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

February 2014 Photo Update

My camera does crazy things when it is cold out.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Biking in the snow can be dangerous. But, if you leave your helmet out overnight you get a little extra padding.

My companion Elder Mantz

 

Sold snow! Building, cups, and him.

February 23, 2014 Letter

0742 hours Misawa

ohaiogozaimasu! (good morning!)

Life is wonderful here! I got two packages from my mama bear and one of them had stuff I needed and the other had a seahawks shirt I couldn't live without so life is well up here! ;-)

 

Culture Point:

Washing clothes (brought to you by my loving mother). I heard all sorts of horror stories from Japanese returned missionaries about how there were no dryers in Japan or that you had these washers that just tied your clothes in a knot of death then you had to put it in a separate machine to untie it and it was so humid in the summer they wouldn't really dry all the way, etc. Turns out they were not lying and there did use to be all those things. But what we are using now (and I would say most people in the areas I have been in use) is a hybrid small washer and dryer. It fits probably 10 shirts comfortably (you could put in 30 if you smashed it) but the mission mom says for us to do 4 shirts at a time to actually wash them and get any sweat marks off. I end up doing normally 6 and all seems to be well. Anyways, it's very similar to a washer in the states: soap, then you turn on the nozzle of the temperature of water you want, and the machine pulls from it and washes your clothes (45minutes). Then you don't even have to open the lid you just hit the dryer button and it dries them. The one downside is that those 6 shirts take the 5 hour cycle to dry. If you put 10 in probably two 5 hour cycles would be needed. But! we do have a machine washing our clothes that takes no effort by us and if you keep the loads small it works great! You see a lot of clothes lines on people balconies and in their houses.

 

Fun Food Fact:

Anko (bean paste). I could talk about this for hours but I will just give you a piece of the iceberg. It's served and prepared into about 100 different pieces sometimes being the main dish and others times just an ingredient. My favorite way (I love this way even though normally anko is not really my first choice but its always a safe food) is when they take the beans and dip it in a sweet batter (I imagine it being like pancake batter maybe but thicker) and they deep fry it and put sugar on top! It's like a high protein donut! :-) soooo good!

This is to show that Japanese eggs are way darker than American Eggs.

This is Elder Iida eating a raw egg to prove to us it was like drinking water.

 

Spiritual Thought:

Overcoming our weaknesses. We all have a desire to do it I think and we all can do it through the atonement of Jesus Christ. We apply that atonement through the gospel of Jesus Christ, faith repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end. It works! I know it and want to testify that it works but it is not easy; if it were there would be no growing. The hard is good for us.

 

Good Timber

by Douglas Malloch

 The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.Where thickest lies the forest growth,
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.

Ether 12:27
 "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their ^aweakness. I ^bgive unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my ^cgrace is sufficient for all men that ^dhumble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make ^eweak things become strong unto them."
 

You are weak because God wants to make you strong! There is hope, the more weaknesses you have the more potential, capitalize on them!

 

Funny Story:

Ice cream. I love ice cream and always will and I am always in it for the story so I try everything that I run into. So when our train arrived 20 minutes before an appointment and we decided to grab some lunch at a little middle of nowhere store (if you know what country mercantile or the chocolate factory is it was kind of like that). We are walking around and looking at stuff and there is all these signs for shijimi ramen.. and i am like what does "shijimi" mean? Then we saw the sign that is in the picture! It means clam! That sounds... not very good... clam ice cream... :-p But you figure that the grape jolly ranchers don't actually taste like grape and the crabapple jam kinda tastes like apples but they add so much sugar that it makes it awesome! So at worst I am imagining it will be like milk ice cream all over again.

 

There were 3 signs I should have paid attention to:

1. Please notice the prices on the sign. the vanilla and chocolate are more expensive the clam. why?

2. When I asked the lil Japanese ice cream lady if it was good she would not answer my question; she just said the equivalent of "about that...." and ran in the back.

3. The smell. When ice cream does not smell sweet you are going to have some trouble is what I've learned.

 

I have eaten live fish, I have eaten octopus and squid raw, I have even eaten t.v. dinner fish sticks.

But I kid you not I have never had anything that was just as completely gross as this. Like clams in a blender, add some milk, freeze it. Put it on some poor cone that has to hold that creature. The worst part is 1. it's japan so there are no garbage cans within 100 miles, 2. it's japan so its super rude not to eat all your food, and 3. it's frozen so there is no just going for it all at once or you will get a brain freeze. I think i can eat anything... but yeah, i can officially say the grossest thing I have ever eaten is ice cream. :-)

 

love each other for me and smile!

Law Choro

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

February 10, 2014 Letter

Winter Wonderland 1653 hours

Sorry folks! I got to do some way fun activities today and I am out of time to write but I promise you it was worth it!

 

Fun Food Fact:

Vending machines. I have talked about vending machines before and how half of the drinks are hot and half are cold. But, on the hot side there are like 20 different coffees and teas and then there is sometimes (about half the time) a hot cocoa and about 80% of the time there is corn soup! Sometimes onion soup but the Japanese really like corn soup and it's easy to understand why because it is so good! It's like a creamy corn broth with corn kernels in it. You can buy it at the store and it looks like hot chocolate packets but it is corn!

 

Culture Fact:

Trains. They are the best in the world but I will talk about them another time. I want to talk about how you ride the train. Most of the time the trains are not smash-packed like you see on the news from Tokyo. There is normally enough room for everyone to sit except like 10 people (unless it is early morning or 4-6pm then most people are standing).When you ride the train you can have anywhere from a 10 minutes to 2 hour ride (for most  people) and so you sit on the seat and just sit. It's not full of talkin;, young people have headphones and their phone and kind of sleep and old people have phones or a book and kind of sleep (really older people just kind of sleep). But it's really quite and everyone is just like nodding off or looking out the window. That is unless you are me; then you are talking to everyone, asking them lots of questions about Japan or seeing if they would have interest in a message about how they can find purpose in life. I always ask them how they know how to get off when it is their stop and to wake up. They always just say, ``I don't know... you just do``. So it's a Japanese secret.

 

Spiritual Thought:

My thoughts today are on the strength or the potentially great strength of the family. My thoughts are: I think God loves us and that the family is a burning example of him wanting to take care us. He gave us a system that when done correctly can be one of the biggest strengths and joys of our existence.

"But what is the right way?" I find myself asking. Then another testimony to me of God's love is that He gives us an answer to that too. He gives us the scriptures of ancient prophets who God talked to and told them the best way to raise their families. My testimony is that he didn't leave us hanging recently, He still talks to the world on how to raise our families through a prophet today! I am so thankful for the love of God and assurance of the right path I have because I know we have a living prophet today.
 

The link below is modern day revelation in regard to the family. If you have any questions please contact an LDS member or your local LDS missionaries. 

 https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation

 

Funny Story:

I was on a train on the way home from a zone training meeting up in Aomori and it was around 6:30 at night so the train was pretty empty. So I was rocking a seat and talking away like always and then the train slowly starts to empty and I am sitting by myself. My companion is talking away to the person next to him and it's kind of late for me to join the conversation. So I look out the window for a bit, study some vocab, and then subconsciously I decided to study some culture about Japan and I start to doze a little bit.... then I think I was bored of the dozing because I fell waaay asleep. My companion was sooo engaged in his conversation. If you all remember the secret trick of the Japanese where they just magically wake up at your stop... well either I am not Japanese or they are just pulling my leg. We got to ride the train an extra 2 hours because I did not wake up! Luckily it was free. They took pity on the silly little Americans that looked all bum hurt.. haha!

 

Have a wonderful week and love each other for me!

Law Choro

February 2, 2014 Letter

Nihon 0752 Hours

Ohaio gozaimasu!! 

Life is wonderful here! We are at the top of our game! We are seeing miracles, having a blast in the apartment, and learning japanese and the gospel. 

 

Culture Point:

I am 90 percent sure I haven't shared this with you but if I have forgive me. Animal sounds: 

• When a dog barks it says "wan wan!" (pronunciation like the Spanish name Juan)
• Cats say niyao  (very similar to ours)
• Pigs do not say oink! they say "bu-bu-" (like a ghost"s boo twice)
• Roosters say "kokekokkou" 
• Cows say "mo-" sounds like mow
• Sheep say "me-me-"
• Horses say "hihi-n" (he heen) 

All my children will be the freaks in kindergarten that say the dog says "wanwan!".

 

Fun Food Fact:

     Cereal. So contrary to popular belief there is cereal in Japan. It is probably the best cereal in the world. You can buy some of your classic American cereals like frosted flakes but the boxes are half the size and the price is 3 times the amount. Not exactly missionary style. They mostly have their own Japanese brands and it is a lot different then what I think of as normal cereal. There is a ton of different toasted grains, flakes, tons of dried fruit, and granola type pieces and it comes in a bag about the size of the big frosted flakes box. It is sooooooo good! Like the best cereal I have ever eaten probably but that bag costs about 12 dollars so they know it tastes good... but sometimes the Japanese moms send it to the missionaries and they share with us! (keeps it fun).

 

Spiritual Thought:

     I read a quote by Elder Holland that told a story he had heard. The story went something like this: There was a young couple that set out to make a home for themselves. They settled on a homestead in the wilderness and built a small home and farm. They had one cow and a pasture where it grazed. Sometimes when the husband was off working the cow would get excited and jump the fence and they would have to find it. One day the husband had to go into town to get some supplies. Before he left he impatiently said to his bride, "do you think you can finally keep that cow in while I am gone?".

She thought she could. While the man was in town a terrible storm came though the area. When he returned home he found a note, "the cow got out, i think i can find her though". He search but neither had survived.

     The author concluded with a poem about how we cant pull back our words once they are said and how they are more dangerous than fire. I think about that story a lot actually. How badly do I really need to say that slightly unloving or sharp sentence? It puts things into perspective. There is also just as much power on the opposite type of speech to lift, heal, and protect. I am going to try and improve. If I can master the tongue I will master the whole body! 

 

Funny Story:

     So we all know my favorite older sister in the ward. So I love her and she puts up with me. Elder Breinholt had the same relationship. But I have a new companion of late, Elder Mantz. Speaking frankly (he says this all the time so i feel no guilt in saying it) he looks like he is about 12 years old; small in stature, baby face, always smiling... he just looks way young! He is actually older then me by about 6 months. The story took place at Sunday school after class when everyone was just mingling and talking to each other afterward. Elder Mantz was talking to some of the young men and I was talking some planning with Elder Anderson when I started to listen to the conversation of my favorite sister and a sister who is hearing the lessons from the missionaries (she is actually getting baptized this weekend). What I hear is my favorite sister with more joy in her voice then I have ever heard saying, "look at him!! He is sooo CUTE! He is so little and cute!". Then the other lady said "yeah, but he is a missionary. He is supposed to be like professional". "But he is so young! Like a little kid! So Cute!" and then the other sister is like "you want to marry him or something?". (I start dying at this point) She gives her a dirty look, "ahh be quiet you!". Elder Iida, Anderson and I are laughing too hard to even hear what happened. And now every time we see the lady who made the marriage joke she asks how Elder Mantz's wife is doing. It's sooo funny! We can talk to any old person because they love Elder Mantz!
 

Smile and love each other for me!

Law Choro