Toda's gun collections
Right outside the aquarium (Enoshima in the background)
Movie Night!
Monday, February 26, 2018
Week 28 - 02/25/18 - Group Email
Hello Everyone,
Last Pday we went to an Aquarium that was right on the beach so that was a good time! We visited some more members, less actives, and former investigators this week as well. Yesterday we had a very odd experience visiting a former investigator. His name is Toda, he's about 60 and he let us in when we knocked. We went into his apartment which was an absolute mess and it was pretty sad honestly. It also smelled like cigarettes because he had been smoking in there. He had us sit on the carpet then showed us all the religious texts he has which was essentially all of them. It didn't take us long to realize that he was super drunk. He was acting super weird and moving 100 mph. Then randomly he grabbed a box out of the corner of the room and pulled out this huge machine gun from like WWII haha. He threw it on the ground and kept yelling "my hobbie, this is my hobbie" then rummaged threw all his other stuff and pulled out like 7 more guns. They all felt and looked real but i guess they were fake replicas. Overall it was just a really strange and odd experience haha. I felt bad for the guy though, his living conditions were terrible and he alcohol and cigarettes all over the place.
On Saturday night we had a movie night at the church where we watched Meet the Mormons. It actually turned out great and we had quite a few people come and most of them weren't members! After that while we were cleaning up one of our members collapsed right in front of us missionaries and started having a seizure. It freaked the sisters out way bad! Luckily his wife and one of the members came in and told us he had epilepsy and he ended up being all good. It was a shock at first though for sure!
One highlight from the week was that I had a 26 minute conversation on the phone with some dude all in Japanese! i don't know what happened but I could understand almost all he was saying and could speak way well! The gift of tongues is real!
Some way good Chapters I read this past week in the Bible were
Ephesians 4-6! If you have a chance go read those!
ディーン長老
Elder Dean
Last Pday we went to an Aquarium that was right on the beach so that was a good time! We visited some more members, less actives, and former investigators this week as well. Yesterday we had a very odd experience visiting a former investigator. His name is Toda, he's about 60 and he let us in when we knocked. We went into his apartment which was an absolute mess and it was pretty sad honestly. It also smelled like cigarettes because he had been smoking in there. He had us sit on the carpet then showed us all the religious texts he has which was essentially all of them. It didn't take us long to realize that he was super drunk. He was acting super weird and moving 100 mph. Then randomly he grabbed a box out of the corner of the room and pulled out this huge machine gun from like WWII haha. He threw it on the ground and kept yelling "my hobbie, this is my hobbie" then rummaged threw all his other stuff and pulled out like 7 more guns. They all felt and looked real but i guess they were fake replicas. Overall it was just a really strange and odd experience haha. I felt bad for the guy though, his living conditions were terrible and he alcohol and cigarettes all over the place.
On Saturday night we had a movie night at the church where we watched Meet the Mormons. It actually turned out great and we had quite a few people come and most of them weren't members! After that while we were cleaning up one of our members collapsed right in front of us missionaries and started having a seizure. It freaked the sisters out way bad! Luckily his wife and one of the members came in and told us he had epilepsy and he ended up being all good. It was a shock at first though for sure!
One highlight from the week was that I had a 26 minute conversation on the phone with some dude all in Japanese! i don't know what happened but I could understand almost all he was saying and could speak way well! The gift of tongues is real!
Some way good Chapters I read this past week in the Bible were
Ephesians 4-6! If you have a chance go read those!
ディーン長老
Elder Dean
Sunday, February 18, 2018
Week 27 - 02/18/18 - Pictures
Sister Tu'amoheloa's bday during district meeting
Gigantic buildig in Tokyo
cute 95 y/o member who we take the sacrament to
zone pday last week. We had a ping pong tournament and yours truly took the W
Game night that the member bought pizza for
Week 27 - 02/18/18 - Group Email
Hello Everyone,
To start the week out we visited one of our potential investigators named Watanabe. He's super nice and invited us in. We talked about the Book of Mormon for about 5 minutes then he brought us into his TV room and showed us his sweet speaker and TV setup. Then he started showing us videos of his trip to America, his daughters dance performances and finally some movie called Jersey Boys haha so we decided to bounce.
Tuesday we had zone conference in Fujisawa. The focus was using the Book of Mormon and it was a really good conference. I've already loved sharing the Book of Mormon with people but now I wanna share it even more!
Another day of the week Elder Wilcox made some cookies which we delivered to some members and shared a message. It was nice eating a homeade chocolate chip cookie, they are pretty hard to come across in Japan for some reason.
On Saturday we got to go back up to Tokyo for Elder Wilcox's follow up doctor appointment. The Olympics was on so I gotta watch it while he was talking to the doctor for a while but literally out of all the events that could've been on it was men's figure skating... On a good note, the nurse there is a member and gave us a huge box of honey nut cheerios then bought us burgers afterwards! Saturday night we had game night for the second time. We only had one person come again and it was our ward missionary haha but he bought us Dominos Pizza so I wasn't complaining.
Yesterday Shohei came to church for the second time which was awesome! We didn't even personally invite him he just showed up. He seemed to really enjoy it and stayed for the whole 3 hours! Seeing people come to church is definitely one of the best feelings as a missionary.
To start the week out we visited one of our potential investigators named Watanabe. He's super nice and invited us in. We talked about the Book of Mormon for about 5 minutes then he brought us into his TV room and showed us his sweet speaker and TV setup. Then he started showing us videos of his trip to America, his daughters dance performances and finally some movie called Jersey Boys haha so we decided to bounce.
Tuesday we had zone conference in Fujisawa. The focus was using the Book of Mormon and it was a really good conference. I've already loved sharing the Book of Mormon with people but now I wanna share it even more!
Another day of the week Elder Wilcox made some cookies which we delivered to some members and shared a message. It was nice eating a homeade chocolate chip cookie, they are pretty hard to come across in Japan for some reason.
On Saturday we got to go back up to Tokyo for Elder Wilcox's follow up doctor appointment. The Olympics was on so I gotta watch it while he was talking to the doctor for a while but literally out of all the events that could've been on it was men's figure skating... On a good note, the nurse there is a member and gave us a huge box of honey nut cheerios then bought us burgers afterwards! Saturday night we had game night for the second time. We only had one person come again and it was our ward missionary haha but he bought us Dominos Pizza so I wasn't complaining.
Yesterday Shohei came to church for the second time which was awesome! We didn't even personally invite him he just showed up. He seemed to really enjoy it and stayed for the whole 3 hours! Seeing people come to church is definitely one of the best feelings as a missionary.
Elder Dean
愛しています!
ディーン長老
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Week 26 - 02/11/18 - Group Email
Hello Everyone!
Just another week in good old Shonan. While we were contacting the other week, Elder Wilcox set up a lesson with a past investigator named Ouri San who we met with this week. He was a cool guy and actually super interested in what we were saying. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he couldn't keep his eyes of it, he was reading it while we were talking to him so hopefully he's read a lot by our next visit. He really only met the missionaries once before this but the reason he didn't ever meet again was because when he went to our church one Sunday he stood outside and no one invited him in which he didn't like. It's hard to know what to say in those cases but we just told him no one is perfect, not ever the ward members. Sounds like he is giving it all a second chance though which is great.
We picked up another new investigator named Watanabe San. We housed into him the other week. He's read the bible a ton so we gave him a Book of Mormon. We stopped by again this week, he invited us in and we talked for a while. It was pretty crazy though he told us to leave our shoes on when we went into his house! Here's a little Japanese lesson: Essentially all Japanese homes have a Genkan (little space right as you walk in the door) where you take off your shoes and put on slippers or just wear socks. In there culture it is it's very rude to wear shoes in the house because the bottom of your shoes represent the outside dirty world. No one sits cross legged like men usually do because that way you will be facing the bottom of your shoe at someone which is really rude. So that's why it was strange to get invited in while wearing shoes. Anyway this guy was going off about how the moon used to be spinning like the Earth but it stopped and everything died so the same thing will happen to the Earth one day. Really weird and he used lots of big words so I was struggling haha. But we shared some stuff about the Restoration and Book of Mormon that he liked alot! We will stop by this week and talk some more.
The other night while we were streeting around the eki we saw some kids skateboarding so we went over and talked to them and I skated for a while! I was pretty rusty not gonna lie but it was a good time. I was literally sore the next day because I'm so out of shape!
We are trying to get some more activies and things going in Shonan so we decided to start up a "game night" every Saturday. This past Saturday was our first time and we had one person come! Who wouldn't want to hang out with four Gaijin (foreign) Missionaries all alone on a Saturday night?? He was an english student and pretty confused when no one else was there but he was going hard in ping pong so it turned out good. We figured it will definitely take some time to get the whole thing going and for more people to come.
If you are still reading here's a wayyy good conference talk that my comp showed me! It's called "Safety for the Soul" by Elder Holland, Oct. 2009. If you haven't watched it I recommend!
Just another week in good old Shonan. While we were contacting the other week, Elder Wilcox set up a lesson with a past investigator named Ouri San who we met with this week. He was a cool guy and actually super interested in what we were saying. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he couldn't keep his eyes of it, he was reading it while we were talking to him so hopefully he's read a lot by our next visit. He really only met the missionaries once before this but the reason he didn't ever meet again was because when he went to our church one Sunday he stood outside and no one invited him in which he didn't like. It's hard to know what to say in those cases but we just told him no one is perfect, not ever the ward members. Sounds like he is giving it all a second chance though which is great.
We picked up another new investigator named Watanabe San. We housed into him the other week. He's read the bible a ton so we gave him a Book of Mormon. We stopped by again this week, he invited us in and we talked for a while. It was pretty crazy though he told us to leave our shoes on when we went into his house! Here's a little Japanese lesson: Essentially all Japanese homes have a Genkan (little space right as you walk in the door) where you take off your shoes and put on slippers or just wear socks. In there culture it is it's very rude to wear shoes in the house because the bottom of your shoes represent the outside dirty world. No one sits cross legged like men usually do because that way you will be facing the bottom of your shoe at someone which is really rude. So that's why it was strange to get invited in while wearing shoes. Anyway this guy was going off about how the moon used to be spinning like the Earth but it stopped and everything died so the same thing will happen to the Earth one day. Really weird and he used lots of big words so I was struggling haha. But we shared some stuff about the Restoration and Book of Mormon that he liked alot! We will stop by this week and talk some more.
The other night while we were streeting around the eki we saw some kids skateboarding so we went over and talked to them and I skated for a while! I was pretty rusty not gonna lie but it was a good time. I was literally sore the next day because I'm so out of shape!
We are trying to get some more activies and things going in Shonan so we decided to start up a "game night" every Saturday. This past Saturday was our first time and we had one person come! Who wouldn't want to hang out with four Gaijin (foreign) Missionaries all alone on a Saturday night?? He was an english student and pretty confused when no one else was there but he was going hard in ping pong so it turned out good. We figured it will definitely take some time to get the whole thing going and for more people to come.
If you are still reading here's a wayyy good conference talk that my comp showed me! It's called "Safety for the Soul" by Elder Holland, Oct. 2009. If you haven't watched it I recommend!
Hope everyone is doing well!
Elder Dean
Elder Dean
ディーン長老
Sunday, February 4, 2018
Week 25 - 02/04/18 - Pictures
Cool shrine in Kichijoji
Elder de Andrade's last day at eikaiwa (english class)
last pday when we opened transfer calls
Transfer day
Met this dude who was a 3 time ncaa champion and a 2 time olympic medalist for wrestling. He was way funny!
Tokyo!
Dinner at shakeys with a ton of missionaries
Week 25 - 02/04/18 - Group Email
Hello everyone! The 9 week transfer has finally come to an end and now I'm in my 3rd transfer. My new comp is a nice kid, we are quite different but I'm sure we will get along well! Sadly he doesn't like running so sounds like I'm gonna be going without running for another 6 weeks at least :( It's also super weird having elder de andrade gone but i'm started to get used to it. On Thursday when Elder de Andrade transfered I had to go on splits with Brother Gaitau (member in the ward from New Zealand). It was super fun though, he plays piano for his job and has a sick set up in his house so he just showed me a bunch of stuff and told me stories for 2 hours!
On Saturday I got to go up to Tokyo because my comp needed to see a doctor. We got to leave the mission and see some of Tokyo that I wouldn't be able to see otherwise and it was super fun! On Sunday, right when church was starting two dudes rolled up on their bikes and said they wanted to attend! They were named Min and Kong, both from Vietnam and said they just searched the nearest Christian church so that was pretty cool. They said they will come next week too! During priesthood a member decided we should pull them in a side room and explain the church a little. So we did but Brother Ozawa layed a bunch of doctrine on them including the Word of Wisdom haha so that was a little interesting and they were probably very confused.
On Friday my comp had a district leader training so I got to go on splits with Elder Romero who is a transfer 1! It was weird being the senior missionary as well as having no one to rely on that can actually speak Japanese. We tried our best though! Me and Elder Wilcox are planning on getting some activities going in the ward this transfer so we are excited! Hopefully we can get some stuff going and get the ward excited about missionary work!
Love you all! (愛しています!)
母は日本語を書いてくださいと言ったので
This means "Japanese is hard" - 日本語は難しいです!(Nihongo wa muzukashii desu)
ディーン長老
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From movie night the other week. Zone blitz in our area. hiked Mount Oyama. IT's pretty cool t here is a huge Buddhis...
