November 17, 2013 Letter

From the land of the rising sun

0152 hours (Is there still an s if its not 2 hours yet? wakanai.)

 

Companion:

 

So I have neglected to give you very much information on my companion. His name is Elder Breinholt. He grew up in Washington state (Duvall) until he was 14 and then he moved to Utah where he lived until he was 18 years and 11 months and went on a mission. He is 196 cm, 86 kg, brown hair, and blue eyes. His hobbies are swimming, water polo, and being silly. He is soooo humble and wants to do the right thing so its so easy to get along with him. After the mission he will go to school for the air force at Utah state and wants to get his mechanical engineering degree or become a flight surgeon for them. I can beat him at arm wrestling but he is way better at reading kangi then me. 

 

Military ward info:

I figure you guys might find all this interesting so I am going to skip the Japanese culture point today. There are really 150ish members in the ward. There are 30 young families and two older (48ish year old) empty nesters. Very few of the families are normal military. We have 5 dentists and 8 doctors in ward and all the families have 3 or 4 children all under the age of 7. It's a waaay loud, way fun ward! These are some of the hardest working coolest people I have meant!

Fun food fact:

Miso soup. So when I first got here i didn't really like miso soup that much. It tasted like hot seaweed water. Now I LOVE it. I like crave it and have to make it. There are no real rules to how you make it (I used to think that there was). Normally you choose some vegetables (like carrots, onions, potatoes, mushrooms, these giant white radishes, seaweed, it doesn't really matter at all) then you boil them in water with this flavor stuff called dashi that I really have no idea what it is (some type of salty bullion). As the bubbles come up you scoop of the bad bubbles (its super important and I learned it from yamamoto choro). Then when the balance is right with the dashi (you taste it about 100 times and yes you get a tongue of steel it gets burned so much at first) you scoop some miso, a brown paste, into a really small metal strainer on a handle. Then you drop that in the still boiling broth and vegetables and stir the miso around tell it dissolves into the water. It's way good and supposedly the most healthy soup there is. I don't know if that is true but I love it!

 

Spiritual thought:

I had the experience of watching change through the atonement. The atonement is the act Christ preformed so that we can all choose to come back to God. It is because of the atonement that we can repent. Repentance always has this scary "you did bad and have to repent" feel but I testify all it is is change. There are two ways I have seen the power of that change. The first was this week when a couple were able to slowly become more humble, their hearts changing, so that they could make a decision that made them happier. The second change is that we can take bad decisions and the guilt and sorrow associated with them and change them! We can change our desires to better things and lose the sting of the old choices through the atonement. We can come unto Christ and become the better person we want to be and he wants us to be! What a blessing and power. I don't have time to explain how to use the atonement but if you find some missionaries where you live they would be glad to show you how to.

 

Picture update:

Be soooo jealous. We get up at 5 and play ultimate Frisbee on Saturdays for exercise. Yes that is a turf field and yes it did snow once already but we run and you feel totally warm after the first ten minutes.

 

Funny story:

So everyone in our district in Misawa is new except for my companion Elder Breinholt who has been here for about 4 months. So when we showed up to church our first Sunday (American ward is from 10-1 and the Japanese branch is from 2-4) there was a whole bunch of introductions and the such. It was the end of the third hour of the American's meeting and we were on the stand (they use it kind of like a classroom for third hour) and I kid you not,  2 seconds after the amen of the closing prayer this little head pops up and is looking at us over little half wall of the stand. It was an Obachan (older woman) I later found out is 78 years old and about 4 foot 8 inches. She looked super suspicious of us. Then she marched right around the stand, up the stairs and straight to my companion and asked ウィタル長老はどこですか。"where is elder Whittle?!" (that is who I replaced when I transferred) and the normally rather calm Elder Breinholt is like sweating his guts out and stammers out in Japanese that he transferred to Sendai. I am kind of confused why she seems so mad and about to introduce myself when she just goes off on him! I kept up for the first 4 insults of his intelligence, but then it started getting ugly and the only words I recognized were ancestors and fecal matter. My trainers always told me there are no cuss words in Japanese but I started to doubt that when I felt the heat of those words. It was out of love for the previous missionaries and settlement of not being informed something was changing though. She is totally a stud and I love her sooooo much! But I about died inside I was laughing so hard and trying to stay calm. All the Americans were just shell shocked and didn't understand. Elder Briendholt was too terrified to really understand. Please picture him 6' 5" and her 4'8" and him terrified. Eventually we got to swear an oath to her that if there was ever a transfer again that he would notify her immediately. Then she was satisfied.

 

Love each other for me!! 

Elder Law

November 10, 2013 Picture Update

This is my companion now. He is awesome! His parents bought him a funny license plate too.

This one is for dad!

 

This is my trainers Halloween costume! It's sooooo good! But it lost the contests because it wasn't funny at all to the Japanese kids... ahaha

Doesn't he look a bit like Gunner when Gunner was young?

Lesuma shimai (from the MTC) and Shuto shimai! Shuto shimai is like my mission mom. She is Japanese and always fixed my manners. She finishes her mission next month and is like 22. She is a waaay good person.

These are sister Luk (left) and sister Hayashi (right) they were in my district in Nagamachi. Sister Luk came to japan with me. She is training sister Hayashi. Sister Luk is from Hong Kong and is literally my favorite person in the mission. I have never met anyone more funny or Christ like.

Look who i got to go on spilts with!!!! He is still the awesome Thayne choro! I love this guy!!

 

So the people that were in the MTC with me and have been in the mission the same time are called my doki. From now on I will refer to them as that! These are my doki that are in my zone! It was sooooo fun to see them!

 

November 10, 2013 Letter

From the Frozen North 11:33

 

Moral:

Way Genki! It was my birthday! I love all you guys!!! I was spoiled rotten on my birthday with packages, letters, e-mails, and posts! Thank you thank you! I will be sending letters to as many as I have addresses for to let you know what I thought of your generosity! I also got to be on a split with my zone leader on my birthday. you guys might have heard of him, his name is Takeshita choro!!!!! It was waaaay fun! So yeah... God loves me, you guys love me... I have to slow down on this getting happy thing. All that is left is Taylor Swift's love and I have officially peaked in life.
 

Culture fact:

Vending machines- I honestly can't remember if I have already told you this or just thought about telling you it but the vending machines are different here. First of all there are more of them; they are everywhere! Instead of having like a lone Pepsi on a whales blow hole spray, they have a little plastic version of all the drinks in the machine inside a display case. They are normally more diverse machines. Not like America where normally one machine has all bottled soda, one all Gatorade and one all the water. Here they normally have a bunch of coffees and teas, flavored water, soda, juice, chocolate water stuff, Calpis (I am going to bring this to the states and make millions) and so on. In the summer all the drinks are hot and in the winter half the drinks get underlines in red and then they are all hot when they come out! Way fun!

Fun food fact:

Calpis. It's white and a mix between a milk beverage and a juice. I actually have no idea what it is but I hear that they have it in Hawaii and no other state. It's sweet with a tint of bitter... like you would never say it is bitter but its not all sweet.., I don't know! It's way good!
 

Spiritual thought:

I want you to think of when a close family member did something bad (not huge but bad). Something stupid that hurt them or others around them. That sounds bad so now think of something stupider you have done so that you can forgive them and not judge them. Now I want you to think of someone else that did the exact same thing as your loved one but you had no real strong relationship with them. My experience with this is that for my loved one I still felt tons of hope and love and saw the thing as bad but them as being able to overcome and get away. While the other person I had more of a "that person is stupid" kind of feeling. I think the reason is that when we can know someone, truly know them, we will always see them for the spiritual sibling that they are. When we can know someone we can always love them, we can always have hope for them, we can have the faith that can work the miracle of them getting the strength to change and overcome what is hurting them. Get to know those around you so you can have the hope for them to become happier.
 

Funny story:

So this was about three weeks ago when I was training elder Anderson in Nagamachi. He had been out of the MTC for 5 weeks and had never had a haircut in japan and it was time. So I take him to a place that I hear from the locals is cheap and good quality. We walk in and I am putting on this big show of being a wise and in control trainer (it gives the little guys the a boost in confidence). But quite frankly when I study the words of God and how to talk about people's desires I have not really come across the vocabulary for " yeah, just give me a straight line across the back and fade it up to about a 4 at the celbrial corplex and then pull back the reins on top so I end up somewhere between a Brad Pit in Meet Joe Black and Brad Pit in Mr. and Mrs. Smith." So normally my secret weapon is to hold up my fingers and say "somewhere around this much" and it works like a charm (when you have a face like mine your screwed either way so I don't worry too much about it).
 

Anyway, I teach Anderson choro how to say "about this much please" and I warn him of everything that will normally happen: shave, haircut, shampoo, conditioner, scalp therapy (lots of minty oil and smacking my head really fast), shave around ears, shave ears, dry hair in big girly machine, and then style. Then we buckle up and dive in.
 

I could talk about this trip for about two hours and I recommend you ask me when I get home. But I want to talk mainly about two parts. The first is the shave. To save my manhood I skip the shave to not embarrass myself. But elder Anderson went for it. They ask him a ton of questions to specify how exactly he wants the shave. He of course pretends like he totally understand and just says yes to everything. So they lay him back and put the shaving cream on his chin, then his jaw and cheeks then his nose a little... then his forehead.. ahahah they just did it all! He just kind of sits there and squirms for 5 minutes while they shave his face! It was way fun for me! He says his forehead skin still feels weird. Anyway we get it cut and all the fun little things. I make it sound funny and it is but really its kind of fun too (except its like death silent the whole time you get it cut... except for my childish giggles when I look at my companion). We get to the end and we are just having the times of our lives. It's one price for everything you want so they ask us what type of hair style we want them to do. Normally I say "the most Japanese you can make it" missionary hair is way too short to be at all Japanese but normally they spike up the back and push down the front when I say that. But the guy styling that day had this long ponytail and goatee (both of which are super rare in japan) and so I was like this guy knows what up. So I told him to give us both the coolest hair styles he knows. He was like super stumped and thought and thought for like 5 minutes. Then he got revelation and just went to town. Turns out it wasn't revelation but inspiration. The inspiration was that we were Americans and he had seen a few American movies. Elder Anderson got all the side of his hair spiked straight up and the top smashed down and forward. I got every hair on my head straight on end. Two missionaries walked into that hair salon but the terminator and chicken little walked out. Japanese gel is a mixture of bondo and tar.
 

Love each other for me! Thanks again everyone!

Much love - Elder Law

November 3, 2013 Letter

From the Northern Base

14:27 hours

 

When you go to the MTC you get a bit of a culture shock. It's kind of like EFY, college, the combine and church all mixed together. Then I came to Japan and lived with 4 Japanese people. That was a bit of a culture shock. I learned lots of new manners, ate new food, learned a ton of Japanese, etc... But the biggest culture shock times a thousand was this place! When I went on base the first night and was served a cinnamon roll and dinner had cheese in it I was like getting slapped in the face with cold water. The American members giggle every time I bow to them... I was so confused.. I don't know what to say when people talk to me! I understand perfectly but the little in-between words are gone... do you have little in-between words? ahhh... luckily I spend the other half of my time in the branch and I am among my own people where we bow and speak the natural language. Haha! It's kinda funny to joke but I am not really joking. I feel so odd and funny with the Americans and when I am with the Japanese its all natural and I don't have to think so much about what is weird.

This is in nagamachi way out in the sticks

Misawa:

First of all let me explain something that always confused me when I wrote people on their missions and they transferred. You can send any mail to the same address my whole mission. It adds about a day on shipping now that I am not in the mission home but to save confusion that is my recommendation.

 

There is a branch of about 23 members of Japanese and a ward of over 200 Americans form the military base. We get fed every night by members of the American ward and holy cow... it's soooooo weird and wonderful! I ate pumpkin cheesecake last night for dinner.... WHAT? I have been sent to heaven where you have angels of two cultures working with you. Ahhh I am sooo stoked!

 

Food fact:

Eggs. The biggest you can buy them in is a pack of 10. That costs about 175. They are normally white but occasionally brown. The yolk is much darker and closer to orange then American eggs. You eat them raw all the time and no one ever gets sick from it. Yamamoto choro told me Japan's eggs are safe for some reason and no one really knows why. Someone find the why for me! But I throw a couple raw eggs in a bowl of rice with a dash of soy sauce and mix it up for breakfast all the time. It is way fast, healthy, and decent. I eat tons of eggs because they are really cheep compared to other things and before this area they were by far my biggest source of protein.

 

Culture fact:

In Japan all schools that I have ever seen have school uniforms. If you have ever watched anime and the kids in school have these `exaggerated` school uniforms on, it's actually pretty accurate. The preschoolers have uniforms too and they always have these matching little hats! I don't care who you are when you see one of those classes walking by holding hands with their little hats you will call it the cutest thing you have ever seen. They even broke Thayne Choro.

 

Spiritual thought:

I don't really like the thought of regrets but along those lines something I wish had done before the mission was sharing what the gospel did for my life a little more. Not dumping it on people or being all preachy, but when they had something that they were unsatisfied with or that was difficult for them at least offering that I had something in my life that was very real and could very much help them in every aspect of their lives. Sometimes I forgot how natural of a feeling that is. For example if I had back pain and someone offered me a solution that worked for them, even if it was kind of different, I wouldn't ever think poorly of them for offering. I testify that this gospel is the salvation Christ himself set up. That it will improve everyone's life if they come with sincerity and do it from their heart. I have seen in in my life, Japanese people's lives, and missionaries' lives.

 

Funny story:

The bad news is I have 3 super funny stories and want to share them all. The good news is I have time for one and time for two the next couple weeks unless something trumps them... but I kind of doubt it.

 

This week was Halloween. While people in Japan don't really celebrate Halloween they do know what it is and because we are happy cool people the missions lead a Halloween activity at the church. It was way good and I have no time to tell you all about it. But it was good. The thing was we needed all the missionaries to be in costumes for a few of the activities. So me and Elder Anderson needed a costume. We were super busy and didn't do anything about it tell like 5 hours before the party and we had appointments for 4 and a half of those 5. We were at the apartment and had no money to buy costumes so I starting looking around. Because I am my parents' son I had thrown away every unnecessary thing in the apartment about a month before and so we had nothing. A bunch of white shirts and ties, blankets, futons, sheets, food, garbage, a bunch of broken down cardboard and scriptures and paper. But it was enough. I don't think it was inspiration but it was something... 15 cardboard boxes, two dark sheets, 4 sheets of gold cardstock, and enough tape to wrap a whole football team of hypochondriacs later... we had them! We were big, we were dark, and I kid you not I made two little 3 year old girls cry...

 

We were Book of Mormons!!! hahahhahahah it was way hard to walk around but waaay funny.

 

These are the APs. They were a bit out of control.

This is my and Kung fu Panda.

 

 

October 27, 2013 Letter

0650 The Far West Pacific

Prepare for the North. Transfers! I will be leaving my beloved Nagamachi and it kind of makes me wants to cry... this place is soooo awesome! But the next place will be full of awesome people too. I am going to the far north east of the big island honshu to a place called Misawa. I will be getting a new companion that is one transfer my junior and will be the district leader there. The area is kind of interesting because we have a branch and a ward. The branch is a little Japanese branch and the ward is for the big American military base there. I have a feeling I will be eating some cheese very soon! We will also have an American senior couple there which should be awesome! I am a little scared to see my Japanese go in the toilet, but we will see.

 

Culture point:

Mail. I feel like I see the mail people 100 times more in Japan. They all have red clothes or bikes and trailers, or the most common is scooters and sometimes even a car or truck! They whiz around and I swear they just deliver as they receive and you can get mail a couple times a day. The mail boxes are red as well. International mail goes in the right side, which is where all your letters go.

 

Earthquakes:

My first transfer we probably averages like two a week and takeshita choro said that is was quite a bit even for japan. Now we probably see one once every 2 weeks maybe more rare than that. Lately we have had a couple pretty decent ones. Normally they are like 7ish seconds long. I don't know, you can look up how big they are but the culture about them is rather interesting. If you are in a meeting, and it is a kind of big one, then normally someone will say it "jishin.." then everyone goes quite. Then it ends and they start talking again. The biggest one I was in someone got up and opened a window. But he is kind of an odd fellow. You never really talk about it after. Also, if the earthquake is over a certain magnitude everyone receives a text. Like in church one time all the phones went off at once, beep beep beep beep, and then this earthquake hit. Sometimes the earthquakes hits finishes and then all the phone go off. But nothings perfect. It's kind of fun but also makes my stomach go funny. At night when you wake up to one is the oddest feeling.

 

Fun food fact:

Chop sticks. In Japanese they are called hasshi (which is insanely close to the pronunciation of corner and to bridge and gets me kind of confused occasionally). I am pretty much a Japanese and dominate with them. At a members house last night they all agreed I had the prettiest holding (my trainer was like a little manner drill Sergeant). You don't eat every single thing with chopsticks but you eat most. It's more the rare exception where you need a spoon. Kare for example you eat with a spoon. You never eat with a fork really. At restaurants I have never seen a fork given and a spoon only for Kare.

 

Spiritual thought:

D&C 78:19 I love this scripture and I have a testimony that when we apply the principle of showing gratitude with our words, prayers, actions, and temper that the Lord will give more. There is another scripture I have shared before maybe in D&C 130:20-21. I think that showing thanks and being thankful brings more blessings and joy because that is how God wired the universe. When we show thanks it really just blesses us. It makes us feel better because we open our eyes to our many gifts and then it makes us feel better because He can give us more! It's a win win situation. Smile for me people.

 

Funny story:

So I teach English class three times a week. It normally is only once a week but I have two special classes where we teach the gospel and English in more private settings. If you know anyone that wants to learn English I would love too and it's free! Anyway, one of these classes is on Wednesday nights and is a high school students only class. It's pretty much the most fun class ever because the teacher is the funniest person ever and always has way sweet activities... he is also grossly prideful. Anyway one of the games we played this week was 20 questions. I had one person sit facing the class and then I drew pictures on the board and the person facing the class had to ask the class questions in English to guess the object. The game is always last and is more of a fun finisher then an English focus time. So we have this one super kind sweet student that is always way genki, bubbly and happy (we all know the type) and I called on her to go. She is super smart and has probably the best English in the whole class. Early in the class we had talked about emotions and I had asked her how she feels when she sees a burning house and she told me she feels sad. The rest of the Japanese students told me they and most Japanese feel mostly curious and excited and she said she feels way sad. So I thought it might be kind of an easy thing for her to guess so I drew a burning house on the board. She starts asking the questions and gets to about question 8 and is just stumped (a burning house is actually pretty hard on 20 questions..my bad) and has no clue what to guess. She starts looking less genki... so I come swooping in to the rescue with a HUGE hint I thought and said most Japanese people kind of like this thing but you don't like it at all. She looks kind of puzzled and then perks up and guesses kaeru! which means frog... and I am like super confused.. frog? What the heck? They answer no. Then she guesses milk! The answer no... wait a second... she just starts listing off all the things she hates that most Japanese people love! It's kind of flattering for her to think I knew that much about everything. Eventually I gave another hint and she got it but man it was just so funny and innocent and I was laughing about that for like a 3 days whenever I thought of it.

 

Japan is awesome people! ahhh I love this place!! Next week my funny story is going to be awesome and short! It's Halloween!

Love each other for me!

Law Choro

October 20, 2013 Letter

Change:

First of all my companion Elder Yamamoto went home this week. He was tired and needed a break. Pray for him if you have an extra prayer. Thank you all sooo much for the birthday present you figured out for him and an awesome uncle for making and sending it! It made him feel love at the end and helped him to think a bit more about Christ I think.

 

So, I have a new companion! His name is Elder Anderson and he is as American as they come. He is the EXACT same height as me. The same color of hair. 1 kg heaver then me (I can still whoop him like a baby at arm wrestling don't worry). He has been in Japan for 4 weeks (I am a trainer). He was a quarterback in Texas and then in Utah when he moved there in high school so we have a lot in common. He is going to get us in the door with his good looks then I will show them God with my firey testimony and colorful Japanese. I am also the district leader now.

This is my new companion. This is a really bad picture of me, I swear he isn't that much better looking in real life. :)
 

My district! Minus Elder Yamamoto now. This is when Elder Anderson came.

Fun food fact:

So I sent a picture a while ago with a Heineken label on a glass. I promised I had a point and this is it:

First of all the glass was just funny because no one else had the label on their glass and no one but me understood what it was. The actual point was what was in the glass. It's actually really common and is just liquid plain yogurt. The first time I had it I almost gaged all over the lady's kitchen because I thought it was rotten milk, the 2nd through 10th time I had it I gave a little whimper when they brought it out. The 11th through 13trh time it was just like drinking a weird soda.. and now I like it! It is actually really refreshing and like a fresh feel! I think I am turning into a Japanese (people will say I am a Japanese" when I ask them something in English; they are so cute!).

 

Spiritual thought:

There is a vision a prophet has in the Book of Mormon called the tree of life. There is about 10000 cool things you can learn from the vision and I tota01lly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand our purpose in life better. But there is this part where people are trying to find the path of God but get lost because of this darkness and fog that come upon them. I have read this scripture a million times and have always thought of the mists as being Satan blocking our vision to keep us from seeing our goal of coming to God and I still think this is true. However, this week when I read it I had a second idea come to mind. There are lots of people making there way to God all around us. Maybe the darkness also blocks us from seeing them. He blinds us by letting us focus on just the self. Let's not be blinded and when we are blinded let's call out to those other people, let's be humble enough to feel around for them until we find them and can help them. We will be happier for it I know and wont stress so much about the self! When you get His sheep HE will take care of you.

Weather:

We had another bigger typhoon. We were told not to leave the apartment for the whole day. It ended up kind of going out into the pacific instead of hitting us directly. It rained a ton and was really windy but that's it. I just learned from my dad that some places were really hit bad but we are safe. Next week I will tell you about earthquakes if I can remember.

Random:

A sports activity that we have every month. I try to keep it calm and fun.

This picture is a bit old but is akonomiyaki and its sooooo good! I hear uncle Reid is pro at making it if you want to try it! The two guys closest to the camera are the a.p.s Elder Uchida on the left (he is like Bryan Earl) and Elder Takese who is a awesome too!

 

This is a good example of the slightly odd level... but I actually think the shirt is awesome! I asked her if she knew want it meant and she had no idea.

 

Funny story:

This is another old picture explanation. So we all remember the burning eyes burning hands story from a while back... that was a dark time in my life and I didn't want to go back there. But the trainer called. The zone leaders were all coming and in order to protect our more expensive foods we had to make tons of kare. Takeshita Choro liked to watch me squirm and burn and he is better at seasoning the kare so I was assigned onions. I have baby blue sensitive eyes and our knife is more of a juicer it's so dull (we bought a new one recently) so it's not that I am just a woos (at least the only reason isn't that I am a woos)! A lesser man would have coward away and given up the meat to the animals that are the zone leaders but instead I remembered a stud aunt of mine that like to make tons of pico de gallo. That involves lots and lots of onion cutting and she has a trick of wearing these awesome goggles. I am in japan and am a poor missionary with no time or money to find goggles or buy them... but I am kind of smart.

 

Two rubber bands and a 12 x 6 inch piece or saran wrap and you are golden. It works really good! But open a window because you become so productive and start working so hard and fast because you can see that you start to get a little warm and it gets a bit steamy in there!
 

Love you all tons! Stay awesome and love each other for me!

Law Choro