I made it to Japan! I survived the MTC!!!!
Firstly, "this is not the language they taught me at the MTC!" Well actually it kinda isn't cause we learnt the most polite Japanese that no one ever uses unless they are writing a book. So everyone talks differently to how we were taught. There are heaps of different dialects and styles of speaking in Japanese, one of which i call old lady mumble, most Japanese don't understand a lot of the old people cause they mumble and slur their words and things they say just make no sense at all hahaha!
On the aeroplane there was this guy who lives in Vietnam who started talking to some of us missionaries. We basically had a 3 or so hour conversation about the gospel, he kept the conversation going and we pretty much taught him all of the first lesson and little bits from all of the other lessons cause he had so many questions. We got his email and address and he wanted to keep in touch with us and learn more! So that was really cool.
When we got to japan there was a camera crew filming us all arriving. I thought this was really weird and not normal. We later talked to our mission president, President budge about it and found out that while he was waiting for us to arrive he was talking to them cause they were walking around with cameras. It Turns out they were filming for a Japanese reality tv show called why did you come to japan. So they interviewed president budge and filmed us all as we arrived! So yes I'm practically famous ;) haha I'm actually quite a big deal in japan ;) jokes.
Going through the japan airport was pretty fun, not one of the people trying to help us and process us spoke a speak of English haha. It took us 2 hours to drive from the airport to the mission home. It was the equivalent of driving through hay st in Perth city for 2 hours! You look left there are skyscrapers, you look right there are skyscrapers. The high rises extend beyond the horizon! Tokyo is massive!!!! The roads are on bridges for half of the way from the airport to the mission home. Because a lot of the roads we're put in after the buildings were built so they literally just weave around the building and over them.
For the first few days all the new missionaries stayed in the mission presidents house where we had amazing home made meals provided and done some training.... Just in case the last 2 months wasn't training enough haha. I'm not to bad at using chopsticks. And everyday were eating Japanese food! Which is just amazing! Japanese rice is sooooo good!
On the Thursday I got my first companion!!! His name is Elder Henderson. He is from west mountain Utah. He has been out for 11 months, he is really good at Japanese. He is not shy and a hard worker which is awesome he is exactly what I wanted in a companion! He talks to anyone and everyone which is exactly what i wanted to do from day 1. Every morning he does 400 push-ups! He is a freaking rock!
My area is called Kisarazu it's the most southern area in our mission, it's a pretty country sort of area, still way more densely populated than Perth suburbs. Our area is massive! We are teaching a few people in tateyama which is just over an hour train ride south from our apartment.
On the way to our apartment we found 1 potential investigator taught him a lesson on the train and I placed my first Book of Mormon. He doesn't live in our area so we passed his info onto the elders in his area. For the first 3 days I spent over 10 hours on trains going to and from meetings, cause my companion is the district leader. Every time we go on the train we teach a few lessons which is awesome fun. Because he is district leader that means I will be able to go on splits with other elders every week or so, so that will cool to get lots of experience of different ways to tract and stuff.
I got my bike on Saturday, it's a pretty sweet bike. Except the seat is really uncomfortable.... My bum is so sore hahaha. We have been spending lots of time teaching some recent converts.
The chapel for our branch is the bottom floor of a 5 story apartment and just recently we extended to two rooms on the 2nd floor. Our baptismal font is a wooden frame with a plastic liner which can be assembled and disassembled! It's so cool. A week before I got here we had one baptism so that's really awesome to see that our area does have people progressing well.
Our apartment is really nice, it's small but in really good condition, all of the elders are really clean which is nice. The only problem with our apartment is the doorways are 6ft high and I am 6ft 2" so I keep hitting my head! It's really annoying and painful! I always joked about how I wouldn't fit through the doors before my mission but I actually don't fit haha! Our bed room can only fit 3 beds so one of the beds are in the closet. Elder herbet sleeps in there.
I used my first squatting toilet.... It was an interesting experience... Hahaha. They are kinda cool, but it will take a bit to
get used to them. Almost all of the toilets that are normal toilets have heated seats! You sit down and don't want to leave, it's like laying in your bed on a cold morning. I had an interesting run in with a bidae (one of the squinty toilets). Cause all of the controls are in Kanji I couldn't read it and there were like 12 buttons on the control. So I sat there trying to figure out how to stop it while it was spraying for like 1 minute, hahaha it was so weird! And I couldn't stop it but I couldn't stand up either cause it would squirt the roof I was stuck for like at least a minute.
Sacrament meeting: I think I understood about 2 % of what was said...people speak so fast and slur their words together. We had 27 people at church our branch has 2 new missionaries me and sister hirschi we both bore our testimony in sacrament meeting, that was fun but scary. My companion gave a talk, he was told about it the night before and the topic was how to be a good friend haha most random topic ever hahaha he done such a good job, he is pretty good at Japanese.
In Japanese lots of words have multiple meanings and I don't mean 2 or 3 meanings, some up to 100 meanings! And lots of words have feelings attached to them so if you use certain words together they can mean something totally different. Old people are really hard to understand, cause they just mumble like a mentally handicapped person and always speak some foreign dialect. There are so many different dialects of Japanese so some people I don't understand a word they say and some I understand about 7% which is sometimes enough to figure out what they said.
Every missionary has an iPad which is pretty cool cause we can take notes on it and use apps like imiwa which is a dictionary.its so much more efficient and we can add people on Facebook and teach lessons through that or through skype. And it's an easy way to get peoples contact info and keep in touch.
My first sit down lesson I taught was taught in English! Broken English but English none the less! I said when I was in the MTC that my first lesson would be in English and it was! Tomorrow I'm going to be meeting one of our investigators tomorrow and inviting him to be baptized, so keep him in your prayers, his name is Takashi. Takashi's mum is also interested in the gospel.
Our mission is aiming for 100 baptisms before Christmas, this goal started last transfer. And to put it into perspective last year we only got 160. So this is quite a stretch, but when you look at it we have 243 missionaries so it's just under 1 per companionship. My companionship has already had on a week before I got here but were hoping for 2 more before Christmas!
I'm running out of Vegemite and Cadbury chocolate and Tim tams :0 it's like a nightmare! I don't know what I'm going to do!! Probably just starve...
Today we found out that our stake presidency is organizing a flash mob for Christmas! On The 23 of December were gonna sing silent night and joy to the world. It's gonna be in a massive shopping centre and they are expecting about 300 people! So that will be awesome!
They use so much kanji in japan! Which means I can barely read anything haha but it's okay cause my companion can't read much of it either hahaha well he can read a lot but there are thousands and thousands of kanji so it's hard! As long as I can get from place to place on trains and busses and be able to talk to people I'll be fine.
I just went shopping which was fun it was more just a game of pictionary, "hmmm that looks like cheese I'll get that, hmm that looks like bacon I'll get that, yup don't know what that is but I'm keen to find out" I'll probably just die of food poisoning...
Every transfer we can go to the temple!!!! It's soooo cool I can't wait! It will be interesting going to the temple when everyone is speaking Japanese!
There is actually another elder king in my mission, actually he is in my zone and he is from Queensland Australia! He only has 1 more transfer left so we will have to get a photo before he leaves!
I love all of you guys and miss you heaps. I'm doing really well and loving the delicious food and amazing culture, not to mention everyone loves me cause I'm Aussie. Can't wait to get more stuck into the work and help people on their journey towards Christ and eternal life!
愛してます キング長老
Love King Choro
Firstly, "this is not the language they taught me at the MTC!" Well actually it kinda isn't cause we learnt the most polite Japanese that no one ever uses unless they are writing a book. So everyone talks differently to how we were taught. There are heaps of different dialects and styles of speaking in Japanese, one of which i call old lady mumble, most Japanese don't understand a lot of the old people cause they mumble and slur their words and things they say just make no sense at all hahaha!
On the aeroplane there was this guy who lives in Vietnam who started talking to some of us missionaries. We basically had a 3 or so hour conversation about the gospel, he kept the conversation going and we pretty much taught him all of the first lesson and little bits from all of the other lessons cause he had so many questions. We got his email and address and he wanted to keep in touch with us and learn more! So that was really cool.
When we got to japan there was a camera crew filming us all arriving. I thought this was really weird and not normal. We later talked to our mission president, President budge about it and found out that while he was waiting for us to arrive he was talking to them cause they were walking around with cameras. It Turns out they were filming for a Japanese reality tv show called why did you come to japan. So they interviewed president budge and filmed us all as we arrived! So yes I'm practically famous ;) haha I'm actually quite a big deal in japan ;) jokes.
Going through the japan airport was pretty fun, not one of the people trying to help us and process us spoke a speak of English haha. It took us 2 hours to drive from the airport to the mission home. It was the equivalent of driving through hay st in Perth city for 2 hours! You look left there are skyscrapers, you look right there are skyscrapers. The high rises extend beyond the horizon! Tokyo is massive!!!! The roads are on bridges for half of the way from the airport to the mission home. Because a lot of the roads we're put in after the buildings were built so they literally just weave around the building and over them.
For the first few days all the new missionaries stayed in the mission presidents house where we had amazing home made meals provided and done some training.... Just in case the last 2 months wasn't training enough haha. I'm not to bad at using chopsticks. And everyday were eating Japanese food! Which is just amazing! Japanese rice is sooooo good!
On the Thursday I got my first companion!!! His name is Elder Henderson. He is from west mountain Utah. He has been out for 11 months, he is really good at Japanese. He is not shy and a hard worker which is awesome he is exactly what I wanted in a companion! He talks to anyone and everyone which is exactly what i wanted to do from day 1. Every morning he does 400 push-ups! He is a freaking rock!
My area is called Kisarazu it's the most southern area in our mission, it's a pretty country sort of area, still way more densely populated than Perth suburbs. Our area is massive! We are teaching a few people in tateyama which is just over an hour train ride south from our apartment.
On the way to our apartment we found 1 potential investigator taught him a lesson on the train and I placed my first Book of Mormon. He doesn't live in our area so we passed his info onto the elders in his area. For the first 3 days I spent over 10 hours on trains going to and from meetings, cause my companion is the district leader. Every time we go on the train we teach a few lessons which is awesome fun. Because he is district leader that means I will be able to go on splits with other elders every week or so, so that will cool to get lots of experience of different ways to tract and stuff.
I got my bike on Saturday, it's a pretty sweet bike. Except the seat is really uncomfortable.... My bum is so sore hahaha. We have been spending lots of time teaching some recent converts.
The chapel for our branch is the bottom floor of a 5 story apartment and just recently we extended to two rooms on the 2nd floor. Our baptismal font is a wooden frame with a plastic liner which can be assembled and disassembled! It's so cool. A week before I got here we had one baptism so that's really awesome to see that our area does have people progressing well.
Our apartment is really nice, it's small but in really good condition, all of the elders are really clean which is nice. The only problem with our apartment is the doorways are 6ft high and I am 6ft 2" so I keep hitting my head! It's really annoying and painful! I always joked about how I wouldn't fit through the doors before my mission but I actually don't fit haha! Our bed room can only fit 3 beds so one of the beds are in the closet. Elder herbet sleeps in there.
I used my first squatting toilet.... It was an interesting experience... Hahaha. They are kinda cool, but it will take a bit to
get used to them. Almost all of the toilets that are normal toilets have heated seats! You sit down and don't want to leave, it's like laying in your bed on a cold morning. I had an interesting run in with a bidae (one of the squinty toilets). Cause all of the controls are in Kanji I couldn't read it and there were like 12 buttons on the control. So I sat there trying to figure out how to stop it while it was spraying for like 1 minute, hahaha it was so weird! And I couldn't stop it but I couldn't stand up either cause it would squirt the roof I was stuck for like at least a minute.
Sacrament meeting: I think I understood about 2 % of what was said...people speak so fast and slur their words together. We had 27 people at church our branch has 2 new missionaries me and sister hirschi we both bore our testimony in sacrament meeting, that was fun but scary. My companion gave a talk, he was told about it the night before and the topic was how to be a good friend haha most random topic ever hahaha he done such a good job, he is pretty good at Japanese.
In Japanese lots of words have multiple meanings and I don't mean 2 or 3 meanings, some up to 100 meanings! And lots of words have feelings attached to them so if you use certain words together they can mean something totally different. Old people are really hard to understand, cause they just mumble like a mentally handicapped person and always speak some foreign dialect. There are so many different dialects of Japanese so some people I don't understand a word they say and some I understand about 7% which is sometimes enough to figure out what they said.
Every missionary has an iPad which is pretty cool cause we can take notes on it and use apps like imiwa which is a dictionary.its so much more efficient and we can add people on Facebook and teach lessons through that or through skype. And it's an easy way to get peoples contact info and keep in touch.
My first sit down lesson I taught was taught in English! Broken English but English none the less! I said when I was in the MTC that my first lesson would be in English and it was! Tomorrow I'm going to be meeting one of our investigators tomorrow and inviting him to be baptized, so keep him in your prayers, his name is Takashi. Takashi's mum is also interested in the gospel.
Our mission is aiming for 100 baptisms before Christmas, this goal started last transfer. And to put it into perspective last year we only got 160. So this is quite a stretch, but when you look at it we have 243 missionaries so it's just under 1 per companionship. My companionship has already had on a week before I got here but were hoping for 2 more before Christmas!
I'm running out of Vegemite and Cadbury chocolate and Tim tams :0 it's like a nightmare! I don't know what I'm going to do!! Probably just starve...
Today we found out that our stake presidency is organizing a flash mob for Christmas! On The 23 of December were gonna sing silent night and joy to the world. It's gonna be in a massive shopping centre and they are expecting about 300 people! So that will be awesome!
They use so much kanji in japan! Which means I can barely read anything haha but it's okay cause my companion can't read much of it either hahaha well he can read a lot but there are thousands and thousands of kanji so it's hard! As long as I can get from place to place on trains and busses and be able to talk to people I'll be fine.
I just went shopping which was fun it was more just a game of pictionary, "hmmm that looks like cheese I'll get that, hmm that looks like bacon I'll get that, yup don't know what that is but I'm keen to find out" I'll probably just die of food poisoning...
Every transfer we can go to the temple!!!! It's soooo cool I can't wait! It will be interesting going to the temple when everyone is speaking Japanese!
There is actually another elder king in my mission, actually he is in my zone and he is from Queensland Australia! He only has 1 more transfer left so we will have to get a photo before he leaves!
I love all of you guys and miss you heaps. I'm doing really well and loving the delicious food and amazing culture, not to mention everyone loves me cause I'm Aussie. Can't wait to get more stuck into the work and help people on their journey towards Christ and eternal life!
愛してます キング長老
Love King Choro