Week 80 - 02/24/19 - Group Email

Hello everyone! 
Back in August I was able to baptize a kid named Fillipe who ended up moving to Utah back in December and my family had him over for dinner today so I was able to skype him thanks to the new changes with communication! It's awesome to see how much his life has changed because he met missionaries. It was fun to talk with him again after a few months! 

Right when I arrived in my new area about 2 weeks our ward mission leader invited us to eat pizza with him. We ate pizza hut but Japanese pizza is seriously the weirdest thing. I ate pizza with asparagus, potatoes and mayonnaise... My boy Elder Bell in Italy would definitely be shaking his head if he saw Japanese pizza lol. 

We have a super awesome kids we're teaching here named Takumi who is 21. He's all prepared for baptism his only problem is getting to church so we are gonna work with him on that. He's such a cool dude though and its way fun working with kids that are near my same age. We are actually teaching two women as well since we don't have sisters in our area. It's way weird teaching girls and I'm not sure how, but we're gonna be learning haha. 

We had zone conf this week and I had to translate again. That was kind of a headache but it went pretty good. The worst part is translating our mission presidents wife because she talks super fast and uses words that no one has any need to know in Japanese so you're constantly on your toes trying to search stuff in the dictionary and keep up. Good times though. 

We went and visited a part member less active family the other day and boy they probably had the messiest house I have ever seen. It looked like one of those houses straight off one of those horder tv shows. We asked if we could help with anything and of course the mom said cleaning up. So we came back the next morning ready to get dirty but we literally just went through the mountain of papers on the kitchen table and threw away anything that the mom said we could, which wasn't a lot so we found the problem haha. We also cleaned the hallway AKA picking up the stuff on the floor and throwing it on top of the giant pile of things nearby. 
Thanks mom and dad for being clean! haha

Well that's about it. Hope ya'll have a great week! 

ディーン長老

Elder Dean

Week 79 - 02/17/19 - Pictures

Week 79 - 02/17/19 - Group Email

This week I transfered to my new area Hodogaya. It's been good so far. My district is solid and the ward is solid so I'm excited! Also there are tons of giant random hills everywhere that'll be interesting because my past 3 areas have been completely flat. 

There was a baptism in my old area on Saturday so I got to go back there and see those members again after almost 6 months. It was awesome! The guy who got baptized came to church for the first time with his girlfriend who's a member when I was in that area so I also kind of knew him. It was cool to see him baptized! 

Yesterday we met some cool American dude named Matthew. He agreed to walk with us to our apartment so that we could give him a Book of Mormon in English! We got to talk for awhile as we walked together and it was cool to see how he became more open minded as we talked. When we finally gave him the Book of Mormon he said he will read it all and let us know what he thinks. I don't get to talk to many American's out here so it was fun. 

Just gotta skpye my fam. The new changes are crazy! 

Love you all, 

ディーン長老

Elder Dean 

Week 78 - 02/10/19 - Pictures

Week 78 - 02/10/19 - Group Email

We got transfer emails today. I'm going to an area called Hodogaya and my new comp is gonna be my old comp Elder Waldron! We were together 3 transfers ago so it'll be fun! 

Last week we visited a member to share a message with and when we walked in there were like 10 old ladies that had just finished singing Karaoke. We found out then that this member runs a little Elderly day care thing out of her home. They asked us if we could share any sort of talents but we had nothin so we sang the hymn "There is Sunshine in my Soul Today." They loved it! After we sat down and talked with them for awhile. One of them had just turned 100! Let me tell ya if you want to boost your confidence just go hang out with some old Japanese women because they were just throwing compliments at me non stop for like 20 minutes hahaha. If you don't look Asian you're guaranteed to be a superstar in their eyes. They love foreigners and long noses for some reason haha. Most of them had bad short term memory as well so I got the same "genuine" compliments from each of them like 10 times, it was great! It was also this holiday called Setsubun and they have this tradition where one person wears a devil mask and everyone throws beans at them. Kinda strange. I got picked to be the devil! That visit for sure made my week. :)

We had an awesome practice lesson with a member who came back to church after 15 years of inactivity last December. He said his mom died and that made him want to come back. He's a really humble guy and shared how much it helped him throughout the years when members would come visit him even though he didn't go to church. It boosted my testimony of not giving up on less active members! 

My comp said he wanted to get a hair cut for pday the other day so I jokingly said I would cut it and he accepted haha. I had never cut hair before but I gave it a go. I got the sides all good then I tried to blend up into the top and totally took a chunk out so we had to settle with just buzzing the top a little longer than the sides. He thinks he looks like an egg and I was laughing so hard. Worst part was that our vacuum broke the day before and we don't have a broom so I had to literally clean up all his hair with my bare hands. That was fun! 

We visited a less active the other day who turned out to be blind. He invited us in and we got to chat for awhile. I was really impressed with how happy and positive he was despite being blind the past 12 years. He showed us a cool gadget he has that you put a book under and it will read for you. He said he went blind gradually from working way too much and only getting like 3 hours of sleep a night. I guess sleep is important haha. 

While I was on splits with Elder Rencher we saw a group of old people playing a game called Patanku or something like that. It's a French game where you throw a marker then everyone has to throw their balls as close to it as they can. Well all these people said they were the top players in Yamanashi prefecture and they asked us to play a game with them. My team won and I got 3 points so I guess I should join the big leagues when I get home. Lol. It was a good time!

A funny experience:
We were riding our bikes in a park that we had never been to before and Elder Suzuki told me he felt like we should go talk to one guy so we went over there and he was literally so triggered it was hilarious. Probably the rudest Japanese man I have met since I've been here. He told us proselyting was prohibited in that park (It actually wasn't, we checked the sign) and that we needed to leave in very rude Japanese. I just think it's funny when Japanese get angry because its so unusual and against their culture. People like him need the gospell!! 

If anyone has time check out a way good story that I read this week from the October 2016 ensign. It's called "Converted for Life."

I love you all!

ディーン長老

Elder Dean

Week 77 - 02/03/19 - Pictures

Week 77 - 02/03/19 - Group Email

Hey Everyone, 

I don't have much time today so here are a few pics. 

~ We went over by Fujisan and visited a bunch of less actives. We were In the car from 10:30~7:00, long day. There was a good amount of snow over there so Elder Suzuki got to make his first snowball, haha. 

~ We ate lunch at the Natoris who live on the very edge of the mission. After that I have basically been to every corner of my area! Good times. 

ディーン長老