SIE SIEND MEIN FRAUEN

In case you're wondering I found Duolingo and learned German, apparently I'm already seven percent fluent. I only know how to say things like my subject which says they are my women, and then like I eat bread, thank you. Haha. I guess that's all it takes to get to seven percent fluent levels. Anyways this week was a good one! I'll tell you about it.

Also next week is transfers so pday is Tuesday. Fast transfer.

I love Elder Jo. He is very money oriented and thinks things in dollar signs. Naturally we talk about issues in the world and typically disagree but are both smart and intellectual and so whenever we talk we know it will go nowhere so there's never contention which is great. We are pretty much polar opposites besides the fact we are both Asian and like rap. So that's that. Oh he also doesn't like to go out to eat and I do haha he's transfer five and I'm way over that. It's definitely fun.

We first taught our mom investigator from last week, Hiromatsu san. We went back and planned on teaching the plan of salvation. She said she had read up through 1 Nephi 14 and head some great questions about the tree of life, and what the fruit was and why the brothers Laman and Lemuel didn't go. We answered her questions and she really like the analogy and everything and we started sharing the plan of salvation which really ties in perfectly with the vision of the tree of life and it was a really good lesson. She asked where her parents go when they die and we answered. She really believes what we teach her and we really tried to emphasize prayer with her and she said she would do it. She said she doesn't really know if she can believe it until she reads the whole book haha like that's understandable completely so no problems there but we really emphasized if she wanted to know, which she does, then God will tell her if she asks. Then what i think the biggest miracle is is she set her own appointment. When we first met it was a "if im here" but with a reason to believe she would be, just Japanese passivity and not wanted to make it seem like they are bothering you. Last time she said "if I am here" and I said how about Tuesday at this same time and she said okay quickly. This time she said "yeah lets meet again every Tuesday, like once a week at this same time" and we were like woah. She also told us if it rains then not to come. She says she's going to worry about us if its raining and she wants us to be safe. One of my favourite people Ive met on my mission. She's just genuinely good.

Next investigator is Kenji. We teach him every week. He used to be of a Christian denomination but isn't anymore and is really into science and stuff like that. Well we teach him what we believe and he understands it but always questions things based off of his truly extensive research of religion and history and science. He's just a smart guy (but maybe too much relying on the knowledge of the world.) Well so we taught just the preexistence because he's been taught everything and we figured if you truly understand the preexistence then everything else makes sense and so we talked about the council in heaven ordained before the existence of the earth and Jesus and Satan and Satan's fall and the war in heaven and it was really really good and he was just blown away at how much the church teaches about that. He didn't have any questions. That's rare. He just sat there taking it all in. Hopefully he says that we really can answer all of his questions. This next lesson on Wednesday we are going to talk about how Jesus and Jehovah are the same and they are the God of the Old Testament. He really hates the Old Testament and Jehovah and says it's all completely different then the New Testament and all this well we figure that's a pretty big step to take to learn about the true nature of God and Jesus Christ. We will see. Also we teach all in English because his dad is Japanese and his mom is American and he lived in Florida his whole life.

Next investigator, Matsunobu, kind of has very little potential. He belongs to this religion that has some amulet that he can and has performed miracles in. It believes in "Jehovah, King of Kings and Lord of Lords" but we have no idea what religion it is. Unless Jehovah's Witnesses started giving out powerful amulets to people then we are at a loss. But we finished the Plan of Salvation and he liked it. We committed him to pray about it in the name of Jesus Christ and he said he would but probably wont. It's just Matsunobu. But he's a really nice guy and has three or four children high school aged and younger.

Last is our boy Yamaguchi Kasumi. He is 20 and his story is he just found a flyer and wanted to go to church and made his mom drive him and even when there wasn't church that week because of stake conference and things like that, he came every week. Well I came and he stopped so we figured oh maybe its just what happens when transfers happen. Well I never saw him but on Saturday we were knocking on doors and this lady opens the door all exited and says her kid goes to church with us and is listening to lessons, and said his name and we freaked out. He has a really hard job hours wise and is hard to get days off and recently has had to work on Sunday. He does demolition. But so he came to church yesterday, we taught the Plan of Salvation and we were able to answer all of his questions and he just absorbs everything. Also the members are trying to get him to go the All of Japan YSA conference in Tokyo in august which I also really want to go to and he said he would and he'd get the vacation time off that week. He is way solid and such a good kid that honestly just loves coming to church. He participates in lessons, sings the hymns and stays all three hours and them some, and when his mom comes to pick him up he goes home. We get along great, and we are actually going to hang out with him today and do some ground golf because he said he would take a day off to hang out with us. Haha way cool.

So those are the investigators. We got to do some service with a member in weeding their garden and it was fun. We had interviews with President Egan this week which was way good also. I love the Egans. Sister Egan remembered to bring me a banana instead of candy because I'm trying to get skinny.

So now the favourite part of the week. We were out in this place we had never been and these three little girls come up to us and talk to us for like forty minutes about everything. They loved us, like completely adored us. They asked if my hair was a wig, if we had girlfriends, where the first place we went to the bathroom in japan was and if it was pee or poop. Just you know like how 10 year old and younger kids always do. They got to bring in pee and poop or they're not really living a great childhood. Well they asked what we were doing and i said buying natto, aka fremented soybeans, and they said there's no where to get that here, its all houses. I told them we ask people for natto at houses and they said because I like natto i must also like poop because they both stink haha. Well they run to ring the doorbell so I can get natto and I'm like dang it, so we stopped them, and they laughed and were making fun of us but the moral of the story is when you're in japan for a long time, you get to be as good at Japanese as children. At one point I told them I was born in japan and
they believed it haha. But if you work hard at learning a language, or anything, you will always be able to reap the rewards. It may not be in teaching tons of people. In fact most days we get said no to about 50 times with nobody saying yes. It can be hard. But then you have little glimpses of fun and happiness and joy, especially with children, and it just makes everything you do worth it. I cant wait until I have my own little kids that I can talk to about poop with in Japanese and have fun with them. Those will be the best days.

love you all!

Elder Tschirki

German

The little girls

After a busy day we went back to Yakiniku Kings

Me and elder Bontempo from Naze reunited.
  

Infrared Beams

Well in case you were wondering the two girls that came to our English class last time and put pics of me on insta and were super flirty didn't come again this week which was a miracle haha. But who knows they may come again and they may not. We will see.

Anyways the reason this is about infrared this week is a weird story so here it goes. I changed deodorant a couple weeks ago and it gave me a rash on my armpit. Well you know when that happens you kind of have to stop. Well I did and it got worse and hurt pretty bad so I found some Goldbond in the apartment and used it. Well it didn't seem to make it any better so I called Sister Egan, the mission presidents wife, and told her about my red, in a lot of pain left armpit. She was like "its because you're in Japan. The humidity is making it worse." And told me to go see a doctor and see if I couldn't get some medicine which I forgot what she said to try to get. Well so on Tuesday me and Elder Ishizu were on exchanges and we went on google maps to find hospitals and we both looked at one, looked at each other, and laughed. It was a 肛門科。I guess the fact that I can read that is impressive considering I do not study kanji at all but can actually read at like a junior high student level. But anyways that's not the point. If you didn't look up the Japanese I will just say its an anal doctor. I don't need to go there. So we found a place, went in, and they were like "we don't do skin things here." So we left and found another place, all really close by. In Japan, hospitals are more like clinics. They are usually special practices and aren't super big. So don't freak out when I say we went to a hospital. But we found a place and I went in and made the appointment, sat down and waited. Also, you don't wait very long in hospitals, the service is very fast and very cheap. Plus the pharmacies MAKE the medicine themselves upon receiving prescriptions. So they don't invest in huge pharmaceutical companies doing everything. It's really cool. But anyways so I go in and the doctor is like "can you speak Japanese?" And I say "yeah" and then told him about my deodorant and armpit issue and he looked at it and was like "yeah we will prescribe some cream and some pills and stuff" like pills for a rash? Okay but so I'm listening to him and all the nurses just chilling there as this dude is looking at my armpit and then he says "we are going to have you go into the next room so we can scan you with infrared" and I understood but was thinking like why the
heck do I need to be infrared scanned? But so I went in and they had me take off my shirt and lay down and they put this infrared thing over my body that was pretty hot and told me to close my eyes. At this point Elder Ishizu asked fi he could take pictures of me and I said of
course! And so he pulls out his iPad and takes one but they close the curtain, but they see him with the iPad and ask if he wants to take pictures and he says yeah so the nurses reopen the curtain and he takes some pictures of me getting scanned by infrared lighting. Well that was it and we went next door to the pharmacy and I had to fill in all of this allergy things and I could read it all which I was surprised at and did it all and Elder Ishizu was like "dang you really are Japanese and not American" and I was like "yeah" and he was like "I've never known a missionary that could do that haha" and so that was that and my armpit hurt the rest of the day but so I use the cream twice a day and a pill at dinner and its pretty much perfectly gone away now. So that was the greatest story of the week. Well one of them. It also shows how funny the people at the hospitals are too.

SO ANYWAYS this week we were able to do some cool things. We went to Nagasaki for exchanges which is three hours away on a train. But it was fun and we got to Nagasaki and had dinner and got lost, watched a creepy old guy flirt with a junior high girl to see if it was
dangerous, deemed it not dangerous, got off the tram and realized we were lost and walked around Nagasaki for a half hour or so, got on the right tram and got to the zone leaders apartment late haha but it wasn't our fault because we don't know the way and they live like
fourth minutes out of Nagasaki city. But anyways there's a really cool story from exchanges. We went to this huge apartment and realized it would be mostly old people but I told elder Murdock that Ive found young people in weird places before. So we get in the elevator and it
smells like old people, but so we do like five floors with no success but then we meet this young mom that has three kids and they're in the middle of dinner and the husband is even sitting there too and she came out and talked to us! Not only that but pretty much we became like best friends. And we were having tons of fun and her four year old boy came out and he was really shy and I told him to put his shoes on before coming outside so he did and came back out and his mom was way surprised because he was listening to us and he goes back inside and grabs a couple cracker type treats and gives it to us and then stands there as we talk with the mom, and then he goes back inside, grabs a small bag of the crackers things and comes back out and comes right up to me and the very first words we heard him say, and probably the only words he said was 2人で食べてください。It was the cutest thing I've ever seen and the mom said he never acts like that haha. Best family ever. We were able to set a return appointment with them and it was such a great miracle. She's pretty interested, and her kids love us already so it was so fun. So it goes to show as you are happy, friendly, and follow the spirit you will see miracles. It's sad because that was in Nagasaki though. So I
don't know how it will turn out. 

But out here on the home front in SAGA we were able to find a new investigator! She's a 40 year old mom named 廣松さん or in English Hiromatsu san, and we made an appointment with her and showed up to the appointment at her house on Wednesday and she said "yeah I remembered I made an appointment with you guys and thought you'd probably come so I made sure I was here" and we talked about us as missionaries and the reason we are here which is the Book of Mormon. We gave her the Book of Mormon after teaching her about how it will bless her and her families life and before we even tried to commit her to read it she took it and said "I will read it. It's kind of big so I will read just a little bit at a time and try to understand." And so we tried to make another appointment and she said she didn't know if she would be home (Japanese culture is kind of passive) and so we were like okay we will come back on Tuesday afternoon at this same time and she said okay and that she will be there haha. It's a funny place. So that was our miracle investigator here in our own area.

The mission is great, I'm happy, I'm healthy, I love Japan with all my heart and never want to leave.

Elder Tschirki

We also ordered new futons and a stove this week and they all came and so our apartment was full of stuff so we made this video. The song is in a string of videos of missionaries doing weird things with stoves because they're like turn tables. They're pretty famous in Japan
because they get sent around to everyone.

We found a little ghetto farmers market with strawberries marked for 120 yen and that's way way way cheap 

and so I got some and the dude liked me and said 100 yen and I told him its 120 and he said "I know. 100 yen." 

And he was just a really happy dude. And now I'm a really happy dude because essentially this is like 80 cents haha.

 I got a random package from a member in Naze and he sent me a bunch of psychology 

books about love, about Japanese psychology, and about how war won't ever stop. 

That book is called "the merchant of death." So they're just sitting on my desk and I cant 

read them because #missionary. He sent the English and Japanese editions. So random. 

Definitely wasn't expecting that.

 The promised hospital pictures. 

General Conference

Isn't general conference just great? I'm pretty sure Ive said it before but I have three favorite times of the year and they are Christmas and General Conference times. This conference was really good. Except for the Saturday morning session. Didn't really get into that one at all. But hey that's okay. I guess since I'm talking about conference, I will just talk about what I learned. My favorite session was Saturday afternoon. I really loved Elder Cordons talk about
Language Loss. It was really interesting how he compared loss in spiritually to a generational loss in language and how if we don't nurture the language, or the spirit, in our children, they will lose it and not be able to really grow themselves. Or in short how I see
it, they don't fill their potential. I always get frustrated when for example I see half Japanese people that cant speak Japanese. It's like there's no point to that. Just like there's no point to not giving what is necessary to help your kids get a testimony or knowledge of the gospel. Then that was followed by Elder Anderson's talk about overcoming the world and how we need to overcome the influences of the world and grow spiritually. The spirit was there in that talk and I feel like I learned a lot about everything I have been thinking of and pondering recently. Then that was followed by a powerhouse talk in the goals and plans by Elder Ballard. Pretty much those two talks were linked together by the spirit in showing you have to make plans and goals to overcome the world and help you prevent spiritual language
loss in your families. Those three talks pretty much spoke to everything I was thinking and it was super super great.

Anyways so enough of that, lets get to the crazy story of the week. We have another one. Saga doesn't disappoint. So I was with a young elder in my district named Elder Lyman and we were at this apartment building and sometimes in Japan they have businesses and such in residential places. Pretty much I don't think they have the same zoning laws or anything. Well I saw the sign on the door of the apartment and I knew it was a business of some sort so me still being somewhat of a punk I rang the doorbell and told young Elder Lyman good
luck (i have actually had good luck knocking on these random businesses and teaching the person that comes out) and this twenty something year old girl comes out. Well so she's not really interested and said she knows someone that likes English and she would give her our flyer. Well so we go to the next door and then the girl comes back out with another girl and she's young also and is the one that wants to learn English and supposedly quit junior high school. Well we told them about English class and whatever and they're like "but you're
missionaries so that's not you're real purpose. You want people to teach." And I was like yep. And they were like "we are only interested in English" and whatnot so they came. But they were super flirty and Elder Lyman doesn't get that much yet but like he knew too that they
were super flirty and it was just a feeling of "crap they're for sure coming tomorrow." And then guess what... they came! And the one that isn't as interested is actually pretty good at English. The second one isn't the brightest but what can you expect from someone who quit
middle school. So the whole time I had to teach her because her level wasn't even a beginner level. But the other students were laughing at how crazy she is. But anyways while I was teaching the second one took a bunch of pictures of me and put them on insta and so if you find me on random Japanese girls insta then that's it. But so the whole time i was like "this isn't good because she is totally more interested in me" and so anyways after class they left and I was talking to a member here that comes to English class, Imamura shimai, and she was like "I wasn't going to come today but I felt the spirit told me to come so i did and i know why" and so she's going to be a bro and tell these girls that missionaries cant date or do anything. So hopefully they either get baptized and join the church or stop coming. It's always awkward when people get attracted to missionaries, and so yeah.But the moral of the story is LISTEN TO THE SPIRIT WHEN IT TELLS YOU SOMETHING because you can and will help other people in need. Also, pray for them to not be crazy and flirty on Wednesday because I don't want to have to deal with that. Because guess what happens if that doesn't get resolved? Missionaries transfer. So yeah I kind of don't want to transfer.

Love you all!

Elder Tschirki

General Conference

Me and the fertility god after all you can eat okonomiyaki

  Okonomiyaki

 

Phone

So straight up this week we taught some lessons but not too much that really stands out as amazing jaw dropping experiences, just regular. But it's all life and so I'll get to the best part of the week which probably y'all won't believe. So we went up to Fukuoka on Friday for a
multi zone conference and it was good. We have to ride the trains which I love. Well anyways we needed to get back home afterwards for our activity night so we ended up getting on the limited express train which I'll just explain there are the regular trains and then there's express and then there is the 特急 which is a limited express train I guess. Well it goes pretty fast and only had like three stops between Fukuoka and Saga. But it costs extra and so somewhere in the process of paying the train attendant extra money and chilling on the train I lost our phone and didn't realize it until we were out of the station and going to the church. Well as a missionary without a phone you can't really do anything, including call the office to figure things out haha you're pretty much left on your own it's terrible. So luckily I was mailing the office elder, Elder Ishikawa, who I talked to for a lot of the day anyways (he's a genius and so funny and going to Tokyo University and we're way tight now and he's going to send me down some Chinese stuff haha like today) and we ended up skyping to figure all this out and he said he called the station and they didn't have a phone like that so they were going to have to send me a new phone, at least for the time being. That would get there on Sunday. And then I had the genius idea of calling the train stations myself so I used a foreign members phone at our activity night to call Hakata Eki in Fukuoka and they said that they called Nagasaki Eki and they have my phone probably and so I had to call them to verify and so I did that and described the phone and the phone number and everything and the man asked me what the name in the phone was and I was like "um... probably Saga missionaries" and he's like "oh yep that's probably definitely you guys. Well send it tomorrow and it will get there Sunday, but you have to pay for it" and I was like "okay" because that's cheaper then taking a three hour train ride to Nagasaki and then three hours back. Well so Sunday comes and you know, we have church and all, so we put a sign on our door that says if you come during church, we are at church and won't be home until dinner at 5 and then at night at 9 but I also wrote that we put money in the mailbox and my stamp with my name on it in case he just wanted to take the money and so we didn't think he was going to do that but figured it was worth a shot. Well we get home from church and jokingly check the mail box (I put 30 dollars ish in there) and sure enough the box with our phone was in there with the change (it was like seven dollars ish) so my remaining 23 dollars or so was just chilling there and we got our phone back so long story short, if you're in Japan and have to pay for postage and you're not home, just put money in the mailbox and they will do it for you. The best part is that people were outside talking to us as I put money in the mailbox haha I love this country so much. My money was still there and I got my phone back. Life was good yesterday. I mean pretty much every appointment fell through yesterday so like it's whatever but we got our phone back.

That's pretty much the week haha it's going good I realize this area is actually pretty huge and we've been able to see success and find people that are interested and prepared to hear the gospel but we just need to go back and meet with them because they weren't quite ready to make appointments. But there's so much potential in this city. Plus it's pretty cold haha I can't get away from the cold and then it's the summer and then I go home lol but then I come back in September so not really getting away from the summer.

Love you all!
Elder Tschirki

We were going to go eat cheap yakiniku but decided to yolo and go to really nice Yakiniku Kingu and 

spent 30 dollars a person but it's the first of the month so it's like whatever, and it was definitely no regrets. 

 

 




Kagoshima boys reunited. But we didn't get Elder Tofa to sign it haha we did it on the train.


 

Saga

Sorry this is Japanese because it's easier to type that way and I'm kind of lazy right now but I think google translate is getting better and probably the people that read it in the first place have Japanese friends or are Japanese so like sorry about that haha but life's good in Saga!

やっ と佐賀県に来たんだ！沖縄から転勤するんがあまりヤダでも内地ん方がいいから嬉しい。日本のことがまったく知らない人がいるから佐賀のことを紹介しよう ね。佐賀は何もないところだ。佐賀って10万人ぐらいいる場所でちょう田舎だけど伝道がよく成功できるはずだ。いま僕の同僚が韓国人であまりヤダ笑笑日本 人の方がいいわけどさあ〜韓国人でもいいんじゃん。実はねここでの2年間前の改宗者がホーストマイヤ長老に教えられて、まだ活発会員でよく彼のこと話して る。

ここでまだ求道者に教えてないんだけど結構いるよね、なのでめちゃ楽しみ、この転勤で攻めて1人がバプテスマを受けれるはずだから楽しみ。

転勤したときはめちゃ悲しかったけど、でも福岡の博多駅で前の同僚やすごく好きな宣教師にあって良かったって思う。伝道中は多分一番すごくいい友だちにあったりすごく日本人が大好きすぎわけめちゃ日本まで戻りたいわー

愛してる！
シャキー長老

 

博多駅でぼくとバルカ長老

 

最後のpday

 

ブルーシールアイス。ムラサキのは紅芋だ。