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. 

Japan 3 months 2 weeks-24

We got kinda bored. 

Hashtag again. 

Getting soaked.

if you want it, this is a picture of my map. the redded out area is Susukino. the red dots are the churches and the pink is our apartments.

Make your own pancake noodle things. 

They all fell asleep so I took a picture with them.

The most dangerous week of my mission was this week. No worries I am safe, I am just oblivious because I can't read or understand anything. So this week started with A LOT of finding. We were out talking to people for over 6 hours a day and getting SO tired from walking all of the time. The other day we even met two gaijin (foreigners). One from Pakastan named Mohamed Ali (I laughed, I am a horrible person. It just sounds really funny when you try to say it in Japanese) and the other is Devon who.... SPEAKS SPANISH!!! I have another Spanish speaking investigator. So this only happened because of how hard we were working the beginning of the week. Monday through Thursday we only made 3 appointments and contacted about 100 people. We talked for about 6 hours a day and saw nothing. One night during planning we even laid down on the ground and laughed/cried(not real tears cause we are men and big girls don't cry)/complained for about 30 minutes. Then we realized we were being so stupid so we said a prayer and asked for help. The next day we had 4 people give us their information. We didn't even have to ask. We taught a lesson to them and they quickly showed interest and gave us their contact info. Prayers really are answered when we work our hardest. So this was Friday. Friday was the high of the week. We were on fire. We talked to everyone and we were so happy. It was pouring rain, we got soaked, but we kept going. We even annoyed a few people so we had to stop. But we just used it to our advantage and went housing. We tried a funny approach this week. It is called... In japanese Kyodai Dendo, which means.. brother missionary work? Wow it doesn't translate at all, but it is basically just going up to people and saying "Sato San!!! It has been forever! Do you remember me?!?! We were such good friends before." They get really confused and then we introduce the plan of Salvation to them. Some people get angry, others tell us they are Buddhist so they don't believe in it, and some people get happy and want to learn more. It was pretty funny. But the Scariest part of this week was Saturday and Sunday. There is a place in Sapporo called Susukino. It is basically the strip at Vegas, but on crack. No missionary is allowed to go there. It is a area of about 10 blocks. They have serious drinking problems in there and even prostitutes. So Tomita Choro and I had a dinner appointment with a family who we thought lived on the border of Susukino. We called the Zone leaders to ask if we can go and they said yes, that the member doesn't even live near Susukino. We were kinda confused. So and Saturday we went to the edge of Susukino and I can't read Kanji so I didn't know the address or understand where we were. Then my companion went in Susukino. At first I just thought there were a lot of people and lights everywhere and even a giant roller coaster. It looked like a lot of fun. Then we went further. Tomita Choro called the member to make sure we were in the right place and we were WAY off. We thought it said South 3, but it said South 13. So we ended up in the heart of Susukino. I have never felt so scared in my life. There were people everywhere. I had to get off my bike and walk. Tomita Choro was a head of me and I couldn't see him. People were trying to get me to buy alcohol, come to their store, and I even was approached by a prostitute. I was freaking out. I kept walking and didn't look or talk to anyone. The lights and people we so distracting. I found Tomita Choro and we tried to get out. We got on our bikes and went down this one road that had gang members outside of it and prostitutes lined up outside. We immediately biked away from there. We eventually got out of Susukino, but the whole time I was freaking out. My body was shaking and I could feel the spirit leaving me. I felt everyone looking and I even felt people grabbing me. Oh and we were only there at 7:00 at night. Just imagine what it would be like at 11:00. We made it safely to the members house and had a great time with them. Just being in their extremely white house felt sooo good. I literally felt like I was living Lehi's dream. I saw the giant roller coaster and the great and spacious building, but we messed up and went inside. Luckily we made it out and made it back to the white room, where they had the fruit of the tree of life (which was ramen salad and curry, super good) I promise you that whatever party may look fun, movie may look okay, or situation you may think you can control, it is just easier to avoid it. To be honest when I first heard of Susukino I really wanted to go see what it looked like. I just heard that they had a roller coaster and lots of lights. Well it is a lot different than that. We have commandments for a reason. Not just to protect us, but to bless us. It was way weird. I never thought I would have to learn this lesson on my mission. Yesterday we visited my favorite less-active member. Shirase Kyodai (the guy with the huge head) we found out that he lives in a gangs territory and there is a Buddhist sect that hates Mormons. Well somehow some of the Buddhist members found out that we have been visiting Shirase Kyodai and they were not happy. They basically went over and threatened him and us. We weren't their when the Buddhist members came over, but we heard about it and now we have to stay away for a while, because we may be being watched or followed. Either way we are targeted. Hahahaha sketch. It is so much fun. Basically this week was a lot of fun. Every week is a lot of fun, but it just gets better and better. I love you all so much. I am safe no worries. Just a funny week. Be excellent to each other! 

Love YOU

Jake Snow Mecham Choro. 

Japan 3 months 1 week-23

Hello everyone!!! ( I hate starting letters. I sound like a loser hahaha good.) Anyways I am going to start off by questions for YOU. YOU means for whoever is reading this. I read a letter from a lady in the ward I am focusing on this week. Her name is Oda San. She is so awesome. In the letter it said "Are you better than you were last week? Are you working harder today? What are you doing to become better?" That is my question. You don't need to answer. I just thought about it this week, so I just want to make the whole world think about it now.

This week was super hard and super fun. My companion (elder tomita) decided that almost all of the investigators we have right now are not very strong. So we dropped about 12. This was SUPER hard for me. One of them included is Takahashi san. The guy we have been teaching for 3 months and who was supposed to be baptized 2 weeks ago. That was super hard for me to realize that he is not very strong right now and we could be putting our energy and focus in a better place. When I first heard this I felt like all of my work that I was doing with Brown Choro before Tomita Choro got here was for nothing. I felt like I was just wasting my time teaching him and that it was all for nothing. I was super upset, making it really hard for me to do anything. Tomita choro does something interesting where he only contacts students who are in college. This means that I have to work a lot harder and that we are talking to a lot of college students. So right after we decided to drop a lot of investigators we went to the University close to the Train station to go find a lot of college students to talk to. I was in a HORRIBLE mood and did not want to talk to anyone. Especially gaijin (foreigners). Tomita Choro really wanted to practice his English so he tried to contact a Gaijin. We say this one guy and Tomita Choro went to talk to him and the guy yelled "don't even think about it!" That was super awkward and I was even more upset. We kept walking and then we saw another gaijin. I made Tomita Choro contact him because there was no way I could do it. Well. I instantly had to change my mood. His name was Nicholas and his is from France. We talked for 3 hours. It started with Tomita Choro's broken English to try and start a lesson with him and introduce ourselves to him. I eventually had to get over my bad mood and talk to him. We talked sooo deep for 3 hours. He REALLY wanted to know about Mormons. He asked so many questions that I did not have the answer to. He kept wanting proof. He said that if a building fell of a sea was parted or a storm stopped (something like that happened in the bible) he would believe. I told him how I came to know that this church is true. I told him how it is all feelings. Because feelings you can't fake. He said that you can. And well that is true. If you are in a bad mood you can change it. And I had to change my bad mood when I was talking to him. But then I realized that the spirit is a feeling. BUT the spirit is a external force effecting our internal emotions. I told him that the ONLY way he can EVER know is if he tries for himself. He can't expect a miracle if he doesn't work for one. I told him stories about the miracles I have seen. About knowing that families will be together forever. It was really powerful. He asked if what I was saying was really true. It was this first time where I really had to think about what I was saying. Whenever I said that I know it is true in Japanese I would think about the words I am trying to say not about whether or not I mean it. It was all in English so I had to mean what I say. First props to all of the missionaries in the world who are serving a mission in their own language. Especially English. I have no idea how you do it. I testified that this is the true church and in the process of testifying the spirit confirmed to me that it is. It was really powerful. But for me only. For him he said that it is great that I know it is true but he thinks that religion came from drugs. He told me about his experience when he did shrooms in the forest by himself and how he felt the most religious at that time. Haha it was really fun talking with him. Sadly he is back in France right now. But I know he felt something. I know that what I told him was true. And whether or not he needed it or I needed it, talking to him was worth it. Today I studied about love and for real that is the ONLY thing that matters. If all of your actions are influence by love then nothing will ever be hard. I am trying to love everything I do and everyone I talk to, but sometimes it is hard cause Satan sucks. But I am doing my best. And that is all that matters. Working harder to be better this week than last week, better today, and always working to become a better person. I would love to report and tell you more stories about what happened this week that was awesome, but it was just a lot of biking and hearing people say (kekko desu) which means no thanks. A lot of rejection, but it will pay off. I love you all. Be excellent to each other. 

Jake Snow Mecham Choro. 

You are going to hate me but I have no pictures this week... we were really busy, but i will do better this week and send you a ton next week. Love you all so much. Sorrrrrryyyyyy.