Kagoshima 2.0

SO THIS WEEK WE WENT TO KAGOSHIMA! We left Monday night on a boat, and came home Thursday night on a boat, arriving on Friday morning at 5:00 am. Anyways the boat on the way up was fun, it was just your regular ferry that goes all night long with a bunch of people sleeping in the same room. It's actually fun but there's nothing to do on it except
for drink alcohol which we don't do so there's literally nothing to do. Anyways, we got to Kagoshima on Tuesday, and there were no members that could pick us up and in order to get to the conference on time we had to take a taxi which was fun. First taxi ride ever, ha. Anyways the taxi driver was way cool and gave us candy. The Kagoshima church is literally on the top of a mountain so we passed a bunch of missionaries from the zone walking up the hill in the heat and we were in a cool, air conditioned taxi. The arrangement of Love at Home that we played went very well. The members in Kagoshima made taco rice for us. That's as Mexican as the food here gets. It's literally taco seasoning and meat, lettuce, tomato, etc. on top of rice. Just like the name sounds. It's good. So the conference lasted a long time and then we went home and stayed in the Kagoshima Zone Leaders apartment
which is about as big as my living room and hallway. Japanese apartments are very small, and they already have four people living there, so eight was really fun. Anyways Kagoshima is a pretty big city. I'm pretty sure I saw more people there than live on Amami. But Amami is way better and laid back. Well guess what. EVERYBODY is playing Pokemon Go. I know I'm late to the Pokemon Go parade but nobody plays it on Amami. It's crazy. There are literally hundreds of people in the park just playing Pokemon. It gets people out of their
houses and outside walking into position to meet us. Well guess what. We made some return appointments and got a lot of phone numbers because of Pokemon Go. You see, you walk up to someone, ask if their playing, talk about Pokemon for a few minutes, and then you can teach them because you just became friends. Like it's that simple. As crazy as it sounds, Pokemon just made missionary work in Japan easier by a hundred times. But it will probably die. There's even 50 year old women walking down the street playing. It's literally insane.

Anyways we came home on Friday morning and on the return boat I slept next to a grandma haha we talked for a boat after I dropped something and woke her up at like 8:30 pm. She was really nice. It was weird to sleep next to a Japanese grandma but the mats are preassigned so there's nothing you can do. Anyways we taught four lessons in three days, you now, that's like really good here on the island. That's actually super super good for here. Three were with investigators. Akira San is working hard at quitting smoking and told us that when he gets baptized he doesn't have any Sunday clothes. We offered to find some for him and he told us he will buy them himself. Like that was really cool. He brought that up himself! But he doesn't want to have a baptismal date, even as a goal, because quitting smoking will be hard and take a lot of time he said. We can't argue with that so we are going to work as hard as we can with him. He REALLY wants to quit and said he cut down half this week. He's a stud. We taught him twice.

This week I finished reading Jesus the Christ. For those that aren't LDS here or don't know what it is, it is a 729 page book about the life of Jesus that just uses scripture and analysis and it's very, very good. I encourage everyone to read it, but don't let it replace the scriptures themselves. The biggest part that stood out to me is how many times Pilate wanted to free Jesus and let him go. Did he know Jesus was the Son of God? Probably not. Did he feel the spirit testify to him about truth? Probably. Did he try to do what is right? Yes. Did he in the end give in to pressure? Yes. I thought about that a lot and how it applies to our lives. There are many times that we are Pilate. In essence Christ is brought to us and we are forced to choose between Christ and pressure. We put Christ through a gauntlet, essentially, and in the end give in to pressure. I mean gauntlet as in we try our faith, we go back and forth, we question, we doubt, we go through uneasily by ourselves with limited knowledge and ultimately many times deny Christ. I don't know why we do that! It doesn't make sense! We
have Christ, the literal Son of God on our side, next to us, yet we are willing to give into pressure and deny him. It's sad! It's true! Even Peter, the chief apostle, denied Christ at least three times. We know of the three times when he wept bitterly, but there were probably
others too. but the principle here is that we can repent! Peter repented and was forgiven, became one of the greatest missionaries and leaders the world has seen and restored priesthood authority to Joseph Smith! Though he was imperfect, he understood that and worked to come closer to Christ and become converted himself! We can do the same!
There is NO limit on how many times we can repent. We just have to mean it and work harder!

Love you all!

餡土龍 K. 赦輝長老
日本福岡伝道部

愛してるわ～

Yes mom, I am staying healthy. The Sano's have a blood pressure thing. I'm good.

Secret pic of a Japanese guy on the deck with Kagoshima in the back ground.

The six Amami missionaries on the boat. 

Me and the famous Sakura Jima. It exploded the day we got there. 

Not the biggest group by far but everyone is playing Pokemon. Park in Kagoshima.

Zone leaders apartment. Elder Bomtempo, Elder Johnson, Me, Elder Beer, Elder Reed, Elder Haoka, Elder Ishizu and Elder Miyagi. I am the fourth oldest behind the three to the right, then the others are way younger than me ha. Mission age wise. 

Japanese (actually all from Amami) Rappers. Notice the Jazz jersey. This inspired me to try to freestyle rap in Japanese. 

The Tschirki smile