Mother's Day Skype and May 20, 2014

Happy Mothers Day Skype!

Skype

We skyped with Elder Canepari (Ashton) on Mothers Day.  As you can see he is healthy and happy.  He said he has gained weight! Hard to imagine on all that sea food and with the bike riding. 

Tsunami Story

He did tell us about the man that he met when he went to the shrine for the tsunami victims.  The man said that they were told that a tsunami was coming. So he and his wife went up onto a high hill and were waiting and watching there for a long time.  Nothing happened so they went home.  But after they went home, they saw the tsunami coming so they ran back toward the hill.  They had to climb up a ladder.   They were climbing up the ladder onto the hill. When he looked back to make sure she was coming he saw the tsunami carrying her away out to sea.  He never found her or saw her again.  Very sad story.

Food Eating Contests

You remember Sister Johnson, in this photo.  Ashton said that food eating contests are competed in a lot in his mission.  It's a very big deal.  So all the missionaries went to McDonalds to eat.  Sister Johnson challenged Ashton to a food eating contest.  If it had been one of the Elders he would have said no, but it was Sister Johnson.  He could not turn it down! To try and save face he said yes.  She said she could eat more Big Macs than him.  They ordered 4 each and the food contest began.  Ashton ate the first, he was fine.  He ate the second, he was full.  He ate the third, he felt like it was too much but he went on to number four!  Half way through he had to run to the restroom to through up the Big Macs.  The McDonalds worker thought he may have food poisoning and was very concerned.  He tried to explain he just ate too much. 

Meanwhile. . . . Sister Johnson was also on number four Big Mac.  She downed the whole thing!  Then she ran to the restroom to through up! 
Ashton-loses at 3 1/2
Sister Johnson- Winner at 4!

Ashton said he may not go back to McDonalds for a very long time!

Business Cards

Business cards are very popular and important in Japan.  Everyone has them and they expect you to have one as well.  You need to be ready to exchange them when you meet someone.  You also should really look and admire their card.  Ashton said that  it works well for the missionaries because it is very easy to get everyone's information.  This is Elder Canepari's Business card.

May 20th emails

River wanted to know what weird food Ashton has eaten.

 I did eat some jellyfish ice cream the other day, it had chunks of jellyfish in it, it was actually pretty good, they also had wasabi ice cream, but I didn't try that one. We got to go on a fun boat ride around a bunch of the islands in Matsushima, I have videos and pictures that I can probably send you guys next week, at least the pictures
 anyways.
 :P Anyways, happy birthday River! In Japanese you say omedato gozaimasu!
  Love you buddy! -Elder Canepari

My Japanese

It was great Skyping with you guys last week. The Japanese is definitely getting better, the hardest thing is just having to think about things to say to an audience of people, but when I am just having conversations with people its a lot easier. We get 1 hour a day to study Japanese, but I have been really busy this transfer, so I haven't gotten to do that everyday. But when you are living in Japan you learn stuff all throughout the day.

I get along with my companion pretty good, my whole district is great, the rest of them wanted to drop in on the Skype call, but they were busy while I was Skyping. All the missionaries are definitely good people because they are out on a mission, of course I still get in disagreements with people sometimes but I haven't met anyone that I don't like.

No new investigators this transfer yet, but things have been going good here. Yesterday we had a zone P-day in Matsushima which was a lot of fun, I have a bunch of pictures from it, Ill have to send those next week, the zone P-day took up all of our P-day time. Sounds like things have been going good over there, it was great seeing you guys,

love you,
-Elder Canepari

I'm sure it will just be a matter of time before they have cures for everything, but Christ's gospel and atonement is a cure from sin for everyone which is a really powerful thing, I don't know if you guys have seen the Because of Him Mormon Message that the church put out recently, but if you haven't you should go watch it, its a really great video.  Because of Him

President Rasmussen is leaving in July and we will have a new mission president.  President Smith from Provo Utah.  They are having all of the missionaries in the mission write good by messages for President Rasmussen, so that should be good.

Love you,

-Elder Canepari

Weather Or Not

Weather and Transfers

Hello Everyone,

The weather is starting to get a lot warmer, we were sweating while riding our bikes today. The humidity makes it feel really hot. We used to just do one district P-Day a transfer, but we have already made plans for a district P-Day every Monday for the next five weeks, except for one which is a zone P-Day which should be a lot of fun.

My shoes and bags and everything are ok, the first time it rained the water soaked through all of my stuff, but I learned from the missionaries here that if you but a bag on the inside of the bag it keeps everything dry so thats what I have been doing.

Elder Anderson is just 2 transfers ahead of me, so he doesn't know that much more than me as far as Japanese goes. Elder Aono is right out of the MTC.  Elder Whittle is his trainer for the last 2 transfers of his mission.  Elder Aono is from Tokyo. Sister Alkazar is from Utah.

Not a whole lot has happened since last week, but we have been looking for a field to start playing Ultimate Frisby with our investigators and members in the branch, and the problem with Japan is there are no fields anywhere that don't have a bunch of trees all over the place.  Then yesterday Elder Whittle mentioned something about tennis and I suddenly remembered that I saw a field somewhere over there.  So after about an hour of searching around the mountain we found it. It was pretty close to the coast, so I wanted to show them this shrine by the ocean in remembrance of Ishinomaki from the tsunami. We ended up meeting this really awesome person who told us this crazy story about what happened to him and his family from the tsunami, its to long to tell right now, but remind me during Skype. I'm not completely sure how we are going to work it out, because there are 6 of us that all have to Skype on the one computer, but this week during District Meeting we are going to figure out who is Skyping when.

That's it for this week,
love you guys
-Elder Canepari

They also have Mountain Dew in Japan.

What about the earthquake?

We are fine, the earthquake happened in the middle of the night so I think it just woke everyone up for a second, I just went right back to sleep.

The new district missionaries Elder Aono from Tokyo, and Sister Alkazar from Utah

They also have Mountain Dew in Japan.

Sister Johnson is the only one that is the same, and that's my companion Elder Anderson, also from Utah.