Japan Ebetsu 20 months 1 week- 97

So it is all in Japanese and you probably can't read it, but this is the poster the cafe owner made for us. I will translate.

"Won't you come spent some lovely time under the candle light with us?"

Yes she is bringing out the candles. Lots of them.

We are taking our band poster pictures this week so look forward to those next week. 

We had 12 missionaries in an elevator. Too cool. 

I played Jenga with this kid. He beat me. 

This is my companion asleep at Ward mission council meeting thing. 
In Japanese it is just DCS... 

too cute. 

classic engrish. 

Everyone is sick. Seriously every one in my district except me got sick this week. Pray for me! I cannot get sick before the concert! 

                                                                  Music and Lyrics 

Almost every day this week, we were practicing music. I never want to join a real band. This is too much stress. First off we had no instruments. My companion had an electric bass, but we wanted an electric guitar. I had a keyboard that can fit into my backpack, but that was not good enough. We asked a lot of members but they all said they don't have anything. So finally we asked the really quiet gospel principles teacher. And naturally she has a guitar. She had no idea what it was. She though it was an acoustic guitar, but it was an electric! So we got that on Monday and then practiced with that. 

Tuesday we had splits so we didn't have time to practice. It also decided to blizzard on Tuesday. It snowed about one foot in one hour. It was crazy. And naturally, we forgot to wear boots that day. Tuesday was a lot of lyrics writing. The set list as of right now is: "Creep" by Radiohead, "Scientist" by Coldplay "Faith" by George Michael, "Hey Jude" by The Beatles "How to save a Life" by the Fray, "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne, and "Love one Another" by Hymn book. As you can tell the lyrics are way inappropriate so Tuesday night was dedicated to writing lyrics. My favorite is probably Faith by George Michael. The lyrics are now, "Well I guess it would be nice, if you would come to church, cause if you'd come to church, well then you'd know it's true. But you've gotta think twice, before you turn your head away, and I know all the games you play because I've played them too. But you need some time off from self-devotion. Time to pick your soul off of the floor. Oh when the spirit comes down with out emotion, all it takes is some believing and I'm showing you the door. Because you've gotta have faith." Our songs are ridiculous. Creep is about Joseph Smith seeing Moroni and pondering about that moment. "But I will weeeeeeep, I will ponder, about the moment I just had, what to do from here? Where? Do I find the gold plates?" It is too much fun. 

Wednesday was our first band practice. Wednesday the band tofu Cheesecake came together.  We met Hikaru kun. He is a super good bass player and saved our day. He had extra amps and was more than willing to share with us. We practiced at the cafe and introduced the songs to him. He was a little iffy about playing in the concert with us, because.... well we sounded horrible. haha and Hikaru has never played in a band before, but we promised him it would be a lot of fun. I got to know him, and turns out his birthday is 10 days after mine, he is also 20 years old and a Christian! This got him super excited so just like teaching a lesson, when the spirit is the highest you extend a commitment. "Hikaru, will you play with us at the concert next Saturday?" he was silent..... so my companion played some jazz chords and next thing you know we are having a jam session. Hikaru was so impressed and said yes! We made a band. 

This concert is taking up so much of our time, but it is going to be so good. It is this Saturday so you will get to see tons of pictures next week. We are super excited for it. I love you all so much. Be excellent to each other.

-Mecham Choro.

Japan Ebetsu 20 months 96 weeks

We went to this festival this last monday called Seijinshiki (becoming an adult party) This is only for 20 year olds and you sit there and listen to people talk. It was super boring, but so fun at the same time. My companion went as well. He is turning 25 next week. Too much fun. 

awwww....

Okay so it was SOOOO cold one day that I couldn't open my mouth all the way. My face froze. So this is me trying SOOO hard to smile as big as I can. HAHAHAHA 

We also took pictures with some random political lady who spoke to us there. She was so funny. 

LOOK AT THE PERSON IN THE BACKGROUND! That is a worker there. She wore a rainbow sweater, red pajama bottoms and green shoes with rainbow socks and purple shoelaces to work. This is a great cafe. 

                                    Oh and by the way this is tofu cheesecake. It is delicious.

The owner of the store and our best friend is Mimura san. The younger looking lady in the background. 

We are too cute. 

Saw my best friend at The becoming adult party(sejinshiki)!!! Yuina!!! 

                                                Choice

We have been meeting with a family and a single woman who need the gospel more than anyone, but will not accept it. The Usui family is extremely loud and irreverent. We have been trying to talk about love, something they are lacking in their family, but it just doesn't seem to go anywhere. We came up with the idea to play a game to get the kids attention. It involved candy so there was no way they would say no. The game was Simon says. "Simon says jump on one leg!" Then we would give them candy. "Simon says hug your mom!" "EW!!! no!!!!" After yelling louder than them they were convinced and hugged their mom. "Tell your family you love them!" The kids said no, gave up and walked away. It was so sad. We asked their mom if she could say it to the kids. She ran over and grabbed her kids, hugged them and said "I love you!!!....... stupid" 

Words are very powerful and the Usui family are using them the wrong way. The kids calmed down and ran away to eat their candy, so we were able to talk to the mom one on one. "your children and soooo fun. They are cute and they are happy. But they don't know what true love is. True love is found in the family, and right now your family needs some help to feel that. We have that help and we are more than willing to give it to you, it just required effort on your part. Are you willing to try?" The mom was silent. She knows that her kids need help. She knows that this gospel can help her family. She wants a stronger family, yet she chose not to. 

The next example is a woman named Goto san. She has had a very very hard life. She was pregnant and engaged. Her Fiancé was in a car accident and rushed to the ICU. He was there for 5 months. She prayed every day to a God that her fiancé would come out alive. "If there is a God, you would help me. God is fair and taking him away is not fair." After 5 months of being in the ICU her husband passed away. Goto san then had a beautiful baby boy. She loved him so much. One night when the boy was 5 months old she laid him to sleep and said goodnight like any other night. The next morning she woke up and her son had passed away. It was unexpected and there were no signs of sickness. He just passed away. Goto san then relied on the only things she had left. Her two dogs. Shortly after one of the dogs passed away. Goto san built walls of depression around her and has since been stuck inside. She got trapped in a dark cave of depression and does not even recognize light anymore. She is always sad, but tries to be happy.  To be honest Goto san did not really want to meet with us, but we pushed her because we know how much she needs this gospel. She was nice and willing to meet, but she would not make time, not tell us her phone number, and hid behind her front door when she talked to us. We prayed hard and felt that we needed to try one more time. Yesterday we visited her and testified of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the plan of salvation and the reality of a living and loving Heavenly Father. She felt nothing. She was cold. We gave literally everything we had and asked her if she is willing to try. She said no. 

My companion and I talked a lot about this. This was very hard for us. People that need the gospel so much, yet chose not to accept it. Why? We are doing EVERYTHING we can. We love them. We study for them. We pray for them. We fast for them, yet they still say no. This is because God loves us so much, He lets us choose. It wasn't that our faith was weak, or we did something wrong, it is their agency and we can't take that away. 

I am grateful for agency. It is a great learning tool. With out we wouldn't be here. 

Happy news. We made a band. Tofu Cheesecake. We are doing a concert on the 31st at the cafe Blue Moun. Everyone will be there.

I love you all sooo much. Be excellent to each other! 

-Mecham Choro.

Japan Ebetsu 19 months 4 week -95

the 5 minute break in between blizzards. This is what we walk in.

Naeem! Our best friend from Pakistan.

I waited my whole mission to take this picture and we took it on the ugliest day of the year. Perfect. That is when you know you are a local.

Around the World in 40 minutes

We dug ourselves into a huge hole that a member said, "will be a huge success or a failure". This last week we were out trying to find people in a blizzard. It was horrible weather and nobody was talking to us. They would see us suffering the cold weather and then run away haha. So we tried something new. We went into this hipster looking cafe and started to talk to the owner. She recently opened this cafe and does not have that much success. We talked a lot, ate her homemade tofu cheesecake and invited her to eikaiwa. This lead to talking about doing eikaiwa at her cafe, which lead to doing a concert at her cafe. We are now throwing a concert party at the end of the month at her cafe. The members are way stoked for it, but it is requiring a lot of planning. Right now my companion and I have written 3 songs, but that is only about 10 minutes filled. We have 50 more minutes to go. It is going to be a very busy week. We are going to meet with her on Wednesday and talk about the details, and I will take a picture then. But imagine the most hipster place ever, then put it in Japan. That is her cafe. And our concert is going to be done in Candlelight.

So this blizzard day was insane. We kept talking about how we felt that we were in Russia. From there we walked into old America cafe, walked back out into Russia and made our way over to Pakistan.

Our best friend Naeem invited us over to come teach him English. We we made our way through the blizzard and to his apartment. His family was there and they were making dinner. It smelt sooo good. We sat down in his room and started talking in English about America. We now moved from Russia to America. Then he started to show us pictures from his life and his family members brought in food. We then flew from America to Pakistan. I had an authentic Pakistan meal. It was AMAZING. I never thought this would happen in my life. Especially in Japan. We ate everything with our hands and a spoon. It was the greatest. After that we ran back out into the Russian blizzard and then to our Japanese apartment. Around the world in 40 minutes.

Other than that, this week was a lot of walking. We walk really slow when the snow is stabbing us in the eyes. But we met with some of our investigators and they tore us apart.

One of them is a single 43 year old woman. She lives with her dog and works as a school teacher for children in wheelchairs. We talked to her about God and tried to see what beliefs she has. This quickly led to her telling us about how her 5 month old baby died and how in her life she has had too many hard trials to even believe in a God. We did our best to testify to her, but in the end she said, "Go home, study, then come back with a better answer." It was hard. She ripped us apart.

I went back and studied. I got my answer. The answer is I don't know the answer to all of her questions. She probably won't even listen to any answer I give her. She needs to get her answer from God. It helped remind me to do all I can to help people get their answer, but God gave us a great gift of agency and she needs to exercise that to receive her answer.

This week was fast and snowy. But it was great. I love you all so much. Be excellent to each other.

-Mecham Choro.

Japan Ebetsu 19 months 3 week -94

The Asahikawa zone. 

I really like this picture. We had a dinner with this member twice in one week hahaha. They are the greatest. 

Party at the Kuwana House! 

Me and The Christmas Tree. 

So we went to the shrine to get our fortune for the year. Then you tie it up on the string thing and pray that it will come true! It was too fun. I felt so Japanese. We are going today to go ring a bell and throw money at the floor. 

This is my fortune. It says I found a great woman in my life, but she is dangerous hahaha. 

I tied mine in here! 

The Ebetsu missionaries and our fortunes. 

artsy yolo. 

This was the line of people waiting to ring a bell and pray. It was too long so we are going today. 

We then went and took Puri Kura. The Japanese style photo booths. Too fun.

So we live on the 6th floor of our apartment and this is what it looks like from our balcony almost every day. 

My companion drew me with his eyes closed. 

OH! I never talked about this day. Okay so this day was the day we were supposed to transfer. I packed the night before and we were all ready to go the next day. We got a call at 6:30 in the morning saying that we are not having transfers and we have to stay in our apartments all day. This was because I huge blizzard/hurricane thing was coming, BUT it never came. So for a WHOLE day we sat in the apartment and looked at the beautiful sky. We played sardines, mafia, life, trump, lots of games. It was fun yet SUPER boring. 

                                                           Four Days later 

 It has only been 4 days since I last emailed so to be honest not that much has happened. We went to a lot of members houses and ate A LOT of food. The meals have almost come to an end, so soon it will be time to try and lose all of the fat collecting on the sides of my body. 

Every day for the last week we had lunch and dinner with members. We would go to one house and eat and talk and play for 3-4 hours with the members. We would all sit on the floor and eat around the table, and eat, and eat. It was really fun to hear the members stories about how they converted or how their missions were. Or just to hear about what they like to do in life. A lot of people in Japan are very interesting. They have the funniest hobbies and don't like to tell people about it. Like skiing. That is a totally normal hobby but they just don't tell anyone because they are embarrassed to tell stories about the times they have fallen haha. I love Japan. 

Well yesterday was the only day this whole week we actually had time to go out and work. It was weird being back and pinging houses. My companion and I almost forgot what to say. "Hi we are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!..... And we are not from Japan..." "okay... what do you want?" ".... I am from America! Hi!" "...Okay.. no thank you. We are busy." It was way funny. After that we went and visited an old investigator.

He has been an off and on investigator for the last 3 years. He has been to church over 10 times, read the Book of Mormon twice and does not want to be baptized. He said he has felt nothing when he read the Book of Mormon and has no desires to believe in God. YET he still comes to church when the missionaries ask him, and he is willing to listen. It was really interesting. My companion started to share an example of how we are all in a river. There are rocks, fish and lots of things in the river. They can either get in your way, or you can learn how to avoid them. The river is deep and sometimes has rapids. You don't know where the end is, but you know that it will end and the end is a waterfall. In the river you can have a boat. That boat is faith. If you have no faith you just swim your whole way down the river and drown. The investigator then said, "I have been floating for the last 37 years and I am fine." "Just be careful when you are an old man and your muscles are weak." It was really intense. We testified to him of the blessing that come from having faith, from believing in God and doing what He has asked us to do. It was really good to be back out testifying to everyone. It has been a while since we have done that haha. I love this mission. I love the members of Japan. I love the Japanese people. I love you all. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true and I love it. Be excellent to each other!

-Mecham Choro.