Paradise

SO, let's be real here. I love my comp and the area. It's so beautiful and my companion is one of the hardest working people I've ever met. His name is Elder Woolston and he's so fun to work with. His Japanese is pretty darn good too, so we'll do great. This will be a great transfer and probably more because he has only been here for one transfer. 

Anyways, about Amami Oshima. There's 45,000 people here so it's a pretty small area. Shimonoseki had about 250,000 people or so. It's an island so you ride 15 minutes one way and you're under a tunnel or going over a mountain to get to the other side, which we haven't done yet. The water is so beautiful and we can't swim at all so that's hard but understandable. It's actually been a little chilly down here but it's not bad at all compared to the mainland. The people here are so laid back. People love to talk here, even if they don't really care about our message, they like to talk. For example, we met a lady yesterday who wasn't interested but said she'd give us food and went inside and grabbed some baked sweet potatoes and gave them to us and then chatted. So that's what the island is like. 

I haven't met any of our investigators yet, they've been busy, so I will let you know about them when the time comes. Apparently we have a baptismal date with a high school kid who is the captain on his team, but he can't come to church because his soccer practice overlaps. There's a German guy named Reina (Rhina, Riena, Rainah, I don't know any German but
it's like RHYE-NUH) who builds surfboards and longboards here and lives here just so he can surf and he likes the missionaries and we love him too and we asked him yesterday if he wanted to hear our message and he said "sure, just drop by the shop and if I'm not busy let's talk" so we'll see how that goes. He's pretty much fluent in German, English, Japanese (he married a Japanese lady) and apparently Spanish. So I'm sorry I don't have too much to say about investigators this week, but it'll come. 

There's only about 10 members that come to church every Sunday, but some weeks it goes up to 25 randomly when people decide to show up. It's hard with how laid back the culture is
on the island because people tend to not really care as much, but the gospel is something you need to care about that probably shouldn't fall under the "island beach bum" culture. It's something we have to consistently do everyday in order to progress and grow, and if we aren't doing the little things everyday and establishing correct habits in living the gospel, there's no way that we will ever be able to reach our full potential. That's why everyday it is important to pray, study the scriptures, and serve others. If you do all three of those, odds are you'll be pretty happy in your life. It's a simple formula! It's been proven to work! 
So do it!

I love you all!

Elder Tschirki
#japan❤️

The view from my desk 

Some palm trees, which hurt really bad when they scratch out

your eye when you're riding your bike.

My beautiful companion, Elder Woolston

 THROWBACK to last week on P Day at bowling when we met this kid. Japanese people just buy stuff with English on it without knowing what it is. There's no SLCU.
 

The four Shimonoseki Elders, the 2 Kitakyushu Elders and the 2 Yahata Sisters at bowling.