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. 

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

Tabehodai (look at all of my meat)

  

Ramen with Elder Flippo 

 We woke up at 5:30 to go to the fish market for fun today and it was a private fish market so we rode to the other side of town and got a picture of the famous Japanese rising sun and it was so beautiful reflecting off of the water.