February 16, 2014 Letter

1503 hour Snow land

``If a mountain goat and Lance Armstrong had a child that would be me.``

 

Weather:

Snowman for eikaiwa advertisement (this was right before the big snow).

I have not seen bare sidewalks or houses since early December. On Saturday and Sunday it snowed 23 and one half inches in 24 hours setting a new record for the month of February of snowfall in a 24 hour period. Then the wind came and made mountains of the stuff. The American church got canceled and we just dug people out all day! It was way fun. We went to Japanese church then just kept digging and digging and we did that again all today. It's been way fun.

Fun Food Fact:

I went to a sushi restaurant today and ate something I have never seen before. They have conveyer belts that carry sushi all around the restaurant and different plates are different colors according to price. There was this little plate (turned out it meant it was free) and on it was two shrimp and I am talking shrimp. Not the shrimp meat that we normally eat; I am talking eyes, legs, hair, shell, the whole thing. It was the part that they take off before you eat the rest. They have cooked it in oil and shook salt on it and it was free if you want it! It was good! In Japan you eat the tail of the shrimp; it tastes good and is very much edible you just have to be careful!
 

Culture Point:

Snow shoveling. So this really applies to Northern Japan because it is the only place that gets a lot of snow: it is really important that you shovel off your walks. You see 80 year old grandmas shoveling all day because it needs to be cleaned off (yes we help them when we see it). It all gets shoveled when it falls (especially in the morning). It's fun! It feels different than in the states; there seems to be no order of whether men or women should shovel (it might even be more of a woman job) but mostly it is whoever is there is shoveling.
 

Spiritual Thought:

My thought is this: no matter how dire your situation may seem if we can rap our minds around the fact that God is all powerful and loves you more than we can comprehend (which I think is essentially faith and humility) and that any trail we have has been tailored created and sent our way with the soul purpose to make you specifically, stronger. There is a plan. If you want to know the plan I can hook you up with someone that will teach it to you. In that plan we are to progress. God knows exactly where we are lacking and so he gives us specific things to stretch us so we can improve to the goal we selected before.
 

Funny Story:

 

Elder Mantz- total beast. We love Elder Mantz. One thing he does is cut his own hair. He looks great, it's cheep for him, he can do it whenever... it's sweet. I thought it was super cool and Elder Iida thought it was totally awesome! He wanted to cut my hair (easier then your own) and try his own and I was thinking about it and maybe going to let him (he is way nice and pretty dang smart so I trusted him). So Elder Mantz was cutting his hair in the bathroom and pretty much finished up then he called for someone to come help him get his neck (only one mirror and he wanted a straight line). Iida choro just jumps up and says he wants to try. Elder Mantz figures he can write tiny beautiful complex kanji he should be able to cut a straight line. He takes the buzzer and starts at the bottom of his neck and starts coming up... I am in the kitchen washing dishes at this time so I heard this from Elder Mantz later. It's all going good then all the sudden it goes quite (all three of the other guys are in the bathroom)..."gomen mantsu choro!" (this was Elder Iida saying sorry Elder Mantz!). Then Elder Anderson just starts howling laughing, red in the face, body bent in half, rolling along the wall, screaming laughing. At the same time Elder Mantz is like half calm half panicked trying to figure out what happened to his head in English and Elder Iida is just saying that same line over and over... and my hands are soapy so I aint going anywhere.
 

 

Long story short I guess when he was going up he ran into a bit of friction and tried to just power through. He powered through a bit too much and ended up an inch higher than he needed to be!
 

Love each other for me and serve!

Law Choro