Monday, August 13, 2012

Hello Everyone! I am glad to hear that all went well with the trip and everyone is safe and had lots of fun! Well, things are great over here in Kohoku. Every Monday, we basically go out and try to find cool shops and I've found some crazy ones so far. We are going to Yokohama city today, like downtown shopping at recycle shops and cool little stores. My letter wont be super big this week 'cause we have a full schedule today, but let me tell you about my week and what I learned. 

On Tuesday, we had lunch with an awesome member named Bishop Kyodai.  He is 32, a financial analyst for one of the top financial consultant companies in all of Asia, single, an RM, and was raised in the US.  He loves the missionaries and loves discussing deep, fundamental doctrine with us.  He took us to this super nice sushi restaurant on the tenth floor of a massive train station/ electronic store/ mall/ business lunch place.  Dad will like this, the building has 3 floors dedicated to selling anything and everything electronic.  It's crazy.  Anyway, he ordered the most expensive thing on the menu for us (I'm not going to tell you how much it was, haha) and it was the best sushi I have ever or probably will ever taste on the mission.  I ate shrimp, sea urchin, caviar, sponges, tons of salmon and tuna, squid, octopus, etc.  But the best thing that we ordered was this foot long slab of eel.  And I don't know what they did to it, but it was one of the best things I have ever eaten in my life.  It was incredibly soft, really really sweet, and was a dark yellow. grey color, but man, it tasted so good! 

We are helping Bishop Kyodai get married, haha.  We are helping him make important decisions like whether or not to move closer to his girlfriend, how to help his girlfriend's conversion process 'cause she is a non member, important life changing decisions you know.  Which is crazy to think that two 19 year old kids are giving a much older and wiser man life changing advice.  But that's my job, haha. To be a doctor of the soul. 

I went on splits with my DL's companion this week and that was fun.  His name is Pope Choro (Elder Pope) and he is from the Redmond/ Kirkland/ Bellevue area.  He is only on his second transfer so he is pretty new too, which made getting around the place pretty fun.  While we were on splits, we had a full mission conference up in Shibuya.  So the two of us had to find our way around one of the most densely populated places in the world during morning rush hour, hahaha.  You will not believe how crowded the trains are during rush hour.  Honestly, like fish in a can, packed to the ceiling.  And there is nothing worse than the person next to you farting during rush hour in Shibuya, hahaha. I have been on 100 times more trains in the four weeks that I've been here than in my whole life.  Almost everyday we ride the trains and it is some of the most fun dendo (missionary work). At the mission conference, President Budge spoke a lot about the mission goals, our standard of excellence, and how to be more unified as a mission.  President Albrecht had a big push for self consecration during his era, and now that everyone is consecrated, the push is to be more unified as a whole.  It was wonderful to see my friends from the MTC and to see how much success everyone is having. 

Those were kinda the highlights for the week.  Other than that, we just did a lot of study and a lot of finding.  We are working on increasing our pool of investigators so we are doing a lot of streeting, housing, and different kinds of work.  I've met a lot of very interesting people with a lot of very interesting beliefs, but no one too interested in hearing more about our message. 

Love the people, love the work, there is nothing I would be rather doing than what I am doing! 

Love you so much and my prayers are always with the family and our friends back home :)

Elder Crandall