Monday, October 26, 2015
Family night with Elder Tschirki
We had family night and decided to take a family photo with Elder Tschirki! We miss him!
Giant Spiders
WE GOT A RETURN APPOINTMENT ON SATURDAY NIGHT AND WE ARE TEACHING HIM TONIGHT YAHOO! He has taken the lessons before and read lots of the Book of Mormon and even has a baptismal date a year and a half ago (thanks area book:)) and he told us he has met with the missionaries and was more than willing to meet again and he pulled out his Book of Mormon and everything and we were like "what the" but we are so
excited! He's a college kid and Flippo Choro showed me that he had written down to call that guy from the area book on Monday and instead we have a lesson with him after accidentally knocking on his door. Except as a missionary there are no accidents or coincidences. So
we're excited for that.
The other companionship here baptized their investigator Fukatani Shimai and that was such a neat experience. That was my first time seeing a convert baptism actually.
Hiramatsu Shimai in the branch is the funniest lady I've ever met and she always talks to me about dating and stuff and what it's like for American kids and I said that I'm not the best example of that because I rarely ever went on group dates haha mostly ever 'hitori hitori' (one person and one person) and she just laughs and her granddaughter is reading Harry Potter and so they always say that I look like Ronarudo Weezuree and oh my gosh I just laugh all the time with them. This branch is so awesome and so special. I asked Fukatani Kyoudai's friend Shinchan (his real name is like shinjin or something but he's just Shinchan) when we were going to the tabehodai (instead of drinking buddies their eating buddies and he's so funny) and he said next week and I said only if he gets baptized and he just laughed and Japanese people are so funny.
We taught some short lessons to some obachans that are Buddhist but we're open enough to listen to us and the thing is that everybody deserves to hear the gospel. Sometimes when people kekko us I just want to find the next person, but Flippo Choro is the perfect example of persistence and he always gets a testimony in everywhere and honestly it's sometimes annoying but I always have to remember that people NEED to hear the gospel in their life, and it's what they do with the knowledge. Our responsibility is to preach and theirs is to act upon it. Sometimes that's hard because you can tell the person is a little annoyed or a lot of annoyed but if they can listen for five more seconds he testifies. That's one of the reasons he's supposed to be my trainer, and I really love that guy. Kids love me for some reason and anytime we knock on someone's door the kids all run up in front of their parents and just stare at us and we wave and talk to the kids and they're so innocent and cute and you can tell their spirit. It's the same on the streets. The kids always tell us "herro" and when we ask the, how they're doing they always say "I am... Happy!" And they really are happy and it gives us a little boost everyday. I love the kids here in Japan and we met one that was going to give us his onigiri and he saw our name tags and asked if we were Jesus Christ in a super surprised voice. We explained to him who Jesus was really simply and him and his group of friends went on their way. He was 11 years old and that's the funniest group of kids here because they just act up all the time. If the kids can have good experiences with the missionaries, they'll remember that when we come knocking on their door (which actually happened and a twelve year old kid said he talked to us before or some other missionaries just in the street (obviously we don't dendo little kids! But if we can we like to talk to them and surprise them in Japanese)) and they'll remember the fun missionaries they talked to. There's opportunities to serve everywhere!!
I love you all!
Elder Tschirki
excited! He's a college kid and Flippo Choro showed me that he had written down to call that guy from the area book on Monday and instead we have a lesson with him after accidentally knocking on his door. Except as a missionary there are no accidents or coincidences. So
we're excited for that.
The other companionship here baptized their investigator Fukatani Shimai and that was such a neat experience. That was my first time seeing a convert baptism actually.
Hiramatsu Shimai in the branch is the funniest lady I've ever met and she always talks to me about dating and stuff and what it's like for American kids and I said that I'm not the best example of that because I rarely ever went on group dates haha mostly ever 'hitori hitori' (one person and one person) and she just laughs and her granddaughter is reading Harry Potter and so they always say that I look like Ronarudo Weezuree and oh my gosh I just laugh all the time with them. This branch is so awesome and so special. I asked Fukatani Kyoudai's friend Shinchan (his real name is like shinjin or something but he's just Shinchan) when we were going to the tabehodai (instead of drinking buddies their eating buddies and he's so funny) and he said next week and I said only if he gets baptized and he just laughed and Japanese people are so funny.
We taught some short lessons to some obachans that are Buddhist but we're open enough to listen to us and the thing is that everybody deserves to hear the gospel. Sometimes when people kekko us I just want to find the next person, but Flippo Choro is the perfect example of persistence and he always gets a testimony in everywhere and honestly it's sometimes annoying but I always have to remember that people NEED to hear the gospel in their life, and it's what they do with the knowledge. Our responsibility is to preach and theirs is to act upon it. Sometimes that's hard because you can tell the person is a little annoyed or a lot of annoyed but if they can listen for five more seconds he testifies. That's one of the reasons he's supposed to be my trainer, and I really love that guy. Kids love me for some reason and anytime we knock on someone's door the kids all run up in front of their parents and just stare at us and we wave and talk to the kids and they're so innocent and cute and you can tell their spirit. It's the same on the streets. The kids always tell us "herro" and when we ask the, how they're doing they always say "I am... Happy!" And they really are happy and it gives us a little boost everyday. I love the kids here in Japan and we met one that was going to give us his onigiri and he saw our name tags and asked if we were Jesus Christ in a super surprised voice. We explained to him who Jesus was really simply and him and his group of friends went on their way. He was 11 years old and that's the funniest group of kids here because they just act up all the time. If the kids can have good experiences with the missionaries, they'll remember that when we come knocking on their door (which actually happened and a twelve year old kid said he talked to us before or some other missionaries just in the street (obviously we don't dendo little kids! But if we can we like to talk to them and surprise them in Japanese)) and they'll remember the fun missionaries they talked to. There's opportunities to serve everywhere!!
I love you all!
Elder Tschirki
Me and my mugicha
Fukatani Shimai's baptism. Hire atsui is the one right behind me (to the left) and her granddaughter is behind Shinchan (who is on the other side of me). The fourth Nephite always bringing food lady is on the far right. The branch president is the back row middle, Fukunaga Kaicho.
The giant spider next to my desk and I almost peed my pants and cried. I'm not even kidding and apparently these aren't even the biggest and it's HUGE.
On some beach we found last week
The same beach
Monday, October 19, 2015
Mugicha
First off, I love Mugicha. I bought a giant bottle of it last week and I'm going to bust it out at
a special occasion or baptism or something. I love it and I challenge
everyone to get some at your local Asian store.
This week was super good. We had mensetsu's (interviews) on Thursday and I just absolutely adore my mission president and his wife. They are the greatest people I have ever met in my life and they care so much about their missionaries and about me and I love love love them. We're starting to implement a new "method" of member teaching to get them excited for member dendo and we went to the Fujinaka's (the dad got two fingers cut off so that's cool) and they all had ideas afterwards of who they can reach out to. Both of the parents are long time RMs. I'll send a picture later. Our investigator with the baptismal date dropped on Wednesday night, so that is very hard but we can't become discouraged. PMG says that discouragement diminishes faith, and it's so true. Of course we're sad but now we get to spend more time finding people that are ready to hear the gospel. We've met quite a few Ehoba Shonins (J-Dubs) here (it's like the biggest 'Christian' (if you can call it that) religion here) and they've actually been kind of nice but people don't like our missionaries
because of the JW old ladies haha. Oh well we just testify and every time we testify they can't deny what we say, and that is so amazing. We know what we're doing is true and that we're working hard to find those people that are ready that will help strengthen the branch here in Shimonoseki. I love the members here. I love the less actives here. I just love everybody here. We had a lesson with a less active named Sanagi and he is one of the funniest and nicest people I've ever met and we just got along and he says we need to have a lesson and do squats sometime and exercise, so I told my companion that next time we
go over I'll bring my shorts with me. We haven't found new investigators yet which is hard, but we're doing the Lord's work and trying hard, and that's all he asks of us.
because of the JW old ladies haha. Oh well we just testify and every time we testify they can't deny what we say, and that is so amazing. We know what we're doing is true and that we're working hard to find those people that are ready that will help strengthen the branch here in Shimonoseki. I love the members here. I love the less actives here. I just love everybody here. We had a lesson with a less active named Sanagi and he is one of the funniest and nicest people I've ever met and we just got along and he says we need to have a lesson and do squats sometime and exercise, so I told my companion that next time we
go over I'll bring my shorts with me. We haven't found new investigators yet which is hard, but we're doing the Lord's work and trying hard, and that's all he asks of us.
Last week we went on a super awesome hike and it was beautiful and in the total inaka (country). Japan is such a beautiful country! We also went to a tabehodai (all you can eat) with a member. The members love feeding the missionaries here but we can only have one meal without an investigator so there's this one sister that brings us so much food a few times a week. She's an angel and we think she's one of the three nephites because she always knows when we're home. We met a Dutch couple a week and a half ago just vacationing and we talked for a while about religion with them and they couldn't deny our testimonies.
They said, "you seem so happy because of your religion" and we said that it was because of Jesus Christ and they couldn't deny the truth of that. We challenged them that when they return to Holland, that when the missionaries knock on their door to let them in and talk with them and he'll have the same experience, but in Dutch. We met a baptist guy too like 3 minutes from our apartment and he couldn't deny the restoration of the church and we gave him a Book of Mormon and a specific chapter to read. The work is definitely progressing here and just like the scripture says "by small and simple means great things are brought to pass" and right now we're just the tools for the small and simple means that the Lord is using.
I love you all!
Elder Tschirki
A cool gate thing on our hike
The view from our hike and you can see the ocean and everything. So beautiful.
Fujinaka Kazouku
Monday, October 12, 2015
Soutaikai
SOUTAIKAI (general conference) WAS AMAZING! I CANT WAIT UNTIL APRIL. Christmas and conference are my favorite times of the year and I fear that this is President Monson's last conference, especially after Elder Bednar's talk. That saddens me because Monson daikanchou is MY prophet. I don't really remember Hinckley daikanchou. I'm honestly tearing up writing about this hahahah dang it. Anyways on Sunday night we were
spiritually supercharged and we exceeded all of our goals that we were struggling to get and we handed out THREE Book of Mormons (there's a shortage of Japanese ones right now) so we gave out a Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese. That was a miracle and it was all within an hour of each other. I've made it a goal to read over past conference notes every morning at breakfast, and I'm also doing the ponderizing that we were challenged to do, and I challenge you all to do it too! It will be such an amazing experience for everybody.
Our investigator is rethinking baptism and he thinks that joining the church will take away from his time and freedom and such because it really is such a big change in his life and while we didn't drop the baptism date he wants to take some time and just think about
things for a bit. We really think that he will still be baptized, he just has to remember why he took the discussions and how far he has become because Flippo chourou said that he has made a 100% change in his life and he is so much happier now than ever before, so he just
needs to realize that that is because of the gospel. That's hard to deal with as a missionary but we know that he will get baptized and we have faith that it will be on his date.
The temperature is starting to cool down and I love it right now, it's perfect. We don't sweat all day anymore, just most of the day. But really Japan is so beautiful! I'll get some pics on my iPad for you to see.
OH! The area presidency doesn't want missionaries to use computers so now if I want to send pictures home they have to be taken on the iPad. I don't know why but we will find out on Thursday when Egan Kaichou comes to Yamaguchi Zone this Friday, so this week I only have one picture of a Chinese guy me and Bowler chourou met at the East Asia University when we were on exchanges and we gave him a Chinese Book of Mormon and got his number and he wanted to take a picture with us and we just chatted for a while. After that we found a DOMINOS in SHIMONOSEKI JAPAN (we almost cried we were so excited) so you bet we got pizza and it was expensive but worth it. (It was dinner time so we weren't wasting time at all!)
Love y'all!
Elder Tschirki
spiritually supercharged and we exceeded all of our goals that we were struggling to get and we handed out THREE Book of Mormons (there's a shortage of Japanese ones right now) so we gave out a Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese. That was a miracle and it was all within an hour of each other. I've made it a goal to read over past conference notes every morning at breakfast, and I'm also doing the ponderizing that we were challenged to do, and I challenge you all to do it too! It will be such an amazing experience for everybody.
Our investigator is rethinking baptism and he thinks that joining the church will take away from his time and freedom and such because it really is such a big change in his life and while we didn't drop the baptism date he wants to take some time and just think about
things for a bit. We really think that he will still be baptized, he just has to remember why he took the discussions and how far he has become because Flippo chourou said that he has made a 100% change in his life and he is so much happier now than ever before, so he just
needs to realize that that is because of the gospel. That's hard to deal with as a missionary but we know that he will get baptized and we have faith that it will be on his date.
The temperature is starting to cool down and I love it right now, it's perfect. We don't sweat all day anymore, just most of the day. But really Japan is so beautiful! I'll get some pics on my iPad for you to see.
OH! The area presidency doesn't want missionaries to use computers so now if I want to send pictures home they have to be taken on the iPad. I don't know why but we will find out on Thursday when Egan Kaichou comes to Yamaguchi Zone this Friday, so this week I only have one picture of a Chinese guy me and Bowler chourou met at the East Asia University when we were on exchanges and we gave him a Chinese Book of Mormon and got his number and he wanted to take a picture with us and we just chatted for a while. After that we found a DOMINOS in SHIMONOSEKI JAPAN (we almost cried we were so excited) so you bet we got pizza and it was expensive but worth it. (It was dinner time so we weren't wasting time at all!)
Love y'all!
Elder Tschirki
Monday, October 5, 2015
Blowfish
The Shimonoseki city animal is a blowfish and I guess they export the most in the world or something like that. This week has been good. It's been hard but good. We were out dendoing and we're going to contact this guy and he started peeing on the side of the street. We got kicked off of property by a supposed 'landlord'. We've gotten asked about 'two different Christianities' and we asked if he meant the testaments and he said 'oh yeah.. Probably.' And we've met some very wonderful and nice people that are ready to hear the gospel too. We testify to everyone we can and give them that opportunity to hear the gospel.
We are progressing with our investigator Matsuo and he has a baptism date for next month and we have started talking about the temple and he wants to go because he loves the peace at the church and we explained that baptism doesn't mean it's done, there's more and
he'll make it to the temple. Our other investigator Shuuhei just accepted baptism after a very spiritual lesson in which all we did was read and explain Alma 7 and then he committed himself to learn more and we asked if he'd be baptized and said he wants to but that next
month is too soon. Both of these people Elder Flippo had met before I got here. Shuuhei loves the church and always drags his friend to everything and every lesson and church and he stays all three hours. This last week he had said that everything at the church in the
lessons was tailored to him exactly and you can just see the happiness he receives from the gospel in his eyes and he is one that will stay in the church.
Japan is a wonderful country with wonderful people, but that doesn't mean Satan doesn't have control over people's hearts because he does, just like everywhere else, and it's easy to see and we are so extremely blessed to be members of this wonderful church and receive
so much joy from it and from Jesus Christ.
I love you all! Hopefully I can email you all individually at some point, I will try! Thank you!
Elder Tschirki
We are progressing with our investigator Matsuo and he has a baptism date for next month and we have started talking about the temple and he wants to go because he loves the peace at the church and we explained that baptism doesn't mean it's done, there's more and
he'll make it to the temple. Our other investigator Shuuhei just accepted baptism after a very spiritual lesson in which all we did was read and explain Alma 7 and then he committed himself to learn more and we asked if he'd be baptized and said he wants to but that next
month is too soon. Both of these people Elder Flippo had met before I got here. Shuuhei loves the church and always drags his friend to everything and every lesson and church and he stays all three hours. This last week he had said that everything at the church in the
lessons was tailored to him exactly and you can just see the happiness he receives from the gospel in his eyes and he is one that will stay in the church.
Japan is a wonderful country with wonderful people, but that doesn't mean Satan doesn't have control over people's hearts because he does, just like everywhere else, and it's easy to see and we are so extremely blessed to be members of this wonderful church and receive
so much joy from it and from Jesus Christ.
I love you all! Hopefully I can email you all individually at some point, I will try! Thank you!
Elder Tschirki
Yamaguchi Zone Training
Me with a blowfish
Sushi that a guy made for us and it was delicious. His contact in the phone is Sushi Guy.
It looks like I have one leg haha. Every missionary gets a picture of them on their bike
in front of the church. I got yellow because I want to stand out as much as I can.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
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