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

TRANSFERS!

This week has been so slow! Only because of transfers and gouches (aka member meals). So the news is.......I'm not transferring and Elder Larson is still my comp!! What's even better though is we got 2 new Elders in our apartment Elder Satou and Elder Murdock. Anyway I'll go through the week

Tue: We had DTM (District Training Meeting) and District lunch where we ate sushi. Sushi is SOO good in Japan. I'm lucky to be in Sapporo which is known for having the best sushi in the world. Then we wrote letters for an investigator who was at the hospital, had a lesson with a new investigator and had Eikawa (English class). We played the sign game but with Halloween things like witch and ghost.

Wednesday: Slow. We picked up a new elder down at the subway in the main part of the city Odori (downtown Sapporo where all the outdoor festivals and winter carnival are held). Then we had an amazing gouch. We went to this buffet at a hotel. Way high class. I ate about 5-6 trays of food.  Then we went back to the apartment and pretty much spent the day moving stuff around to accommodate 4 ppl. Then we did some housing as a San(3)nin doryo(companion(ship)).

Thursday: Back to Odori, We had some extra time so we went windows shopping because we were out of our area (Can't proselyte outside your area unless on splits). Then back to the apartment and continued to move some stuff around. Then we met Simon who took us all over the place. We also went to a koi fish pond which is owned by one of his old yakuza (Japanese mafia) buddies. Then we went back to his parents house and he showed us his ties. He has pretty much everything packed up because he can't wait to go to college. He still has a lot of questions about the Book of Mormon but he seems like he really doesn't want to find an answer right now.

Fri: Another Gouch. This time by a bunch of member Obaa-chan (older people) who meet at the church about once a month to do lunch with the missionaries. Then we biked like mad to get to a bunch of different places but nobody was home all day! And all the houses we knocked on to introduce ourselves got kekko desued ("no thank you").

Sat: A fun yet slow day. This was our Halloween party day! The day pretty much consisted of studies, planning, and the party. The Halloween Party was great! We had 13 non members come to it. 2 were our investigators and 7 who aren't investigators who came because of friends or family. It was a lot of fun, we had mini games for the kids, and themed food. They had little hotdogs that had spaghetti through them, black spaghetti (It was squid ink, surprisingly delicious), pumpkin soup, and other things. Then we played Basketball after with some members and non members.  I'm sorry I don't have a pic of my costume.  I'll try to get one. We all got the same wig which had really long hair and cut them to our desire. Everyone thought mine was hilarious, I looked like John Lennon because I had a ponytail in the back. 

Sun: We had an Investigator come to Sacrament Meeting for his first time! We asked a member to invite him and he came! He left right after Sacrament meeting though. Then we did some car dendo with our dendo shuni (mission leader) and a member Nishino Kyoudai. We went to 4 houses in an hour but no one was home :(. Though we did stop by a seico mart where an investigator works and gave him candy :). Then Larson and Murdock Choro practiced for their performance tonight at FHE (Family Home Evening). Then things got fun. We biked around for a while but nothing. We stopped by an investigator's house whom I haven't met until last night. We helped them move some wood and offered to come back and help chop for them later. Then we went to Takahashi sans house. Oh my goodness these people are so nice. We dropped by unexpected but Takahashi sans wife made us a fruit plate, cookies, salmon onigiri (see Wikipedia), squid, some garlic thing, and some frozen udon packages. We felt kinda bad but she insisted we take all this food. While we were there we shared the video mountains to climb and talked about it for a bit with Takahashi San. He totally felt the spirit and said so but refuses to acknowledge that it is actually the spirit. Oh and they gave us clementines, made me a bit nostalgic for Thanksgiving time. Then we went housing but no luck, we even got kicked out of a neighborhood but I was really nice about it so that was good. 

Mon: We climbed up a Marayama Mountain in the rain! I'll let some pics do the talking for me. 

All the other pics of us as a district are on my comps camera So I'll get those later and send those to you all. 

Love you,

Harvey Choro.  

District lunch with Obaa-chan

My companion's hair has changed!

Some Halloween basketball.

P-day on Marayama Mountain

Koi fish pond

Winter is here (10/23/16)

Ok maybe not quite here but it is getting really cold! Especially when you are outside not wearing shoes and not wearing a coat or gloves.  Helping people move is really good service but cold! What's even worse though are the yukimushi. Bugs that come out right before winter. There are swarms of thousands of these things. Bike through the sunlight and you come out covered in tiny bugs that die by you hitting them. All the people here avoid sunlight during these dark and dreary days.  Anyway Captains log 243 star date 627

Wednesday : An awesome day. We helped Miyauchi San move for a few hours and then we went to a members house and helped her move a couch.  Then we talked a little bit and she is working on getting some people to meet us! She has such a big dendo Fire, It's a blessing to be in the Moiwa ward.

Thur: This day was interesting. We had Apartment Checks which we got really high praise on. Then we had to work on our bikes for a bit.  Then we went to a Japanese Buffet which are way different. Meat is bought as a meal and then they had 4 buffet options,  soup salad curry and drinks. I got a hamburger steak with egg on top with some fried chicken and French fries. BEST BEEF I HAVE EVER EATEN! It was absolutely delicious. I also ate 4 plates of curry 3 cups of hot chocolate and 2 glasses of melon soda. We were doing weekly planning so we were there for a while. Then we went home teaching and found a new investigator and gave a blessing to a less active. I'm glad we had the opportunity to go with Shinden-Kyoudai (brother temple ). Then once we got back to the church we realized something was a amiss.....We saw white everywhere. IT WAS SNOWING!  I just might see a white Halloween. Right now there isn't snow though :(

Fri: We had to walk for half of this day. It's nice to walk but a waste of time because there are no people out on the streets and it takes forever to get anywhere. We were fed an amazing breakfast by an investigator. The only time I have ever eaten a mushroom and liked it. We had such an amazing lesson, we could feel the spirit so strongly and he is coming to understand the importance of the gospel for him. We were able to bike later though because all the snow melted. So we went and helped Miyauchi San move for the rest of the day.

Sat: This was a trying day. We biked all around town in cold rain and pretty much nobody was home. Only 2 people were home and they both had guests over. It was rough. BUT, during our housing time this day we found 2 new investigators. The first one seemed kinda confused but said we could come back. What made it really funny though was that as we were walking out the pizza man came and delivered a pizza to him. When we first knocked he totally thought we were the pizza man haha. The second person we found was in this really weird looking apartment. It was a single mother with a little girl. We talked a bit about eternal families and she seemed pretty interested. She wants us to come back. :) oh and her daughter was like 2 or 3 she was adorable.

Sun: We had 2 investigators come to church, but both missed the sacrament so we can't mark it towards their progress, which is unfortunate because they both have baptismal dates. It was kind of interesting though because in Gospel Principles we were talking about eternal marriage and 1 of them is 17 and the other is about 55. It was an interesting conversation. Then we went dendoing with our mission leader. It was awesome to have a bunch of team up lessons. He knows his stuff...and Japanese. Also it snowed again it was really cold.

A beautiful day at the temple.

What a difference a day can make!

And so it begins for the new member of the Frozen Chosen!

Enjoying my new district.

Apostle Life Be Crazy (10/19/16)

This has been such an amazing week. We had an investigator coming to Seminary at 6 in the morning because he wanted to. He also has to bike here which makes it even more amazing. Unfortunately Seminary has a break for the next 2 weeks but we hopefully can take this chance to teach him some more useful things than Isaiah X)

I also had splits this week which was SO STRESSFUL! They made me area sempai meaning I had to plan everything and know where to go. Needless to say I pulled out the map a few times. Mostly because we went places I had never been to before. Because I was in front I also was the one who had to stop everyone as we were biking. But that was actually a lot of fun. We found 2 new investigators this way and when we were checking out one of these 2 people’s apartment complex we housed it and found some one who has a cousin in our ward. She invited us to teach her more but we have yet to follow up. I also felt we should stop at another place but the first place we knocked someone who was possessed came to the door. It was so creepy her eyeballs were twitching and she had a delayed slow answer for each question we asked. Then the ZL encouraged me to knock on a another door when we were about halfway out and it was a normal person. We got keko desued (“No thank you”) but that gave me the confidence to knock on the door I wanted to in the first place. He is a new investigator now. He seems like a really solid guy. I am way excited to teach him. Then we finished splits and ate sushi yum. I ate about 8 pieces of way good sushi for 7 dollars not bad.

The next day we had mission conference with Bednar Choro. For those of you who have no idea who this person is he is an apostle of our church. One of 12 people who have been called by God to lead his church. There is also our Prophet and his 2 counselors who lead the church. It was such an amazing experience. He focused on how the Holy Ghost teaches. He basically had a Q and A session with us and really focused on how he really wasn't the one teaching us. In fact he hopes not a single one of us remembers anything he said but that we remember the things we heard from the voice that was not spoken aka the Holy Ghost.

Then it was Sunday and we had stake conference. The coolest part of this day was that we had 2 investigators come to Elder Bednar’s devotional that night. They both felt very touched by the message that many shared which was mostly about joy.

Monday: We had an investigator with a birthday and that was a lot of fun. He smokes a lot and we played some basketball, as in we all had a basketball and shot some hoops on an 8 foot basket. I could dunk :)  It was really good for him to get some exercise though and he really enjoyed it, we also taught a really good lesson after. We helped an investigator move. It was...interesting.

Tue: we helped him move again more.....interesting. Sometimes you just have to not look and put some bags on your feet. However I really love this guy and I am excited to help him more and teach him more about how the gospel can bless his life. We also had English class which was fun.

Wed: We were supposed to go to the Temple today but there was a miscommunication with the time, and we got on the wrong train. Instead we just took some pictures around the building and went home. I went to Boston Bake though which has a ton of good pastries and sandwiches and all kinds of bread goods.

Anyway being on small sidewalks still sucks, but the people are amazing and I love talking with these people. Especially the younger people. Though most high school boys are kinda crazy. Though for the most part they are really fun to be with. It being cold here sucks too but biking up hills really warms you up, going down though.... It is so amazing though being in Japan and being able to just go out and talk to people about something that has brought me so much Joy and be able to share that with these people.

Love you all

ﾊﾋﾞ 長老

Boys Be Ambitious! (10/10/16)

Mon: So on Monday we walked around part of Sapporo with Simon, a half Canadian half Japanese guy who took us to a bunch of different places.  I ate SUBWAY! We also went to an army store which made me miss Kayla :'(. He also took us to a few historical places and explained the history of Hokkaido. This conversation actually came up because a guy named William Clark? pretty much made Hokkaido modern and left with the phrase “Boys be Ambitious.” We walked a ton this day and it reminded me so much of my walks around Boston with my Dad.

Tue: This day we had Zone Training meeting and we biked around to a bunch of Bike Shops to buy me a new Bike. I got a black and blue bike that's waayyyy nice. Then we had Eikawa Class (English class) which was really fun too. We had twizzlers for treats>.< I also got a new hair cut!

Wed: We biked everywhere this day but the coolest thing was when we were housing. We get to the very last house of the block we were housing and the mom (Fukui San) had some interest. We planned to meet her again and tell her about eternal families. This day was also really cold. We spent a good amount of time without coats until we were finally forced home because of the cold. Then we trapped coats and ran back out the door. This day we visited a few members and at one point a less active member’s daughter was playing with some friends right outside her house. They thought it was so cool that we were gaijin (foreigners) and spoke English. That girl is gonna be sooo popular cuz she spoke English with some Americans. 

Thur: This day was weird. We had practically no dendo time. We printed things out at a member’s house. He's pretty young.  He plays League of Legends and his desktop screen was a picture of a new skin for a champion named Jinx. Then we had interviews with our mission president. I learned a lot from him. He relates everything back to his job as a chiropractor somehow though.

Fri: Right when I thought I was done with early morning seminary I'm not. We had an investigator come and we went too. I picked up my bike and the rest of the day was kind of disappointing. But we made the day up by going to a cafe at a hotel called prince Hotel.

Sat Sun: RYO KUN CAME! So the investigator who came to seminary actually came to conference for the Saturday session and 1 and 1/2 of the Sunday sessions. He wants to come to Elder Bednar’s Fireside too! IM SO EXCITED FOR THIS PERSON! Also BOYS BE AMBITIOUS! We went housing this Sunday and found a Potential investigator and a new investigator. I finally handed out my first Book of Mormon myself. I recommended Moroni Chapter 7 because she really wanted to know the truth about Love. Also we are definitely ambitious. By the end of this month our goal is to find 32 new investigators. So far we found 1 and 4 potentials but potentials don't count :( Oh and on the way home we stopped this guy and he has a friend who is Mormon though she lives in Kyuushu. But he has lived in New Zealand for the past 4 years and wants to come to our Eikawa class with his daughter. SO EXCITED!

Mon: I mopped floors Japanese style, with rags. X)

Sorry I am out of time about to go to a Basketball tournament. Also one of our investigators is here with us. We are currently at the Church that is where we do all of our emails.

Love You!

My new haircut

A room with a view!  Downtown Sapporo.

Planning meeting at the Prince Hotel cafe.

First Zone Conference and training.