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.