Harvey Choro: 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!