Monday, April 7th, 2014

Dearly Beloved,

The dawn of spring has finally trudged through the barren gloom of
winter and has carried with it a prismatic blooming of Japanese
radiance.  It's Sakura season!!!!  The most beautiful time of the year
in Japan.  Elder Call and I have had quite the adventure this past
week as we have thoroughly embraced this gorgeous time of the year.

In the Japanese culture, they have this thing called Hanami.  It just
simply means to go look at the flowers.  However, the way that they go
look at the flowers is rather unique.  When they go look at the
flowers, they bring with them a large blue tarp, their family,
friends, children, light snacks, and gallons upon gallons of hard
alcohol.  Imagine American style spring break at a large beach on
California, well they do the same thing over here except they cram
into tiny parks and just get hammered while looking at the pretty
cherry blossoms. The trees really are amazing, especially in the part
of Tokyo where we live.

There is this famous park called Inokashira Park right next to where
we live that is famous for the cherry blossoms and we took the time to
go check it out and talk to some of the people going to see the
flowers.  It was going pretty well until we actually got to the park
and experienced the mayhem of Hanami at its climax.  We had some run
ins with crazy drunk old men that thought we were the bees knees cause
we were Christian in Japan.  However, we found some good opportunities
to dendo with a few people that just walked straight up to us and knew
who we were and what not.  I will attach a video of the park that we
went to, although no video can truly capture the scenic wonder of
flowers and beer.  Fun times.

This week we had Mission Leadership Council and that required a lot of
effort in planning and coordinating what we need to focus on as a
mission.  We have gone from 75 to 145 missionaries in the last 7
months which means that the majority of missionaries have only been
out less than half a year. Our focuses have mostly been on finding and
basic teaching skills up till now, but we are starting to emerge into
more advanced teaching skills, like asking inspired questions and
understanding peoples concerns.  We use the analogy of an iceberg and a
submarine.  With some people, the only way to truly understand them is
to jump in the submarine and take a look under the water.  Realizing
that what you see on the surface is just a tiny part of the whole
chunk of ice will benefit us as missionaries every time we go to
invite, teach, and commit people to living the gospel.

We also had the chance to go on splits with some of the zone leaders
and will go on more splits with them starting tomorrow.  I am going to
go on back down to Yokohama for one last time.  We have a zone
conference with them tomorrow and then after that, I will stay down
there for a day and help teach some of the people that I know over
there.  This is my final round of conferences so it is time to go hard
in the paint!

We have been watching general conference during comp study cause we
actually probably won't be able to see most of it at the Japanese
sessions this next weekend.  We have a gospel choir concert in Shibuya
that day with one of our friends, Jett, and his choir that he has put
together of various Japanese ladies in our area.  I will tell you more
about it afterwards, but who would have ever thought that I would end
up in a black spiritual gospel choir in Japan!  It's a service to the
community so it counts for missionary work, but it has also been a
great opportunity to meet a lot of new people.

The pictures on Facebook of us at the BBQ with the s'mores and what
not was an elders quorum activity.  We had 4 of our investigators come
with us and we had a great time eating and talking with them and
introducing them to the ward members here.

I am putting together a plan of things we should do while you are here
with me.  I will get back to you with this details today, but I need
to go right now cause we have an appointment to get to, but it's great
to hear about Kylie's eagle project getting done.  Maybe we can have
our court of honors at the same time cause i haven't had one yet, haha.
Sorry to hear about your toe Connor.  Your can always get a better
one after the resurrection, ha. ;)

I hope Kelsie is doing good, I wouldn't know though cause she don't be
writing me ever...hint hint...

Have a wonderful week and I will see you soon, too soon actually...

Love,

Elder Crandall