Time Crunch!

This has been a really weird week. All of our time got eaten up by activities and such. It kinda sucked to have all our dendo time get sucked up by other things. :( But, I did see miracles this week!

Mon: Me and Elder Isobe just played around at the church for our Pday.  We also got zange ramen. Mama (important word: average) ramen but the zange is why you go there. (Editor's note - I have not been able to find anything that tells me what zange means.)  It kinda reminded me of apple cider doughnuts from Vermont. We met with Keita San and a really good discussion with him. It was probably my first really good lesson I have had with him. He had a ton of questions and I was spouting out answers left and right...IN JAPANESE! Then again that's why I am here so it's futsu (normal).

Tue: We didn't have our ZTM (zone training meeting) today because the snow was so bad on Monday the government was still trying to clear the roads. So that got moved to Fri. Instead all of our time got eaten up by singing practice for the Christmas party and for sacrament meeting on Christmas. Then we had our mogie (role playing), dinner and Eikawa (English class).

Wed: This day was a lot of walking. Noteworthy things of this day were: eating an apple ice cream bar and teaching a lesson by myself to one of our investigators. There was construction going on just outside this guy's apartment so Elder Isobe couldn't hear him. But it was a really good lesson on prayer. Then our time got eaten up at night because we were told by the AP's to go to institute to help out...even though there was no one there. Awkward! I also found my first bathroom where toilet paper is not provided and went to my first Boston Bake 30% off sale. It was a battle zone in there. Everything is 30% off every night after 7:30.

Thur: This day we had the Obaa-chan (older people) lunch which Elder Murdock taught.  It was really cool and we had an investigator there which was nice.  Then we had DKK and institute AGAIN! The only people who were there was the teacher, one sister and us. It was fun and we got fed Boston Bake. I love Boston Bake. And the ward members. Most noteworthy thing though was as we were leaving the teacher Nakajima kyodai told us "Oh Elder's I'm looking forward to feeding you on ___ date. Oh, and I am inviting the mission president.  Bye." Needless to say we are all freaking out about it a little on the inside.

Fri: ZTM which was really good. It was a lot of fun until I made my douki sisters cry (I believe douki sisters means the sisters that were in the MTC and started at the same time as Zach). I had to be the messenger of bad news to them. Then a little after I told them we had pictures which I forgot about.

Whoops. Then I went to an all you can eat Yakiniku place, same one as b4 but because it was lunch it was cheaper. Then a lot of rejection or people not being home. That was no fun, but that's missionary life for you.

Sat: Our Ward Christmas party happened! It was a ton of fun! We had 3 investigators show up. Which was actually 100% of the people we got real commitments out of. We had a play, a bunch of musical performances, Amazing food, and I got to dress up as Santa!

Sun: Church was fun, we went caroling with members, and walked to an investigator who wasn't home.

Love you all,

Elder Harvey

Santa Zach!

Missionaries singing, "Silent Night" in English and Japanese.  Warning - turn up the volume and take dramamine if necessary.

This is the main drag in Sapporo during the different seasons (i.e. winter and not winter).

Elder Harvey lives at the base of the mountains and to the left a bit.

Now I'm waist deep in this....

THIS WEEK HAS BEEN CRAZY! SO much has happened that each day goes by super fast but it feels like it's been weeks since I last emailed. Ok meat and potatoes dake (i.e. "only" or "just" meat and potatoes).

Mon: Went Bowling with the zone, ate all you can eat Yakiniku (grilled meat dishes) and had an awesome lesson with our French investigator at Starbucks.

Tue:  Had our last DTM (district training meeting) where we got our transfer calls and announced them.  (Every 6 weeks the missionaries find out if they are going to transfer to another area and/or if they are going to be assigned to a new companion.  Zach is staying in Sapporo, but is getting a new companion.)  Then we had SUSHI. Then dendo (missionary work), and Eikawa (English class).

Wed: This morning Elder Larson was saying bye to investigators. We made 2 new baptismal dates, and went to the top of Moiwa Ropeway.  (This is a tram just a block from Zach's apartment that takes people to the top of Mount Moiwa.  All the venues for the 1972 Winter Olympic Games are within walking distance of Zach's apartment.  Some are a long walk, but still....)

Thursday: TRANSFERS: We missed Elder Larson's bus by like 2 min. BUT, We had some investigators there to say bye to Elder Larson. Then I stayed with some other Elders while I waited for my new companion to arrive. My NEW COMPANION IS...Elder Isobe!! Elder Maloy's Dad. (A "Dad" refers to a trainer - so Elder Larson was Elder Harvey's "Dad."  Elder Maloy was Elder Harvey's companion in the MTC, so Zach now has his MTC companion's Dad as a companion.  Got that?)  It was hilarious when we got the call because we kept saying I was going to go to Abashiri with Elder Isobe, but he came to me. 

Fri: We did our weekly planning and found 2 new investigators. 

Sat: AHH BLIZZARD! At any given point during this day I was walking on a foot of ice. Oh just so you know we only stop dendo if it seems like we will legitimately die by going outside. We visited a bunch of people, handed out a Chinese Book of Mormon, and "borrowed" someone's shovels to shovel them out, their neighbor out, and our investigator out. We asked (for permission to borrow the shovels) once they got home though. 

Sun: We had an amazing church block. We had an investigator come and had an amazing team up lesson with the young men's class. Then we spent pretty much all day trying to get to a member's house for an AMAZING goach (dinner appointment). At one point I was literally waist deep in snow. We also got stockings which was so nice of them. This family really cares about their missionaries and we could feel that. Not just by gifts, but through the Spirit I felt the strong love they have for us. (In a separate e-mail Zach said they had another blizzard on Sunday and " I don't think I will see the ground for a long time."  It snows there almost every day.) 

LOVE Y'ALL

Elder Harvey

SUSHI!!!!

I can't believe I ate all that.

Japanese bowling and more food

The climate is affecting my complexion

The bottom and top of the Moiwa Ropeway

(I [Zach's dad] had found the Moiwa Ropeway on Google Earth before I even knew where Zach was going to serve, so it was pretty cool when I found out that his apartment and the church were just a block away from the bottom of the tram.  I've been telling him I wanted him to go to the top and take pictures, so in the first video his reference to fulfilling my wish is a direct reference to that.  The view looks over the entire city of Sapporo.  The Olympic venue sites are on the back side of these mountains.  In the second video, Zach and his friends say hello and goodbye.)

An early Christmas with a fantastic family!!

Speaking in Japanese, English, and FRENCH!?!?

This week has been absolutely crazy! I have seen so many miracles and I feel a TON of things have happened. First off though, shout out to Sister Harvey out there in France. French people are SO easy to talk to. At least when you are in a foreign country where no one speaks French...  Anyway, onto the details.

Mon: We went to FHE (Family Home Evening) with Keita San as I said before and it was really fun. We played a telephone game where we had to write the word in Katakana (one form or alphabet of the Japanese written language) on the persons back in front of us. The teams' answers were dancer and kuruma (car). The correct answer was actually Santa though. Then Nakatsuka Kaichou (President Nakatsuka is my Mission president) gave us a message on what all the traditional Christmas stuff's meanings. It was really fun!

Tue: Pretty futsu (normal). We had DTM (district training meeting) and then had lunch. Then we went to Takahashi-San (the one who was hospitalized) and found out he has diabetes. Really sad, but I really feel that our visit to him was important. I really feel like he needed our love and friendship in that moment. Then we had our mogie (role playing), dinner, and Eikawa (English class) where Elder Larson got destroyed! He wanted to do raps and the entire class utterly rejected the idea, so we talked about music.

Wed: This day was a roller coaster day! At the beginning of the day no one was home and one fairly new investigator dropped us :(. We were feeling pretty low and had no idea what to do. To quote my companion, "This is the first time since I have been Senior Companion that I have no idea what to do." So we ended up going to the Library. We got inside and turns out the Library part was closed. Now we were even more lost on what to do. We go sit down and start reviewing our area book and sending out texts when all of a sudden we hear this guy speaking French to his family. Elder Larson JUMPED up and went to go talk to him. Turns out he is a professor at the College right next to the temple. His wife is Japanese and she speaks not only French and Japanese, but English as well. Now here's the real crazy part. We had about an hour long conversation just jumping between French Japanese and English. What's even more crazy is that I understood a lot of what was being said, EVEN IN FRENCH! Long story short we talked to them about French stuff, missionary stuff, and other stuff.  We got their phone number to boot! Throughout this week we have been texting them in French. (It's pretty funny that the French speaker keeps asking me how to spell words.) Oh and they invited us over for dinner TONIGHT! I also forgot to mention the wife was in France when they met because she was studying French Cuisine. Now I finally get to see what Sister Harvey gets to eat all the time.

Thur: Planning day! However for the one lesson we did have it was AMAZING! The lesson started out with our investigator, Simon, saying straight up that he did not believe in God at all. We talked for a long time and eventually committed him to pray (again) to know whether or not God was there. We knelt down with him and he said a prayer as preparation for that night. I called him the next day and asked him how it went. He said he felt "odd feelings but they felt good". I explained to him that those feelings was his answer. He took a second and was like yeah it was. He said he now cannot deny that God and Christ exist. Quick shout out to my Dad, your tatoe (parable, example) of the spiritual engine blocks verses pieces of paper to make a phone book played a HUGE role in getting him to pray. Thank you for always teaching me! :)

Fri: This was a day of walking with nobody home. BUT, We saw some miracles for people. Once again we went to Tai-San and right as we got there the Sister's investigator was just lighting up a cigarette. If that timing wasn't a miracle I honestly don't know what is. Heavenly Father is pulling all the stops to help this person stop smoking! We also got to meet Tai-San and gave him a Chinese Book of Mormon. He goes home (to China) in about a week. Other cool thing that happened, we went to go talk to a new investigator and she gave us Black Garlic. Basically garlic you cook for about 2 weeks I think? Anyway tasted weird.

Sat: Another make it or break it lesson. This time it was with Yuasa-San. He told us the day before that this will probably be the last time he will meet with us because he wants to go to a church closer to his house. Luckily we got Yuni-kun (a member) to be a team-up. It turns out he was worried because of all the information on the internet was saying scary stuff that isn't even true. We talked a lot about prayer and getting answers from God. Another long story short, he was at church the next day with his friend. Then right after that lesson we made a video with Yuni-kun which was a lot of fun. The rest of the day was pretty slow.

Sun: Yuasa-San and his friend were the only two who came to church out of our investigators. Zan'nen (too bad). We had invited 6 people.  Though it was really good. We had a member Nishino Kyodai drive them to and from Church. We learned later that Yuasa San had wanted to share his testimony during sacrament meeting. He had shared it with Nishino Kyodai in the car. Then we went out to dendo with a different member and the two people we wanted to visit were not home and sick.

But it was really good because we had a car and didn't waste a lot of time walking to be met with rejection. What's even better though was this member was like who should we go to next. We didn't know so we prayed about it and I felt we should visit Huugo Kuhn who we haven't met in forever and hasn't been responding to us. Well he was home, and it turned out that he wasn't responding because right now is the time for College Entrance Exams, so he was studying hard. When we got there he was like HEY ELDERS! I was just thinking of contacting you guys. We had a short lesson but most important was that we made sure he had interest and didn't drop him. Then we texted the French guy (Cedric) and walked around housing before the Bishop's dinner.

Mon: I'm really excited for today. We are going to a Yakiniku (Japanese bbq) buffet for lunch and we are getting a French goach from a new investigator! To be continued

Love Elder Harvey

Zone conference last month

I smell like cigarettes

That does not mean, however, that I smoked them. This was just another cool miracle of the Lord's guidance.

Wed: So after emailing and everything we went to dendo (did missionary work). We visited a bunch of referrals but only one was home. We also went to go see Satoshi San. His house is the reason for the subject title. We talked with him for a long time, just sitting in his genkan (entryway/porch), about a lot of things. Interesting fact, he is convinced the second coming will happen 2033. Why - I think it was because he read somewhere that Christ said he was coming back in 2000 years.

Thur: Nothing really happened on the dendo front this day. However, we made an amazing thanksgiving feast! We had purple mashed potatoes, gyoza (Japanese dumplings), and chicken. Then for dessert we had cold mashed sweet potato.  All the while we were watching On The Lord's Errand: The story of President Thomas S. Monson. Great movie by the way. Then we did DKK (weekly planning) and then people kekkoing (saying "no thanks") and dropping us :( Oh but we did walk up to a rich neighborhood and found a history teacher who had a teepee and took a Book of Mormon so he can learn more about Ancient Native Americans.

Fri: This was a fun day! We started off having the Obaa-chan (grandma) lesson at the church. And we had an investigator come! Our lesson was about the atonement. For those of you who remember the doughnut story from general conference a few years ago? (the seminary one where the guy has to do push-ups for people's doughnuts) you will know what I am talking about. It was really good - all the old ladies felt really bad for Elder Murdock. Then we went to a RC (Recent Convert) with Nishino Kyoudai. We felt like we should talk about the word of wisdom with him. It was really cool though because he led us into it talking about healthy food. Then we learned he has been drinking coffee and tea every once in a while. He didn't even remember that it was dame (dah-meh) (not allowed, bad, must not). We committed him to stop drinking it.

Sat: A really sad day where people were not home, did not have time, or dropped us . :( We did however find a new investigator who gave us Oreos.

Sun: Ooguro-San came to church! We taught him the Plan of Salvation right before church and then we had the Primary Program (an annual program where the young Primary children sing and give talks). That was a lot of fun AND I could understand what they said (well when they spoke audibly and didn't mumble their words). Then Ooguro San left and will be back in the Hospital again. Oh that's right he just got released from the Hospital and the first Sunday out he was here. :)  Then we went to visit Satoshi San again. It was a lot of fun but I understood very little. Even Elder Larson did not understand a lot of it. Another interesting fact, he is convinced Jesus loved to drink beer.

Mon: WE WENT TO THE THOUSAND GATE SHRINE. (See pictures below.  You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them.)  Time to write a few essays.

 This shrine is just on the other side of the hill where the ski jumps for the 1972 Winter Olympics are located.

 Views of Sapporo from the top of the hill.

Sushi, Splits & Shinden

For those who are wondering what the best acronym is, here you go SSS (sushi, splits and Shinden).  Now for those who are wondering what Shinden means, it means Temple. As in the Sapporo Temple. Sorry for forgetting to mention that last week.  Especially because there was an Earthquake and Tsunami down in the mainland of Japan. Anyway I don't have any time today so I will try to be quick.

Tue: We found out one of our Sisters had to go home due to health reasons. A sad day.

Wed: I went on Splits with Satou Choro. He is the Nihonjin (Japanese person) who is in our apartment. It was a ton of fun. We did a lot of Streeting and housing and had one investigator visit who we had to drop :(  But towards the end of our day we found a KINJIN (literally Gold Person translation: golden investigator.)

Thur: Another very apparent miracle. The very first thing we did this day was go to see some investigators we have been wanting to see. We decided to visit them one last time. First person not home. Second person, I prayed in very gaijinpoi (Gaijin is foreigner and adding poi to a noun basically means like a noun) Japanese to make this person be home if He (Heavenly Father) wants us to teach him. Elder Larson explained to me what I said and then added "besides if he's not here it's not like Heavenly Father can just make him appear." So we knock on his door, no answer. We stand there for a little while and then the elevator opens. It was the guy. We found out his name and set up a return appointment.

Fri: This day we had Zone Conference. One of the many things I learned was how to make a good tasting salad. Then we went back, I packed my stuff and we went housing for an hour while I was carrying a duffle bag full of stuff. I got a few strange looks and a lot more people saying hello back to me. Probably because they think they can outrun me. Anyway the reason I had the bag is because I was going on splits for Saturday with one of our ZL's (Zone Leaders)

Sat: A lot of walking around finding less-active members and housing/Streeting. It was really fun though because we had a lot of time to talk. I heard a lot of stories this day.

Sun: Stake Conference! Once again strange looks because of the duffle bag.  Our area authority was here and so was our dendo Kaichou (mission president). It was a really good meeting. Also the two kids sitting next to me made me 4 paper airplanes, an origami fox head, table, cherries, and this thing you blow on and it spins and looks cool. They were pretty cute kids.  Then dendo wise we found another KINJIN! We were on our way to an appointment when we almost passed this guy but decided to talk to him.  Long story short he accepted a Book of Mormon and invited us back.

Mon: NOT P-DAY! Instead this was another split. This time I went with Murdock Choro my other apartment mate. I guess to make a very long story short. We walked 12 miles, visited 3 LA's (less actives) found 4 PI's, housed a former investigator who invited us back, got a thing of pineapple, 2 apple juice boxes, 2 persimmons, an imported pear, and bought my first onigiri (a rice ball usually wrapped in nori/seaweed and filled with something). We also found this incredible park that screamed VERMONT! Made me a little thanksgiving sick (we won't have one ;( ).

Tue: Now this is where I get to sushi. So many miracles this day but before that - sushi. After our DTM (district training meeting) we went to sushi together for district lunch. Sushi is SOO good. I got 5 plates of sushi and one of fried chicken because it's amazing here in Japan (literally everyone bought it, and I may or may not have gotten all the left overs :) ).  Just to put in perspective how cheap it is too I got all of my food for exactly $11. The winner for most number of plates though was Elder Murdock at 10 plates of sushi. His was just under 30 dollars. Ok, Miracles. We went to visit the KINJIN we found my first day. He was finally home. We talked with him a while, committed him to read the Joseph Smith experience with his family and made a return appointment.  Then as we were walking down the street this old lady stops to talk to us. Turns out she is a less active. She was baptized 40 years ago, fell away from the church, and then moved to Sapporo (she used to live in Hakodate). She said she has been looking for the missionaries for years. She saved up on a rewards card for a grocery store money so she could buy missionaries food. She wanted to buy us lunch at first but we told her we ate a little so we could keep talking to her. She took us to a bakery bought us breads and then drinks. Then we had about a 40 min conversation on a bench in the store. We gave her a Book of Mormon and got her phone number. She is totally going to become active again!

Wed: So Elder Larson's Temple Recommend actually expired this month and literally everyone from honbu (headquarters/mission home) was out. Luckily though Elder Murdock said I could go with Elder Satou to the Temple. It is such a gorgeous building. Sorry I'm out of time but something interesting about the temple is you have to take off your shoes at the entrance.  They even have a huge closet for shoes and coats in the lobby.

I Love you all,

Harvey Choro

Orangina - all is well

Where does the sushi come out??

Our beautiful Sapporo Japan Temple

BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST!!!

So this email may or may not be mostly be about food...ok it will be mostly about food...

Mon: Finishing up last week I went to a bunch of thrift stores.  Japanese thrift stores are pretty interesting to say the least. You could buy pretty much anything you want for pretty cheap there. You name it - clothes, skis, books, music, guitars, games, food, ok maybe not food but pretty much anything.

Tue: We had ZTM (Zone Training Meeting) this day. It was pretty fun especially seeing some of my Kouhai as beans (kouhai or kohai is a junior or protege in a mentoring system - just the opposite of senpai, and bean is a reference to a greenie or brand new missionary.  So this is a reference to an earlier class of missionaries met at the MTC that are now in Japan as brand new missionaries.)  Interesting story - one of the elders named Elder J________ got coke, food, 2 cans of beer each and a whole season of Law and Order from a drunk guy. Needless to say they left the beers and Law and Order and booked it out of there. Then they called him the next day to go get lunch and he just hung up on them. The feeling of people hanging up on you is honestly the worst. Then we went home, had a repair man check out the broken vent window and heater in our apartment, did some dendo, had a mogi (role played - probably in preparation for a lesson) and then EIKAWA! (English class)  This week we talked about morals and honestly Japanese people need to improve on some of those....

Wed: This day was really cool. We met with Yuasa San and his friend at the church and had a really good lesson about a lot of things. The best part was we showed them this manga (a type of Japanese comic book) that a missionary made which kind of explains who Christ and Satan are and they just analyzed the whole thing by themselves and taught themselves a really cool lesson.  Then we played some badminton which was pretty good exercise for these old smokers. The other cool thing we did this day is we went to a members restaurant for lunch with Honda San. Something happened at this restaurant that hasn't happened to me my whole life. I liked a salad. This restaurant was all natural foods and there was no meat in the meal. It was a salad, veggie sushi, enzyme rice, miso soup, dried fruit and nuts, and a fruit smoothie. It was actually really good! It was also a really great setting to teach this investigator at.

Thursday:  We had out heater fixed! Now we don't have to freeze in an ice box any more. We also did our weekly planning. We then went out to the streets to go visit people but nobody was home . :(  One interesting thing though was we stopped by a konbini (a Japanese convenience store) to use the restroom and I got a Dark Matter black thunder. To my chagrin it was only dark chocolate and nothing special inside. Elder Larson, however got something really interesting. He got this weird fish marshmallow thing with miso broth. Basically imagine a baseball, but it's this soft fish marshmallow thing. Pretty much the only thing that happened this day was we found a new potential investigator, but I think she really just wants to talk with us because she thinks we are cute.

Fri: This day... So we went to Mister Doughnuts (Japanese doughnuts are SO much better than American doughnuts, especially golden chocolate) to teach Y______ San and his friend a lesson. We taught the Law of Chastity which was super awkward because he had a slightly naughty picture for his phone background and he said that he had it because it reminded him of _______ shimai. Yet another email to Kaichou (Mission President) about this. After the lesson he went out a different way and Larson Choro suddenly had to use the bathroom. As we left we noticed Y_______ San ahead of us and our hearts sunk. He was smoking. Coincidence on us leaving later than planned?  I think NOT! Before he told us, repeatedly, that he had stopped smoking.  It was really sad.

Sat: BIG. AMERICAN. BREAKFAST. We had our breakfast event and we had 8! Investigators come. It was delicious and a ton of fun. The member support was really good too. We had probably 15 members there. For a pretty last minute activity, that was a really good turn out. I will let this picture talk for me about the food this time.

Serving breakfast (far right)

We also had some delicious bread and drinks but you can't see those. Then we gave Y______ San a call and he admitted to us about smoking. We assured him that we will continue to encourage and help him through this and he seemed pretty humbled by that.     

Sun: None of our investigators came to church. ;( We did however commit one of our weaker investigators to meet with us for real lessons on Monday nights. He is a college student who lived in Utah for a few years in high school. Also he decided to write his college paper on....THE MORMON CHURCH! I am pretty excited to start teaching him real lessons instead of 5 minute visits at his door. He also gave us POPTARTS! Then we helped Miyauchi San move some more and confirmed his interest in learning. As he bore his testimony I could feel his love for God and this church.  It seems like he really wants to join our church. Then we housed but no luck. 

Is anyone else hungry after reading this letter? 

Love Harvey Choro

Rise and shine.

Sunrise in Japan

Hanging with the locals

Out and about

Fall meets winter

I am no longer dreaming

That is of course about a white Christmas haha. SO MUCH SNOW! First time snow sticks and it just happens to be a foot of snow. But that's ok. I think I actually prefer walking to biking. This way I can talk to all the people we used to pass on our bikes. The only downsides are it takes forever and you might die.  The ice here is insane. All the sidewalks are now even smaller and there's just a path of ice. Though I have made it 2 days with only almost slipping . :) Anyway into the frozen solid details of the week. Sorry that it's not juicy :( Side note Black Thunder is the best candy bar on the planet! I also had the Ice cream bar.

Mon:  MY FIRST SPLITS! So there we were on our way to FHE when my comp calls our mission president and asked if all four of us should go. As I had presumed he told us to go on splits. So Elder Satou (a Japanese Elder who knows almost no English) and I went to go dendo! We visited

3 referrals and housed all of their apartments. It was really fun! We only met one of the referrals though but he was a pretty interesting dude! He kept saying how wonderful our message was but was saying that it was impossible for him. He'll soon learn better, we got an OK to come back!

Tue: Another interesting day. We had DTM (district training meeting) where we talked about thoughts.  It was really cool and only the beginning of a deep discussion among our district. We fixed (more like tried to fix) our districts new shimai's (sister's) bike. Had a lesson with Honda San, did our weekly mogie (role play of a missionary lesson) with some members and then taught Eikawa (English class). This week was really fun! We taught advanced class and they were just telling us scary stories about their travels. One got robbed in America by gunpoint, One was picked up by his head and robbed, and one punched someone in America. Interesting stories. Our plan for next Eikawa is morals.

Wed: Ok so this day was slow because pretty much no one was home. However 2 really cool things happened. We visited a recently active member in the Church. He's probably in his 80's or 90's we talked with him for a while just trying to become better friends with us. When we left he gave us ham bacon grapes and all these little snacks. Old people in Japan are so nice. They always give us so much food. I feel so bad being piled up with this food thinking what are you going to eat but they insist. Then when we were biking we got a call from Simon and he said he made a decision. Dun dun dun.... But right before he could say his decision Elder Larson remembered a story told 2 general conferences ago about a guy sitting on a fence during the pre mortal life. Long story short Satan convinced him to jump on his side. After telling that story Elder Larson was like, "so ya what was that decision you made?" Simon then responded by saying that his decision had changed. God really is looking out for Simon I know He has a plan for this boy.

Thursday: Our entire day was eaten up by planning and random people calling us making planning so much harder. This was such a long day.

Fri: This day was awesome~. We were fed an amazing goach (dinner appointment) by Oda shimai. She made us REAL RAMEN! First ramen experience in Japan! It was absolutely delicious.  The amount of oil in it was disgustingly amazing!(Though I hear the best ramen has like 3 times as much oil {O_0} )  She also put in a ton of vegetables and made fried chicken to dip in the broth, yum!  She also made us apple pie and cheese cake.  Her food is so good! Then we went out to dendo. After we did a little dendo in Oda-shimai's area, we went somewhere else we wanted to go.  We biked up a mountain and went to a bunch of places. Most interesting thing about that was we read the Book of Mormon together with the Sisters' investigators. We were visiting our investigator who lives next door and found their investigator smoking :( but we encouraged her to do her best and ask God for help. Then we read.

Sat: We looked out the window and what did we see? Popcorn popping on the snow? It was snowing. However by the time we left the apartment it had turned into rain. COLD RAIN SUCKS! We walked around, housed a bunch of places trying to find old investigators but no luck. However, we found 2 new investigators! On one, I pointed out a bike to my comp and we ran over to see it. Inside was this 20 something year old guy and we bike dendoed him. We talked with him for a while and showed him the come follow me video. We got his phone number (in Japan people don't give out phone numbers unless they have real interest and like you).  The other one was the last door we housed. It was this 77 year old lady who has a ton of interest in religion but because she is the oldest and she has no brothers social duty means she has to be Buddhist. Though she really wants to hear our message! Oh, and we found a place for squash ball if anyone wants to tell me what that is.

Sun: POOF! It was a scene like out of a movie. We look out the window and everything is just covered in a foot of snow. We went to Church and began to shovel but the members told us we didn't have to shovel so cleanly. They only wanted us to do a small portion and only shovel off the top half of the snow on the ground. Then they just drove the bishops car all around the parking lot to pat the snow down. Usually they have a contracted company come but that doesn't start until December. Then my companion went with a member to go pick up Yuasa San for church. I stayed with the other elders to shovel. Church was great and we taught Yuasa San a lot. He stayed for all 3 hours. Funny thing though is he had a dream and we confirmed/answered the question he had about this dream without him even mentioning it to us. He told us after church. Then we did a little bit of dendo and then went back to the apartment to be picked up by the bishop. We were having a Goach with the Bishop, AND with Yuasa San and his friend. We taught them about tithing and fasting.

Mon: Today we went with Simon to a shrine and explained temples to him a bit. It was really fun. He told us all about this Buddhist Temple (he really dislikes their religion) and we in turn told him a lot about our temple and it's purpose. Then we did other uninteresting P-day stuff like shopping and going to recycle stores.

All in all, another week of miracles. It's amazing what you start to notice when you have your eyes open and start looking around you.  There are opportunities to see miracles everywhere so long as you are paying attention to what's around you and follow what the spirit is telling you to do.

Love You ALL

Elder Harvey

I'm dreaming of a white Thanksgiving!

Chillin'

My fantastic district!

Ready to set the town on fire!

Superheros - Habi & Rason