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

The Lord has helped me learn how to work

まあ、日本語ができる。

People in line to go to the Shrine

ma- nihongo ga dekiru. 

Well, I can (speak) Japanese...

So... 

Let me try to explain, 

When I was in the MTC, when all my teachers only spoke Japanese, I was trying so hard to understand- but it's like trying to figure out the quadratic equation when you've never seen (done) math before. My head hurt constantly. 

I got in the field and like everyone feels, I couldn't speak at all- 

In my second transfer (a month and a half in Japan) I had a third transfer trainer. Both of us couldn't really speak Japanese, so we wandered the streets trying to understand what people were saying. To be honest I had no idea what they were saying, but by the tones of their voice and the afraid expressions on their faces I could tell they were  rejecting us. 

I was determined not to be beaten by this language. 

A friend,who was a return missionary from Sapporo Japan,  that I had in collage before my mission was talking with me about Japanese even before I got my mission call. 

"How was the Japanese?" I asked, knowing nothing other than that Japanese was supposedly hard. 

"It was awful." he told me "It wasn't until a year that I could understand what people were saying to me. Even after two years I couldn't really speak. I kept quiet most of the time and let my companions do all of the talking."

When I got the call to Sendai Japan, I was determined not to be beaten by the language, and put off studying really at all before I went into the MTC. I figured it'd come. 

At a couple months in, my Japanese wasn't coming- and I remembered the story my friend told me. He kept quiet... He let two years almost uselessly slide by, not because he wasn't willing to share the gospel, he wouldn't have left if he hadn't, but because he didn't beat the language. 

Now, you hear of the gift of tongues, and you might think just as I though., I thought some sort magic was going to occur. I thought I'd be standing there with someone that needed the message and magically I'd open my mouth and all the right words would spill forth- but one thing that I've learned- is that God with His infinite wisdom and power, will not do things for us that we can do for ourselves. We grow though overcoming trials, and the saving grace doesn't always kick in when we want it to, or think it ought to. 

I thought one night, laying on the floor, (that's how we sleep in Japan), and had what you might consider a Gordon B. Hinkley experience. I was thinking selfishly, and wondering why God had seeming left me all alone to waste my time. Every day, I tried my best during language study to learn, but it would all slip away the next day. Why aren't you helping me?! I asked in my wrath to God... 

Elder Uucdorf said "That spiritual light,rarely come to those who sit in darkness." 

I was certainly trying, but a little thought creeped into my head, at the time I didn't know, but now I know that it was from the Spirit of the Lord. 

'Are you doing ALL you can?'

Me and My Ramen

Missionaries only have a few precious hours a day of time to think.   There's the hour in the morning to shower and eat, the hour for both lunch and additional study, the hour in the evening for dinner, and the hour after planning for writing in the journal and prepping for bed. If you clever with your time, you can maybe have a few minutes to think during that time. 

That little bit of thinking time was precious to me... The question that came was "Are you doing ALL you can?" and I wondered... Am I really doing ALL I can...? 

We sometimes lull ourselves to think that we're doing enough, we don't need to give any more. 'I'm doing all I can!' 

but are we? 

I looked around and realized that there was something more that I could give. I could trade (as we all have to at some point) something that I want a little now, for something I want so much more later. 

So I made the trade. 

Every morning after exercise, a quick shower and breakfast, I started to study Japanese writing. During language study I study the grammar,(lunch and dinner I study what I feel is lacking) in the evening I memorize vocabulary and make flash cards upon flash cards, and during the day, I try to speak as much as possible. I started then and I still do it now. 

And though I still lack so much and am not even close to fluent. I'm better today than I was yesterday. And after looking back over 100's of days- I can see growth. I thank the Lord for letting me learn, and pushing me along the way.

Yep... that sounded like I'm bragging... I don't even know if I want to tell anyone other than family that or whatever.... 

But yep. The Lord has helped me learn how to work. 

On the train yesterday I stuck up a conversation with a girl about the snow, and she kept freaking out saying that I was fluent and stuff. Then right after she said that she said something that I didn't understand. Laugh. I've still got a long way to go. 

But ya, motometara, (in conclusion) 

yep. We've gotta work. 

Spiritually I'm still as stupid at a brick. I've learned a lot, and am leaps and bounds above who I used to be, but still am lacking so much. But hey, I think we get to the point when we are leaning to the more spiritual side. I've always thought I was pretty good stuff and knew a whole lot when I was further away from the Lord before my mission. The closer we get to Him, the more we realize that we suck and need Him so much. 

Yep. I hope that gives you something to work with.

A sister drew this picture of me for a newsletter

Ya, we visited Sasaki Kyodai again yesterday (the member in the hospital who speaks English).

He's taken a turn for the worse, and has an O2 mask and all that. He recognized us but couldn't really understand too much of what we were saying. His leg is all skin and bones. His eyes were wide with fear. 

The nurses said we could say long, and he just kept saying 'sacrament' over and over. 

So we did that, then he told us with tears in his eyes that he loved us and gave us handshakes- and we left.

He's only in his late 60's. Pray for him everyone. Brother Sasaki. 

We did a lesson with Myuto-kun. He says he half believes, half doesn't believe in God. It was a good lesson. We told him how he can know the truth. He said he'd pray every night to get an answer. 

He's such a little chub. I love Myuto-kun. He hugs us every time we come in and wraps his legs around us. He's funny. 

He couldn't come to church yesterday because he had a judo tournament. 

I can't type English correctly anymore. So I might have grammar mistakes. 

Uh... We tried to go to ZTM, but.. ya. There's was to much snow, so the train from hirosaki to aomori was down. We got to try again this week.

Yep. That's dendo. 

Peace out. 

Elder Wheelwright

Heavenly Father help all of these people

So... New Years week is probably one of the oddest for missionaries in Asia. 

We taught some lessons on Tuesday- 

So odd things are happening- I got a call from the President one day this week- 

Since there is only one Mel. Priesthood holder in this branch two of the missionaries in the district have to be his first and second councilors. The mission president usually assigns them- but for some reason, the district president assigned the two Japanese elders to be the first and second councilors- and we sustained them in church... 

But so ya, in the call he, the president,  told me that whoever had done that was out of the direction of his authority, and that we also don't sustain missionaries in this situation- so he told me that I was the second councilor. 

So ya. That was kind of funny. 

On Wednesday- yep, we stayed in the apartment all day- which sounds way weird, but I'll explain why- 

Japanese people don't get Christmas off work or anything. Instead they get it off on new years. Everyone instead of partying with their friends, get's together as a family, and on the thirty first they do the O-soji (lit. big cleaning) they clean up their houses and get ready for the fresh start that comes with a new year. 

So, we were told by our mission President to do the same. We cleaned up our apartment like crazy (it took a long time)... 

Hasebe Kyodai needed help with 'getting rid of some snow'. Which turned out to be climbing on his slippery two story roof and pushing the two or three feet of snow off of it.... So we did that... I almost fell off, but it was fun! 

Then I studied Japanese. 

Then the next day we woke up, studied. When to the locial shrine to understand their customs... 

Which everyone in Japan goes to the shrine, passes though the tori gate that represents going into a new world- and we went to the 'house of (the local) god'- we waited in line, rang the bell to get the god's attention, threw a coin in, clapped twice, bowed- and then I was supposed to pray to the pagin deity, but I asked Heavenly Father to help all of these people, then clapped again to finish and walked away. 

I got my fortune, and though last year I got the best you could get, this year I got a normal one. If you get a bad one, you tie it on these fence and pray that the gods will take it away. 

Then we stood there for a bit, and went home. 

Then as were were told, read 3rd nephi, and bam. Made some goals for the new year. 

We went over to myuto-kun's house, and his grandma made us kiritanpo (some sweet crushed rice rolls in soup). Then we cleaned her butchery. It smelled like meat... WAHOO! 

Then Myuto-Kun said he'd come to church. So he did. 

It was awesome. We just hung out. (He's 13) 

He's a little cub that does what he wants. He hugs us, and we do ninja fights and stuff. He's hilarious. 

His parents hate the church so they won't let him get baptized. 

Meh. 

That's my week. I'm gunna cut my hair today. 

see ya'll next week. 

Elder Wheelwright