Bourne Never Cut His Fingers...

Good morning sports fans,

It's another day in the neighborhood. This past week has been an
interesting adventure. It all began last week on P-Day after getting
back from doing service for our ward mission leader at his house. We
came back to the 本部 and we decided to head out and go shopping and
right as we were about to leave Jones forgot his wallet so I waited
for him downstairs while he went up to grab it. While I waited I got
kind of bored and looked above the door and there is an awning that
sticks out over the door. When I saw it two thing went through my
mind; 
1. "If Jason Bourne can do it then I can do it" 
2. "It would be really funny to climb this and wait for Jones on top and surprise
him."

I have climbed several 団地 (danchi) buildings with similar
awnings so I jumped up and grabbed the ledge. The thing I didn't
realized is that on top of the ledge was a thin runner of sheet metal
that wrapped all the way around the edge. When I grabbed the ledge it
hurt so I let go, but I must have pulled off funny or something with my
left hand because when I was back on the ground I noticed that I had
just sliced through my left index and ring finger. It looked pretty
bad and I immediately started putting pressure on it and waited for
Jones to come down. When he came down he thought I was joking with
him, but I wasn't. Next we started calling members to find out what
hospital to go to because upon further inspection my cuts were deeper
than I thought. Since it was Saturday all the close hospitals were
closed so we had to go to an emergency room and after about an hour of
calling members to take us we finally went to one 30 minutes away and
I got to experience social medical care at it's finest. I don't want
to bore you too much with the beauties of waiting in line for an hour
at the emergency room, or that the operating room looks like a storage
room, or the fact that I have seen cleaner vet clinics.  In the end I
got four stitches in my index finger and three in my ring finger. I
get the stitches out, this coming Wednesday, leaving me with two
lingering thoughts: "How did Bourne never manage to cut his fingers?"
and "Always look before you leap."

That day we had two lessons planned but 椿 (Tsubaki) canceled and
rescheduled for the next day, but after the hospital we were still
able to meet with David, even if it was an hour later than planned.
In our lesson he asked us why we decided to go on missions and kind of
what our personal conversion stories are. It was a really cool
opportunity to just testify of what we know and the blessing of God's
hand in our lives.

On Sunday we started teaching 椿 some of the commandments which
included the Ten Commandments, Law of Chastity, and Keeping the
Sabbath Day holy. It was a solid lesson and she committed to keeping
all of these commandments and that night after mailing us thank you's she
said, 「私は戒めを守りたいと思います。もっと良い人になるために頑張ります。」meaning, "in order to become a better person I want to keep the commandments." She is so golden and such a sweet lady. Today we finish teaching commandments and start
preparing her for her baptism in a couple weeks.

This week has been a lot of travel to zone conferences in 金沢
(Kanazawa) and 松本 (Matsumoto). Those were my last opportunities to go
there and say goodbye to those missionaries. It was pretty weird to
say goodbye to so many missionaries, some of which I will probably
never see ever again. I'm going to miss these missionaries. While in
松本 I realized how much I love 長野県 (Nagano-ken) and loved working in
that zone. I was only there for five months, but I love it up in the
Japanese Alps. It was hard to work there sometimes but the atmosphere
and the missionaries are the best!

On Wednesday when we got back from 松本 we had to prepare to send off
two missionaries going home, one of which included Tommy Eadie. He is
now currently home safe and sound after two years of service here in
Japan. In a couple of weeks he will be re-entering back into USAFA for
ESET in about two weeks. It was such a blessed opportunity to be able
to serve together in the same mission and then to become companions was
an opportunity that we had dreamed of from the beginning. Oh well,
we'll see each other soon back at the Hill.

That's about all the excitement for the week. It's getting nasty hot
and humid here. I can't wait for the dry heat!

スピードと天使

堅城長老

Pictures

Pic 1- Holding onto my fingers

Pic 2- All sewed up

Pic 3- For reals, how could I have known?

Most true pic of Japan ever

Pic 4- Eating in 瀬戸 (Seto) with Elders Klein and Graydon at a しゃぶしゃぶ
(Shabu Shabu) place that I ate with Klein when I was only week three in the mission.

最後の転勤週間

Well folks it has started with a bang: Transfer Week.

Thankfully it's my last one ever. We were running around so much this
week it's ridiculous. Nobody gave us a break. This was the new couple
missionary's first transfer week and they were stressed out of their
minds and were constantly asking for our help while we were trying to
take care of our responsibilities as well. The Japanese elders were
way stressed because they have to work with them and coordinate
everything in English. It's not good, but there was so much tension in
the office. I don't like being in there with everyone freaking out.

On a better note last week on P-Day we (the office missionaries) got
to go with President Ishii to a Japanese professional baseball game in
Nagoya Dome and watch the Nagoya Dragons play against the Tokyo
Swallows. It was a lot of fun to go to a game with President Ishii and watch a
day game. The Dragons are second best In the nation right now and the
Swallows were the best last year so it was a really good game. The sad
part was President Ishii wanted to follow missionary rules and we had to leave
early to get back home at 1800 to end P-Day. We were all disappointed
the next day because a member told us the game went into extra innings
and the Dragons ended up barely losing.  Going to the game was
definitely a perk of being in the 本部 and dealing with all the stress

So this was transfer week which is easily the busiest week of the
transfer. We were constantly getting things prepped for the new
missionaries and new trainers. The most successful thing in he
beginning of the week was the solo transfers were a huge success and
occurred without a hitch. I'm super grateful for that. Picking up the
new beans was good, except two of them couldn't come in because their
visas hadn't arrive yet. So on Tuesday we picked up 10 beans and
brought them into the 本部. This group is crazy. There are several
bilingual missionaries and one guy from Europe can speak three
languages fluently. Nuts. Wednesday was when the beans met their
trainers which is always exciting. All the trainers were so excited
and they are all so good and I'm excited to see how they do with their
beans.

Thursday for Jones and I was a complete office day where we caught up
on all the work that we hadn't been able to do up until that point and
we had to plan for MLC on Friday. That next day the whole office staff,
except for us, went to the airport to pick up the last two
missionaries who's visas finally came in.

Yesterday was pretty exciting. The day started off early with new
missionary orientation at 0700 and we did the whole thing in Japanese
because both are fluent in Japanese and one of the new missionaries is
Brazilian and can't speak English. From that orientation we had to
leave early to get to the church to get MLC ready to go. This was my
eighth and last MLC and probably the best I'd ever been to. The group
of Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders is so good and they are
making huge improvements to the mission. From the AP end we held a
group discussion about missionary attributes and in the beginning of
the discussion we had everyone think about their personal missionary
hero and the room got really quiet. When we asked people to list
traits of those missionaries they thought of there was great
participation and then we asked for how we could apply these thing to
our missionaries so that they can grow and develop. All of the ZLs and
STLs participated in a great discussion. There was an truly sincere
desire to help the missionaries grow. Our mission has a lot of brand
new missionaries and most of the "old" missionaries with 10 or more
transfers are ZLs. In order to keep the mission going we need to
develop these "young" missionaries to become leaders quickly. The
whole time there was such a good Spirit there. In the end of the meets
we had all of the missionaries going home at the end of the middle of
next transfer bear the testimonies. There were six including myself
and it was such a powerful testimony meeting. You could feel the
Spirit so strong and there was such a strong feeling of God's love in
that room. Sharing my final thoughts with everyone was a great
experience and I love missionaries and I love this mission. So many
spiritually life changing experiences.

Our investigators are doing good. We have teaching appointments with
both Tsubaki and David today so we are praying that they can have a
good spiritual experience and continue to progress.

I'm grateful for my last five weeks to serve here and I'm going to be
super busy to the end and look forward to another transfer of
adventures.

スピードと天使

堅城長老

CHILLIN'

Nagoya Dome

My last MLC

Triple Ace

Good Morning ladies and germs,

Yes it's true; today is the start of my last transfer (Transfer 15) in
the Japan Nagoya Mission. We finished transfer calls this morning and
I realized that I have reached the point where I never thought I'd get
to. It's already planned out to be a busy transfer so there will never
be a dull moment and I'm looking excited for that.

This last week was a blast and a lot of good things happened. Our last
two lessons with our investigator 椿(Tsubaki) were really good. We're
getting a lot of support from the members and they are joining our
lessons and are helping to explain things to her and are
fellowshipping her a lot. She's progressing really well and I love
teaching her. She accepts the gospel and our commitments well and has
the desire to be baptized. Last week we taught the Gospel of Jesus
Christ and this week we taught about how that ties in with the Plan of
Salvation. We emphasized how families are eternal and that through
having faith, repenting, and by being baptized you can start to create
an eternal family. We are so lucky to get to teach 椿 and we are
praying for her.

On Sunday last week Jones and I were heading out to go house a 団地
(danchi-massive apartment complexes) and we were stopped by a white
guy before we could even stop him and that is when we met David St.
John. David had just arrived in Nagoya after biking two months from 神戸
(Kobe). He came to Nagoya to be a 杖術 (Jojutsu- a form of martial arts
where you fight with a staff) master and teacher in the nearby city of
瀬戸 (Seto). He's been in Japan for about 20 years and is way good at
the language and knows a ton of cool Japanese history (which of course
I thought was sick). He actually studied Japanese History and Language
at USC and then came to Japan and has done a variety of jobs out here.
He was super fun to talk to and he took us to his home to show us
where he lived and said we could visit anytime we wanted. We talked to
him for about two hours out on the street and became pretty good
friends. We asked if there was anyway we could help him and then gave
him our number so he could call us. He told us that he'd met
missionaries in all the other places in Japan and says of all the
Christian religions he respects ours the most (he never calls us
Mormons only Latter-Day Saints) and would love to meet again.

Later in the week I received a call from David and he told us that he
met 阿部, 狩谷, and 中塚 (Abe, Kariya, and Nakatsuka) on the street and he
was wondering if he could recruit our help cleaning and weeding his
yard. He said that in exchange he would love to listen to our message
and said he received a pamphlet from 中塚 in Japanese but said he'd like
an English Book of Mormon if we could supply him with one. I told him
that of course we could help and yesterday we helped out cleaning his
yard and then we had a lesson with him which was a way good
experience. First off you have to understand that David is a very well
educated person and his background is history and through a lot of his
comments since we met him he doesn't seem to like organized churches
very much. Anyways in the beginning of the lesson David told us to
teach him like we had know idea about how much he knew about our
religion. We asked more for his religious background and he just gave
us a torrent of his struggle with his one previous Protestant religion
because he felt that the churches he went to were not practicing what
they were preaching. Therefore he hasn't called himself Christian in a
long time. So we taught him the very basics from who God is and taught
about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. He was very attentive
and asked a lot of good questions and I was able to us my knowledge of
history to understand and answer some of those questions and Jones was
doing so good and testifying of the truthfulness of our message. In
the end he said he would begin reading the Book of Mormon and would
love to continue to discuss the church with us. It was my first time
teaching an American on my mission and it was a very good experience
that I will never forget.

This week's been busy with two exchanges. We went to 四日市 (Yokkaichi)
on Tuesday and I got to work with Tommy for the last time on the
mission. They had zone interviews to start everything off and after
that is when we started our exchange. It was a lot of fun and we were
busy teaching at a lot of less active member appointments. The people
in 四日市 speak this weird, mumbling, accented Japanese which is really
hard to understand and in fact we both didn't understand a lot of what
was said to us. We tried our best and is was still fun. Thursday we
headed out to 静岡 (Shizuoka) and were supposed to do an exchange but
石井会長 (President Ishii) was interviewing their zone that day and it
went really late so we did a four man lesson with one of their
investigators who was way cool. He is a retired Japanese Self-Defense
Force Navy helicopter pilot who has 7000 hours and is currently
learning and getting his license to fly Cessna Citation Vs. He was
really fun to talk to and it was good to talk about flying with
someone.

It's been a great week and it's been a ton of fun. I love being able
to work with so many people and have all of these awesome experiences.

I hope you all have a great week! Take luck!

スピードと天使

堅城長老

Pictures

Pic 1- My posterity. My bean, his bean, and his bean's bean. I'm a
great Grandpa!
Pic 2- Getting real in the 'hood. Found this outside a less actives house.
Pic 3- Us and 沼津 (Numazu) our chopper pilot friend.

3日間本部にいなかった。よし。

Good morning sports fans,

This has been a crazy week and time went by pretty fast. Life's been
pretty good. To kick things off our investigator 椿 (Tsubaki) accepted
a baptismal date for the end of next month during our lesson last
Saturday! She is such a miracle! The lesson was really good and we
taught at the church with a member and we taught about the restoration
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the prophet Joseph Smith. It was
a really spiritual lesson and she was willing to accept a date to be
baptized and follow Jesus Christ. The next day she came to church and
made a lot of friends and wants to keep coming. We have another lesson
with her today and we are excited to see continual progression.

Monday I got the opportunity to return to 豊田 (Toyota) for a couple of
hours. A new Japanese elder, 中塚 (Nakatsuka), was called to become a
commisarian and we went to pick him up and because 豊田 is kind of
special to me I wanted to go and meet 森村 (Morimura). It was so much
fun. While walking down the street a member pulled off the side of the
road to say hi. They said the saw the missionaries and somehow
recognized it was me and turned around. At 森村's shop we surprised the
crap out of him and had a ton of fun talking to him. He is still
reading the Book of Mormon and an elder has given him a triple
combination and he still has all of my notes and scripture reading
assignments in it and is marking it. It was so good to see him and get
to talk with him for a while. While at 森村's 中塚 called me and told me a
member wanted me to meet with her daughter who I was friends with when
I served in 豊田 but went less active shortly after I left. So after 森村
I met up with the 市川 (Ichikawa) family at the church and got to talk
to there daughter 夏美 (Natsumi). I haven't seen them for almost a year
and they were way surprised that I could actually speak Japanese now.
The only memories they had of me was the first eight month of my
mission while I was still struggling hard with the language. It was so
good to see and talk to one of my favorite member families of 豊田 Ward.
I am so happy to have gotten to go see everyone again and see that
some of the success I saw there is still visible.

From Tuesday on our week got pretty busy. We went on three exchanges
in a row and pretty much traveled around the entire mission. We
started our "tour" in 野並 (Nonami), then 松本 (Matsumoto), and finished
out in 金沢 (Kanazawa). Elder Jones and I packed our bags, loaded the
bikes, hopped in the van, and had our own little three day long
adventure. It was a lot of fun! I got to meet so many people that I
worked with. In 野並 I called up a member family, the 落合's (Ochiai), and
asked if I could meet and they said yes and unexpectedly had a お好み焼き
(Okonomiyaki) party for Elder Callahan and I. It was so awesome to go
visit one of my favorite member families ever and have dinner and a
lesson with them. On Wednesday we headed to 松本 and spent most of the
day helping a sister missionary who got hit by her car while riding
her bike. Elder Warren (松本ZL) and I helped transport her damaged bike
with the van while she was helped out by some members at her
apartment. Warren and I also visited a LA Filipina that Elder Klein
and I used to work with back in the day. At night I visited my
favorite Brazilian family and introduce Jones to Aoki and Preto while
the ZLs had to go to a meeting at the church. It was great to see them
and reconnect once again. Our final destination was 金沢 where I got to
work with Elder Day. Him and I (and Elder Callahan) will be riding the
same plane home in a couple months. He is a way good ZL and has really
been helping the DLs in his zone and has been a huge asset up there.
It was a great couple of days to escape the 本部 and work out in the
field for several solid days.

We got back from our trip yesterday afternoon. At night we had to go
out to 一宮 (Ichinomiya) to go help bring some stuff the 福徳 (Fukutoku)
sisters needed from the apartment they left last week. After that the
week was all of a sudden over. We've got one week left in the transfer
and we'll see where that takes us. It's looking like it'll be a good
week.

All's well here folks so I hope all's well for you out there too. Take luck!

スピードと天使

堅城長老

写真

森村!

なちゃん Meeting up with Natsumi and her family

Driving through 長野県 (Nagano-Ken)

Driving up on the Sea of Japan

Hot Wheels

Good morning folks,

It's already P-Day again. Can you believe it? I just talked with my
lovely family for the last time for the duration of my mission which
is crazy. This past week has been pretty exciting. As Assistant the
unusual and abnormality of the schedule has become normal for us here.
It's been a fast and furious ride.

To kick off things last Saturday and Sunday was the 名古屋東 (Nagoya East)
Stake conference. I came to realize that in my almost two years in
Japan I have never missed a 名古屋東 Stake Conference. That just kind of
tells you how long I've lived in 愛知県 (Aichi-Ken) which will be 1 1/2 years
by the end of next month. The huge highlight of last Sunday was our
new investigator we found last week, 椿 (Tsubaki) came to church and
she liked it! She was also fellowshipped by the ward really well and
it was a great first experience for her and we have a lesson with her
today. Jones and I found her two Sunday's ago while housing an
apartment complex. She's a young, single mother and is super sweet.
I'm so happy that we have someone to teach this wonderful gospel to!

Monday and Tuesday were just office days where we got our weekly
routine stuff done and had another transfer meeting. We are having a
lot of new missionaries come in and a lot of young missionaries are
about to become trainers. It's really crazy to look at the transfer
board and see almost everyone I know taken off and gone. Next transfer
I'll be taking my own card off and will be planning a transfer I will
never see.

Wednesday was an adventure. The plan was to head out in the morning to
岡崎 (Okazaki) for an exchange, but that morning 石井会長 (President Ishii)
calls us and informs us that the next day we need to conduct an
emergency transfer to pull the sisters out of 福徳 (Fukutoku) due to a
less  active member harassing members of the ward and the
missionaries. 石井会長 was about to head to 東京 (Tokyo) that morning for a
Mission President's Seminar and essentially told us that we were in
charge and said to make it happen. So before we left for 岡崎 we
coordinated the whole thing with the ZLs and the sisters and then
rolled out. 岡崎 was a really good exchange. I got to work with Elders
Tsuru and Yamada in a threesome for the day and it was my first time
doing threesome dendo. It worked out ok and we had fun and I met some
members that I know here in 岡崎.

The next day we had to roll out and head to 藤枝 (Fujieda) again for the
second time in two weeks to move out an apartment that we shut down.
The 本部 senior couple missionaries had some issues with renting the
moving truck so Jones and I had about two hours to kill so he showed
me around the small city of 藤枝. It was a big walk down memory lane for
Jones since this is his bean-chan area and he hasn't been back in over
18 months. I swear we ate at the best Indo Curry place in the whole
mission and then headed back to the apartment, met up with the elders
there, and then started moving when the truck came. Once we got
everything loaded up we rolled back to the 本部 and unloaded everything
and then put it all in storage and then headed out to 福徳 to move the
sisters to 一宮 (Ichinomiya) to live with the other two sisters there
for the time being. That took all night and we finally walked in the
本部 at 2230 that night.

Yesterday I drove with 阿部 (Abe) out to the beautiful city of 富山
(Toyama) so 阿部 could close an apartment contract. That didn't take
very long. We drove three hours out there to have a thirty minute
meeting with the owner. At least I got to see another beautiful city!
We then took the elders who are serving in 高山 (Takayama) home because
if they rode the train it would time them almost four hours to get
home. So by giving them a lift I got to see another beautiful city
that's actually really famous here in Japan. We finally got back at
around 1930 at night and I was tired. In the last 48 hours I had been
driving in a van for close to 18 hours.

One of the senior missionaries made a joking remark to me and Jones
saying that he was surprised that we weren't dendoing as assistants.
That remark kind of frustrated me because without us APs the mission
couldn't function. I'm not saying that to be prideful or anything, but
if we weren't around then who would translate, who would drive close
to 20 hours a week, who would carry fridges down flights of stairs and
load it into trucks and then unload it? The members in those areas are
too busy and two 60 year old guys who don't speak Japanese aren't
going to be able to do it all, so we're the only ones left. Of course
I'd love to be teaching investigators, but my role right now is a
little different and I'm tired of being depreciated for it. Jones and
I are doing the best we can and we are still seeing miracles in our
work whether it be in the office, in the van, or out knocking on
doors. I've never been busier and that's the way I like it.

Summer is definitely here and I hope that everyone's got their grills
cleaned up. My folks sure do. It's looking like it'll be a fast, fun
summer so hold on tight! I'll see you all in a few!

スピードと天使

堅城長老

Pictures

Pic 1- Sick pic from last week
Pic 2- Found this on the street
Pic 3- 寿司 (Sushi) in 岡崎