Sunday, October 13, 2013

October 13, 2013 Letter

So in order to grace you all with a longer letter we woke up early, but the problem is I burned a lot of time on my letter to the mission president so we will see how this goes.

0637 Nippon (that is a really formal written way to say Japan)

Baking stories:
I feel like I am one of those bloggers that bakes one page a day through a cookbook and talks about it in her blog... they made a movie about that once.. mary to mary or sally to sally... it has Amy Adams in it. Anyway! I pumped out a pie this week! Baking is the most interesting thing. I will compare it to Harry Potter. If anyone has read Harry Potter you all have thought the same thing as me: you can understand defense against the dark arts as being difficult because someone might have a better wand or pronunciation or just be more powerful. The seeing the future class could be tricky because someone might have the gift and you don't. But what about potions? You just read the bloody recipe, measure it out and boil. Harry complains and complains about how hard it is... its an art folks. 

My pie was apple. it cost me approximately an entire shift as a lifeguard to purchase the ingredients. In japan shortening comes in a little squeezable bottle and is super fun to squeeze. The pie was super good tasting! It was a bit on the ugly side but won the "good looking award" at family home evening but came in second to Yamamoto choros pork boiled fancy, way delicious, in the tasting category. My vote was that the tie breaker should be a smell off but they refused....

Culture Point:
Counting. It's going to be a bit hard to explain but its different when you count on your fingers here. In America and Japan the first 5 are the same. But the second five and up are different. In America when you finish loading the first hand you just bust out ol' lefty. In japan you have two options: the first is you start pulling down fingers form the side you started. That sounds super confusing but if you do it every time then it makes sense and is nice because you only rock one hand. The second way and the way you would show someone across the room to grab SEVEN eggs is you hold up the filled hand and then place the fingers of your other hand (in the case of seven two fingers) nail up on your palm so they can see. I don't know why but this way is super easy and natural to copy. I have been doing it on accident since the second week of the MTC.

Random:
This is a perfect example of the messed up used of English that I have talked about in previous letters. This one wasn't on a shirt so I could take a picture for you.



This is what a church building looks like


Yamamoto choro on my favorite road to ride. It looks like this for a couple miles with a river on the other side and occasionally baseball fields for little kids.


My first split where I was the senior companion! I love this guy and he wants to do the same thing at he same school after!


Fun Food Fact
Deep fry! Everyone thinks America is super unhealthy and japan is super healthy which is true in a lot of the diet. My image was always that most of the reason was Americans love deep frying. But Japan deep fries waaaay more. The thing is what you get with the deep fried batter. In America its normally chicken or potatoes or onions or fish or steak or corndogs or burritos or bread or snickers. In japan its normally meat or the most common is vegetables (egg plant, green beans, pumpkin, onions, pepers...). It is always super good! You should try it.

Spiritual thought:
So we just watched general conference this week end and because of the translation and the time issues I actually got to watch it in English which was sweet. A thought I wanted to share was a little story in President Eyring's talk. Its the morning session on Sunday and the story is the one about the grandma and the kid in prison. If you weren't able to hear it please look it up.

We are all literally infinitely in debt to the Savior for all He has suffered to help us. I thought this story was inspiring to maybe be able to pay him back a little. To become an arrow in his quiver that can be shot at the strongest, armor covered, flaming advisory and penetrate deep and not break off. Become the weapon the Lord can use to liberate the captive and protect the innocent. To be humble and loving enough that He is able to use us to accomplish great things. From the rest of conference I think the way is complete repentance and obedience to his commandments and then to pray. Pray for humility, pray for meekness, pray for love and I know He will give it. Through Christ's name I testify. Amen.

Funny Story:
So we had two birthdays this week! The first was my companion's and went perfect thanks to an AWESOME uncle and a super star family! But I will write about that in a real letter and mail it to you guys. I want to talk about Takase choro's birthday. It was yesterday and we had gone all out for elder Yamamoto and we needed to do something for elder takase. But it was Sunday and we didn't really know what he wanted anyway because he has everything he wants because he is a way old missionary. We tried to think of what he likes and all we could come up with was the gospel, Hawaii and his fiancé. We couldn't send him to Hawaii, the gospel birthday present was a bit boring, so that left the girlfriend. Except we didn't have enough to send him to her. So we decided to bring her to him. Not the real her of course (refer to letter 16, paragraph 6, "male nun") so we decided to make him one! Some lesser men would result to paper and ink but we wanted 3D so we went with rice eggs and ketchup (we have a chef in the apartment we can do anything). He died of laughter and said it wasn't his lover but that she was tasty. We presented it to him really funny but I don't have time to explain now. Above was supposed to be his favorite animal, a dog.
 
 
 
Love each other for me!

Elder Law 

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