Hello there mother!
How are you? How is planning for the wedding? I bet it
is way fun! Right now I am in a kunitachi ward member’s ramen shop. It is
amazing. I'm getting tsukemen. It's like a bowl of noodles and. A separate bowl
of hot soup and you take the noodles with the chop sticks( ohashi) and dip it
in the soup. It is delicious. I'm pretty much a pro with chopsticks now haha.
Not really but I am pretty dang good if I do say so myself. I kind of can't
even imagine eating some foods with a fork or a spoon like I used to. Like rice
is way better with chopsticks. We have spaghetti every once in a while and we
usually use forks and I seriously feel so awkward using a fork with noodles.
Chop sticks are the way to go. Also I don't know if I mentioned his before, but
the convenient store food here is way way better than Americas.
Yah 4 months! That sounds so crazy! The stake
dance sounds way fun!!! I think it is hilarious how I didn’t used to be able to
know the difference in Chinese and Japanese, spoken or written. It is SO obvious!
I’m learning to read pretty well. I read the scriptures in Japanese
everyday and I started the book of Mormon over in Japanese. I am in chapter 8
now. I just look up words I don’t know and eventually I usually see them enough
that I can remember them! I love it!
I am proud of you mom!! I can’t believe you actually
snowmobiled into the cabin! (I have always protested snow, cold or snowmobiles)
Also I saw Allie and Nate’s apartment on face book! It looks so cute!
I love the sweet potato kit kats! (he sent
us some candy and the kit kats taste like yams!) They sell some with rum in it
too. Actually they sell a lot of rum candy. But I love the sweet potato kit
kats. I sent Audrey some squid tentacles like jerky stuff hahaha. I don't think
she ate it. I don't like squid or octopus very much. The suction cups just are
too chewy for my liking. But black thunder candy bars are definitely my
favorite. They make this way good ice cream that has a rice cover called mochi
and an ice-cream inside. You need to sell it in the truck. People would go
crazy for it!
The Christmas party for the mission was awesome! (I
asked him if he got to see his companion from the MTC) Ya I saw him! I’ve
seen him a couple times! It is way weird but he’s doing really good! He has had
3 baptisms I think! We heard from President Wada and his wife and a
couple other good speakers. Then we had a gift exchange. I got 400 yen in 1 yen
pieces. We also got really cool lapel pins with our mission logo and motto on
it! I don't have a picture but I’ll take one soon! I’m not home right now and I
can’t take another picture of the wedding stuff right now to send in time.
Sorry I will have to take one next week.
Did I ever tell you that you have to buy each
individual grocery bag here? Well you do.
For New Years we didn't do anything. It is called
Shogatsu here. Everybody leaves for shogatsu. We found several drunk people. In
nishikunitachi train station we saw this guy who was WASTED. He fell over like
5 times in the street, in the road... and then he busted through the train
station gate and passed out against the wall after falling into it. We and a
conductor tried helping him but there wasn't anything to do.
This and last week have been way hard. We only have a
couple investigators. One really. President Wada has this thing called S.O.S.
invitations. (Salvation of souls) where we get to know someone, teach them a
gospel principle and then make a direct invitation to meet with us again or
come to church. We are expected to get at least 10 a day so 70 a week. We got 8
last week and 7 this week. I got really down but today I am determined!
President Wada told me that it takes detailed planning and following the plan.
So I have been fasting and praying and studying on how to get more. I made
an extremely detailed plan on how, where, when, and how many sos i will get. We
have found 1 person right now through it! First of all it is way hard because
no one likes to talk here. But there is something I like to call the
"Natural Japanese Person" compared to the Natural man in Mosiah 3:19.
Japanese people refuse to talk to people on the train. Since my companion is
Japanese, that makes it way hard because we are literally expected to talk to
people on the train.
Today is feels like summer! IT is warm! The
weather comes from Sibera up north, and then gets a ton of moisture from the
Japan sea, and then the mountain range cuts off the moisture before it ever
gets to Tokyo so I probably won’t ever get any snow. That is just fine though
because it still is plenty cold! The air is doing this way weird thing to my
hands. They look like they have leprosy whenever they get wet. It’s like
wrinkly to the max and the outer most layer of skin is pealing way bad.
Back in like the 80s when this mission was first
opened, (this mission was opened, then closed and more recently reopened) there
was something called Tokyo Rush. Well that is what it has been named.
Infamously. There was a mission president, now excommunicated, well he was, he
may have brought back by now, but he basically told the missionaries to do
ANYTHING to get people to be baptized. They LITERALLY had signs up that said
Pool Party... So needless to say there were tons and tons of people baptized,
none of which have stayed in the church. We have met 2 right now and neither of
them remembers anything about the church at all. SO it’s pretty crazy!
I really want to try the squid jerky; of course I have
had squid but never the jerky kind! By the way, it is illegal to send jerky
from America to Japan. Just a heads up.
After I’m done writing we are going to tachikawa eki to
get a light bulb and to do a little thrift shopping. Then I have 1 hour with
the piano!! Then tonight we are going to go house in Tachikawa for about 3
hours after dinner. By the way I lost one of those really nice gloves. Not the
winter ones but the lighter wind breaker ones. I was sad. But luckily right
before Elder Laird left he gave me an old pair! (I
asked him what I should send in the next package) They don’t have captain crunch,
but that may be too difficult to send. Send some mac and cheese! Also I don’t
have an oven so if you could figure out how to make German pancakes on a stove
top that would be cool! Last month my mission money
was very limited. I don’t even know what happened. But I remembered all of the
wisdom dad bestowed on me about being smart with money and I bought a notebook
and I made my own transaction register and I’m doing really good at knowing
exactly how much I have! But unfortunately I can’t check how much I have
on my personal cards for some reason. So can you tell me how much I have and
then I will try my best to keep track of that really well.
Thanks! I have to go now.
I love you so much!!!
Draper Choro
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