Harvey Choro: 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.