Sorry it's so long so much is happening and I haven't written half of it. とめんね
Japan Japan Japan..... It's freezing!! The northern parts of my mission already have a foot of snow and in Tokyo normally most of the snow comes in late January! I so want to get transferred to the northern mission areas during winter! I want snow! I have only seen snow once in my life! "Do you want to build a snow man?" "YES!" Hahaha
On Monday we met with miki San. Talked about prayer and revelation and how we can recieve answers to prayers then I shared a experience I had with prayer and it instantly brought the spirit into the room! I learnt that there is nothing that brings the spirit more into lessons than sharing spiritual experiences :) it was my favorite lesson so far! At the end miki san said the closing prayer and it was awesome! We could all feel the spirit really strongly. So I hope she is starting to recognize the spirit more :)
On Tuesday we went door knocking on the way to an appointment in tateyama and ran into this really old lady she said that her kids used to go to our church like 40 years ago in tateyama! They used to go their for lots of activities and English class (brief history- tateyama was the very first area opened in Japan! It was opened by Heber J Grant, he was the first missionary in Japan 113 years ago! But now there is no longer a ward down there we are the closest Ward to it and we are just a branch, the branch in tateyama closed like 20 years ago.) well we talked to this lady for a while then shared the "he is the gift" video with her and then after it was finished she went inside grabbed some traditional japanese candies and ¥1000 and gave it to us! We refused and refused it but she practically forced us to take it!
On Wednesday we got up and jumped on our bikes and headed over to a friends house and done some service for him. He was Putting in a new floor in his kitchen so we moved everything out of the kitchen cleaned it they layer the floor then we put it all back. And as we were leaving he gave us this envelope with ¥5000 in it! We refused it and gave it back and he tried to give it back. We wouldn't take it and he started to get a little bit angry. It got a bit heated he would stick it in our bags we would take it out and put it on the table and say no it was service! He would grab it grab our hand and try and force us to take it, we wouldn't so he quickly slips it in our pocket we grab it out and try and put it on the table or give it back. This goes on for several minutes and he was getting angry with us for not taking the money so we eventually said okay we will take it thank you. Haha it got pretty heated!!! So we're going to use that money to buy presents for our investigators. Also while we were leaving after the money argument finished he went to shake my hand so I go to shake his and he slips a bunch of bananas in my hand! Super sneaky so I was like whatever I ain't gonna have another argument with him and it's only a few bananas. So we just took it.
On Thursday I taught my first lesson over FaceBook! It went really well! Technology on missions is amazing! It is so useful for teaching and finding!
On Friday we set a new baptismal date for takashi! It's on the 11th of January so that's my birthday present! It's only like a week after my birthday (2nd of January) Hopefully he makes it :) the japanese Book of Mormon is so hard to read so he is reading the simplified version :)
Saturday!!!!! Yes yes yes! Saturday was awesome! We went to Tokyo for a Christmas music devotional! It was performed by missionaries for investigators! There was a massive turn out there was about 100 missionaries and 150+ investigators! Me henderson Choro and iwasaki San got a ride with miki San! The entire trip iwasaki San was freaking out and thinking we were going to crash! Even though miki is a really good driver and a 100 times better then him hahaha. Every time we would talk to miki he would freak out and be like no no no stop talking to miki san she needs to concentrate hahaha! He was flipping out the whole way there and back! It was so funny! To get to Tokyo from Kisarazu we went on the Aqua line! It is so cool! It is a bridge that goes half way across Tokyo bay then goes under the water For miles!!! Tokyo is insane! The roads are literally a tangled ball of string! A 3D maze! Roads go left, right, up, down, spiral and every direction imaginable! The city never ends! It extends beyond the horizon! We went over the rainbow bridge which is covered in lights of different colors which make it look like a rainbow! Then we saw Tokyo tower which is massive and then Tokyo sky tree which is like the biggest tower in the world I think! There are so many tunnels and bridges and roads that are just elevated off the ground for miles it's insane!!!! Words could never describe Tokyo no picture could ever describe Tokyo you have to see it to believe it!!!! The music devotional thing was really good everyone could feel the spirit so strong! And I met someone from Canberra she is a sister missionary and we have a mutual friend! Tom Timu!
Sunday, well got up got ready for church got outside nearly froze to death walking out the door then looked at my bike and the seat was covered in ice!!! It's freezing! It was fast and testimony meeting today! So that was cool to hear everyone's testimonies! Especially some of the recent converts we have been working with! Most of the branch was able to get up and give thier testimony cause the branch isn't very big at all! There was also a baby blessing today! So cute!!!! Loved it!!! Even though I only understood half of it! We taught 6 lessons today! Which was a miracle cause that was exactly what we needed to reach our weekly goal! We had an hour left of the day and still needed two lessons to reach our goals so we went and stood outside in the cold and thought about what we should do to bring two more people closer to Christ. After two minutes of planning what we should do a less active who we have been working with recently walks past the church so we call out to her she comes over and we taught her! It was a great lesson! Could feel the spirit so strong and now she is going to see the bishop next week to ask about setting a goal date to receive her patriarchal blessing! Then we went and visited a less active who got baptized with baptism as the goal not the beginning so he instantly went inactive, he is super uninterested in the church but willing to listen to the missionaries so we talked for like 30 minutes about Christmas and why christ is so important then had a race back to the apartment to get in on time! We made it!!! In Japan reactivating less actives is a massive part of the work cause there are 5 less actives for every 1 active in Japan!!!! Lots of people got baptized super quick in Japan and didn't even know who christ was nor why he was important or what repentance is or any doctorine at all.... So there are so many less actives!!!
Japan had an era called the Tokyo express where who ever had the highest baptisms in the mission became A.P.s then next highest became zone leaders and so on and so forth so lots of missionaries done some crazy unbelievable things like setting up portable swimming pools near train stations and asking people if they want to come swimming with them! Then baptizing them! People also had swim parties at church and baptized tonnes of people! Or people would go around to grave yards get a heap of names and then baptize their companions for that person count it and record it! This was all about 30 years ago and every now and then we still stumble across members records and contact them and they have absolutely no idea what a mormon even is...... So we assume they were Tokyo expressed.during Tokyo express Tokyo was baptising more people than the entire world combined! The president would throw a big party for all the missionaries if they baptized over 1000 members a transfer. The whole idea stemmed from the stupid thought that if 1 person stays out of every 100 people baptized than it was better than what they were already doing....
Luckily that culture was cleaned up a long time ago!!!! That mission president actually got excommunicated.... So yeah that's a bit of Tokyo mission history for you! But now the Tokyo mission is insanely obedient and hard working! I have never seen such obedient missionaries in my life! Some of the missionaries will get in at 8:55 and curfew is at 9 so they will start phoning up people for proselyting purposes or do 5 minutes extra study! They are always so accountable for the time on their mission! There are so many other things but honestly I have never seen a more obedient group of missionaries or even 1 missionary which compares to the obedience here! Sometimes I think they take it too far but when ever I think that They always seem to see so many miricales for example:
Yesterday there was a music concert held by the missionaries and so the other elders left got on the train after organizing for thier investigators to come then 5 stops into thier travel they get an email which was sent to all the missionaries saying if you live further than an hour away from the location don't come cause it's expensive and you will be missing out on valuable time as well. So they read it and immediately got off the train! Like thier investigator was going and they were already on thier way! So they dendoed in that area and saw soooooo many miricales!!! They gained 4 new potentional investigators that day 2 of which are investigators now and 1 came to church! There are blessings for being exactly obedient!!!
I got to go to the temple! Every transfer we get to go to the temple once! Unfortunately it will all be in English. It will cost me like $40 to get to the temple and back! It's a 2 and a half hour trip just to get there! Plus another 2 and a half to get back. So we have to leave the apartment by 5:00 am! But it will be worth it! This week I will be going to Tokyo twice! So I'm gonna spend a lot of time on trains! 10 hours just for Tokyo trips plus whatever else we do for the week probably end up on trains for at least 18 hours this week.
The Tokyo temple is really cool! No land around it cause it is in Tokyo it is made to fit the block of land exactly! It has 5 floors inside it and is a cool temple! On the way to the temple we went through the worlds biggest train station! It is massive we only walked through a tiny bit of it and it took us longer than 10 minutes!!! There are multiple floors and underground floors and is so hard to navigate! Especially seeing it's all written in japanese! After the temple we went to Shibuya shi and looked at a couple of shops. Walked through the busiest intersection in the world!!! And some typical crazy Tokyo streets! So in one day I went through the biggest train station in the world, the busiest intersection in the world and walked around the biggest city in the world! Wow hahaha it was so cool and the intersection wasn't even busy in comparison to how busy it normally is yet it was packed! At this intersection all of the lights go red and then people basically run at each other and it feels like we should be screaming for Sparta as we collide with the people coming from the other side!
On the way to Tokyo it was rush hour on the trains so we would get to a station, say 50 people would get off and 100 would try and get on!!!! So your standing there and then people just start compressing and compressing until you could not fall over or move even if you wanted to! There are people who's job is to push everyone into the train and compress everyone into as smaller space as physically possible! Then they try and close the doors. It's crazy!!!! So different to perth! Perth trains are empty and peek hour in comparison! There are so many people it's crazy!
I am loving the joy I am getting from opening my eyes to the small miricales! Like seeing someone accept what you say when you teach them a few simple restored truths on the train! Or an investigator pray for the first time!
Miss the sunshine and beaches of Perth so much! And I miss wearing shorts and t shirt and thongs! When I get back I am going to wear shorts t shirt and thongs and spend so much time at the beach, I might just get my swag and camp on the beach!
Til next week friends :)
Japan Japan Japan..... It's freezing!! The northern parts of my mission already have a foot of snow and in Tokyo normally most of the snow comes in late January! I so want to get transferred to the northern mission areas during winter! I want snow! I have only seen snow once in my life! "Do you want to build a snow man?" "YES!" Hahaha
On Monday we met with miki San. Talked about prayer and revelation and how we can recieve answers to prayers then I shared a experience I had with prayer and it instantly brought the spirit into the room! I learnt that there is nothing that brings the spirit more into lessons than sharing spiritual experiences :) it was my favorite lesson so far! At the end miki san said the closing prayer and it was awesome! We could all feel the spirit really strongly. So I hope she is starting to recognize the spirit more :)
On Tuesday we went door knocking on the way to an appointment in tateyama and ran into this really old lady she said that her kids used to go to our church like 40 years ago in tateyama! They used to go their for lots of activities and English class (brief history- tateyama was the very first area opened in Japan! It was opened by Heber J Grant, he was the first missionary in Japan 113 years ago! But now there is no longer a ward down there we are the closest Ward to it and we are just a branch, the branch in tateyama closed like 20 years ago.) well we talked to this lady for a while then shared the "he is the gift" video with her and then after it was finished she went inside grabbed some traditional japanese candies and ¥1000 and gave it to us! We refused and refused it but she practically forced us to take it!
On Wednesday we got up and jumped on our bikes and headed over to a friends house and done some service for him. He was Putting in a new floor in his kitchen so we moved everything out of the kitchen cleaned it they layer the floor then we put it all back. And as we were leaving he gave us this envelope with ¥5000 in it! We refused it and gave it back and he tried to give it back. We wouldn't take it and he started to get a little bit angry. It got a bit heated he would stick it in our bags we would take it out and put it on the table and say no it was service! He would grab it grab our hand and try and force us to take it, we wouldn't so he quickly slips it in our pocket we grab it out and try and put it on the table or give it back. This goes on for several minutes and he was getting angry with us for not taking the money so we eventually said okay we will take it thank you. Haha it got pretty heated!!! So we're going to use that money to buy presents for our investigators. Also while we were leaving after the money argument finished he went to shake my hand so I go to shake his and he slips a bunch of bananas in my hand! Super sneaky so I was like whatever I ain't gonna have another argument with him and it's only a few bananas. So we just took it.
On Thursday I taught my first lesson over FaceBook! It went really well! Technology on missions is amazing! It is so useful for teaching and finding!
On Friday we set a new baptismal date for takashi! It's on the 11th of January so that's my birthday present! It's only like a week after my birthday (2nd of January) Hopefully he makes it :) the japanese Book of Mormon is so hard to read so he is reading the simplified version :)
Saturday!!!!! Yes yes yes! Saturday was awesome! We went to Tokyo for a Christmas music devotional! It was performed by missionaries for investigators! There was a massive turn out there was about 100 missionaries and 150+ investigators! Me henderson Choro and iwasaki San got a ride with miki San! The entire trip iwasaki San was freaking out and thinking we were going to crash! Even though miki is a really good driver and a 100 times better then him hahaha. Every time we would talk to miki he would freak out and be like no no no stop talking to miki san she needs to concentrate hahaha! He was flipping out the whole way there and back! It was so funny! To get to Tokyo from Kisarazu we went on the Aqua line! It is so cool! It is a bridge that goes half way across Tokyo bay then goes under the water For miles!!! Tokyo is insane! The roads are literally a tangled ball of string! A 3D maze! Roads go left, right, up, down, spiral and every direction imaginable! The city never ends! It extends beyond the horizon! We went over the rainbow bridge which is covered in lights of different colors which make it look like a rainbow! Then we saw Tokyo tower which is massive and then Tokyo sky tree which is like the biggest tower in the world I think! There are so many tunnels and bridges and roads that are just elevated off the ground for miles it's insane!!!! Words could never describe Tokyo no picture could ever describe Tokyo you have to see it to believe it!!!! The music devotional thing was really good everyone could feel the spirit so strong! And I met someone from Canberra she is a sister missionary and we have a mutual friend! Tom Timu!
Sunday, well got up got ready for church got outside nearly froze to death walking out the door then looked at my bike and the seat was covered in ice!!! It's freezing! It was fast and testimony meeting today! So that was cool to hear everyone's testimonies! Especially some of the recent converts we have been working with! Most of the branch was able to get up and give thier testimony cause the branch isn't very big at all! There was also a baby blessing today! So cute!!!! Loved it!!! Even though I only understood half of it! We taught 6 lessons today! Which was a miracle cause that was exactly what we needed to reach our weekly goal! We had an hour left of the day and still needed two lessons to reach our goals so we went and stood outside in the cold and thought about what we should do to bring two more people closer to Christ. After two minutes of planning what we should do a less active who we have been working with recently walks past the church so we call out to her she comes over and we taught her! It was a great lesson! Could feel the spirit so strong and now she is going to see the bishop next week to ask about setting a goal date to receive her patriarchal blessing! Then we went and visited a less active who got baptized with baptism as the goal not the beginning so he instantly went inactive, he is super uninterested in the church but willing to listen to the missionaries so we talked for like 30 minutes about Christmas and why christ is so important then had a race back to the apartment to get in on time! We made it!!! In Japan reactivating less actives is a massive part of the work cause there are 5 less actives for every 1 active in Japan!!!! Lots of people got baptized super quick in Japan and didn't even know who christ was nor why he was important or what repentance is or any doctorine at all.... So there are so many less actives!!!
Japan had an era called the Tokyo express where who ever had the highest baptisms in the mission became A.P.s then next highest became zone leaders and so on and so forth so lots of missionaries done some crazy unbelievable things like setting up portable swimming pools near train stations and asking people if they want to come swimming with them! Then baptizing them! People also had swim parties at church and baptized tonnes of people! Or people would go around to grave yards get a heap of names and then baptize their companions for that person count it and record it! This was all about 30 years ago and every now and then we still stumble across members records and contact them and they have absolutely no idea what a mormon even is...... So we assume they were Tokyo expressed.during Tokyo express Tokyo was baptising more people than the entire world combined! The president would throw a big party for all the missionaries if they baptized over 1000 members a transfer. The whole idea stemmed from the stupid thought that if 1 person stays out of every 100 people baptized than it was better than what they were already doing....
Luckily that culture was cleaned up a long time ago!!!! That mission president actually got excommunicated.... So yeah that's a bit of Tokyo mission history for you! But now the Tokyo mission is insanely obedient and hard working! I have never seen such obedient missionaries in my life! Some of the missionaries will get in at 8:55 and curfew is at 9 so they will start phoning up people for proselyting purposes or do 5 minutes extra study! They are always so accountable for the time on their mission! There are so many other things but honestly I have never seen a more obedient group of missionaries or even 1 missionary which compares to the obedience here! Sometimes I think they take it too far but when ever I think that They always seem to see so many miricales for example:
Yesterday there was a music concert held by the missionaries and so the other elders left got on the train after organizing for thier investigators to come then 5 stops into thier travel they get an email which was sent to all the missionaries saying if you live further than an hour away from the location don't come cause it's expensive and you will be missing out on valuable time as well. So they read it and immediately got off the train! Like thier investigator was going and they were already on thier way! So they dendoed in that area and saw soooooo many miricales!!! They gained 4 new potentional investigators that day 2 of which are investigators now and 1 came to church! There are blessings for being exactly obedient!!!
I got to go to the temple! Every transfer we get to go to the temple once! Unfortunately it will all be in English. It will cost me like $40 to get to the temple and back! It's a 2 and a half hour trip just to get there! Plus another 2 and a half to get back. So we have to leave the apartment by 5:00 am! But it will be worth it! This week I will be going to Tokyo twice! So I'm gonna spend a lot of time on trains! 10 hours just for Tokyo trips plus whatever else we do for the week probably end up on trains for at least 18 hours this week.
The Tokyo temple is really cool! No land around it cause it is in Tokyo it is made to fit the block of land exactly! It has 5 floors inside it and is a cool temple! On the way to the temple we went through the worlds biggest train station! It is massive we only walked through a tiny bit of it and it took us longer than 10 minutes!!! There are multiple floors and underground floors and is so hard to navigate! Especially seeing it's all written in japanese! After the temple we went to Shibuya shi and looked at a couple of shops. Walked through the busiest intersection in the world!!! And some typical crazy Tokyo streets! So in one day I went through the biggest train station in the world, the busiest intersection in the world and walked around the biggest city in the world! Wow hahaha it was so cool and the intersection wasn't even busy in comparison to how busy it normally is yet it was packed! At this intersection all of the lights go red and then people basically run at each other and it feels like we should be screaming for Sparta as we collide with the people coming from the other side!
On the way to Tokyo it was rush hour on the trains so we would get to a station, say 50 people would get off and 100 would try and get on!!!! So your standing there and then people just start compressing and compressing until you could not fall over or move even if you wanted to! There are people who's job is to push everyone into the train and compress everyone into as smaller space as physically possible! Then they try and close the doors. It's crazy!!!! So different to perth! Perth trains are empty and peek hour in comparison! There are so many people it's crazy!
I am loving the joy I am getting from opening my eyes to the small miricales! Like seeing someone accept what you say when you teach them a few simple restored truths on the train! Or an investigator pray for the first time!
Miss the sunshine and beaches of Perth so much! And I miss wearing shorts and t shirt and thongs! When I get back I am going to wear shorts t shirt and thongs and spend so much time at the beach, I might just get my swag and camp on the beach!
Til next week friends :)