March 9, 2014 Letter

0816 Hours snowy Japan

I want a better picture of these people. I love them so much. Okumura.

Moral:

Moral took a blow this Saturday night... we were biking home from the base to the apartment and my stomach did not feel so hot all the sudden. It turned into one of those nights: The flu. But on the flip side of that I am very genki now and I am just happy as a clam! "Pop"! My bike tire just popped but God did not make me have the flu right now so life is amazing! It's all about perspective and it gives you mercy and love too. God will guide us.

 

Fun Food Fact:

Mochi is as Japanese traditional as I think you can get (maybe fish is a bit more but barely). What you do is take cooked rice and put it in a stone like basin thing and you beat it with these giant hammers. Then is turns into this paste that you form into little cakes.You can pretty much go anywhere from there. You can toast it and eat it, toast it and drop it in a soup, just eat it, put it in a donut,  wrap it around beans, flavor it a thousand different ways (my favorite is sakura (cherry)). It's way fun, they tell me it is waaay healthy, and the more you eat it the more you appreciate it.

 

Culture Point:

Hinamatsuri. It's girls' day (there is also a boys' day in may so nobody get too offended). It's a holiday where the day is for girls and everyone puts out these two little dolls of an emperor and empress. Then you eat all these delicious little cakes when you are a missionary because everyone gives you them when you come over, ha ha. I actually don't know that much about it besides what I experienced, there isn't really festivals or parades though. That is why I got to try the sakura mocha though, because they eat it

for girls day!

 

Spiritual Thought:

My thought today is on humility.

 

Matthew 22: 36-37

 "36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."

 

I totally love this scripture and the scriptures after it which talk about loving others and sometimes I forget about what he said first. There are soooo many wonderful things we can do in this life: we can love others, be a missionary, be a mom or dad, help the needy, write a song the list goes on and on... good things! But I (and I always just assume others make similar mistakes) need to remember God is in control of everything. He is God. He will take care or everything from the "the lilies in the field" to the sick an afflicted. He might and probably will use us to do it, but we need to let Him use us by making Him our priority. To humble our own wisdom, however wise it may seem, and go to the source. He speaks to us through the spirit and scriptures and we can speak to Him through prayer. He knows us perfectly and will guide us perfectly if we can humble ourselves and follow.

 

Funny Story:

    Raw eggs. There is only one type of person in the world that eat them: the toughest of the tough. Rocky and the Japanese. One of my life 5 goals is to become a Japanese and so we set out on a mission to conquer the oval of champions.

    It had been a long day in the misawa district, but the 4 missionaries were cool as cucumbers as they glided in out of the snow. They could conquer the world. "Lets do it tonight!" came the call from the back. Just that one sentence was all anyone needed to understand the challenge. They agreed it would be tonight. 5 minutes later, 4 camera, and 4 of Japanese poultry's finest work later the nights activities were ready to begin. Smooth as ice they looked into each others faces, nodded, and then cracked and dumped...

    I thought it was going to be the texture... I have eaten a ton of raw eggs mixed with stuff and its always good! So I was figuring the texture of just the egg would be nasty. Others thought the egg white taste would be nasty, others just the idea. But it turns out we were all wrong. All three of us (Elder Iida is excluded because he has done this before and it wasn't even funny or interesting - like shoving a whole piece of bread in your mouth) had the same thought as it entered: "this is kinda a lot!" like my mouth is totally full cheeks puffed and all! Then I look over and the other two are having similar experiences. Elder Anderson's eyes are huge and cheeks puffed out and Elder Mantz has egg all down his front and on the floor and still cheeks puffed out and eyes big. It's like dead silent because no one can laugh... and I can't swallow because its this big solid mass so I start swooshing between my teeth to kinda brake is up and trying not to laugh. Then Elder Mantz is able to swallow and then picks up this slime off the ground that fell when he over flowed because he wants to be able able to say he ate a whole raw egg. When he puts that back he starts gagging and ahh.. it was so funny! I have it all on video for posterity!

 

Love each other for me!

Law Choro

March 2, 2014 Letter

0800 Hours the West Pacific

ohisashiburi desu! (its been a while)

So I always have these moments of genius through out the week when I think of something fun to write home about. Then when I sit down I go, "did I actually write that 2 months ago or just think about it in my head"... so if I repeat my self I apologize in advance.

 

Culture Point:

Thank you. There are lots of different ways to say thank you in Japanese all depending on the situation and how polite you want to me:

domo-  thanks (Almost off hand, you can say domo to mean almost anything)

arigato-thanks (A good deal stronger than domo)

arigato gozaimasu-thank you (Most widely used by far. You say it much more than in English, if you are bowing you are probably saying this; I say it probably 100 times a day not even exaggerating)

domo arigato gozaimase- thank you so much (Also widely used; a bit more polite)

And then of course just like English there are 100 other ways to show gratitude but you don't need those. A cool fact about the word thank you in Japanese is that it did not really exist until the Portuguese came! Their thank you "abrigato" or something hard to pronounce got taken and used! We have a connection to our mission languages Dad!

 

Fun Food Fact:

The Japanese elder in our apartment is super awesome! He makes the weirdest breakfasts in the world. It's weird to everyone, Japanese and Americans alike. But I am confessing my sin here because I judged it before I ate it. I now have eaten it and will be eating it once a week probably from now on. It is a piece of toast covered with peanut butter (they do have peanut butter here just super expensive) then you slather honey all over the peanut butter. Then you steam an egg, put tons of salt and pepper on the egg and then put it on the honey. Then you stuff. Kind of messy but pretty good. ;-)

 

Spiritual Thought:

There is a sister in the military ward here that said something that I want to kind of steal and add on to. The thought is about crickets, grasshoppers, locusts... whatever you call them. Two experiences with them:

1. The pioneer settlers in the late 1800's had an experience where their crops were getting eaten by them and they were terrified and prayed to God to have them taken away.

2. The Japanese people in and after world war two were hurting bad for food. That same creature came and they were so thankful and ate them because they were healthy and safe to eat.

Same bug, both hungry people, one taken as a plague one taken as manna.

 

Now I have no idea if the bugs in America were actually poisonous or if you cant preserve them long enough to make up for the crop damage and I don't really think it matters that much. But, do I Elder Law see my crickets as plague or manna. I think its pretty easy for a lot of people to have the faith that there is in fact a God and that He is all powerful and good. It's the next step of humbling ourselves enough to be able to trust Him and His all powerful control. If we can master that we will only be receiving manna, not because its any easier to eat or do, but because there is no fear we will be blessed. 2 Nephi 9:39 (page 76 in the Book of Mormon) "...Remember to be carnally minded is death, and to be spiritually minded is life eternal". 

 

Funny Story:

I consider myself 1/4 Mexican because from the age of 4-12 I spent more than half of my time at the home of a wonderful family that's moma was Mexican and they pretty much became my other parents. So I ate the chili pepper many a time, had my fair share of hot salsa, and from that background I went into the world and always choose the hottest sauce when the question was asked. I ate the "hottest" curry at the Indian curry restaurant and it was super hot but I did not cry. I tell you this so you understand I am no ketchup on my taco kinda guy.

 

There is a small country in South East Asia where their babies suck on habaneros for binkies and the 3 year olds can breath fire. Thai. We made this good friend on the street that is from Thailand and works with his sister at their restaurant and he invited us there. We went and I ate the hottest curry I have ever eaten! It doesn't feel like hot after the third bite, it feels like you are chewing on needles...  but we love him so we went back! We got things on the menu with lots or vegetables and no spicy and it was sooo good! Which made us get confident again.. ahh perhaps just the curry is spicy then... so we ordered these noodles. There is 5 levels of spicy, the curry that killed us was a 4, so we went with a 2.

 

The plate is lade below us: shrimp, crap, squid, vegetables, and noodles all tumbled together in a beautiful concoction of Thai gourmet cooking. Then my eyes start to burn... oh no... three bites in I am grabbing for my water. It was at least twice as hot as the curry, easily the hottest dish I have ever eaten, and huge! So we just start on a mission that has no hope... my lips were like swollen and blood red half way through (should have got a picture). Then the sister comes over and starts chatting with us (she is like a 45 year old mom that knows English, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, and something I had never heard of) and she sees the tears rolling down our faces. She asks if it is hot, and we kindly explain that her brother must have played another joke on us and given us a 5 this time because it is the hottest thing we have ever eaten. Then she says she made it!! It's not that funny of a story but just be careful if you ever go to a Thai place.

 

Love each other for me!

Law Choro