Lots of Fun and Photos!

Splits in Kamisugi

This last week was a lot of fun, last weekend I was in Kamisugi Sendai for zone splits, Kamisugi is the biggest city in the mission, Saturday I was just in shorts and a t shirt for most of the day and I also got to play Ultimate Frisbee for like 3 hours. This transfer is down to 2 weeks and then I will be getting a new companion, I'm probably going to be in the same area though.

Sister Missionaries Took Photos

These were from splits with Elder Olson last week, the sister missionaries had us do pictures, the first one we had to have a picture of us hugging our bikes, the other one had to have the Book of Mormon and the sky and the last one had to have hymn books and chocolate, so those are the pictures we came up with.

Elder Canepari and Elder Olson

Smile It's  The Book of Mormon and The Sky!

We Love Our Bikes ((((HUG))))

Nothing Like Eating Chocolate with Hymns

Star Wars in Japan!

I Got my hair cut super short!

I didn't mean to get my hair cut as short as I did, but my Japanese isn't very good and when he asked me I said cut a little, which I guess he interpreted as cut it to just a little, but its fine.

3rd Anniversary of the Tsunami

This last week was the 3 year anniversary of the tsunami, I believe it happened at 2:46 pm, they sounded the Ishinomaki city alarm and there was a minute of silence in the city in remembrance of all the lives that were lost.

You Will Never Believe What Happened!

Also you will never believe what happened, and it happened to be while I was on splits with another missionary so I didn't see it in person, but me and the Elder I was on splits got back to the apartment last Saturday and the other Elders said you will never guess what we saw today, and they pulled out their camera and showed us a picture of them with the Tohoku Japan 501st Garrison, I guess they were doing something near the manga museum and happened to run into them

The Japanese Elder on the left is my companion Elder Akiyama, the Elder on the right is Elder Berkley, we were in the MTC together so it was pretty cool to be in the same apartment , sadly I didn't get to see these guys but they were pretty excited to see them. My companion has never even seen Star Wars though.

This is my district, 1 Japanese person 1 Chinese person 1 Canadian and 3 Americans, this is from last weeks District meeting, we have some other pictures that I will email as soon as I get a copy of them.


The missionaries in my district are Elder Berkley, Elder Olsen, Sister Johnson and Sister Luk. Sister Luk is Chinese, she is from Hong Kong. Then there is me and my companion Elder Akiyama.

Anyways, I hope everything has been going well!

Elder Canepari

The Snow has melted and the Heat is on the way!

Hi Everyone,

This is my investigator Onadera, he came with us to the Manga museum.

There hasn't been much new here but everything is going good.  We got another new investigator this week, he moved here from Tokyo, he was an investigator there so now we are teaching him, also the weirdest thing happened. when we were going to teach him, this guy showed up, I guess he joined the church in January and for whatever reason he hitchhiked all the way from Tokyo to come to Ishinomaki, he said he hadn't eaten in like 4 days and had been sleeping outside and had no money, he joined in on the lesson with us.  Our Branch President Onima got him a bunch of food, and he said he would come to church on Sunday but he never showed up and we have no idea what happened to him, so yeah, that was pretty strange, I guess he also used to be apart of the Japanese Navy.
Also, we may have ad our last lesson with Eric Tacamoto.  After not getting ahold of him for 2 weeks we finally had a lesson with him and we taught him the plan of salvation which I think he really felt the spirit and everything from what we taught but he didn't sound like he wanted to have anymore lessons, but he might come to church at some point, he seemed interested in seeing what a mormon church is like.
It is getting warmer though and the snow is melted already.  I heard that it gets really humid here but I keep telling everyone I'm from California and I'm used to the heat, but humidity is different.
Anyways, thats all for this week.
Love you guys,
Elder Canepari

Here is another picture of the coast.

He Sent Photos!

Transfer Day

Yes, today is transfer day, I am officially no longer a bean chan so I'm not being trained anymore which is nice. 

No one in my district got transferred, which is pretty unheard of because we have all been here for 3 transfers now. So, yes I am with the same companion, and it is his last transfer so I will definitely be getting someone new next transfer (which comes every 6 weeks). 

Zone Conference

The conference was great, I think everyones spirits were strengthened. The main focus of it was spiritual self reliance. He told us we should always be feeling the spirit and if we aren't then we need to repent, so I guess I could probably improve with that.  It was in Japanese though so I didn't understand everything.  The translator wasn't doing very good so I decided my Japanese was good enough that I could understand it better if I just listened to him. It was really good though. 

How Cold Is It?

The fridge is warmer than the apartment, although when we have our heater running its fine but while we are gone it gets pretty cold.  In December if I didn't put my soap in the fridge it would turn into jelly, but its warming up now. 

We run an earthquake drill every transfer, so there is a plan incase something really bad happens. 

President Rasmussen goes home in June I believe, they change mission presidents every 4 years. I'll try to send a few pictures today.


We actually have 6 investigators right now, we have found 4 new investigators in the last 2 weeks, we don't have any baptism dates or anything yet but we are working on it. I


anyways, love you guys!


Elder Canepari

Ashton with his MTC Teacher Huefner Sensei

Ashton with his MTC district

Here is the ocean-what the coast looks like now

Elder Ohori (1st companion) with Ashton at the Magna Museum 

View from Ashton's apartment

Ashton's zone, his new companion is the Japanese Elder behind him