Elder Michael Dialogue - Sapporo, Japan

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Week #4 photos

Frozen banana with chocolate pieces...Mike's new favorite treat!

Harper Choro Piccolo costume

Jazz night

Japan week #4

Kazoku!!

I hope everything is well at home, everyone loving school? ;) It's been a crazy week for me here in Muroran and Sapporo!

We had our lesson with Nishigaki San last Monday, and that went alright. She's having a hard time keeping our commitments which sucks because she's not really progressing unless she's experimenting on the word, ya know! That p-day was fun, practiced for jazz night, which I'll talk about in a bit, and we got all our shopping done. There are dollar stores in Nihon called Daiso, and they're amazing! They are like a regular general store, and it's all 100 yen! Some of their ties are EPIC, and famous among missionaries, so I'm gonna have to get some I think sometime! ;) We bought some candles and spent our evening in candlelight! Twas awesome! :) Had some fun, got some sweet video and pictures. ;)

Tuesday was crazy! Our morning was normal, had DTM with our boys in Tomakomai, but a really cool miracle happened! I was feeling down a bit, had a REALLY serious personal study, wasn't sure if I was doing any good, and I found a note in my suit coat!! I had turned it in to get dry cleaned, and the workers left me a super nice note that MADE MY DAY! I wish I could tell them how much that meant to me. I've got it in my scriptures now as a pick me up for later. ;) This is what the note said: Thank you for having a spiffy gold and silky tie, and a spiffy name. You have made our days here, good luck out there, heart, the laundry workers.

That evening got crazy though. Elder Harper has been having some back issues, and it got really bad that same day. So we made a back brace. A back brace of doom! It was duck taped all around his stomach, and four chop sticks! O.O LOL! He also asked me for a blessing which scared me to death!! First blessing ever, I didn't know what to say! I just said what came to my mind, and it made sense and made him feel good. :) It was so great. I've never given a blessing before till then, and it was quite a powerful experience. I'm blessed with the spirit of healing as you know, so hopefully that kicks in. ;) We bought some cloth to make a new back brace, and with the extra cloth Harper Choro made a turban and showed me his Piccolo costume! (Piccolo is a character from Dragon Ball Z by the way) That was fun!

Wednesday and Thursday were normal days. Just lots of dendo. You get to know quite a few words very well when you tract. ii desu! I'm good! keko desu! I'm good! suki ja nai! I hate you! ;) Some old man said that, right after we volunteered to help him weed his garden! :) He was having a rough day, I'm sure.

The weekend though is where things got crazy. I'm not sure if I told you before, but Evans Shima is ALL about music. She was a singer for awhile making records, plays violin, she LOVES it. And she puts on music nights every once in awhile. This one was Jazz Night, and since Elder Harper plays the Sax AND clarinet, naturally she commissioned him to be there. And then she found out I sang, and so I became a part of it! :D We left Friday afternoon for Sapporo for rehearsals. They went well, and we had tons of fun! I actually sang, accentuate the positive, with Elder Spurling, who was Elder Harper's comp just last transfer!! That was cool, and he has got some PIPES!! HE's so good. He's only three transfers ahead of Muroran and that was his bean area too! So we have lots in common. Loves SX too!! :D

We spent the night in the mission office in the ap's apartment. They have a NICE apartment. It's HUGE! And new! They have it so good! There were eight of us there and we had a bit of a party. I ate a watermelon the size of three of my heads! Not alone of course ;) We played some games and had a great night!

Saturday was the big day. Before rehearsals Elder Harper and I did some dendo in Moiwa, HIS bean area, so that was crazy cool for him. Hadn't been there in a year. Pretty soon it was Jazz Night, and we had a great turn out! TONS of non members there to talk to. I spoke so much Japanese, it was amazing!! I still know nothing, but it's coming. Every nihonjin says I sound very natural when I talk, and that my pronunciation is great. So that's good. :) We mingled for the first hour then the show started. The music was awesome, and we did a GREAT job! Everyone loved it! After it was over they encored MY song!! :D :D So we went and performed again! It was so much fun. After that we hung out for a bit, mingled, got swarmed with people saying how good we did. And then caught the 7:30 pm train home. This week was epic! I know I've only been here for four weeks, but I can't believe it!

I can't believe everyone is doing so much crazy good at home. Tell Mark that that is AMAZING, what he's doing. I love him to death!

We have NO central heating, even in our missionary apartments. Just futones, blankets, and a space heater! Lol!! It's great! And some parts of hokkaido get up to 4 meters of snow!! It's nuts!! I've lost 22 pounds since coming to Japan from the MTC. Isn't that CRAZY!! Love you all!! :D

Love love love!!

Mike

Monday, August 26, 2013

Week #3 pictures

Japan week #3

Konnichiwa minasan!! Minasan wa genki deska? Kibo shimasuyo! :) I hope everyone is feeling genki and well!! :) I know I certainly am! I'm already halfway through a transfer, can you believe that! :P It isn't that long, but I can't believe it's already been three weeks about since I've been here in Muroran. I can totally understand what other missionaries say when they say the time flies by. When you're keeping busy, and working hard, and seeing miracles, the days really pick up. Elder Harper keeps us working hard which is AWESOME, and we've already seen lots of good come from our efforts. :) The ward here is awesome, and this last week we've had lots of opportunities to visit them and strengthen them, as well as visiting a lot of non attending members. We have really had a lot of great visits, and we even had one of them come to church yesterday after our visit with her on Friday!! :D Her name is Sato Shimai, and she was so happy that we visited her. She's a lovely little old lady and she has a pretty solid testimony, she just needs to keep enduring to the end, desho! She gave us a present at church, a bunch of writing materials, stamps, prepaid envelopes and things, a NICE present, and not the cheapest too, so we were super grateful for that. The ward is really awesome, and it makes me happy to see so many really strong members out here in Japan. :)

So I mentioned last week how the members don't usually have us for dinner often, well we did have a dinner appointment this week with the Murata Kazoku. That was a BLAST! We had a ton of fun, at some great food, boy do I love tofu, ;) Seriously, I LOVE tofu, and we gave a nice message about our blessings from Heavenly Father, and how we can be aware of those blessings in our lives. We've been giving everyone we've visited with the Shukufu Challange, which is just a blessing counting challenge. To try and write down a couple blessings everyday to be thankful to Kamisama for, and to increase our positivity. It's been going great. :)

Last p-day we were doing some dendo in a little place about 20 minutes from our apartment by bike, and we found a SWEET woman who has become our newest investigator. She told us her mother was in the hospital, and how that she felt that she was all alone. So we taught her about prayer and about God, and how he loves her and knows her. We taught her how to pray, and she prayed for the first time ever there with us. We asked her how she felt and she said she felt wonderful, after her prayer, and after ours. So that was a COOL experience, we're visiting her again tonight, so I hope it goes well!! :) I want so badly to bring people unto Christ! She was accepting everything we taught her, so hopefully she's a kinjin, literally gold person, ;) It's how we say golden investigator around here! She was pretty down when we saw her last week, so hopefully she's been praying and is doing a little better this week, and that we can teach her more! Ahh miracles, they're great things. I can't believe I've only been out here for so short a time and I'm already seeing sweet things happening. :) We also had the unique opportunity to help not one, but TWO people with pre mission prep. One is a shimai who knows she wants to go, and so we gave her some advice, things to do to prepare, and the other is Satoshi Kyodai. He's a AWESOME young man, not quite mission age yet I think, but very close, and he's really thinking hard about whether or not he's going to serve a mission, which is great. :) So we have been talking to him and really encouraging him, and I hope he gets an answer for himself.

One day to talk about, then I gotta run!

So we went to Hachodaira on Wednesday really early to visit with a less active recent convert. We had to get up there really early, so our morning schedule was thrown off, so we had a super fun day up in Hachodaira. We visited the RC, and she had a great time, told us she felt the spirit, yoshi! And then we went to go get a convenient store lunch and then do some picnic companionship study. That's where the sweet landscape pictures are from, plus it was that day that I got BURNT to a crisp. It was the single greatest companionship study I think I've ever had, it was glorious. We were on top of a little hill in a park, and after we were done we decided to ride down it on our bikes. Turns out at the bottom of the hill was a little ditch thing that was deceptively deep, and we both went head over handle bars and rolled down another little hill. :P It was SO FUNNY! :D We're fine, my bike is dandy, :) And we're started rolling again. Elder Harper's back tire though is in BAD condition. It needs to be changed, and we have to carry a pump with us all day and fill it up occasionally because it can't hold air!! We're gonna go fix it up today. :)

One other thing I wanted to tell ya! We eat frozen bananas. A LOT. And they're glorious. I encourage you all to try it! Peel a banana, freeze it, eat it. It's changed my life forever. ;)

So, can you guys send me some music stuff? Like the Consider the Lilies motab album, and can you look into Rob Gardener's restoration CD? Sounds like it's amazing, so says Elder Harper. I am loving being able to listen to music again. :)

I love you all!! I am having a blast, and I hope you all are too! 愛しています!!

-Dialogue 長老