Monday September 17, 2012

I am doing great!  It's not a billion degrees here anymore.  Things are starting to cool down and we are transitioning into Fall.  This past week was the first time that I have been dry, haha. Everyone is always dripping with sweat and if you work outside, you wear a headband, like a legit Asian headband, haha.  And yea, everything is good :)

Thank you for telling me about your guys adventures back home!  I hope the boys are adjusting well to school and it sounds like you guys are having a great time at the Fair and planning the wedding and what not.  Not a ton happened here in Kohoku this past week, but I'll tell you some of the fun things that we did...

I went on splits with my zone leader, Elder Checketts, on Tuesday and it was way cool.  He is from Provo and is a way cool guy, tons of fun to dendo with.  We taught three lessons to investigators that day.  The first lesson was interesting because it was with this 19 year old guy named Ueda San.  He is still in high school, and we found him streeting the other day.  He lives kind of far from the church so when we met up with him we suggested just going to the park and talking there.  But he really wanted to go to the church so we said okay.  But this kids bike was a wreck, completely rusted over, the back tire was all the way flat, the wheel spun in all directions when he peddled, and the chain kept falling off.  So as we were going to the church, we stopped at our apartment and tried to help out his bike in any way we could.  The other elders went and picked up a new tire and a new pump for real cheap and we waited for them outside the apartment.  We ate Nashi and we did a very thorough BOM introduction and reading with him.  We spent like 10 minutes just talking the BOM up while we were going to the apartment, to the point where he was like, "Let me see one! Do you have one?! I want to read it!" Which was cool to see a guy so excited to read a BOM.  After a few hours, haha, we finally fixed his bike and went to the church.  We sang some hymns with him and taught him the whole first lesson and he prayed at the end of it.  He doesn't really believe in God yet, but he really wants to.  His mom is a little hontai (I'm not sure what that is in English, anti?) about religion in general, but other than those things, he is down for the business.  We had a big CES FHE with all of the single adults in the area yesterday and he came to that and had a good time. 

Our next lesson was with a guy named Toshi.  Toshi is like 5-10, 200 pounds of muscle, really big football player kind of guy, and he loves America and English.  Loves the culture and the way of living, his English isn't very good, but he is trying hard, haha.  He wants to be a professional singer, R&B artist, and he has been training his voice to sound like the artist Neo. And he sounds like him too, haha.  He is Christian and kind of reminds me of Uncle Phil actually, haha.  We taught him about the restoration and authority, went over the entire background of the Bible so he could have some knowledge of the prophets the BOM mentions, and then I committed him to pray to be baptized and set a date to work for with baptism.  We have a tentative plan for him to get baptized next month and he will keep working towards that.  He has met with a few other missionaries before, but I think this group of missionaries are the right ones for him.

After him, we taught the zone leader's investigator named Hotta.  Hotta is what we call a kinjin, a golden person.  He met with the missionaries ten years ago, but was too busy to get too involved.  Last month, he thought a lot about the purpose of life and religion and wanted to find answers.  He remembered that he had a BOM so he looked us up on mormon.org and contacted the zone leaders asking for answers.  This kid is awesome.  He read the entire BOM, and then, is reading the teachings of President Kimball and Heber J. Grant and what not.  I taught him the law of tithing, or should I say, he taught me the law of tithing when I asked him if he had heard about it before, haha.  He is going to get baptized next Sunday!

Other than that, we just did a lot of streeting and talking to people.  We got a few numbers but they are kinda bimio (unsure) and maybe won't turn out to be anything.  If you have not watched Elder Holland's CES talk yet, watch it!  It is on lds.org and it is legit.  I've seen it twice, English and Japanese, but it is much much cooler in English than in Japanese.  He is a boss.

Well, I hope you guys have a great week and do lots of fun things! Tell the ward I say "hi".  Who is our ward mission leader these days?  And also, you guys should have the missionaries over for dinner one of these days.  Do it for me :)

Love you guys and will talk to you later!

Elder Crandall .