January 4, 2015 Letter

1100 hours land of the Eskimos

So you know how the Lord says he prepared those he sends. I just have to give a shout out to the Moses Lake ice skating rink (I heard it closed which breaks my little heart) but working there has given me the edge to be the missionary with the least falls in the area. They call me Whaling Wallace for the advanced arm techniques I use on the especially difficult stretches.

Fun food fact:

Milk. So I think I talked about this a long long time ago but I now am not as confused by the Japanese so I know a little more. The biggest container I have ever seen milk sold in, is one liter cartons. I have never seen it in anything but a carton. Now that carton runs from about ￥120 to I have seen ￥400. The huge variations in price has two big reasons that I can tell. One is where it is from. If it’s from Hokkaido the island to the north it will be expensive. If there is milk from china it will be dirt cheap. The other big difference is fat content. It’s either fat free or whole and fat free is way cheaper. But for some reason fat free and whole milk taste sooo different here. I have a theory, the fat free is actually from goats.. ;-) 

Culture point:

In the USA I always kind of felt that by the 2nd everyone stops saying happy New Year. But in Japan (in my experience (I always get worried you guys will take this as doctrine and not the notes of an idiot 20 year old)) people say akemashite omedetogozaimsu. kotoshi mo yoroshukuonagaitashimasu. (Happy new year! I am looking forward to working with you this year as well!) For like a month after New Year’s! You only need to say it once but if you haven’t seen someone since the New Year began and you already knew them and it’s the 7th of January I think you are totally cool to bust it out. (Especially old people think you are super cool)

Spiritual thought:

 This week’s thought comes from being around my beloved companion elder Macnab. This guy is full of experiences. It all comes back to the experience and the knowledge that the fruit is sweet. I was reading in the Book of Mormon and I came across this scripture the other day, it’s about a prophet that is talking about why he is making these sacred records "And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins." (2nephi25:26) the influence of my companion combined with me finishing my first journal (which was given to me by Sister Heather Calder love her.) kind of made me think of why I am writing. If in the future or today sometime someone needs my help am I prepared with my own experiences and knowledge of how to use it? In 200 years if someone read my journal would they know how to get the remission of sins? My advice is go out and spend way too much money on a journal or buy some app that is way too expensive so you feel bound to write! It has been a blessing to me! :-)

Random Pic:

This is one of my beloved past companions Elder Keshino. He is home now... :-( he went home last transfer but I really like this picture he took on his last day.

Funny story:

We walk a lot... like A LOT! I already bragged to you a bit about how good I am at staying up. Sometimes it’s just me and Macnab Choro, sometimes lots of people, and sometimes we walk with Moffat and Nishiie Choro. But when we are walking around and there are no other people. No cars. It’s dark. I get this really strong temptation to be unprofessional and occasionally I throw a snowball at a sign or something. Wild I know. One thing that is really stupid I do is I throw them really hard straight up. The idea is they will stall for a solid 3 seconds then come down and drill Elder Nishiie in the face. (He says goodnight everyone! I love you Macnab i love you Moffat. I like you Law) but he is normally a foxy little fella and never trusts me, so is always on the lookout and avoids them. One day I made this beauty of a projectile. Just enough snow to be heavy enough to throw but small enough to give it the “bring it to the just two handed grunting compact”. It was round it was hard and it was up in the air a solid thirty feet. In all honesty I didn’t think too much of it because normally I suck. Then I hear this crack. I am thinking that had to hit the ice on the road because of that sounding like ice cracking. Then the yelling begins. I turn around see Nishiie with half formed snowball in his hands big eyes and looking at Moffat who is the one making all the noise. If you have ever seen what a snowball the drills a car window looks like, that bit that sticks in the shape of a little cone. He had that plastered to the front top of his head and he had snowball shrapnel all over his shoulders...

It would have worked a lot better, but he was making way to much noise and I knew that he had plastered himself in the face to try and make my feel bad. He is too honest. ha-ha! But Elder Macnab totally judged me for being a monster for 10 seconds. We are working on apartment relationships.

Love each other for me!

Law Choro