there at 9:07 right after he tried to hug one of the sisters. We made it home at 9:28. I was freaking out the whole time. I didn't do a good job explaining it, but basically imagine eating dinner with voldemort. I was crying. 

Other than that this week was really sadly average. We weren't able to meet with Hasegawa san because she was sick and doesn't want us to catch her sickness. So we went over on Thursday to see how she was and she comes to the door and says, "NO! I am sick! I want you to come in sooo bad, but you can't get sick either! LEAVE! GO HOME! God will forgive you. But call me because I want you to come back really bad." It was way funny. She is my favorite. 

Other than that this was a really painful week in terms of finding people. We didn't find anyone this week and I felt really really down on myself. I thought it was my fault and got scared that maybe I was being disobedient or something, but I found out it was just Satan and now I am fine! It was a hard week, but that's it and now I am over it. 

This week we also were able to go see the snow festival! It was amazing, but to be honest, I got over it pretty quickly. The best part was there was this typical Asian girl group singing and dancing on a snow castle stage thing and this thing came running past me in a red hoodie. I couldn't see it's face so I didn't know what gender it was. It had stuffed animals in it's hands and it was freaking out and screaming like a girl because it was so excited to see the girls dancing. I wanted to go party with it sooo bad. We eventually got closer to it and found out it was a old man! So naturally we took pictures with him. Want to know something horrible? I forgot my camera for the snow festival... It is okay though! I had some of the best photographers on the planet follow me around and take pictures of me, but I forgot to copy them so hopefully next week I will have those! I love you all so much. Be excellent to each other! 

-Mecham Choro.   

Japan 8 months 3 weeks-47

  Baptismal making pants....They are beautiful 

This is a lady who carries a bunny with her everywhere she goes, Elder Sunny. The bunny that my companion is holding is President Thomas S. Monson. The other one is a missionary that is serving right now. (Elder Rodenberg) Mom expect a friend request soon hahahaha. She takes TONS of pictures of the missionaries and requests to be their friends on facebook so she can tag them in the photos. This picture basically describes this whole event. It was a raw chocolate party and we all made raw organic chocolate. HAHAHA it was the greatest. 

This is everyone that went to the onsen with us. This was the hotel that the onsen was in

This is when we went to the onsen. The public bath. 

This is the Henmi family. The youngest son is not in the picture. But this is the family we visit all the time and they are now coming back to church! Oh and this is how messy their house is. Yes. We are still unpacking with them. 

The Oda Shimai dinner appointment. (Mom this is the member that sends you letters) OH! expect one soon! I just corrected a letter for her. 

I feel good I feel great I feel wonderful. 

This is a random picture that my companion took and I just stole it from his memory card. This is Japan. 

Well this last P-day we did a great activity called "Treat yo' self 2014". This means that we took out some of our personal moneys and had a party. We went to a store and bought ourselves some beautiful new pants and they became our baptismal date making pants! THAT IS RIGHT BAPTISMAL DATE!!!! 

The lady we met a few weeks ago that wouldn't tell me her name, now has a baptismal date. Her name is Hasegawa san by the way. We went over and taught them the Plan of Salvation. We teach her with her grandson so we have to teach very very simply and it is a lot of fun. I got a puzzle from my friend Jennifer Martins and that puzzle helped SO much this last lesson. It kept the grandson so interested and focused and asking questions. We taught them, they asked questions, and it ended beautifully. We talked about how we need to be baptized to be able to return to live with God and our Families forever and asked her if she will be baptized to have this joy. At first she just said 'Yeah..' but it was a pretty vague yes. So we testified even harder and it ended with her saying YES. We were going to ask her grandson as well, but he fell asleep right when we extended the commitment. (too much spirit for him) He was probably having a vision anyway. Well that lesson was a huge miracle. Her interest spiked and she progressed so much. We had an appointment scheduled with them yesterday, but she got sick and we weren't able to meet them. We are calling them today though to meet with them this week. Basically they are the greatest. 

Our goals this transfer is to have the Hasegawa family get baptized and to find another family. I love focusing on families. Families are amazing. They are so much fun to teach and this is the first time I have done it. It is very rare to find families who want to listen all together, but it will happen! We are working our hardest! 

Other then that we didn't really have a lot this week. We did a lot of finding and pinging doors. Almost all of our appointments fell through, but that is okay we will meet with them this week. Sorry for the really short and probably really boring letter, but this picture of me in my beautiful new baptismal making pants makes it all worth it. LOVE YOU ALL. Be excellent to each other. 

-Mecham Choro. 

Answers to questions: Onsens are anywhere and everywhere, but nice ones are in hotels sometimes. You can go to them anywhere they are. There are rec center status onsens and then there are rich people onsens it just depends on where you go. It is really birthday bathing suit naked. You have a little towel, but basically everyone puts it on their heads. Average person in Japan goes like once a month. Old people once a week. The one I went to was 15 dollars, but normal is like 3 dollars. I TOTALLY DID A FLIP TURN IN THE POOL! IT WAS SO AWKWARD! The towel is basically used for looks. Haven't had the high school experience yet, the lady needs to talk to her boss first. I am going to talk about the lady who wouldn't tell me her name in my email. It is good. The heater is gas.  For FHE we play minute to win it games, sing hymns and eat cake and have a message.