Showing posts with label Inoue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inoue. Show all posts

Sunday, May 4, 2014

5/4/14 Successful ML Kaigi

Hey!!!! I'm trying to remember what happened this week.
Thanks for your email!!! I'm way stoked for the Takaras! That sounds way cool about the ward getting bigger. I hope lots of people are able to go on missions! The senior couple here is leaving this month and there will almost be a whole transfer that we have no senior couple because there aren't enough sr. missionaries. I probably won't recognize half the people in the ward though, huh hahah.

Speaking of Vietnamese and Japanese, Nguyen E and Sakamura E (in Nemuro) are teaching so many it's ridiculous. Van S is going crazy with dendo.

It is still hard to find dendo time, but we are doing our best and I'm feeling more satisfied with what I can do. I am definitely learning a ton. I have to learn to be better and finding things to do when I get other things done.
Anyways...

I still haven't been taking any pictures, but we saw some amazing sakura by the giant shrine this morning when we went running. I got the shorts at uniqlo and no I wasn't freezing because it was inside, plus it's way warm now. I bought short sleeves at uniqlo the other day as well.

Thank you for the prayers!!! Thanks to all the prayers, this transfer there have been 6 baptisms so far. Based on the reports we have, there are a ton of baptismal dates, but at least 8 more will probably be baptized this transfer! It might literally be an all time record for the mission.

This week on Monday we hung out, went to the eki with a few other missionaries and I bought shirts. I think we prepared for a stake meeting or something that night. Tuesday we met to have a preparation meeting for Elder Christofferson coming. We also prepared a ton for mission leader kaigi (conference) the next day. A bunch of missionaries slept over. It actually went really good and a lot of people said it was their favorite ml kaigi so far. That night we had the stake meeting over skype for Asahikawa stake. Thursday we followed up with beans and got a lot of stuff done in advance for Elder Christofferson. Then we did some phone dendo. Friday I went on splits in Moiwa with Elder Inoue and it was pretty fun! Moiwa is probably the most metropolitan area in the whole mission. The funny thing is that all of their investigators and recent converts are grandmas hahaha. I biked all over and it felt great. Inoue E is way fun too.

Saturday was Elder Tomita's b-day. We sang to him and gave him cake etc. Randomly, a bunch of RM's showed up so that was pretty fun! We did lots of computer stuff and made some time for phone dendo. Sunday at church was good. It's way different to be at a church with other missionaries. There are 8 missionaries in Kotoni. Crazy. It's pretty big though. We had a way good AB lesson with Tadano B and a member actually taught him this time! His name is Kumagai B and we had dinner with him that night! It was super fun and spiritual. He used to be bishop.

Anyways I'm out of time, but love you so much!!!!
Aishiteimasu!
Hutchinson Choro

Sunday, October 27, 2013

10/27/13 Splits and lots of cold wind

Hey! It has been a good solid week of being in Nemuro. I used my district leader powers to bring the other companionship of Elders from Kushiro over here this time. Also thanks for doing stuff with my facebook profile! Please accept pretty much any friend request unless they are suspicious looking Americans (haha). Van also sent that message to my phone probably about the same time. That's cool you guys saw it too! She said she took 30 minutes trying to figure out the English for it. To answer your question, I used the same pants that Andersen E borrowed from Nakazawa B.

I'm grateful I've been able to see Heavenly Father perform so many miracles here as well! Okuchi Shimai is doing pretty good and we actually spent some good time with her last week. She actually taught primary yesterday! Way cool. Glad Mara's dance went well! I had a hard time imagining how her date's last name might be pronounced. That's cool what Margaret said! Did bishop ever get my postcard? Halloween stuff sounds like it's going good. We are having a party for Eikaiwa. Hopefully lots of people will come! It's gonna be a little simple probably, so we'll so how it goes. I didn't hear/feel anything relating to an earthquake, but if it happened to transfer into the air in wind form, I did. I'm good though! Just had to bust the scarf and undershirts out.

Starting from last Monday, it was kinda lame weather so we just chilled inside and I practiced guitar a bunch. We did some decent finding that day. Tuesday my DTM went really well! We went to this area called Nishihama and did lots of finding there and met some nice people who could have some potential. Afterwards we had some plans to visit people that didn't work out and we were a little stuck because of how early it gets dark here lately. We did find some people to contact on the street plus people to call at home before the Kushiro Elders arrived. I went on splits with Yoshikawa E who is on his second transfer. We walked all day and weren't able to meet a lot of the people we wanted to, but the people we did meet we were able to teach awesome lessons to! It was fun to dendo with a nihonjin again and I learned a lot of things I could apply to helping Morgan E out. We also visited Okuchi S and she is still doing awesome and studying a ton. She is always really happy to meet new missionaries and is collecting signatures and stuff like that. Afterwords we stopped by Van's work and she introduced a lot of her Vietnamese friends! They might not be super interested in the gospel at first like Van, but with her help we have been able to share the gospel with them a bit! She gave us some interesting Vietnamese food and we gave her friends lesson pamphlets in Vietnamese. My Vietnamese has been getting better too hahaha. The next day I went on splits with Inoue E who is 8th transfer and is awesome. He gave me a lot of advice for being a trainer and we had lots of fun finding and walking! In town we ran into an old investigator who was with his friend. He introduced him to us and told us to invite him to church and Eikaiwa so we did! He was really nice and pretty good at English. We also met Tatsuya again for the first time in a while and gave him more snickerdoodles I made (which are my new secret weapon. I've been giving them to lots of people). We taught him the first part of the plan of salvation and he was interested, but it got a little deep and hard for him to follow so we took a break. He seems to have pretty good potential to progress, but his wife isn't interested so he is a little embarrassed to read the BoM or pray at home. He's also really busy with his son. Anyways after that, we all went out to Sushi w/ Okuchis and it was way fun! Next day (Friday) I hadn't been able to sleep very well, but felt good enough in the afternoon to have our planning session and then go to Eikaiwa. The guy we met on the street came and it turns out that he is Catholic and had a lot of questions about church too! It went pretty well. Maybe he'll become a good investigator.

Saturday it was really bad weather, but we took a bit of time to plan for our Halloween party. We also went out to do a bunch of finding and there was a lady who was busy working so couldn't talk much, but gave us an umbrella since we were out in the rain! That's Japanese people for ya! Sunday was really windy! Church was good though! Like I said Okuchi S taught primary and was a little tired afterwards, but did pretty well! I got asked to speak in sacrament meeting... IN sacrament meeting! I spoke about agency since it was what I had planned to teach in gospel principles but didn't get to teach because Van S was late. I didn't ever think I'd be able to give a 20 min talk on the spot let alone in Japanese. It went good though. After church we worked with the members a bit to get ready for the Halloween party. Then we met Van and reviewed a bit of the first lesson on the restoration with her, but it was so windy we gave up halfway. We stopped by the dorm of some of her Vietnamese friends and they were happy to see us again/gave us chocolate/were impressed by the 5 Vietnamese words I know. We went home and got into warmer clothes, then went to see Hebikawa who has been reading the BoM. She gave us potatoes and onions because she liked the snickerdoodles I made for her. We taught her a bunch about families and temples, etc and she was pretty impressed that we do so much for our ancestors since Buddhism is all about ancestors. She also randomly asked about crosses and the sabbath day, since she had learned about them when she was younger. We were able to show her a lot of the cool and unique things about our church and hopefully it'll get her to want to come! She also prayed for us at the end which was pretty cool ;)

That was pretty much it though! Thanks for all your support and love and little favors. As for a package I just still want that RM/singles ward soundtrack and Sufjan Stevens. I'll be happy with that I think :)
Aishiteimasu!
Hutchinson Choro

Sunday, July 14, 2013

7/14/13 Busy week in Nemuro - lots of photos!

The kitchen looks way sick!!!! I'm really glad you got to get all that stuff done and I bet it was way busy, but putting the effort in pays off, no? That sounds like a full and fun week! This week was insane. So cool though. I'm glad you had some fun eating German food, but I'll have to admit.. I've never liked it much. Sausage and stuff... It's all about the fish B)

I'm grateful for all the great influence I have had from you as a family. We have been doing more and more here to help open up the hearts of the people, but there is still so much we need to improve on to make sure that we can tell the message in the right way so that they understand.

I'm excited for Adam to get out there though. It'll be crazy to see him after 3+ years. There is a store here and I think it's my new favorite (well there isn't one in Nemuro... too small) but it's called uniclo and it's the best store ever. I don't know if it has a website or if there are any in America, but I recommend it. It's way reasonable as well.

So this week flows a bit like this:
Monday was a good p-day, woke up early, ran to the Jinja (shrine) by our house and took pictures, got everything else done and went to Kuruma Ishi again. This time took tons of cool pictures on top of the rock. It was pretty foggy so we couldn't see out that far, but it looked amazing. Afterwards we dendo'd that town and called it a night. Next day was DTM and dendoing an area I hadn't done before. Met some cool people. One really nice lady who owned a bar, but was really interested! I also had a conversation with a non-attending member in sign language and we set up an appointment to go eat lunch together some time. Pretty intense. Japanese sign language is awesome. That night we randomly got a call from Okuchi's daughter asking if we would come by and play for a bit so we went back and talked with them and turns out because of the hello kitty prayer card we made for her she's been praying every day! That was really cool.

Next day was splits with Inoue Choro! He is a few transfers younger than me and way awesome. Lived in Ireland and went to BYUID so is fluent in English, but we still spoke Japanese the whole time. Found some WAY cool people actually. Inoue Choro is really enthusiastic about dendo and I learned a ton from him. Oh yeah, and that morning I got a call from Nakazawa Kyoudai saying that Ishii Kyoudai died. Kinda crazy. I didn't how to react at first. Since we went on splits that day Andersen and Ogata Choro went to visit them. The sunset that night was way incredible. We ate this cold pasta called reimen at a yakiniku place for only 350 yen! Yeah boy. It was way good. Next day we stopped by the Ishii's to see Ishii Kyoudai's... self. Kinda sad, but their family was all there and it was chill. We went home and had planning after that and then I got called to give the prayer at his funeral that night. Because of that we didn't get to do the finding we planned on, but it was a great experience. The whole funeral was like a big testimony of the plan of salvation and great stuff Ishii Kyoudai did as a member. The Ozawa family sang Families Can Be Together Forever. There were a lot of non-members and a few non-attendings came too. It ended up being a great dendo method i think. I would like my funeral to be like that. Far off thought, but yeah!

The next day was Friday and it was way cool. The high school was having its festival so we decided to go because we promised pretty much every high school kid I ever contacted that we would go. It was way cool! It started off with just this parade of high school kids in different costumes. We high fived almost the entire high school as they walked by. They were all very excited to see gaijins and a lot of them even remembered my name! After that we went and watched their little dance/play things that they did and were really funny. We tried to shizen dendo (finding people through starting normal conversations) but it was really hard because no one was getting into it even though it was way hilarious. A big difference between America and Japan, no one cheers; not even for their own kids. But we still had a lot of fun and hopefully through that a lot of the high school kids and their families were able to get a good impression of us. After that we helped out at a part member:s dry cleaner. It was really hot! We folded and dried a bunch of pillow cases! After that we left a note at Okuchi's asking them if they'd come to Eikaiwa. Eikaiwa was pretty fun as usual. One new guy came who is really good! It's always fun to have new students and see class grow.

Saturday was another day in Bekkai. We went and met the mom of a member in another ward who we got as a referral. She was super nice and cool! Hopefully we'll be able to teach her more next time we come back :) We did some finding there and taught Kawashima again! She has been praying everyday AND reading the Book of Mormon! We didn't even ask her to! She even bought a cover for the Book of Mormon because she wants to take good care of it. She also looked up the church website and has been studying a lot! She wants to come to church really bad as well. We taught her lesson 3 and committed her to be baptized. She wants to when she feels ready. She has some concerns about what happens after getting baptized (responsibilities and stuff) but we explained to her the importance of coming to church and hearing all the lessons so she can know all that. Her husband isn't protesting to her meeting with us, but is a little worried about her joining as well so hopefully we'll be able to talk with him too and help those worries clear up so they can all come to church as a family! After that we high fived a bunch and went to Itou farm to MILK COWS! Way awesome. Cool experience. Back in Nemuro we stopped by Okuchi's one more time to invite them to church and they promised they would! Actually when we first came Yuka (the daughter) was crying because she didn't get to go to Eikaiwa the day before and thought that we weren't going to visit. Since we came though, she calmed down and was happy again! Before we left that night I asked her if she'd pray for us and she did, primary style!(Me whispering in her ear what to say, way way cute) Then we went home and high fived a bunch again. Sunday was a little stressful at first. We had coordination meeting and found out that only 5 people could come to the first 2 hours of church. Okuchi promised pretty sure that she'd come that time so we were worried it would just be us, a few members, and her. Priesthood was only me, Andersen Choro, and Nakazawa kyoudai and right as we starting we saw Okuchi and Yuka walking by! Found out that they had to go to a practice for a parade they were doing that night, but said they would come back! We were just antsy the whole time wondering when they would come back, but they eventually did for sacrament! Actually a family from Kitami ward came and so did a few other members which was great and made sure there were more people. After sacrament Yuka wanted to play a lotttt. Got really tired, but she had a blast and so did her mom. Went home, ate lunch, and brought the sacrament to Ozawa shimai because she was busy with the baby. Had some fun there with the kids and her parents plus Ishii kyoudais grandkids that were sleeping over there.

Then we went to an appointment we made before with a way cool lady who used to live by missionaries. To top everything off we went to the parade Okuchi and Yuka were in. It was call the senninodori (1000 people dance) and i thought it was a different meaning so when I got there and there were 1000 people in different colored kimonos I was pretty surprised! We went and tried to shizen the people watching and afterwards high fived with Yuka and took a few pictures. They did way great. We have developed a good relationship with them and hopefully it will make it easier to talk about the gospel and teach in a way that Yuka will understand. Reminds me of Haramai and Nodoka sometimes. Anyways it was an awesome week in a billion different ways!

I love you tons and am grateful for the miracles that we get to see everyday! Good luck at home and love you!!!!
Aishiteimasu
Hutchinson Choro

Cool sunset over a shrine that's on a little island

Pictures at kuruma ishi


Creapy powder

Us with the Okuchis

Reimen

High fiving highschoolers @ parade

More high school kids (Monsters Inc. costumes)

Milking cows

At the parade with Andersen Choro

Us with Yuka