April 27, 2014 Letter

1049 hours Spring!

It's such great weather here lately and missionary work is on fire!

 

Culture point:

Bread stores. It's funny because we think of Japan as being a place where bread is less popular than in America and it is: but, they have these fun little shops where you walk in and grab a tray and then roam around with a pair of tongs and grab all these different little breads ranging from ￥500 to ￥80 and just pile it higher and higher. It can be hard on your wallet if you like food as much as I do. Then you go pay at the counter and they bag up the bread and you go sit down at a table (normally upstairs in the places I go to) and you enjoy your bread with your friends as lunch! Probably not the most healthy of things when you choose the breads I do but way good!

 

Fun food fact:

Bread. So the bread you make toast out of I explained but the bread at the shops is a little different. Japan has pretty much mastered bread pastries. They look insanely perfect. There is everything from the classic croissants, to French bread, to bread filled with care, to filled with seet beans, to filled with cheese, and bead with vegetables, and others with fruits and some with potatoes in them, some with custard... Melon bread (they call honeydew melon and flavor everything from soda to bread with it) donuts, eggs... put sausages in the bread, ketchup backed into the top of the bread... and it's actually all good! I try all the best looking ones and the weirdest looking ones and it is all great. Also different than America is the bread doesn't need to be warm, like we keep it under warming lamps but they like it warm or cold, no difference.

 

Spiritual thought:

I think of all the goals people have in life, all the problems they want to overcome and the things they want to do. If you truly scraped away all the facades and misconceptions you would end up with a thread that runs through almost every one; I think that common thread  is peace. Peace from guilt and regret, peace or fulfilling potential, peace of worth, peace of safety. I am young and naive and maybe wrong but maybe I am right. I think the opposite of peace, that goal of us all, is fear. 

 

In 1 John 4:18 " there is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear" 

 

I clearly understand that pretty words about loving each other sound nice but with actual way to apply they do us nothing and even make us desensitized to recognizing truth. But I think if we come from this perspective I think it is easier to desire that love for others. It not only pleases God when we love others but in the end it will give us our goal. When we have that desire God promises us that He will give unto us according to our righteous desires (Alma 29:4 page 279). I have been praying for this love and through my own actions attempting to show it, and little by little it has been coming and little by little I am more and more happy. God loves us so He is guiding us.

 

Funny story: 

So I bought this awesome shirt... it's the rakuten! The baseball team of Sendai that won the Japan national championships last year (it was an awesome year for law choro with the seahawks and the rakuten). Anyway, I wore this shirt to a frisbee activity we did at the park and on the way home I ooked really good on my bike wearing it. I said konichiwa to this high school student on the way home and then he stands up and starts chasing us! Since this is Japan I stopped because when people chase you in Japan they are not scary at all because this is Japan... It turns out when he saw a foreigner with a jersey on as buff as myself he thought for sure I was a player and he wanted my autograph. So instead we took him to the church and played pingpong with him! :-)

 

love each other for me!

Law Choro