Getting stopped by the Cops cause we're white

This week was pretty interesting. 

So.....

We ate some Sushi. And I think it's quite a bit different than sushi that we have in America. I think most of it in America is like the roll style. 

The kind that we eat the most here is a chunk of fish on a chunk of rice. The tuna is pretty good actually, even though at first it grossed me out. 

I wonder if all of you could even handle sushi?... ? 

I tried some Buri, which is sardine, and I don't know if it was because it had the skin, or the bones, but something about the texture was weird. 

But other than that it's all good.... 

Uhh.  An older member invited us over to her house, and she's hilarious. She can't walk, so she's got all these crazy chairs around her house, that she just jumps off one to another. 

She's even got one up the stairs... .So she commanded me to ride it and to have fun. So I did both of those. 

Uh............................................ 

We got a new student at eikaiwa this week. (English Class) She's way cool. I told them about prom and explained all the steps and everything. 

They said it seemed like a dream- or like a Disney Princess movie. 

They don't have dances here at school or anything, which is super sad. No parties.

The new girl took a picture of us and said she was going to advertise us on facebook and stuff. 

On Thursday we spend all day on trains to get to zone training and back. It's cool though because I love train dendo. 

Japanese people are all about talking with people about the whether. So, I started up a conversation with a 90 year old grandma next to me. (you always call old people grandma in Japanese for some reason... not to their faces normally, but when you talk to other people) 

She loved me. By the end she gave me her number, address, and name and said that we'd have to hang out sometime. 

She was speaking in an odd dialect. But I got most of what she was saying. She kept asking me (cause young people don't even understand them sometimes) "Do you get what I'm saying?" "Is it getting though?" 

I'd always answer honestly: "Ya, most of it." 

She said I was the best.... yep.

So ya. I feel like a grandma. 

Back problems, 

Shoulder problems, 

My hip started killing me the other day- 

But oh well. I've just gotten a (oldmanish) appreciation for the doctrine of the resurrection. :D

So. 

Yep, then we didn't even get time for studies because we had to go straight to the city next to ours to do Kid's eikaiwa there. 

That was fun. There's just like 10, 10-year old girls, that are all hilarious. I play a game where I write two words on the board, and practice them, cover my mouth and say one of them and they have to point to it. 

Laugh.... It was hilarious. 

Right ------ Light

I cover my mouth 

"Right"

They all point at light. 

So ya, because of the snow our train home got delayed... (over two hours) 

But a train to akita was coming in a few minutes and it would take only 1 hour and 40 minutesish. So we got the green light from the District Leader, and us and the Shimai (sisters) jumped on. (we had interviews in Akita the next day and would have to wake up earlier than 6:30 to get there anyway. 

We met four tired missionaries at the train station in Aikita at 10:30. The Elders there walked us back to their apartment. (which was way close.) 

It was funny cause when we got there, Elder Hodskins (I can't spell his name) took of his winter coat and pants and was wearing pajamas underneath. 

So ya. They were nice and gave us toothbrushes, toothpaste, savers, towels, and beds. (well futons) 

Had some good interviews the next day [

"Be the best missionary you know how to be. Consecrate your life to Him. Give your time to Him. Let your whole eye be single to His glory and He will change you." 

And so here I go. 

This week I'm going crazy trying to make every minute the Lord's. 

I'm so tired every single night 

So yep. On Saturday we rode a 1 hour train to a (even more in the middle of nowhere) town called Kazuno to visit an LA. 

It was blizzarding up there. 

We carried a huge map book, which we cracked open to navigate to her house. 

We were laughing as we walked though the snow and wind. (at one point a gust of wind kicked in which made it so we almost couldn't walk forward- we blamed it on satan.) 

We made it to her house. Her husband wasn't there, (who is the LA. She's a member though. She gave us hot coco, (standing in the genkan isn't against the rules) and we gave her come pictures of Christ with notes on them for her and her husband. She told us on Sunday that as she saw us walking away into the blizzard tears came to her eyes. 

Then we got stopped by the police. 

Hill Choro had warned me that this might happen. 

So Kazuno, is so much in the middle of nowhere, that there are no white people that live there. A ton of people probably haven't even seen a white person before. 

And no matter what happens, for some reason, a person will see us gaijin, walking around and just feel the need to call the cops. Yep. 

That's the truth. Let me sum it up in a sentence. 

We so much in the middle of nowhere, that people call the cops on us cause we're white.

But ya. I thought it was pretty funny. We just showed him our cards and he was way cool. He knew where we lived and everything. Nice guy. 

I thought the whole thing was funny, and wanted to share the joy of how funny it was with some of the Japanese people in my branch. 

But everyone seemed kinda angry. "Well that's way rude." 

or "They shouldn't do that." 

No one laughed.... I hope ya'll laugh in America.

We did a mogi (role play) lesson with one of the 6 sisters after church. She said my Japanese sentences were too long and hard to understand. (Plus my pronunciation was a little bad... Humbled.) 

But we challenged her to pray for us this week. "Hill Choro and I will go crazy, working hard, but we need your help" is what I told her. "We need you to pray for us as well so that we can find a new investigator." 

So here we go. 

We went to go deliver the sacrament to Sasaki Kyodai, and asked the nurses preemptively where the chairs were, (so that we could sit by his bedside).

They asked "Why?" 

We said "To visit with Sasaki-San"

"Haven't you been told?" 

"What?"

"He's ()" They used a weird word that means checked out. Or unregistered. 

"What do you mean?"

 "Well... He's dead."

So, ya.... We wrote down the date and time... and just sat down for a little bit.. I called the Branch President and passed on the news. 

Sigh. Well. He was only in his 60's. 

I told him that after he got better I'd come back and I'd go take him out to eat ramen. He hated the food there. He always told us he just wanted to go take us out to eat, just like he'd always done with the missionaries. 

Turns out he'd passed away only a couple of hours after we left the hospital last Sunday; a couple hours after he took the sacrament.

Just like the cliche line says, he's most definitely "In a better place now", but I wonder if the transition is difficult. I pray for him every night. 

(The sisters went to visit him a few hours after with Tamura Shimai, who's the same age as Sasaki-Kyodai, but the nurses didn't have the heart to tell them, they just said to call us and we'd tell them. So yep.)

Well. Since we had some extra time before the train came, we went housing. And just the same as ever we got rejected, but this time I was a little angrier because of how hard their hearts were- So one lady opened the door and said right after we finished saying Christ's name 

"I'm getting a little old. I've only got about 20 years left in life, so I don't need religion."

I retorted. "Don't you?! You know religion usually deals with what happens to people after they die, and preparing for it?"

She just said politely: "I'm truly sorry." 

In Japanese, you can have a conversation with no emotion at all if you use, keigo. (really polite speech) it carries no emotion at all. 

But ya. We got home and visited a PI we affectionately called the Crazy Lady. She wasn't home again. So we went housing. 

I've been praying for the Spirit a lot and I felt like we should stop at some apartments on the way back. (They were a little out of the way and tucked in behind some houses.) 

So we knocked with no answer until the third door, when a middle aged lady opened. 

She was spunky, and was actually willing to hear us out. She said don't believe in a religion, but she is willing at least to read their texts. I whipped out the Book of Mormon. 

"Sorry, it's a little beat up." I said. (It's been a while since I've passed out a Book of Mormon)

We tried to set up an appointment for the sisters to come back and teach her, but she just said 

"For now, I'll read this book. I'll give you a call when I'm done so you can have it back." (she flipped though it and whispered to herself 

"It shouldn't take more than a few hours." )

So ya. I testified to her that if she read that book and asked God though prayer, that she would know that it's true. 

So that was pretty crazy. 

Well this is the longest email I've ever written in my life. Enjoy it. 

I'll conclude by telling you that my favorite company of yogurt drinks came out with a new fruity flavor. It's sitting the fridge at home, waiting for my lips. 

(Isn't it weird that we have fridges in the winter...? It's cold outside so we have a warm room inside, and it's warm inside so we have a cold box inside of that.... Maybe it's just me.) 

Be inspired everyone. 

Elder Tyson Clark Wheelwright