The Strangest Experience On My Mission Thus Far

June 29 2014

A Full Week of Akita

The Strangest Experience

I've just been in Akita this week but it has been a pretty normal week, with the exception of yesterday; probably the strangest experience I have had on my mission thus far, we were leaving an area after a few hours of knocking on doors, and then some guy starts yelling at us, I looked at my companion and said maybe we should hurry and get out of here, then he said well it looks like he wants us to come talk to him.  Then we noticed that he was actually talking in English, but he obviously didn't know more that just hello and come here.  As we started walking towards him my companion said, at least we are in public so if he is crazy and tries to do something we can just run away, then he started speaking to us in Japanese and said I want to show you my house.  So we followed him to his house, he had us come in, his poor wife looked extremely surprised to see 2 tall Americans walk into her house, he told us to sit down, then he said you guys cant drink beer huh? Let me get you some coffee.  Then we said, we cant drink coffee sorry.  Then he said oh, let me get you guys some tea, then we said sorry we cant drink that either.  Then he said, can you drink water?  And we said yes.

Then he went on and on about himself, saying he was part of the Japanese military, showing us his pictures and awards and his house and his dogs.  And talking on and on, for almost 2 hours, then he said so you guys are missionaries right? and we said yes, then he said ok teach me about your religion, so my companion just looked at me and said what the heck do we say? And I said well I have the lesson pamphlets, so I pulled out the Restoration pamphlet and started talking about the basic stuff like we believe in God and we have a heavenly father. Then he stopped me and said put the pamphlet down! so I did, and he said wow this is amazing you guys speak fluent Japanese, and we said no not at all. And he said how do you speak Japanese so good? And I said well I got here last December and study it everyday, and he said yeah but that's not why you speak it so good, and I said no its not, its because I pray for help from God everyday to speak Japanese and its through his help that I am able to speak it.

And he said I will read the pamphlet. Then he said he wanted to take us to get dinner sometime, we told him we had to go and gave him our number, he gave us his and told us to call him, tomorrow we leave to Morioka for the Meet The New President conference and then we get back on Wednesday and on Thursday we move into our new apartment but after that we are going to give him a call back to see if we can meet with him again.

It was a pretty crazy experience, we came to the conclusion that he wasn't crazy, just really friendly with people.

A connection To Home

Also yesterday me and my companion got to teach the 2 Tongan boys, they are from Tonga but only speak English and a little Japanese. Believe it or not they actually have a lot of family in the Tongan ward in Sacramento, their mother said they go on trips there every once in a while. One of them is getting baptized soon because he is about to turn 8 so we are teaching him the lessons during church.

The World Cup

The world cup is huge in Japan. Stuff is promoting the Japanese team everywhere, and of course Pokemon is really big in this country so there is lots of stuff everywhere with Pokemon in the Japanese uniform. In stores lots of the employees wear the uniform.

. I talk to you guys next week.

-Elder Canepari

Same Story From Earl Choro's email: 

Earl Choro and Canepari Choro

Also, as we were putting fliers in people`s mailboxes (perfectly legal in Japan, at least), a man yelled out to us and told us to come to his house. We went in and "san (his name) gave us milk and pickled shallots and showed us all his pictures and stuff from his army experience. He was very impressed that we put our lives on hold for two years and come out here to volunteer and teach people about Christ. He told us that he wasn't planning on joining the church, but that`s what everybody says at first! He said he`ll pay for us to go to yakiniku if we want, (Yakiniku is like grilled meats and veggies with yummy dipping sauce.  You usually grill them on a table top.)  so we`ll definitely follow up with him after this crazy week of zone conferences, parties, and moving finishes."

I don't think this happens often. He was pretty excited to have someone so interested in talking with them!

View From New Apartment

July 6 2014

Moving and New President

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with the new mission president.  President and Sister Smith seem like really great people.  We also finally moved into our new apartment which is right in the middle of the city: Its a lot smaller then our last apartment, of course there is only 2 of us, but its nice being right next door to the church.

Zone Conference with President Smith

New Companion

We also got the transfer call last night, every companionship is changing and my new companion is named Elder Moffat.  He is the new district leader but oddly enough I am senior companion, he has been in the mission longer than me though, but usually when you are senior companion for the district leader it means you are going to become district leader but we will see what happens.

I seem to get a new companion every transfer, Elder Akiyama is the only companion I have had for more than 1 transfer.

4th of July Ward Party

Singing Patriotic Songs

We also had a 4th of July party.  All of the American missionaries sang patriotic songs and talked a little bit about American history.  We also put together a BBQ and did a water balloon fight.  It was a lot of fun, but us missionaries had to put together and organize the entire thing by ourselves.  There is no such thing as activity committees in these small Japanese branches.

Robertson Sumisi and Canepari Choro with Sparklers 

We haven't met with the guy we met last week yet, but we are hoping to be able to meet with him before Elder Earl leaves on Wednesday.

Just For Fun

Thats basically it for this week, I just had one more picture to show, you guys should like it, Japanese English is pretty funny:  

Love you guys,

-Elder Canepari

Saying Good-by and Hello

June 22 2014

More Diversity

It seems that with Japan the larger cities tend to have more Americans, I have seen several while I have been here. Although the Tongans that live here play rugby for Japans rugby team, it kind of seems like cheating but I guess America is pretty diverse also. 

New Mission President

President and Mrs Rassmasan and Mrs Smith with President Smith

The last time we got to see President and Sister Rasmussen was at a special goodbye devotional they did here in Morioka yesterday. It was a crazy week, we actually were only in Akita for one day this last week. We had splits with the zone leaders and there was a special conference (kind of like Stake Conference) for all of Morioka. President Rasmussen only did his goodbye devotional here in Morioka so I guess we were pretty lucky to be here for that.

Cool Broadcast

We had a really cool broadcast from church headquarters in Salt Lake. It was a lot like General Conference except it was only for Japan. Elder Christopherson talked as well as the Presiding Bishop and Elder Walker. Elder Walker and the Bishop both served in Japan and they actually spoke in Japanese which was really cool to here, of course Elder Crishopherson doesn't speak Japanese so they translated it to English, but all of us English speakers were in a different room so we just heard them talk in their native language.

New Apartment

President Smith and his wife get here in 2 weeks, they will be doing a devotional here in Morioka and then they are touring every single missionary apartment in the mission, luckily we will be in a new one so it should be all clean and everything before he sees it, you wouldn't believe how messy some of these missionary apartments get. I don't know when we will be doing interviews with him, but I imagine it would probably be when he comes to Akita. 

I Hope To Ride The Bullet Train

I haven't gotten a chance to ride the bullet train, we really want to though, most missionaries have but they recently told missionaries not to ride them anymore, they are really nice and go very fast but they are also really expensive, a regular train ticket from Akita to Morioka is about 4500 Yen both ways which is about $45, the bullet trains are about 8500 Yen, so its almost twice as expensive, and the church will only reimburse us for the cheapest way of travel, although me and my companion were thinking if we ever have a little extra money left over one month we might try it and just pay the difference. Its way faster, the normal train takes about 4 hours and of course missionaries are the only ones that take it to go such a far distance. I think the bullet train is more like an hour and a half which is pretty nice. The used to let missionaries take it but recently told us not to because of the cost, that's why it took us so long to get to Akita from Ishinomaki, that was more like 6 hours, the bullet train would have been nice.

Sushi

Unlike America sushi is actually really cheap in this country, so usually we just go to restaurants if we are going to eat it, there are some really great sushi places here, we actually go to them pretty regularly, for $10 you can get about 20 pieces of sushi here, which is usually more than I can eat.

Church

We come to the church almost everyday for various meetings and for the English and Chinese class, the branch here also does both institute and seminary, so there is something going on here everyday. We teach some lessons here, but I actually haven't really gotten to meet any of the investigators yet, although we are teaching the Word of Wisdom to one of them today. And one of our investigators is a kid from Brazil and we are going to be playing Basketball with him later tonight so that should be good.

Well, that's about it for this week, it was mostly spent in Morioka because we had splits with the zone leaders and the conference and devotional. This week is actually all going to be spent in Akita for once.

Love you guys,

-Elder Canepari

秋田いきました。

June 15 2014

The investigator that mentioned my stomach is pretty blunt, and when my bike broke last transfer I had to carry it all the way to the church which took almost an hour, and he drove by and saw me and just laughed and drove away.

Bikes and Transfers

They used to always ship bikes to the area that you transfer to, but its really expensive and the shipping company just raised the price so its over $100 for each bike to be shipped, and that money comes from the tithing fund, so we were all asked to pray about it, and the decision they came to was that we would just leave our bikes in our area and use the old missionaries bike when we transfer there.  It was sad because I was taking really good care of my bike and now I have one that is almost 2 years old, but its for the better I suppose.

Akita is the most diverse branch in the mission, there are Tongans, Americans, and Colombians here.  Of course it is still mostly Japanese people, but all of the classes arent even in Japanese, so we have to translate either from English to Japanese or from Japanese to English for several people.  The area is also really nice to, for some reason people just seem to be a lot nicer when you are out in the country.  

The journey to Akita was a very long one.  I met my new companion in Sendai which is where you always go for transfers, since my companion is also district leader he had a district leader training meeting the next

morning at the mission HQ in Sendai so we slept in the Elders apartment there in Sendai that night. Then normally the next day we would have headed to Akita, but the following day was the Morioka Zone Meeting and from Akita it is about a 4 hour train ride, and since ZTM starts in the morning they usually just go the night before and stay at the Zone Leaders apartment in Morioka so that's what we did, then after ZTM we finally got on a train back to Akita and got to our apartment just a few minutes after 9:00 pm. I also had my bags with me so I had to drag those around the whole time which was pretty annoying but nothing you can really do about that during transfers.

Speaking of apartments, ours is super far away, its about a 20 minute bike ride from the church, but we just found out we are getting a new apartment which is right next door to the church, we just had a guy from the moving company at our apartment to figure out the costs and everything, we are moving into the new apartment on the 7th of next month I believe so we have to get everything all packed, and I just barely unpacked all of my stuff.

New Companion

My new companion Elder Earl is great. We have been getting along really well, he is a democrat from Utah, you don't meet to many of those I feel like. So sometimes we have to be careful about our discussions in the apartment because he supported Obama and everything so his political views are of course different, not that we talk about that much as missionaries, and we aren't supposed to with other people either. His Chinese is really good though, and 2 of the sister missionaries here are actually from Hong Kong, so that's been interesting. 1 of them I was in the MTC with and the other one was in my last district in Ishinomaki. The large branch is definitely one of the highlights of Akita, they are all really great and helpful, and unlike Ishinomaki, we actually get food from and fed by the members here.

And Happy Birthday to Mom and Happy Fathers Day to Dad, omedetou gozaimasu! And otanjyoubi gozaimasu!

Love you guys,

-Elder Canepari