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
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